“We can’t go to the north, so it follows that we must go to the south.”

“Leave the canoe?”

“It’s our only chance.  We can cut through the woods and come out near this friendly house on the Richelieu.  The friar will lose our trail then, and we’ll have no more trouble with him, if he stays on the St. Lawrence.”

“There’s nothing else for it,” said Captain Ephraim ruefully.  “It’s not my way to go by land if I can get by water, and I have not been a fathom deep in a wood since King Philip came down on the province, so you must lay the course and keep her straight, Amos.”

“It is not far, and it will not take us long.  Let us get over to the southern bank and we shall make a start.  If madame tires, De Catinat, we shall take turns to carry her.”

“Ah, monsieur, you cannot think what a good walker I am.  In this splendid air one might go on forever.”

“We will cross then.”

In a very few minutes they were at the other side and had landed at the edge of the forest.  There the guns and ammunition were allotted to each man, and his share of the provisions and of the scanty baggage.  Then having paid the Indians, and having instructed them to say nothing of their movements, they turned their backs upon the river and plunged into the silent woods.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE HAIRLESS MAN.

All day they pushed on through the woodlands, walking in single file, Amos Green first, then the seaman, then the lady, and De Catinat bringing up the rear.  The young woodsman advanced cautiously, seeing and hearing much that was lost to his companions, stopping continually and examining the signs of leaf and moss and twig.  Their route lay for the most part through open glades amid a huge pine forest, with a green sward beneath their feet, made beautiful by the white euphorbia, the golden rod, and the purple aster.  Sometimes, however, the great trunks closed in upon them, and they had to grope their way in a dim twilight, or push a path through the tangled brushwood of green sassafras or scarlet sumach.  And then again the woods would shred suddenly away in front of them, and they would skirt marshes, overgrown with wild rice and dotted with little dark clumps of alder bushes, or make their way past silent woodland lakes, all streaked and barred with the tree shadows which threw their crimsons and clarets and bronzes upon the fringe of the deep blue sheet of water.  There were streams, too, some clear and rippling where the trout flashed and the king-fisher gleamed, others dark and poisonous from the tamarack swamps, where the wanderers had to wade over their knees and carry Adele in their arms.  So all day they journeyed ’mid the great forests, with never a hint or token of their fellow-man.