The tree drifted on.  Farther to the west and near the shore, another tree was floating in the same manner, and off to the east a third was beckoning in like fashion.  There was nothing in the behavior of the three trees to indicate that one of them was different from the other two.

The eyes of the savages passed over them, one after another, but they saw no human being hidden within their boughs.  Yet Robert at least, when those four pairs of eyes rested on his tree, felt them burning into his back.  It was a positive relief, when they moved on and began to hunt elsewhere.

“They will yet bring their canoe much closer,” whispered Willet.  “It’s too much to expect that they will let us go so easily, and we’ve got to keep up the illusion quite a while longer.  Don’t push on the tree.  The wind is dying a little, and our pace must be absolutely the pace of the breeze.  They notice everything and if we were to go too fast they’d be sure to see it.”

They no longer sought to control their floating support, and, as the wind suddenly sank very much, it hung lazily on the crests of little waves.

It was a hard test to endure, while the canoe with the four relentless warriors in it rowed about seeking them.  Robert paid all the price of a vivid and extremely brilliant imagination.  While those with such a temperament look far ahead and have a vision of triumphs to come out of the distant future, they also see far more clearly the troubles and dangers that confront them.  So their nerves are much more severely tried than are those of the ordinary and apathetic.  Great will power must come to their relief, and thus it was with Robert.  His body quivered, though not with the cold of the water, but his soul was steady.

Although the wind sank, which was against them, the darkness increased, and the fact that two other trees were afloat within view, was greatly in their favor.  It gave them comrades in that lazy drifting and diverted suspicion.

“If they conclude to make a close examination of our tree, what shall we do?” whispered Robert.

“We’ll be at a great disadvantage in the water,” the hunter whispered back, “but we’ll have to get our rifles loose from their lashings and make a fight of it.  I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

The canoe approached the tree and then veered away again, as if the warriors were satisfied with its appearance.  Certainly a tree more innocent in looks never floated on the waves of Lake George.

The three were masters of illusion and deception, and they did not do a single thing to turn the tree from its natural way of drifting.  It obeyed absolutely the touch of the wind and not that of their hands, which rested as lightly as down upon the trunk.  Once the wind stopped entirely and the tree had no motion save that of the swell.  It wandered idly, a lone derelict upon a solitary lake.

Robert scarcely breathed when the canoe was sent their way.  He was wholly unconscious of the water in which he was sunk to the shoulders, but every imaginative nerve was alive to the immense peril.