"They've found our trail at the end of the natural bridge," said Willet.

"It is so," said Tayoga, in his precise school English.

"And they're mad, mad clean through," said the hunter. "That single cry
shows it. If they hadn't been so mad they'd have followed our trail
without a sound. I wish I could have seen the faces of the Ojibway and
the Frenchman when they came back and noticed our trace at the end of
the tree. They're mad in every nerve and fiber, because they did not
conclude to go upon it. It was only one chance in a thousand that we'd
be there, they let that one chance in a thousand go, and lost."

The great frame of the hunter shook with silent laughter. But Robert, in
very truth, saw the chagrin upon the faces of Tandakora and De
Courcelles. His extraordinary imagination was again up and leaping and
the picture it created for him was as glowing and vivid as fact. They
had gone some distance, and then they had come back, continually
searching the thickets of the opposite shore with their powerful and
trained eyesight. They had felt disappointed because they had seen no
trace of the hunted, who had surely come by this time against the
barrier of the river. Frenchman and Ojibway were in a state of angry
wonder at the disappearance of the three who had vanished as if on wings
in the air, leaving no trail. Then Tandakora had chanced to look down.
His eye in the dusky moonlight had caught the faint imprint of a foot on
the grass, perhaps Robert's own, and the sudden shout had been wrenched
from him by his anger and mortification. Now Robert, too, was convulsed
by internal laughter.

"It was our great luck that they did not find us on the tree," he said.