Slumber was slow in coming to Robert.  Too much had occurred for his faculties to slip away at once into oblivion.  His interview with Montcalm, his meeting with St. Luc, and the appearance of Tandakora at the camp fire, stirred him mightily.  Events were certainly marching, and, while he tried to coax slumber to come, he listened to the noises of the camp and the forest.  Where the French tents were spread, men were softly singing songs of their ancient land, and beyond them sentinels in neat uniforms were walking back and forth among trees that had never beheld uniforms before.

The sounds sank gradually, but Robert did not yet sleep.  He found a peculiar sort of interest in detaching these murmurs from one another, the stamp of impatient horses, the moving of arms, the last dying, notes of a song, the whisper of the creek’s waters, and then, plainly separate from the others, he heard a faint, unmistakable swish, a noise that he knew, that of an arrow flying through the air.  Langlade knew it too, and sprang up with an angry cry.

“Now, has some warrior got hold of whiskey to indulge in this madness?” he exclaimed.

The faint swish came a second time, and Robert, who had risen to his feet, saw two arrows standing upright in the earth not twenty feet away.  Langlade saw them also and swore.

“They must have come in a wide curve overhead,” he said, “or they would not be standing almost straight up in the earth, and that does not seem like the madness of liquor.”

He looked suspiciously at the forest, in which Indian sentinels had been posted, but which, nevertheless, was so dark that a cunning form might pass there unseen.

“There is more in this than meets the eye,” muttered the partisan, and drawing the arrows from the earth he examined them by the light of the fire.  Robert stood by, silent, but his eyes fell on fresh marks with a knife, near the barb on each weapon, and the great pulse in his throat leaped.  The yellow flame threw out in distinct relief what the knife had cut there, and he saw on each arrow the rude but unmistakable outline of a bear.

The Owl might not determine the meaning of the picture, but the captive comprehended it at once.  It was the pride of Tayoga that he was of the clan of the Bear, of the nation Onondaga, of the great League of the Hodenosaunee, and here upon the arrows was his totem or sign of the Bear.  It was a message and Robert knew that it was meant for him.  Had ever a man a more faithful comrade?  The Onondaga was still following in the hope of making a rescue, and he would follow as long as Robert was living.  Once more the young prisoner’s hopes of escape rose to the zenith.

“Now what do these marks mean?” said the partisan, looking at the arrows suspiciously.

“It was merely an intoxicated warrior shooting at the moon,” replied Robert, innocently, “and the cuts signify nothing.”

“I’m not so sure of that.  I’ve lived long enough among the Indians to know they don’t fire away good arrows merely for bravado, and these are planted so close together it must be some sort of a signal.  It may have been intended for you.”