Just as she reached the upper floor, a lucky thought suggested itself to our heroine; and, by expressing it in a hurried but natural manner, she gained a great advantage in executing her projected scheme.

“I will go down,” she said, “and listen by the door, June, while you are on the roof; and we will thus be on our guard, at the same time, above and below.”

Though June thought this savored of unnecessary caution, well knowing that no one could enter the building unless aided from within, nor any serious danger menace them from the exterior without giving sufficient warning, she attributed the proposition to Mabel’s ignorance and alarm; and, as it was made apparently with frankness, it was received without distrust.  By these means our heroine was enabled to descend to the door, as her friend ascended to the roof.  The distance between the two was now too great to admit of conversation; and for three or four minutes one was occupied in looking about her as well as the darkness would allow, and the other in listening at the door with as much intentness as if all her senses were absorbed in the single faculty of hearing.

June discovered nothing from her elevated stand; the obscurity indeed almost forbade the hope of such a result; but it would not be easy to describe the sensation with which Mabel thought she perceived a slight and guarded push against the door.  Fearful that all might not be as she wished, and anxious to let Chingachgook know that she was near, she began, though in tremulous and low notes, to sing.  So profound was the stillness of the moment that the sound of the unsteady warbling ascended to the roof and in a minute June began to descend.  A slight tap at the door was heard immediately after.  Mabel was bewildered, for there was no time to lose.  Hope proved stronger than fear; and with unsteady hands she commenced unbarring the door.  The moccasin of June was heard on the floor above her when only a single bar was turned.  The second was released as her form reached half-way down the lower ladder.

“What you do?” exclaimed June angrily.  “Run away — mad —­ leave blockhouse; blockhouse good.”  The hands of both were on the last bar, and it would have been cleared from the fastenings but for a vigorous shove from without, which jammed the wood.  A short struggle ensued, though both were disinclined to violence.  June would probably have prevailed, had not another and a more vigorous push from without forced the bar past the trifling impediment that held it, when the door opened.  The form of a man was seen to enter; and both the females rushed up the ladder, as if equally afraid of the consequences.  The stranger secured the door; and, first examining the lower room with great care, he cautiously ascended the ladder.  June, as soon as it became dark, had closed the loops of the principal floor, and lighted a candle.  By means of this dim taper, then, the two females stood in expectation, waiting to ascertain the person of their visitor, whose wary ascent of the ladder was distinctly audible, though sufficiently deliberate.  It would not be easy to say which was the more astonished on finding, when the stranger had got through the trap, that Pathfinder stood before them.