He lay down in the shelter of dense bushes, and kept himself perfectly quiet for a long time.  He would not allow hand or foot to move.  His weary heart at last began to beat with regularity, the blood ceased to pound in his temples, and his nerves grew steadier.  He dozed a little, or at least passed into a state that was midway between wakefulness and oblivion.  Then the terrible battle was fought once more before him.  Again he heard the crash and roar of the French fire, again he saw British and Americans coming forward in indomitable masses, offering themselves to death, once again he saw them tangled among the logs and sharpened boughs, and then mowed down at the wooden wall.

He roused himself and passed his hands over his eyes to shut away that vision of the stricken field and the vivid reminder of his terrible disappointment.  The picture was still as fresh as the reality and it sent shudders through him every time he saw it.  He would keep it from his sight whenever he could, lest he grow too morbid.

He rose and started once more toward the south, but the forest became more dense and tangled and the country rougher.  In his weakened state he was not able to think with his usual clearness and precision, and he lost the sense of direction.  He began to wander about aimlessly, and at last he stopped almost in despair.

He was in a desperate plight.  He was unarmed, and a man alone and without weapons in the wilderness was usually as good as lost.  He looked around, trying to study the points of the compass.  The night was not dark.  Trees and bushes stood up distinctly, and on a bough not far away, his eyes suddenly caught a flash of blue.

The flash was made by a small, glossy bird that wavered on a bough, and he was about to turn away, taking no further notice of it, when the bird flew slowly before him and in a direction which he now knew led straight toward the south.  He remembered.  Back to his mind rushed an earlier escape, and how he had followed the flight of a bird to safety.  Had Tayoga’s Manitou intervened again in his favor?  Was it chance?  Or did he in a dazed state imagine that he saw what he did not see?

The bird, an azure flash, flew on before him, and hope flowing in an invincible tide in his veins, he followed.  He was in continual fear lest the blue flame fade away, but on he went, over hills and across valleys and brooks, and it was always just before him.  He had been worn and weary before, but now he felt strong and active.  Courage rose steadily in his veins, and he had no doubt that he would reach friends.

Near dawn the bird suddenly disappeared among the leaves.  Robert stopped and heard a light foot-step in the bushes.  Being apprehensive lest he be re-taken, he shrank away and then stopped.  He listened a while, and the sound not being repeated, he hoped that he had been mistaken, but a voice called suddenly from a bush not ten feet away: