"God knows," said I impatiently. "Why do you stand there idle when you must make ready for flight!" "I--I can not bear to have you go to Fish House--all alone----" "I have the Yellow Leaf, and can keep clear o' trouble. Come, Penelope!----" "When you move toward trouble I do not desire to flee the other way, toward safety!----" "Pack up, Penelope!" shouted Nick, leading Kaya into the orchard, all saddled; and fell to making up his pack on the grass. "At Mayfield Fort!" I called across to Nick. "And if I be not there by night, then take Penelope to Johnstown, for it means that the Iroquois are on the Sacandaga!" "I mark you, Jack!" he replied. I turned to the girl: "Farewell, Penelope," I said. "You shall be safe with Nick." "But you, John Drogue?" "Safe in the forest, always, and the devil himself could not catch me," said I cheerily. She stretched out her hand. I took it, looked at her, then kissed her fingers. And so went away swiftly, to where our canoe lay, troubled because of this young girl whom I had no desire to fall truly in love with, and yet knew I had been near to it many times that spring. I got into the canoe and took the stern paddle; my Saguenay kneeled down in the bow; and we shot out across the Vlaie Water. Once I turned and looked back over my shoulder; and I saw Penelope standing there on the grass, and Nick awaiting her with Kaya. But I did not wish to feel as I felt at that moment. I did not desire to fall in love. No! "Au large!" I said to my Indian, and swept the birchen craft out into the deep and steady current. CHAPTER XXIV GREEN-COATS Nothing stirred on the Drowned Lands as we drove our canoe at top speed between tall bronzed stalks of rushes and dead water-weeds. Vlaie Water was intensely blue and patched with golden débris of floating stuff--shreds of cranberry vine, rotting lily pads, and the like--and in twenty minutes we floated silently into the Spring Pool, opposite the Stacking Ridge, where hard earth bordered both shores and where maples and willows were now in lusty bud. Two miles away, against Maxon's sturdy bastion, a vast quantity of smoke was writhing upward in dark and cloudy convolutions. I could not see Fish House--that oblong, unpainted building a story and a half in height, with its chimneys of stone and the painted fish weather vane swimming in the sky. But I was convinced that it was afire. We beached our canoe and drew it under the shore-reeds, and so passed rapidly down the right bank of the stream along the quick water, holding our guns cocked and primed, like hunters ready for a hazard shot at sight.