He did not answer for a moment, and he followed me silently along the edge of the maize field.  Then he touched my shoulder.

“Monsieur, how strange the world looks to-night.  The moon,—­have you ever seen it so remote and chill?  Oh, we are puppets!  No, it was not my wit that carried me through.  It was Fate.  Life has been hard on me.  She is saving me now for some further trick she has to play.  I pray that it may not bring you ill, monsieur.”

I knew not how to answer, for I was moved.  As he said, the moon made the world strange.  Great beauty is disturbing, and the night was like enchantment.  He had come to me like a dream spirit in his woman’s dress.  I felt the need of a dash of cold water on my spirit.

“You must not put on woman’s fancies with your petticoats, monsieur,” I cautioned over my shoulder.  “Now we had best not talk till we are safe afloat in the canoes.”

The men were ebon, the canoes vague gray, and the water like sheet ice under the moon.  The Englishman and I crept across the pebbles with panther feet, and the splash of a frightened otter was the only sound.  I laid my finger on my lips, and my men checked their breathing.  We were silent as figures in a mirror.  I tapped the Englishman on the shoulder, and motioned where he should sit in the canoe.

And then, from the timber fringe behind us, came a call.  “Singing Arrow!  Singing Arrow!  Stop!  Stop!”

Sword unsheathed, I dashed across the open space of moonlight toward the trees.  Who called, or why, I did not question.  But I must smother the noise.  “Singing Arrow!” the call came again, and the roar of it in the quiet night made my flesh crawl.

I had not taken two strides into the timber when I saw a man running toward me.  He was still calling.  I leaped upon him, winding an arm about his neck, and covering his mouth.  He was a small armful; a weazened body to have sheltered so great a power of lung.

“Hush!  For the Virgin’s sake, hush!” I stormed in noisy whispers.  “Father Carheil, is it you?  Hush!  Hush!” I dropped my hand from his mouth.  “Now speak in whispers,” I implored.

The father shook his cassock free from my fingers.  My embrace had been fervid, and his cassock was rumpled, and his scant hair was stringing wildly from under his skullcap.  But shrunken and tumbled as he was, he was impressive.  With some men, if you disarrange their outer habit, you lower their inner dignity as well.  It was not so with Father Carheil.

He looked at me closely, with a sober gentleness that became him well, and that he did not often use.  “Why should I go quietly?” he asked.  “My errand is righteous.  It is only black work that needs the cover of a silent tongue.  My son, you are letting your men abduct Singing Arrow.  Did your promise to me count for so little in your mind?”

I bowed, and mumbled something meaningless to gain time.  I was not clear as to my course.  “Why do you think that we have Singing Arrow?” I blurted out finally.