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And here we saw a little bird flitting the first we had seen that day. At the western end of the oval glade a path ran straight away as far as we could see, seeming to pierce the western wall of the hills. The little brook followed at. As Lois knelt to drink, the Sagamore whispered to me: "This is the pass to the Vale Yndaia! You shall not tell her yet not till we have dealt with Amochol."
I could see in the darkness little of the secret and hidden valley called Yndaia, only the heights silhouetted against the stars, a vague foreground sheeted with mist, and the dark little house standing there all alone under the stars. All night long the great tiger-owls yelped and hallooed across the valley; all night the spectral whip-poor-will whispered its husky, frightened warning.
"Your army makes it safe at last. And now the time is come when I must follow it." "Is that why you have followed us?" "Yes, that is why. Until that night in the storm at Poundridge-town I had never learned where the Vale Yndaia lay. Month after month I haunted camps, asking for information concerning Yndaia and the Regiment de la Reine.
But all were excited and all slept lightly. Within the Vale Yndaia, perhaps a hundred yards from the mouth of the pass, stood the lonely little house of bark in which Madame de Contrecoeur had lived alone for twenty years.
And I saw the White Sorceress and my sweetheart close locked in each other's arms so close and motionless that they seemed but a single snowy shape there under the lustre of the stars. At the mouth of the pass which led to the Vale Yndaia I lay with my Indians that night, two mounting guard, then one, then two more, and the sentinels changed every three hours throughout the night.
Amochol stared at the soldier, at the executioner still writhing and struggling to loose his hand from the bloody arrow, at the Sorceress who had veiled her face. "Witch!" he cried, "get you to Yndaia. If you stir elsewhere you shall burn!"
A broad, pinkish shaft of sunshine slanted through the pass into the hidden valley; and for the first time in my life I now beheld the Vale Yndaia in all the dewy loveliness of dawn. A milch cow fed along the brook, flank-deep in fern. Chickens wandered in its wake, snapping at gnats and tiny, unseen creatures under the leaves.
And, at once, I knew that I should also speak to her, there in the storm, and answer her her question." "And did you do so?" "Yes, Loskiel. I said to her: 'Little sad rosy-throated pigeon of the woods, the vale Yndaia lies by a hidden river in the West. Some call it Catharines-town." I shook my head, perplexed, and understanding nothing. "Yndaia? Did you say Yndaia, Mayaro?"
While we had eaten our hasty morning meal, I had told her what I had learned of the Vale Yndaia; and this had excited her more than anything I ever saw to happen to her, so that her grey eyes sparkled with brilliant azure lights, and the soft colour flew from throat to brow, waxing and waning with every quick-drawn breath.
Somewhere in the North he had met with obstacles which delayed him. He must scout for himself, now, for the entire Tory army was between him and us. "There is but one way now," whispered the Mohican. "By Yndaia," I said. My Indians were of the same opinion. "I should have gone there anyway," said Lois, still all a-quiver, and shivering close to my shoulder.
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