“Pemaou told me.”

Pemaou again!  But we had tricked him.  I grinned with joy to think of him with his nose still rooted close to the deserted hole.  I could almost forgive him for the trouble he was causing now.

“Pemaou lied,” I said cheerfully.  “Singing Arrow is not with us, Father Carheil.  Will you go back now?  My mission is urgent and demands secrecy.”

He looked at the ground.  “You swear to this?  You swear that Singing Arrow is not with you?”

I laid my hand on my sword, and bared my head.  “I swear.”

He turned away.  “You seem a gentleman,” he said reluctantly.  “I regret that I troubled you.  I wish you fair winds, monsieur.”

Beshrew me, but the man could get close to my heart.  “Thank you, father,” I cried earnestly.  “I wish that I might requite your trust with greater candor.  But, in the end, I hope to justify my means.  I would that I might have your blessing on my mission and my cargo.”

Blockhead that I was, not to have let well enough alone.  For I was to blame for what followed.  I may have grown unconsciously rhetorical, and waved my hand in the direction of the canoes.  I do not know.  I do know that at the word “cargo” Father Carheil turned and looked toward the shore.  There, in my canoe, with gaze searching the timber where I had disappeared, stood a figure,—­a woman’s figure in Singing Arrow’s dress and blanket.

Father Carheil looked at me.  He did not speak; it was not necessary.  I endured his gaze for a moment, then sold my prudence to save my honor.  I laid my finger on the priest’s arm.

“Come with me to the canoes,” I demanded.  “If you find yourself in the wrong, it may teach you to trust a man’s word against your own eyesight.”

He assented.  We walked swiftly across the moon-lighted open, and I had scant time for fear.  Yet I was afraid.  I could give the Englishman no helping hand, no word of warning.  Would he rise to the moment?

He did.  He turned his back upon us, Indian-fashion, and squatted in his blanket.  He lost all suggestion of Singing Arrow’s slim elasticity, and sat in a shapeless huddle.  I laughed with relief.

“Where is Singing Arrow now?” I twitted the priest.  “Is this she?”

The old priest peered.  “No,” he meditated.  “No, this is not Singing Arrow.”  He wheeled on me with one of his flashes of temper.  “I cannot recognize this girl.  Let her take off her blanket.”

I motioned my men to take stations in the canoes.  “Father Carheil, I beg you to let me go at once,” I implored.  “You see you were wrong.  As to this Indian, you never saw her; she is a stranger here.”

But the father was not pacified.  “Let her take off her blanket,” he repeated, with all the aimless persistency of age.

Did I say that the man had grown close to my heart?  Why, I could have shaken him.  But the Englishman cut the knot.  He turned with a hunch of the shoulder, and peered at us over the corner of his blanket.  Gesture, and roll of the head, he was an Indian.  I was so pleased at the mimicry, that I gave way to witless laughter.