rom my friend's
seigneury."

"Then we may sleep there to-night, if you think that he is indeed to be
trusted."

"Yes. He is a strange man, with ways of his own, but I would trust him
with my life."

"Very good. We shall keep to the south of the fort and make for his
house. But something is putting up the birds over yonder. Ah, I hear
the sound of steps! Crouch down here among the sumach, until we see who
it is who walks so boldly through the woods."

They stooped all four among the brushwood, peeping out between the tree
trunks at a little glade towards which Amos was looking. For a long
time the sound which the quick ears of the woodsman had detected was
inaudible to the others, but at last they too heard the sharp snapping
of twigs as some one forced his passage through the undergrowth.
A moment later a man pushed his way into the open, whose appearance was
so strange and so ill-suited to the spot, that even Amos gazed upon him
with amazement.

He was a very small man, so dark and weather-stained that he might have
passed for an Indian were it not that he walked and was clad as no
Indian had ever been. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, frayed at the edges,
and so discoloured that it was hard to say what its original tint had
been. His dress was of skins, rudely cut and dangling loosely from his
body, and he wore the high boots of a dragoon, as tattered and stained
as the rest of his raiment. On his back he bore a huge bundle of canvas
with two long sticks projecting from it, and under each arm he carried
what appeared to be a large square painting.

"He's no Injun," whispered Amos, "and he's no Woodsman either.
Blessed if I ever saw the match of him!"

"He's neither _voyageur_, nor soldier, nor _coureur-de-bois_," said De
Catinat.

"'Pears to me to have a jurymast rigged upon his back, and fore and main
staysails set under each of his arms," said Captain Ephraim.

"Well, he seems to have no consorts, so we may hail him without fear."

They rose from their ambush, and as they did so the stranger caught
sight of them. Instead of showing the uneasiness which any man might be
expected to feel at suddenly finding himself in the presence of
strangers in such a country, he promptly altered his course and came
towards them. As he crossed the glade, however, the sounds of the
distant bell fell upon his ears, and he instantly whipped off his hat
and sunk his head in prayer. A cry of horror rose, not only fro