he intermediary recovered its lost color.

"You will spare me, then?" he exclaimed joyfully.

"In a way, yes, but we're not going to carry you back in luxury to
Albany, nor are we thinking of making you an honored member of our
band. You've quite a time before you."

"I don't understand you."

"You will soon. You're going back to the Chevalier de St. Luc who has
little patience with failure, and you'll find that the road to him
abounds in hard traveling. It may be, too, that the savage Tandakora
will ask you some difficult questions, but if so, Monsieur Achille
Garay, it will be your task to answer them, and I take it that you
have a fertile mind. In any event, you will be equipped to meet him by
your journey, which will be full of variety and effort and which will
strengthen and harden your mind."

The face of Garay paled again, and he gazed at Robert in a sort of
dazed fashion. The imagination of young Lennox was alive and leaping.
He had found what seemed to him a happy solution of a knotty problem,
and, as usual in such cases, his speech became fluent and golden.

"Oh, you'll enjoy it, Monsieur Achille Garay," he said in his mellow,
persuasive voice. "The forest is beautiful at this time of the year
and the mountains are so magnificent always that they must appeal to
anyone who has in his soul the strain of poetry that I know you have.
The snow, too, I think has gone from the higher peaks and ridges and
you will not be troubled by extreme cold. If you should wander from
the path back to St. Luc you will have abundant leisure in which to
find it again, because for quite a while to come time will be of no
importance to you. And as you'll go unarmed, you'll be in no danger of
shooting your friends by mistake."

"You're not going to turn me into the wilderness to starve?"

"Not at all. We'll give you plenty of food. Tayoga and I will see you
well on your way. Now, since you've eaten enough, you start at once."

Tayoga and the hunter fell in readily with Robert's plan. The captive
received enough food to last four days, which he carried in a pack
fastened on his back, and then Robert and Tayoga accompanied him
northward and back on the trail.

Much of Garay's courage returned as they marched steadily on through
the forest. When he summed it up he found that he had fared well. His
captors had really been soft-hearted. It was not usual for one serving
as an intermediary and spy like himself to escape, when taken