rious glances. Simply and quietly he
began the narrative of the capture of the hunting party at Fort
Frontenac. At the first words Menard turned to Father Claude with a
meaning look. The maid saw it, and her lips framed a question.

"It is better than I hoped," Menard whispered. "He is bringing it up
himself."

"Not two moons have waned," the Long Arrow was saying, "since five
score brave young warriors left our village for the hunt. They left
the hatchet buried under the trees. They took no war-paint. The Great
Mountain had said that there was peace between the redman and the
white man; he had asked the Onondagas to hunt on the banks of the
Great River; he had told them that his white sons at the Stone House
would take them as brothers into their lodges. When the Great Mountain
said this, through the mouths of the holy Fathers, he lied."

The words came out in the same low, even tone in which he had begun
speaking, but they sank deep. The house was hushed; even the stirring
of the children on the benches died away.

"The Great Mountain has lied to his children,"--Menard's keen ears
caught the bitter, if covered, sarcasm in the last two words; they
had been Governor Frontenac's favourite term in addressing the
Iroquois--"and his children know his voice no longer. There is corn
in the fields? Let it grow or rot. There are squaws and children
in our lodges? Let them live or die. It is not the Senecas who ask
our aid; it is the voice of a hundred sons and brothers and youths
and squaws calling from far beyond the great water,--calling from
chains, calling from fever, calling from the Happy Hunting Ground,
where they have gone without guns or corn or blankets, where they
lie with nothing to comfort them." The Long Arrow stood erect, with
head thrown back and eyes fixed on the opposite wall. "Our sons and
brothers went like children to the Stone House of the white man.
Their hands were stretched before them, their muskets hung empty
from their shoulders, their bowstrings were loosened; the calumet was
in their hands. But the sons of Onontio lied as their fathers had
taught them. They took the calumet; they called the Onondagas into
their great lodge; and in the sleep of the white man's fire-water
they chained them. Five score Onondagas have gone to be slaves to
the Great-Chief-Across-the-Water, who loves his children and is kind
to them, and would take them all under his arm where no storm can
harm them. My brothers of