see it, and, with
his head very high, he trod lightly as he passed among the trees,
approaching the quiet beach. Before he left the wood he saw the top of
the schooner's mast showing over a fringe of bushes. Evidently she had
anchored outside the reefs and was sending in a boat to look further.
Well, that was fit and proper, and his advice and assistance would be
most timely.

The wind rose a little and it sang a lilting melody among the leaves.
His imagination, alive and leaping, turned it into the song of a
troubadour, gay and welcoming. Tayoga's spirits were abroad again,
filling the air in the dusk, their favorite time, and he rejoiced, until
he suddenly heard once more that faint note of warning, buried under
the volume of the other, but nevertheless there.

Alone, driven in upon himself for so many months, he was a creature of
mysticism that night. What he imagined he believed, and, obedient to the
warning, he drew back. All the caution of the northern wilderness
returned suddenly to him. He was no longer rushing forward to make a
welcome for guests awaited eagerly. He would see what manner of people
came before he opened the door. Putting the rifle in the hollow of his
arm he crept forward through the bushes.

A large boat was coming in from the schooner, and the bright moonlight
enabled him to see at first glance that the six men who sat in it were
not men of Boston. Nor were they men of England. They were too dark, and
three of them had rings in their ears.

Perhaps the schooner was a French privateer, wishing to make a secret
landing, and, if so, he had done well to hold back. He had no mind to be
taken a prisoner to France. The French were brave, and he would not be
ill-treated, but he had other things to do. He withdrew a little farther
into the undergrowth. The door of welcome was open now only a few
inches, and he was peering out at the crack, every faculty alive and
ready to take the alarm.

The boat drew closer, grounded on the beach, and the men, leaping out,
dragged it beyond the reach of the low waves that were coming in. Then,
in a close group, they walked toward the forest, looking about
curiously. They were armed heavily, and every one of them had a drawn
weapon in his hand, sword or pistol. Their actions seemed to Robert
those of men who expected a stranger, as a matter of course, to be an
enemy. Hence, they were men whose hands were against other men, and so
also against young Robert Lenno