“Did Schuyler make that a point?”

“Yes, Sir George.”

“They say the False-Faces’ rites are terrific,” he muttered.  “Thank God, that child will not be lured into those hideous orgies by Walter Butler!”

We walked towards the house where Mount had prepared our food.  I sat down on the door-step to eat my porridge and think of what lay before me and how best to accomplish it.  And at first I was minded to send Sir George back with Magdalen Brant and take only Mount with me.  But whether it was a craven dread of despatching to Dorothy the man she was pledged to wed, or whether a desire for his knowledge and experience prompted me to invite his attendance at the False-Faces’ rites, I do not know clearly, even now.  He came out of the house presently, and I asked him if he would go with me.

“One of us should stay here with Magdalen Brant,” he said, gravely.

“Is she not safe here?” I asked.

“You cannot leave a child like that absolutely alone,” he answered.

“Then take her to Varicks’,” I said, sullenly.  “If she remains here some of Butler’s men will be after her to attend the council.”

“You wish me to go up-stairs and rouse her for a journey—­now?”

“Yes; it is best to get her into a safe place,” I muttered.  “She may change her ideas, too, betwixt now and dawn.”

He re-entered the house.  I heard his spurs jingling on the stairway, then his voice, and a rapping at the door above.

Jack Mount appeared, rifle in hand, wiping his mouth with his fingers; and together we paced the yard, waiting for Sir George and Magdalen Brant to set out before we struck the Iroquois trail.

Suddenly Sir George’s heavy tread sounded on the stairs; he came to the door, looking about him, east and west.  His features were pallid and set and seamed with stern lines; he laid an unsteady hand on my arm and drew me a pace aside.

“Magdalen Brant is gone,” he said.

“Gone!” I repeated.  “Where?”

“I don’t know!” he said, hoarsely.

I stared at him in astonishment.  Gone?  Where?  Into the tremendous blackness of this wilderness that menaced us on all sides like a sea?  And they had thought to tame her like a land-blown gull among the poultry!

“Those drops of Mohawk blood are not in her veins for nothing,” I said, bitterly.  “Here is our first lesson.”

He hung his head.  She had lied to him with innocent, smooth face, as all such fifth-castes lie.  No jewelled snake could shed her skin as deftly as this young maid had slipped from her shoulders the frail garment of civilization.

The man beside me stood as though stunned.  I was obliged to speak to him thrice ere he roused to follow Jack Mount, who, at a sign from me, had started across the dark hill-side to guide us to the trysting-place of the False-Faces’ clan.

“Mount,” I whispered, as he lingered waiting for us at the stepping-stones in the dark, “some one has passed this trail since I stood here an hour ago.”  And, bending down, I pointed to a high, flat stepping-stone, which glimmered wet in the pale light of the stars.