Climbing over rocks and windfalls I came against a solid log wall and heard the woman talking in a very pretty chatter the other side of it.  She only left off talking to call for help, and left off calling for help to scold and laugh again.  There was a man imprisoned with her, and they were speaking English, a language I did not then understand.  But what had happened to them was very plain.  They had wandered into a pen built by hunters to trap bears, and could not find the bush-masked and winding opening, but were traveling around the walls.  It was lucky for them that a bear had not arrived first, though in that case their horses must have smelled him.  I heard the beasts shaking their bridles.

I found my way to the opening, and whistled.  At once the woman ceased her chatter and drew in her breath, and they both asked me a question that needed no interpretation.  I told them where they were, and the woman began talking at once in my own tongue and spoke it as well as I could myself.

“In a bear pen?  George, he says we are in a bear pen!  Take us out, dear chief, before the bear family arrive home from their ball.  I don’t know whether you are a chief or not, but most Indians are.  My nurse was a chief’s daughter.  Where are you?  I can’t see anything but chunks of blackness.”

I took her horse by the bridle and led him, and so got both the riders outside.  They had no tinder, and neither had I; and all of us groped for the way by which they had come to the bear pen.  The young man spurred his horse in every direction, and turned back unable to get through.

Though we could not see one another I knew that both the adventurers were young, and that they expected to be called to severe account for the lawless act they were committing.  The girl, talking English, or French, or Mohawk almost in one breath, took the blame upon herself and made light of the boy’s self-reproaches.

She laughed and said—­“My father thinks I am with Miss Chantry, and Miss Chantry thinks I am with my father.  He will blame her for letting me ride with George Croghan to meet him, and lose the way and so get into the bear pen.  And she will blame my father, and your dearest Annabel will let the Count de Chaumont and Miss Chantry fight it out.  It is not an affair for youth to meddle with, George.”

Having her for interpreter the boy and I consulted.  I might have led him back to our hunting camp, but it was a hard road for a woman and an impossible one for horses.  There was no inhabited house nearer than De Chaumont’s own.  He decided they must return to the road by which they had come into the bear pen, and gladly accepted my offer to go with him; dismounting and leading Annabel de Chaumont’s horse while I led his.  We passed over rotten logs and through black tangles, the girl bending to her saddle bow, unwearied and full of laughter.  It was plain that he could not find any outlet, and falling behind with the cumbered horse he let me guide the party.