my
face from the ground to discover there was a God. Some of the prayers
our priest had industriously beaten into my head, began to repeat
themselves. In a twinkling I was a child, lonely in the universe,
separated from my dim old life, instinct with growth, yet ignorant of my
own needs.

What Madame de Ferrier and Madame Tank had said influenced me less than
the intense life of my roused activities.

It was mid forenoon by the sun when I reached our lodges, and sat down
fagged outside my father's door, to think longer before I entered.
Hunger was the principal sensation, though we had eaten in the cabin the
night before, and the Indian life inures a man to fasting when he cannot
come by food. I heard Skenedonk talking to my father and mother in our
cabin. The village was empty; children and women, hunters and fishermen
having scattered to woods and waters.

"He ought to learn books," said Skenedonk. "Money is sent you every year
to be spent upon him: yet you spend nothing upon him."

"What has he needed?" said my father.

"He needs much now. He needs American clothes. He wept at the sight of a
book. God has removed the touch since he plunged in the water."

"You would make a fool of him," said my father. "He was gone from the
lodge this morning. You taught him an evil path when you carried him
off."

"It is a natural path for him: he will go to his own. I stayed and
talked with De Chaumont, and I bring you an offer. De Chaumont will take
Lazarre into his house, and have him taught all that a white boy should
know. You will pay the cost. If you don't, De Chaumont will look into
this annuity of which you give no account."

"I have never been asked to give account. Could Lazarre learn anything?
The priest has sat over him. He had food and clothing like my own."

"That is true. But he is changed. Marianne will let him go."

"The strange boy may go," said my mother. "But none of my own children
shall leave us to be educated."

I got up and went into the cabin. All three knew I had heard, and they
waited in silence while I approached my mother and put my hands on her
shoulders. There was no tenderness between us, but she had fostered me.
The small dark eyes in her copper face, and her shapeless body, were
associated with winters and summers stretching to a vanishing point.

"Mother," I said, "is it true that I am not your son?"

She made no answer.

"Is it true that the chief is not my father?"

She made