I will pass over the hour that followed.  We quieted Obed’s ravings at length; or rather, they ceased out of pure exhaustion.  We were all starving in fact, and the food left in our wallets would not keep a cat alive for another forty-eight hours.  Retiring to a clump of firs about 100 yards back from the river’s bank, we scooped a hole in the snow and entrenched ourselves as well as we could for the night.  Some of us managed to sleep a little; the others tried to allay the pangs of hunger by chewing their musket-covers, the sponges on their ramrods, even their boot-soles.

At midnight came my turn for watching.  In my weakness I may have dozed, or perhaps was light-headed.  At any rate, turning after some time to glance at the sleepers, I missed Obed.  An ugly suspicion seized me; I counted the muskets.  Two of these were missing.  After shaking one of the sleepers by the elbow and bidding him watch, I leaped over our low breastwork and ran towards the river in the track of my brother’s footsteps.  Almost as I started, a flash and a report of a musket right ahead changed the current of my fears.  By the light of the young moon I saw two figures struggling and rolling together on the river’s brink.  They were Obed and our peculiar enemy, the toen.  The body of a dead Indian lad was stretched some ten paces off beside a small canoe which lay moored by the bank.

Our comrades came running up as I flung myself into the struggle, and we quickly secured the toen.  I believe Obed would have killed him.  “Don’t be a fool!” said I; “cannot you see that we now have a hostage for Margit?” I ought at the same time to have begged his pardon for my suspicions.  As the reader already knows, Obed had a far keener ear than I, and it had warned him of the canoe’s approach.  It turned out afterwards that the toen had planned this little reconnoitring expedition on his own account, and on the chance perhaps of filching a musket or two.

We quickly laid our plans; and at daybreak flung my gentleman, bound hand and foot, into his own canoe, which Obed and I paddled into mid-stream, while our party stood on the bank and watched.  The village opposite seemed deserted:  but at Obed’s hail an Indian woman ran out of the largest hut, and returning, must have summoned the good-looking chief Yootramaki; who emerged in a minute or so, and came slowly down the bank.  By this time several groups of Indians had gathered and stood looking on, in all perhaps eighty or a hundred people.

Obed pointed to our prisoner and made his demand.  I understood him to ask for the immediate ransom of Margit, and a supply of salmon and other provisions to take us on our journey.  The chief stood considering for a while; then spoke to a native boy, who ran to the house; and in a minute or so Margit herself appeared, with the native woman who had first taken word of us.  She came down the bank, and Yootramaki signed to Obed to address her; which he did.