r. Moreover, it will not be for long.
The river leads, after all, to Quebec; and the English, if they take
Louisbourg, will quickly push up that way."

"The White-coat used to speak wisdom once in a while," answered
Menehwehna gravely. "'It is a great battle,' he said, 'that battle
of If; only it has the misfortune never to be fought.' Take heart,
brother, and come with me to the Isles du Castor. When your
countrymen take Quebec you shall return to them, if you still have
the mind, and I will swear that we held you captive. But to tell
this needless tale is a sick man's folly."

John could not meet the Indian's eyes, full as they were of a
wondering simplicity. He feared they might read the truth--that his
desire to escape was dead. During Father Launoy's exhortations he
had lain, as it were, with his ear against its cold heart; had lain
secretly whispering it to awake. But it would not. The questions
and cross-questions about Douai he had answered almost inattentively.
What did it all matter?

The priest had been merely tedious. Back on Lake Champlain and on
the Richelieu, when the world of his ken, though lost, lay not far
behind him, his hope had been to escape and seek back to it; his
comfort against failure the thought that here in the north one
restful, familiar face awaited him--the face of the Church Catholic.
Now the hope and the consolation were gone together. Perhaps under
the lengthening strain some vital spring had snapped in him, or the
forests had slowly choked it, or it had died with a nerve of the
brain under Muskingon's tomahawk.

He was not Sergeant a Clive of the regiment of Bearn; but almost as
little was he that Ensign John a Cleeve of the Forty-sixth who had
entered the far side of the Wilderness.

He wanted only to be quit of Menehwehna and guilt. It would be a
blessed relief to lie lost, alone, as a ball tossed into a large
country. As he had fallen, so he prayed to lie; empty in the midst
of a great emptiness. The Communion of all the Saints could not
comfort him now, since he had passed all need of comfort.

"You must go, Menehwehna. I will not speak until you are beyond
reach."

"It is my brother that talks so. Else would I call it the twitter of
a wren that has flown over. Is Menehwehna a coward, that he spoke
with thought of saving himself?"

"I know that you did not," answered John, and cursed the knowledge.
But the voice of the falls had begun to lull him. "W