upon hope. His was the spirit that leads to success in the face of
overwhelming odds.

Willet was first, and Robert was close behind.

Neither looked back, but they knew that Tayoga would not move, until
the alarm was given, and they could flee away with the pursuit hot
upon their heels. Young Lennox saw again that they could now have
slipped through the Indian lines, but the thought of deserting
Grosvenor never entered his mind. It seemed though as if all the
elements of nature were conspiring to facilitate the flight of the
hunter and himself. The sentinels, whose dusky figures they were yet
able to see, moved sleepily up and down. No dead wood that would break
with a snap thrust itself before their feet. The wilderness opened a
way for them.

"I think a warrior or two may be watching in the forest to the north
of us," whispered Willet, "but we'll go through the line there. See
that fellow standing under the tree, about a hundred yards to the
south. He's the one to give the alarm."

But circumstances still favored them. Nature was peaceful. When they
wished for the first time in their lives that their flight should
be detected, nothing happened, and the vigilance of the warriors who
usually watched so well seemed to be relaxed. Robert was conscious
that they were passing unseen and unheard between the sentinel on the
north and the sentinel on the south.

Two hundred yards farther on, and the hunter brought his moccasin
sharply down upon a dead stick which broke with a sharp snap, a sound