When he started out January had come. Snow wrapped the earth and loaded the branches of the trees, clinging even to the sides of the mighty trunks that soared skyward. The road down the Maumee, well-travelled as it was, was hidden beneath drifts. Only the river itself was bare, swept clear by the icy wind. Down it Jack and Cato sped, their skates ringing on the steel-cased coils of the winding pathway. For four days they travelled, passing Fort Defiance and Fort Deposit, and coming at last to the mouth of the river. A few hours more upon the ice along the shores of the lake brought them to the American camp at Frenchtown on the Raisin River. Here Rogers was waiting them at the outposts. “I reckoned you’d be along soon,” he said, “an’ I been watching. I’ve got news that you’d ought to know quick. First place, Williams is here! No! I ain’t seen him, but he’s here. He’s on outpost duty an’ you can see him tonight if you want to. But I reckon you ain’t got time to fool with the skunk now. I’ve got bigger news. I didn’t see Madame Fantine; she’d gone to Cincinnati to get some goods to restock their store that was burned. But I saw Peter. Neither of ’em knew that Miss Bob had left you. Peter didn’t know nothin’ about the letter. But he knew something else. And I saw Colonel Johnson and he knew something else, too. Who you reckon Miss Bob really is?” Jack clutched the old man by the arm. An idea was dawning in his mind. “Who? Who?” he chattered. “Not--not----” “She’s the gal you was lookin’ for--the gal that Tecumseh brought up. Alagwa means ‘the star,’ an’ they tell me her right name, Estelle, means star, too. I dunno why she fooled you. Women is durned curious critters an’----” The old man babbled on, but Jack did not hear him. The explanation of many things had rushed upon him. But the main fact stood overwhelming and clarifying out. Bob was Alagwa, the girl of whom he was in search, the daughter of M. Delaroche. And she was his wife. Once he knew the truth he could not understand why he had not guessed long before. In truth, however, his dullness was not strange. No doubt, if he had known from the first that his little comrade was a girl he would have quickly guessed that she was the girl of whom he was in search. But so long as he thought her a boy he could not guess; and since he had known her sex his thoughts had been engrossed with other matters. When his thoughts came back to earth, Rogers was still talking. “Peter was mighty sorry she’d left you,” he said. “He reckoned she’d gone back to Tecumseh. And he says for you to see his friend, Jean Beaubien, at Frenchtown, and----” “At Frenchtown? That’s here!” “Yes. An’ I’ve seen Beaubien! He knows all about Miss Bob. She’s living at Amherstburg, with white people. Tecumseh’s having her taught things.”