Cadillac gave a trumpeting laugh.  “Yes, tomorrow.  I shall take a hundred men and leave a hundred here for guard.  I have made arrangements.  Longuant leads the Ottawas, and old Kondiaronk the loyal Hurons.  Where shall we meet you?”

“I cannot tell.  Stop at the Pottawatamie Islands and Onanguisse will know.  Keep watch of Pemaou.  He will make trouble if he can.”

Cadillac looked at the horizon.  “Montlivet, I have bad news.  Pemaou has gone.”

“Gone!  Where?”

“I don’t know.  To the Seneca camp, probably.  His canoes have just left.”

I tapped the ground.  I was tired and angry.  “You should have prevented such a possibility,” I let myself say.

But he kept his temper.  “What could I have done?” he asked quietly.  “I have no authority in my garrison.”

I regretted my outburst.  “You could not have done anything,” I hastened.  “And if Pemaou has indeed gone to the Senecas, it is good news for me.  I am impatient for a meeting with him that I did not dare have here for fear of entangling myself and losing time.  I shall hope for an encounter in the west.  And now I am away, monsieur.”

I wished to leave with as little stir as possible, so Pierre took the canoe around the point, and I joined him there.  To reach the rendezvous I walked through the old maize field where I had met the English captive.  It had been moonlight then.  Now it was hot noon, and the waves of light made me faint.  I had forgotten breakfast.  I cursed myself at the omission, for I needed strength.

But I was not to leave quite unattended.  When I reached the canoe, I found Father Carheil talking to Singing Arrow.  I was glad to see him.  There was something that propped my pride and courage in his irritable, tender greeting.

He pressed a vial into my hands.  “It is confection of Jacinth.  It has great virtue.  Take it with you, my son.”

I knelt.  “I would rather take your blessing, father.”

He gave it to me, and his old hands trembled.  “Come back, my son. 
Come back safely.  You will return this way?”

I looked off at the blue, beckoning west.  “I do not know, father.  I go without ties or responsibilities.  I am not sure where I shall end.  I doubt that I return this way.”

“But where, my son?  Where do you go?”

I pointed, and his mystic glance followed my hand.  “Out there in the blue, father,—­somewhere.  I don’t know where.  It has beckoned you thus far; can you resist its cry to you to come farther and force its secrets from it?”

He clutched his rosary, and I knew I had touched one of his temptations.  He loved the wilderness as I have never seen it loved.  Even his fellow priests and the few soldiers and traders crowded him.  He wanted the land alone,—­alone with his Indians.  He would not look at the blue track.

“It is the path of ambition, and it is strewn with wrecks.  Come back to us here, my son.”