John seated himself on the bank, and gazed out over the river for a
minute or so in silence. "She believed me dead, of course?" he
began, but did not ask how the blow had affected her. Likely enough
Dick would not know. "Is there any more bad news?" he asked at
length.

"None. Your brother is well, and there's another child born.
The a Cleeves are not coming to an end just yet. No more questions,
Jack, until you've told me all about yourself!"

He settled down to listen, and John, propping himself on an elbow,
began his tale.

Twice or thrice during the narrative Dick furrowed his brows in
perplexity. When, however, John came to tell of his second year's
sojourn with the Ojibways, he sat up with a jerk and stared at his
cousin in a blank dismay.

"But, good Lord! You said just now that this fellow--this
Menehwehna--had promised to help you back to the army, as soon as
Spring came. Did he break his word, then?"

"No! he would have kept his word. But I didn't want to return."

"You didn't--want--to return!" Dick repeated the words slowly,
trying to grasp them. "Man alive, were you clean mad? Don't you see
what cards you held? Oh," he groaned, "you're not going on to tell
me that you threw them away--the chance of a life-time!"

"I don't see," answered John simply.

Dick sprang up and paced the bank with his hands clenched, half
lifted. "God! if such a chance had fallen to _me_! You had
intercepted two dispatches, one of which might have hurried the
French up from Montreal here to save Fort Frontenac. Wherever you
could, you bungled; but you rode on the full tide of luck. And even
when you tumbled in love with this girl--oh, you needn't deny it!--
even when you walked straight into the pitfall that ninety-nine men
in a hundred would have seen and avoided--your very folly pulled you
out of the mess! You escaped, by her grace, having foiled two
dispatches and possessed your self of knowledge that might have saved
Amherst from wasting ten minutes where he wasted two days. And now
you stare at me when I tell you that you held the chance of a
lifetime! Why, man, you could have asked what promotion you willed!
Some men have luck--!" Speech failed him and he cast himself down at
full length on the turf again. "Go on," he commanded grimly.

And John resumed, but in another, colder tone. The rest of the
story he told perfunctorily, omitting all mention of the fight
on the flagstaff tower and t