Onawa, a silent listener to their talk, stepped out. She was good to look upon, with her wealth of black hair, her large eyes, her rounded face, the cheeks and lips lightly touched with paint, her slim muscular figure. She could run against any man, and aim an arrow with the sureness of any forester of Nottingham. But she was headstrong, as changeable as water, and the Englishman did not trust her.

"Where have you been, Onawa?" he said.

"I have come from the camp with my father," she replied. "Where have you left your son? They say, among the tribes, that he grows into a great warrior. They say also that he carries wood and draws water and cuts up the deer which he has killed. Our young men despise a woman's work."

"I have taught him the duty of helping his mother," came the reply.

"In my country a man lives for his mother or his wife, and her good favour is his glory."

The girl hesitated, a frown crossing her forehead. "Why are the French so beautiful, so bold-looking?" she asked suddenly.

"That they may captivate the minds and eyes of women who are weak."

"They are better to look at than Englishmen. They do not wear old garments marked with dirt. They do not let the hair upon their faces grow down their bodies. They do not talk deep in their throats. They are not serious. I love to hear them talk, to see them move. They walk like men who own the world."

"I have warned you against them," he said earnestly. "They are the natural enemies of your people. Consider! What Frenchman has ever married into your tribe and settled down among you?"

The girl laughed scornfully, and turned to go, grasping her long hair in her hand.

"You hide from them because you know that they are better men than you," she taunted. "It was a Frenchman who first came Jo our country from the other world. Perhaps there was no England in those days. The sun loves to shine upon Frenchmen. The English live in the mists. You have taken my sister for wife, but I--I, Onawa, daughter of Shuswap, would marry a Frenchman."

"Never shall I wish you a harder fate," retorted the calm man; and having thus spoken he turned aside towards the tiny English settlement to greet his friends and join again his son.

It was the first hour of night when Viner started upon his great journey. The forest was white with a moon, and sparks of phosphorus darted across the falls. When the wooden bars were drawn out of their sockets and the five men emerged from the palisade, the monotonous chirping of frogs ceased abruptly, and a great calm ensued.

In single file they pa.s.sed along the dark trail, the wet bush sweeping their legs, the branches locked overhead. They rounded the red fires which marked the camping-ground of the Oneidas; they smelt the acrid smoke, and dimly sighted many a brown lean-to; the dogs jumped out barking. They pa.s.sed, the lights disappeared, the silence closed down.

Presently the trail divided; the branch to the left leading to the river, that to the right bearing inland to the lakes, rivers, and hunting-grounds known only to the Indians.

"Get you back now," said Viner, halting at the parting of the ways.

"We are already in the country of the enemy. Bid me here G.o.d-speed."

There they clasped hands, and in the act of farewell Flower slipped into Viner's hand a little black stone marked with a vein of chalk.

"Keep it, lad," he muttered. "One spring when I was near drowning in the Thames by being held in the weeds I caught this stone from the river-bed. Methinks it has protected me from ill. May that same fortune be on you, and more added to it, in the work which lies before you."

A ray of moonlight fell through an opening in the trees, and whitened the five keen faces.

"Superst.i.tion made never a soldier of any man," muttered the stern voice of the Puritan. "Fling that idolatry to the bush, Geoffrey, and go your way, trusting rather in the Lord with a psalm upon your lips."

"It is but a reminder of home for the lad," protested Flower gently.

"We have each other. But in the solitudes what shall he have?"

"'Tis but a stone from our river, friend Hough," said Geoffrey timidly.

"I thank you, neighbour," he added.

"Fare you well," said old Penfold sadly. "We shall lack you sore."

They turned away, and instantly became lost from the man who was going south, because the trail bent sharply. The little band of adventurers, now reduced to four, walked slowly and sorrowfully towards New Windsor, until they came out upon the lake, and heard the beavers gnawing the rushes, and the wind splashing the fresh water up the beach.

