Mrs. Schell gave her a helpless glance.  “Did you not know that the district scout-call has gone out?” she asked.

“Yes; but if the tenants of Sir Lupus obey it they do so at their peril,” replied Dorothy, gravely.  “The militia scouts of this district must not act hastily.  Your husband would be mad to answer a call and leave you here alone.”

“What would you have him do?” muttered the woman.

“Do?” repeated Dorothy.  “He can do one thing or the other—­join his regiment and take his family to the district fort, or stay at home and care for you and the farm.  These alarms are all wrong—­your men are either soldiers or farmers; they cannot be both unless they live close enough to the forts.  Tell Mr. Schell that Francy McCraw and his riders are in the forest, and that the Brandt-Meester of Balston saw a Mohawk smoke-signal on the mountain behind Mayfield.”

The woman folded her bony arms in her apron, cast one tragic glance at her children, then faced us again, hollow-eyed but undaunted.

“My man is with Stoner’s scout,” she said, with dull pride.

“Then you must go to the block-house,” began Dorothy, but the woman pointed to the fields, shaking her head.

“We shall build a block-house here,” she said, stubbornly.  “We cannot leave our corn.  We must eat, Mistress Varick.  My man is too poor to be a Provincial soldier, too brave to refuse a militia call—­”

She choked, rubbed her eyes, and bent her stern gaze on the hills once more.  Presently we rode on, and, turning in my saddle, I saw her standing as we had left her, gaunt, rigid, staring steadily at the dreaded heights in the northwest.

As we galloped, cultivated fields and orchards became rarer; here and there, it is true, some cabin stood on a half-cleared hill-side, and we even passed one or two substantial houses on the flat ridge to the east, but long, solid stretches of forest intervened, and presently we left the highway and wheeled into a cool wood-road bordered on either side by the forest.

“Here we find our first landmark,” said Dorothy, drawing bridle.

A white triangle glimmered, cut in the bark of an enormous pine; and my cousin rode up to the tree and patted the bark with her little hand.  On the triangle somebody had cut a V and painted it black.

“This is a boundary mark,” said Dorothy.  “The Mohawks claim the forest to the east; ride around and you will see their sign.”

I guided my horse around the huge, straight trunk.  An oval blaze scarred it and on the wood was painted a red wolf.

“It’s the wolf-clan, Brant’s own clan of the Mohawk nation,” she called out to me.  “Follow me, cousin.”  And she dashed off down the wood-road, I galloping behind, leaping windfalls, gullies, and the shallow forest brooks that crossed our way.  The road narrowed to a trodden trail; the trail faded, marked at first by cut undergrowth, then only by the white scars on the tree-trunks.