“How do you know that they are another party?”

“Because we have crossed the trail of the first within the hour.”

De Catinat was filled with amazement at this marvellous man who could hear in his sleep and could detect a trail when the very tree-trunks were invisible to ordinary eyes.  Du Lhut halted a little to watch the canoes, and then turned his back to the river, and plunged into the woods once more.  They had gone a mile or two when suddenly he came to a dead stop, snuffing at the air like a hound on a scent.

“I smell burning wood,” said he.  “There is a fire within a mile of us in that direction.”

“I smell it too,” said Amos.  “Let us creep up that way and see their camp.”

“Be careful, then,” whispered Du Lhut, “for your lives may hang from a cracking twig.”

They advanced very slowly and cautiously until suddenly the red flare of a leaping fire twinkled between the distant trunks.  Still slipping through the brushwood, they worked round until they had found a point from which they could see without a risk of being seen.

A great blaze of dry logs crackled and spurtled in the centre of a small clearing.  The ruddy flames roared upwards, and the smoke spread out above it until it looked like a strange tree with gray foliage and trunk of fire.  But no living being was in sight and the huge fire roared and swayed in absolute solitude in the midst of the silent woodlands.  Nearer they crept and nearer, but there was no movement save the rush of the flames, and no sound but the snapping of the sticks.

“Shall we go up to it?” whispered De Catinat.  The wary old pioneer shook his head.  “It may be a trap,” said he.

“Or an abandoned camp?”

“No, it has not been lit more than an hour.”

“Besides, it is far too great for a camp fire,” said Amos.

“What do you make of it?” asked Du Lhut.

“A signal.”

“Yes, I daresay that you are right.  This light is not a safe neighbour, so we shall edge away from it and then make a straight line for Sainte Marie.”

The flames were soon but a twinkling point behind them, and at last vanished behind the trees.  Du Lhut pushed on rapidly until they came to the edge of a moonlit clearing.  He was about to skirt this, as he had done others, when suddenly he caught De Catinat by the shoulder and pushed him down behind a clump of sumach, while Amos did the same with Ephraim Savage.

A man was walking down the other side of the open space.  He had just emerged, and was crossing it diagonally, making in the direction of the river.  His body was bent double, but as he came out from the shadow of the trees they could see that he was an Indian brave in full war-paint, with leggings, loin-cloth, and musket.  Close at his heels came a second, and then a third and a fourth, on and on until it seemed as if the wood were full of men, and