"What has come to our nightingales?" said Penfold suddenly. "I like not this silence."

The frogs about the palisade were songless, and the sign was ominous.

At their leader's hasty remark the others came to a stand, and scanned the prospect keenly, until silently and abruptly the ghost-like shape of a woman rose between them and the moon.

"'Tis but the girl Onawa, daughter of Shuswap," muttered Woodfield rea.s.suringly; but there was a suspicion in his mind which prompted him to add, "What does she here?"

Even while he put the question Hough cried out, and pointed with a wild gesture, feeling that same moment for his sword. Gazing in the direction which he indicated with a quivering hand, his brethren saw before them the palisade, but not as they had left it. The wooden bars had been set back into their sockets, as though to forebode the occupation of their enclosure by an enemy.

"Stay!" called Onawa haughtily, when the men approached her at a run.

"Your tepee has pa.s.sed from you into the power of the king."

"There is only one king," cried old Penfold. Then he shouted at her, for all the land to hear, "What king?"

"King Louis," said the girl defiantly.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GAUNTLET DOWN.

Oskelano, chief of the Algonquins, that unstable race, false alike to friend and foe, and doomed to be the first of the savage tribes to be extinguished, reached the fortress about noon on the day which had been fixed for Geoffrey's departure to the unknown lands. Roussilac personally met the treacherous old man upon the heights, and dazzled his savage eyes with the splendour of a blue surcoat, upon which gleamed the fleur-de-lys worked in gold. He proceeded to point out the soldiers in their brave array, the strong huts of wood or stone dotted about the cliff, the _St. Wenceslas_ riding upon the river, the glistening guns, and the flashing steel. Finally he bade the old savage note the impregnable nature of the French position.

"Behold the citadel which my master has ordered me to build for your protection," the commandant continued, pouring his figments through the leering mouth of the dwarf Gaudriole. "We have not destroyed your forests, nor robbed you of your shelters. You may enter our forts in safety, and obtain whatsoever you desire in exchange for skins and feathers. We do not ma.s.s together in one place. We distribute our strength. Our forts are dotted along the coast. The tribes of Maryland and of Ma.s.sachusetts have shown you how the English congregate upon the Potomac River. When you go to them for supplies of food, or demanding recompense for that which they have taken from you, they threaten you with death. Is it not so?"

"Um," replied the Algonquin, not a muscle of his face stirring.

"The English have their eye upon this north of the continent," went on the governor. "In the south they rule, but only by permission of our king. Have you obtained any benefits from them? Have they not rather hunted you like wild beasts when you have resisted them? Remember how Samuel de Champlain armed you so that you might fight against the tribes of the Iroquois. He did not fear the Iroquois, but he saw you in danger, and reached out his hand to save you."

"Um, um," exclaimed Oskelano, with some symptom of feeling.

"And now the King of France bids you choose between him and Charles of England. If you accept my master's friendship he shall protect you from your enemies. But if you refuse him he shall leave you to the mercy of the Iroquois and the English, who shall rob and kill you until there is not one Algonquin left."

"The chief desires to know," said the interpreter, "why it is that the English in the south have brought their wives and families, and why the French come alone."

"The English desire to take the country that they may make it their home and abide here for ever," answered Roussilac. "The French are here to protect the Algonquins, and when danger is over they shall return to their wives and families in the homeland."

"The chief also desires to know what is the cause of the king's friendliness to a people whom he has never seen," continued the interpreter.

"King Louis has forbidden the English to enter this country, and when they disobey he sends ships and men against them. It is his will that the Algonquins shall possess this land in peace."

"Um," said Oskelano profoundly, when these fictions had been expounded.

"What says the wooden-faced fool?" asked Roussilac.

"The doctors of his tribe tell him that all white men are liars,"

replied the dwarf. "But the English are greater liars than the French."

"Would that I might collect all the savages in this country upon yonder island in mid-stream, and there exterminate them root and branch," the governor muttered.