“Then you do not know who it is in the canoe?”

I could have answered “no,” but I would not.

“Yes, I think that I know,” I replied.  “I think that it is Pemaou, a Huron.  An Indian whom you have never seen.”

She read the hate in my voice.  “Do you know what he wants, monsieur?”

And now I could answer truthfully, and with a laugh.  “I suspect that he wants, or has been sent to get, something that I have determined to keep,—­at least for the present,” I told her.  “Good-night, madame.”

I told my inner self that I must sleep soundly, and wake just before dawn; and so that was what happened.  The horizon was flushing when I rose and looked around.  My company was asleep.  The woman lay on her bright blankets, and I looked at her a moment to make sure that all was well.  She was smiling as if her dreams were pleasant, and her face wore such a look of peace, that I turned to the east, ready to begin the day, and to thank God that I had not done everything entirely wrong.  I took the lighter of the canoes, carried it to the water, and dipping a cautious paddle, crept off along the shore.

If I wake in the woods every dawn for a year, I can never grow stale to the miracle of it.  I was on no pleasant errand, yet I could not help tingling at the cleanness of the air and at the smell of the mint that our canoes had crushed.  I hugged the shore like a shadow, and rounded a little bend.  It was as I had thought.  We had landed on the western side of a small island, and before me, not a quarter hour’s paddling away, stretched the shore line of the peninsula.

Here was my risk.  I paddled softly across the open stretch, but that availed me little, for I was an unprotected target.  I slanted my course northward, and strained my gaze along the shore.  Yet I hardly expected to find anything.  It came like a surprise when I saw in advance of me a light canoe drawn up on the sand.

I landed, drew my own canoe to shelter, and reconnoitred.  I had both knife and musket ready, and I pulled myself over logs as silent as a snake.  Yet, cautious as I was, little furtive rustlings preceded me.  The wood folks had seen me and were spreading the warning.  Unless Pemaou were asleep I had little chance of surprising him.  Yet I crept on till I saw through the leaves the outlines of a brown figure on the ground.

I stopped.  I had been trying for a good many hours to balance the right and wrong of this matter in my mind, and my reason had insisted to my inclination that, if I had opportunity, I must kill Pemaou without warning.  We respect no code in dealing with a rattlesnake, and I must use this Huron like the vermin that he was.  So I had taught myself.

But now I could not do it.  The blanket-wrapped shape was as unconscious as a child in its cradle, and though the wilderness may breed hardness of purpose it need not teach butchery.  I crept out determined to scuttle the Indian’s canoe and go away.  If the man waked, my knife was ready to try conclusions with him in a fair field.