“A fresh village, a fresh wife,” said he.  “But I never have more than one in each, for it is a shame for a Frenchman to set an evil example when the good fathers are spending their lives so freely in preaching virtue to them.  Ah, here is the Ajidaumo Creek, where the Indians set the sturgeon nets.  It is still seven miles to Poitou.”

“We shall be there before nightfall, then?”

“I think that we had best wait for nightfall before we make our way in.  Since the Iroquois scouts are out as far as this, it is likely that they lie thick round Poitou, and we may find the last step the worst unless we have a care, the more so if these two get in front of us to warn the others.”  He paused a moment with slanting head and sidelong ear.  “By Saint Anne,” he muttered, “we have not shaken them off.  They are still upon our trail!”

“You hear them?”

“Yes, they are no great way from us.  They will find that they have followed us once too often this time.  Now, I will show you a little bit of woodcraft which may be new to you.  Slip off your moccasins, monsieur.”

De Catinat pulled off his shoes as directed, and Du Lhut did the same.

“Put them on as if they were gloves,” said the pioneer, and an instant later Ephraim Savage and Amos had their comrades’ shoes upon their hands.

“You can sling your muskets over your back.  So!  Now down on all fours, bending yourselves double, with your hands pressing hard upon the earth.  That is excellent.  Two men can leave the trail of four!  Now come with me, monsieur.”

He flitted from tree to tree on a line which was parallel to, but a few yards distant from, that of their comrades.  Then suddenly he crouched behind a bush and pulled De Catinat down beside him.

“They must pass us in a few minutes,” he whispered.  “Do not fire if you can help it.”  Something gleamed in Du Lhut’s hand, and his comrade, glancing down, saw that he had drawn a keen little tomahawk from his belt.  Again the mad wild thrill ran through the soldier’s blood, as he peered through the tangled branches and waited for whatever might come out of the dim silent aisles of tree-boles.

And suddenly he saw something move.  It flitted like a shadow from one trunk to the other so swiftly that De Catinat could not have told whether it were beast or human.  And then again he saw it, and yet again, sometimes one shadow, sometimes two shadows, silent, furtive, like the loup-garou with which his nurse had scared him in his childhood.  Then for a few moments all was still once more, and then in an instant there crept out from among the bushes the most terrible-looking creature that ever walked the earth, an Iroquois chief upon the war-trail.