“But enough.  I hear that you trussed Father Blackgown like a pigeon for the spit the night that you went away.  I would have given my best tobacco box to have seen it.  There was some excitement here over the loss of the prisoner, but no talk of pursuit.  Indeed, the Hurons seemed relieved to have him spirited out of the way.  Which is odd, for they took great pains to obtain him.  But I am wonted to the unexpected; it is the usual that finds me unprepared.  Even Father Blackgown surprises me.  He has not complained to me of you, though heretofore I have found him as ready to shout his wrongs as a crow in a cornfield.  But again, enough.

“And I have the honor to be, with great respect, monsieur,

“Your very obedient servant,

“Antoine de la Mothe-Cadillac.”

I read the letter through twice.  Then I turned to Singing Arrow.  I was glad she was a savage.  If she had been white, man or woman, I should have been obliged to go through a long explanation, and I was not in the mood for it.  Now savages are content to begin things in the middle, and omit questions.  It may be indolence with them, and it may be philosophy.  I have never decided to my satisfaction.  But the fact serves.

“Do you think that you were followed?” I asked.

The girl sat up and shook her head.  “Only by the stars and the clouds,” she answered.

I felt relieved.  “And how did you happen to come this way?” I went on. 
“What did they tell you at the Pottawatamie Islands?”

She stopped to laugh.  “That you went the other way,” she replied, and she swept her arm to the southwest.

I shrugged my shoulders.  “And you thought I lied to them?”

She nodded her answer.  “The bird who hides her nest cries and makes a great noise and runs away from it,” she explained.  “You told all the Pottawatamies who would listen that you were going southwest.  So I went southeast.”

I could afford to let her laugh at me.  “We stopped at that island over there,” I said, without comment.  “Now we will follow this shore line for a distance south.  You must go with us.  Singing Arrow, did they tell you at the islands that the English prisoner was a woman, and that she is now my wife?”

The girl did not answer nor look in my direction.  She pulled her blanket over her head, and sat as stiffly as a badger above his hole.  I could not determine whether the news of the marriage was a surprise or not.  It did not matter.  I lit my pipe and let her work it out.

“Are you coming?” I asked at last.  “I must go back to the island now.”

She rose and pulled her blanket around her.  She was typically Indian at the moment, unreadable and cold.  But she nodded in acquiescence and went to her canoe.

I found my own canoe and we paddled side by side.  The sun was over the horizon now and fish were jumping.  I saw a great bass that must have weighed five pounds spring his whole length out of the water for a fly.  A sportsman in France would have traveled leagues to have seen such a fish, and here it lay ready for my hand.  Perhaps after all there was no need to search for reasons for the exultation that was possessing me.