"One of yer's done mischief enough this morning already, and you'll get your har raised, as sure as you're born, unless you look out sharp. Now," he went on, turning to the Welches, "let us go down and talk this matter over. The Injuns may keep on firing, but I don't think they'll show in the open again as long as it's light enough for us to draw bead on 'em. Yes," he went on, as he looked through a loop-hole in the lower story over the lake, "there they are, just out of range."

"What do you think they will do?" Mrs. Welch asked.

The hunter was silent for a minute.

"It aint a easy thing to say what they ought to do, much less what they will do; it aint a good outlook anyway, and I don't know what I should do myself. The whole of the woods on this side of the lake are full of the darned red critters. There's a hundred eyes on that canoe now, and, go where they will, they'll be watched."

"But why should they not cross the lake and land on the other side?" Mr. Welch said.

"If you and I were in that canoe," the hunter answered, "that's about what we should do; but, not to say that it's a long row for 'em, they two young uns would never get across; the Injuns would have 'em before they had been gone an hour. There's my canoe lying under the bushes; she'd carry four, and would go three feet to their two."