sten, Boulanger and the girl, as
if with one consent, drove the canoe close under the bushes that
fringed the bank and here and there hung down and dipped their long
branches in the water. Isidore's impatience and curiosity now became
so great, and his sense of his own rather undignified position so
galling, that he was just about to assert some kind of right to know
what and whereabouts the danger might be, when he was stopped by the
sound of voices upon the bank at no great distance from them. A few
more strokes of the stealthy paddles and the voices were distinctly
within hearing.

"And I say," exclaimed some one in English, "that I am not going to
stay out here all night on such a wild-goose chase."

"Nor I," said another. "You, Master Kirby, may stop here with them
that will; some of us have sorrow and trouble enough at our own doors
that call us home instead of loitering here. Besides, who knows that
the whole thing isn't a lie of this red scoundrel's after all?"

"You placed yourself under my orders, and I bid you stop here," replied
a firm voice. "The Indian's story was clear enough as he told it at
first, before you were such fools as to let him get dead drunk after
his hard run. What more likely than that Oswego has been taken by that
rascally Montcalm, or that he should send important despatches across
country this way? I know this Indian fellow well: he is trustworthy
enough when sober, and he says he not only saw the French officer and
his guide start from Oswego after the disaster there, but left them not
two hours ago on a path that must bring them either along here or take
them over the hill, in which latter case they will fall into Tyler's
hands."

As these various views and opinions were uttered the canoe was gliding
along within a couple of feet of the bank, stealthily indeed and with
diminished speed, lest the mere splash of the paddle should give the
alarm. The bank was for the most part steep enough to afford complete
concealment from any one at a short distance from the edge. It had
just passed the spot, and was drawing away from the voices, when it
suddenly stopped and swung round. But for a dexterous stroke of
Boulanger's paddle it must have turned over, for it had come right
across a long bramble that had become submerged.

"What was that?" exclaimed one of the New England men; "it sounded like
a paddle."

"Sounded like a fiddlestick!" replied another; "you with your sharp
ear