But if any had had eyes to note it, there was one Frenchman whose face became ashy white as he met the rolling gaze of those terrible, bloodshot eyes.  He too flung away his gun, and uttered a frantic yell of terror, plunging headlong into the wood without a thought save flight.

“It is he! it is he! it is he!”

This was the shout which rang from the lips of Charles as he dashed after the retreating figure.  All was confusion now amid French and Rangers alike; that awful yell, and something in the appearance of Charles, had startled friend and foe alike.

There were several of the French soldiers left dead in the wood, and one was captured and made prisoner; but the rest had fled like men demented, and the Rangers could not come up with them.  As for Charles and his quarry, they had disappeared, and it was long before any trace could be found of them.

Stark and Fritz, however, would not give up the search, and at last they came upon the prostrate form of Charles.  He lay face downwards on the frozen ground, which was deeply stained with blood.  His wrist was fearfully gashed by some knife; yet in his fingers he held still a piece of cloth from the coat of the French fugitive.  It had been literally torn out of his grasp before the man could get free, and he had nearly hacked off the left hand of the hapless Charles.

Yet the man had made good his escape, leaving Charles well nigh dead from loss of blood.  But they carried him tenderly back to their cave, and making a rough sledge for him; then brought him safely with their prisoner into the camp at Fort William Henry.

Chapter 3:  The Life Of Adventure.

“I have seen him once, and he has escaped me.  But we shall meet again, and then the hour of vengeance will have come!”

This was the burden of Charles’s words as he lay in his narrow quarters in the Rangers’ huts just without Fort William Henry, tended by his comrades till his wound healed.  The fever which so often follows upon loss of blood had him in its grip for awhile, and he would lie and mutter for hours in a state of semi-delirium.

The sympathy of his comrades for this strange man with the tragic story was deep and widespread.  Charles had become a favourite and an object of interest throughout the ranks of the Rangers, and great excitement prevailed when it was understood that he had really seen the man—­the Frenchman—­who had stood by to see his wife and family massacred, and had deliberately designed to leave him, cruelly pinioned, to die a lingering death of agony in the heart of the lonely forest.

Every day he had visitors to his sickbed, and again and again he told the tale, described his foe, and told how he knew that the man recognized him, first taking him—­or so he believed—­for a spectre from the tomb, afterwards filled with the most lively terror as he realized that he was pursued by one who had such dire cause for bitter vengeance.