been inclined to return at once and share whatever trials were
besetting the chevalier. From him the boy's thoughts sped to France
and the old chateau in which he was born. He almost laughed aloud as
he imagined the look of consternation with which old François would
regard him if he could now see him, lying alone in a fragile craft,
such as the old servant had never imagined, in the midst of a terrible
wilderness of great moss-hung trees, queer-looking plants, black
waters, and blacker mud.

From these reveries he was suddenly startled by the sound of a slight
splash in the water and a subdued human voice. Raising his head very
cautiously above the side of the canoe, Réné caught a glimpse, at the
mouth of the little lagoon in which his own craft was concealed, of
another canoe, in which were seated two Indians. It was headed
up-stream, but its occupants had paused in their paddling, and from
their gestures were evidently considering the exploration of the very
place in which he lay hidden from them. In one of them Réné recognized
the unwelcome face of Chitta the Snake, but the other he had never
before seen.

With a loudly beating heart and almost without breathing he watched
them, thankful enough for the shelter of broad lily-leaves that raised
their green barrier in front of him. He was fully conscious that upon
the result of the conversation the two were holding, in such low tones
that he could not distinguish a word, depended his own fate. He knew,
from what Has-se had told him, that Chitta regarded him as an enemy,
and he knew also that for his enemies an Indian reserves but one fate,
and will kill them if he can.

Thus it was with the feeling that he had escaped a mortal peril, and