Peter knew all this, as well as the bee-hunter, and he had no intention of trusting his new friends in a flight down the river. Pigeonswing, with the sententious brevity of an Indian, had made an important communication to him, while they were moving, for the last time, toward the canoes, and he now determined to profit by it. Taking the lead, therefore, with his own canoe, Peter paddled UP, instead of DOWN the stream, going in a direction opposite to that which it would naturally be supposed the fugitives had taken. In doing this, also, he kept close under the bank which would most conceal the canoes from those who approached it on its southern side. It will be remembered that the trees for the palisades had been cut from a swamp, a short distance above the bee-hunter's residence. They had grown on the margin of the river, which had been found serviceable in floating the logs to their point of destination. The tops of many of these trees, resinuous, and suited by their nature to preserve their leaves for a considerable time, lay partly in the stream and partly on its banks; and Pigeonswing, foreseeing the necessity of having a place of refuge, had made so artful a disposition of several of them, that, while they preserved all the appearance of still lying where they had fallen, it was possible to haul canoes up beneath them, between the branches and the bank, in a way to form a place of perfect concealment. No Indian would have trusted to such a hiding-place, had it not been matter of notoriety that the trees had been felled for a particular purpose, or had their accidental disposition along the bank been discernibly deranged. But such was not the case, the hand of Pigeonswing having been so skilfully employed that what he had done could not be detected. He might be said to have assisted nature, instead of disturbing her. The canoes were actually paddling close under the bank, in the Castle Meal reach of the river, when the band arrived at the grove, and commenced what might be called the investment of the place. Had not all the attention of the savages been drawn toward the hut, it is probable that some wandering eye might have caught a glimpse of some one of them, as inequalities in the bank momentarily exposed each, in succession, to view. This danger, however, passed away, and by turning a point, the fugitives were effectually concealed from all who did not actually approach the river at that particular point. Here it was, however, that the swamp commenced, and the ground being wet and difficult, no one would be likely to do this. The stream flowed through this swamp, having a dense wood on each side, though one of no great extent. The reach, moreover, was short, making a completely sheltered haven of the Kalamazoo, within its limits.