Then they crossed a ridge and came upon a lake, by the side of which they saw through the snow and darkness a large fire burning.  Creeping nearer, they discerned dusky forms before the flames and made out a band of at least twenty warriors, many of them sound asleep, wrapped to the eyes in their blankets.

“Have they passed ahead of us and are they here meaning to guard the way against us?” whispered Robert.

“No, it is not one of the bands that has been following us,” replied the Onondaga.  “This is a war party going south, and not much stained as yet by time and travel.  They are Montagnais, come from Montreal.  They seek scalps, but not ours, because they do not know of us.”

Robert shuddered.  These savages, like as not, would fall at midnight upon some lone settlement, and his intense imagination depicted the hideous scenes to follow.

“Come away,” he whispered.  “Since they don’t know anything about us we’ll keep them in ignorance.  I’m longing more than ever for my warm bear cave.”

They disappeared in the falling snow, which would soon hide their trail here, as it had hidden it elsewhere, and left the lake behind them, not stopping until they came to a deep and narrow gorge in the mountains, so well sheltered by overhanging bushes that no snow fell there.  They raked up great quantities of dry leaves, after the usual fashion, and spread their blankets upon them, poor enough quarters save for the hardiest, but made endurable for them by custom and intense weariness.  Both fell asleep almost at once, and both awoke about the same time far after dawn.

Robert moved his stiff fingers in his blanket and sat up, feeling cold and dismal.  Tayoga was sitting up also, and the two looked at each other.

“In very truth those bear caves never seemed more inviting to me,” said young Lennox, solemnly, “and yet I only see them from afar.”

“Dagaeoga has fallen in love with bear caves,” said the Onondaga, in a whimsical tone.  “The time is not so far back when he never talked about them at all, and now words in their praise fall from his lips in a stream.”

“It’s because I’ve experienced enlightenment, Tayoga.  It is only in the last two or three days that I’ve learned the vast superiority of a cave to any other form of human habitation.  Our remote ancestors lived in them two or three hundred thousand years, and we’ve been living in houses of wood or brick or stone only six or seven thousand years, I suppose, and so the cave, if you judge by the length of time, is our true home.  Hence I’m filled with a just enthusiasm at the thought of going back speedily to the good old ways and the good old days.  It’s possible, Tayoga, that our remote grandfathers knew best.”

“When Dagaeoga comes to his death bed, seventy or eighty years from now, and the medicine man tells him but little more breath is left in his body, what then do you think he will do?”