I had known, since first leaving the Maumee, that danger haunted the
expedition; yet these solemn words came as a surprise.

"Why think you thus?" I asked, with newly aroused anxiety, my thoughts
more with the girl behind than with myself. "Mademoiselle Toinette
tells me the Fort is strong and capable of defence, and surely we are
already nearly there."

"The young girl yonder with De Croix? It may be so, if it also be well
provisioned for a long siege, as it is scarce likely any rescue party
will be despatched so far westward. If I mistake not, Hull will have
no men to spare. Yet I like not the action of the savages about us.
'T is not in Indian nature to hold off, as these are doing, and permit
reinforcements to go by, when they might be halted so easily. 'T would
ease my mind not a little were we attacked."

"Attacked? by whom?"

He faced me with undisguised surprise, a sarcastic smile curling his
grim mouth. His hand swept along the western sky-line.

"By those red spies hiding behind that ridge of sand," he answered
shortly. "Boy, where are your eyes not to have seen that every step we
have taken this day has been but by sufferance of the Pottawattomies?
Not for an hour since leaving camp have we marched out of shot from
their guns; it means treachery, yet I can scarce tell where or how. If
they have spared us this long, there is some good Indian reason for it."

I glanced along that apparently desolate sandbank, barely a hundred
feet away, feeling a thrill of uneasiness sweep over me at the