“Take it, my brother, for my gratitude.  It shall not cut the friendship between us.  It shall cut any stranger that would come between your heart and mine.  Longuant, I have a wife.  She is fair, and stars shine in her eyes.  She has loved a daughter of your people.  I cannot hide in your lodge,—­a man who carries a sword must use it,—­but will you take my wife and keep her?  Will you keep her with Singing Arrow for a few days?”

Longuant thought a moment.  He looked at the knife as if it were a talisman to teach him how much he could trust me; he tried its edge, put it in his pouch, and made up his mind.

“My brother is keen and true as the blade of the knife.  I will tell him a story, a story that the birds sang.  The eagle once married.  He married one of the family of the hawk.  But the hawk found the eagle’s nest too high, so she flew lower to a nest near her own kin.  Listen.  So long as the hawk stays near the hawk and is not seen with the eagle, the wolf will spare her.  But when she comes back to the eagle’s nest in the high tree, then let her beware.  I have spoken.  Now let my brother go on his way and see what his eyes and ears can teach him.”

But I went my way with thought busier than eyes.  So I must keep away from the woman.  I went to my room, found paper and a quill, and wrote to her.  It was the first time I had written her name.  It seemed foreign to me, almost a sad jest, as it flowed out under my hand.

“I cannot come to you to-day,” I wrote; “perhaps not for some days to come.  I shall be watching you, guarding you.  I think I can assure you that you are in no danger.  For the rest, I must beg of you to wait for me and to trust me.  The women of the name you bear have often had the same burden laid on them and have carried it nobly.  Yet I know that your courage will match and overreach anything they have shown.  I salute you, madame, in homage.  I shall come to you the moment that I may.”

I subscribed myself her husband.  Yet even the Indians gossiped that the eagle’s nest was empty.  Well, I had work on hand.

So I found Cadillac.  I told him in five minutes what it had taken me five hours to learn.

“We must give our strength now to winning the Hurons,” I said.  “I will work with them this afternoon.  If we can get through this one night safely I think we can carry the council.”

Cadillac shrugged, but sped me on my way.  “Be careful of to-night.  Be careful of to-night,” he repeated monotonously.  His eyes were growing bloodshot from anxiety and loss of sleep.

The afternoon slipped away from me like running water, yet I wasted no word or look.  I dropped my old custom of letting my tongue win the way for my ears, and I dealt out blunt questions like a man at a forge.  At one point I was foiled.  I could not discover whether Starling—­whom personally I had not seen—­was in communication with the Hurons.