After what seemed endless hours, but which in reality was but a short time, the party arrived at the settlement of wigwams on the bank of the Shubenacadie. The priest was no longer to be seen. “Am I then to be left to the mercy of these savages?” thought Gabriel. Yet close on the heels of the thought flashed the consciousness that the Indians’ violence had considerably slackened since the disappearance of Le Loutre. The bonds with which they had tied their prisoner were so loose that he easily slipped out of them, and approaching the squaws who were gathering wood for the fires, he addressed them in their own language and proceeded to help them. The braves merely turned their heads and glanced at him indifferently. “Not enough gold!” he heard one mutter to another. He had already heard that the Micmacs had grown shrewd enough to put their own price on the harassing of recalcitrant or timid Acadians, and the taking of English scalps; and like all ignorant or savage races had quickly learned to overestimate their services and become insatiate in their demands. Gabriel’s chances, therefore, depended to some extent on the condition of the priest’s treasury; also on the fact that he was personally acquainted with certain members of the band, to whom by reason of his skill in woodcraft and familiarity with the habits of the forest game he had not only occasionally been of service, but whose respect he had won. “This is the white boy who knows even as does the red man the lair of the wild deer and where in the noonday heat they turn their steps to drink,” observed one to the other, as Gabriel, restraining every symptom of fear, quietly joined the group around the now blazing fire and helped himself out of the common pot. “Yes,” he put in coolly, “and I can tell you more than that if you will.” There are natures, those of women as well as of men, whose vitality quickens in the face of actual danger. They may be even cowardly in the mere anticipation, but the trumpet-call of duty, honor, or sacrifice, or the less high-sounding clarion of self-preservation, sets them on their feet, face forward to the coming foe. In Gabriel all these forces were at work, though Margot’s sweet, pale face and the _gran’-père’s_ bowed gray head, were the strongest influences. And behind all these was that irrepressible spirit of adventure, never wholly absent from the normally healthy young mind. Drawing on his store of woodland stories, and occasionally pausing to give ear to those furnished by the now interested Micmacs, an hour passed in total oblivion by the captors of the commands laid on them concerning their prisoner; and when at last a tall dark form suddenly appeared within the circle of light, and a well-known terrible voice broke forth in objurgation; it was plain that the owner of both was scarcely more welcome to his “lambs” than to the prisoner.