successful resistance to so large a number of their savage foes. In
the daylight he felt certain they could beat them off, but darkness
neutralizes the effect both of superior arms and better marksmanship.
It was nearly midnight before he lay down with the determination to
sleep, but scarcely had he done so when he was aroused by an outburst
of distant firing. Although six or seven miles from the scene of the
encounter, the sound of each discharge came distinct to the ear along
the smooth surface of the lake, and he could even hear, mingled with
the musketry fire, the faint yells of the Indians. For hours, as it
seemed to him, he sat listening to the distant contest, and then he,
unconsciously to himself, dozed off to sleep, and awoke with a start,
to find Nelly sitting up beside him and the sun streaming down
through the boughs. He started to his feet.

"Bless me!" he exclaimed, "I did not know that I had been asleep. It
seems but an instant ago that I was listening"--and here he checked
himself--"that is, that I was wide awake, and here we are in broad
daylight."

Harold's first care was to examine the position of the canoe, and he
found that fortunately it had touched the shore at a spot where the
boughs of the trees overhead drooped into the water beyond it, so
that it could not be seen by anyone passing along the lake. This was
the more fortunate as he saw, some three miles away, a canoe with
three figures on board. For a long distance on either side the boughs
of the trees drooped into the water, with only an opening here and
there such as that through which the boat had passed the night
before.

"We must be moving, Nelly. Here are the marks where we scrambled up