ved?"

"You cannot hide your heart from me, Menehwehna. You wish two things
of me, and the first is my leave to tell your people that I am
English."

"Without your leave I will never tell them, my brother."

"Did I ever suppose that you would? Well, as soon as you have told
them, they will clamour for me to go to Fort Niagara, and at need to
entreat for them. Now I say that there will be no need; but they
will compel me to go, and you too will wish it. Have I not guessed?"

Menehwehna was silent a while. "For my people I wish it," he said at
length; "but for my own part I fear more than I wish."

"You fear it because I go into great danger. By my countrymen I
shall be rightly held a deserter; and, among them, for an officer to
desert is above all things shameful."

"But," answered Menehwehna with a cheerful readiness which proved
that he had thought the matter out, "if, as you say, the Governor
receive us kindly, we will hide that you are English; to that every
man shall give his oath beforehand. If things go ill, we will hand
you back as our prisoner and prove that we have kept you against your
will."

John shook his head, but did not utter the firm resolve of his
heart--that even from ignominy no such lies should save him while he
had a gun to turn against himself. "Why do you fear then,
Menehwehna," he demanded, "if not for me?"

"Do not ask, my brother!" Menehwehna's voice was troubled,
constrained, and his eyes avoided John's.

"Ah, well," said John lightly, after regarding him for a moment,
"to you at least I will pay some of my debt. Go and tell your people
that I am English; and add--for it will save talk--that I am ready to
go with them to Fort Niagara."

By dawn on the third day at Fort Rouille three canoes lay finished
and ready, each capable of carrying eight or nine men. Pushing off
from the Toronto shore, the embassage paddled southward across the
lake.

They came late that evening to a point of land four miles from
Niagara, on the north side of the river mouth. Approaching it,
they discerned many clusters of Indian encampments, each sending up
its thin column of smoke against the sunset-darkened woods: but night
had fallen long before they beached their canoes, and for the last
three miles they paddled wide of the shore to skirt a fleet of
fishing-boats twinkling with flambeaux, from the rays of which voices
challenged them. The Ojibways answered with their own call and were