Two hours passed and Willet and Tayoga did not return, but he had not expected them.  He knew that when they decided to go on a scout they would do the work thoroughly, and he waited with patience, sitting beside the canoe, his rifle on his knees.  Before him the creek flowed with a pleasant, rippling noise and through the trees he caught a glimpse of the lake, unruffled by any wind.

The rest was so soothing, and his muscles and nerves relaxed so much that he felt like closing his eyes and going to sleep, but he was roused by the sound of a footstep.  It was so distant that only an ear trained to the forest would have heard it, but he knew that it was made by a human being approaching, and that the man was neither Willet nor Tayoga.

He put his ear to the earth and heard three men instead of one, and then he rose, cocking his rifle.  In the great wilderness in those surcharged days a stranger was an enemy until he was proved to be otherwise, and the lad was alert in every faculty.  He saw them presently, three figures walking in Indian file, and his heart leaped because the leader was so obviously a Frenchman.

His uniform was of the battalion Royal Roussillon, white faced with blue, and his hat was black and three-cornered, but face and manner were so unmistakably French that Robert did not think of his uniform, which was neat and trim to a degree not to be expected in the forest.  He bore himself in the carelessly defiant manner peculiar to the French cadets and younger sons of noble families in North America at the time, an accentuation of the French at home, and to some extent a survival of the spirit which Richelieu partially checked.  Even in the forest he wore a slender rapier at his belt, and his hand rested now upon its golden hilt.

He was about thirty years old, tall, slender, and with the light hair and blue eyes seen so often in Northern France, telling, perhaps, of Norman blood.  His glance was apparently light, but Robert felt when it rested upon him that it was sharp, penetrating and hard to endure.  Nevertheless he met it without lowering his own gaze.  The man behind the leader was swart, short, heavy and of middle years, a Canadian dressed in deerskin and armed with rifle, hatchet and knife.  The third man was an Indian, one of the most extraordinary figures that Robert had ever seen.  He was of great stature and heavy build, his shoulders and chest immense and covered with knotted muscles, disclosed to the eye, as he was bare to the waist.  All the upper part of his body was painted in strange and hideous designs which Robert did not recognize, although he knew the fashions of all the tribes in the New York and St. Lawrence regions.  His cheek bones were unusually high even for an Indian and his gaze was heavy, keen and full of challenge.  Robert judged that he belonged to some western tribe, that he was a Pottawatomie, an Ojibway or a Chippewa or that perhaps he came from the distant Sioux race.