The elm, the ash, the cypress, the chesnut, the pine, and the beech, all mingled their varied foliage above the narrow track or Indian trail the soldiers were pursuing, while a thousand flowers and shrubs, to them unknown, flourished in all the rich luxuriance of this new world into which they were penetrating, and the musk-rat, the racoon, and the fox scampered before them from tree to tree as they proceeded. "Hark!" exclaimed Alaster MacGregor, a wary old forester, "something on two feet stirs in the bush!" "Dioul! and see, Alaster, the objects are close enough," added the officer. At a part of the wood where it became more open by the trees having been cut away, and where the ground shelved abruptly down to the depth of eighty or a hundred feet, they suddenly came in view of two Indians gliding stealthily from stem to stem, as if seeking to elude observation. Their wild and horrid aspect caused the timid wife of MacGillivray to utter a faint cry of terror, while the whole detachment halted simultaneously to observe them, and began instinctively to handle their muskets. "They are Iroquois," whispered MacGillivray to his sergeant; "I was told that Montcalm had filled all the woods around Lake George with the cursed tribes of that race." "One of them is carrying something," replied the sergeant, as he shred away by his Lochaber axe a magnificent azalea, the flowers and foliage of which obscured his view. "It is a child--a poor little child," exclaimed Mary, piteously. "Listen to its cry of despair!" "The child of a white man, by Heaven!" added MacGillivray. "Come hither you that are the best shots, and bring yonder rascals down; but fire one it a time, lest we needlessly alarm the fort, or, what is worse, bring all the tribes of the Iroquois upon us." Both these savages were nearly nude. Their skins had the deep and tawny red of their race, but were streaked with war paint. One was daubed over red and blue, and the other who bore the child was striped with white lines, and these glaring upon a background so sombre, gave him the horrible aspect of a walking skeleton. Their heads were closely shaved, or by some other process divested of all hair, save the scalp-lock, in which was tied a tuft of eagles' feathers. Each had the terrible tomahawk and scalping-knife glittering at his gay wampum girdle, and each bore a French musket ornamented with brass rings. One wore over his shoulder the fur of a wild animal; the other had nothing across his bare, brawny chest but the buff belt of a cartridge-box. By their weapons they were at once known to be allies of the Marquis de Montcalm, who with a policy, alike dangerous and ungenerous, had armed the six nations of the Iroquois against the British.