hands fell away; she raised her head, the tears shining on her
heavy lashes: "It is the truth."

"His wife?" I repeated slowly.

"His wife, O Bearer of Arrows! He took me at the False Faces' feast,
and the Iroquois saw. Yet the cherries were still green at Danascara.
Twice the Lenape covered their faces; twice 'The Two Voices' unveiled
his face. So it was done there on the Kennyetto." She leaned swiftly
toward me: "Twice he denied me at Niagara. Yet once, when our love was
new--when I still loved him--he acknowledged me here in this very
house, in the presence of a County Magistrate, Sir John Johnson. I am
his wife, I, Lyn Montour! I have never lied to woman or man, O my elder
brother!"

"And that is why you have come back?"

"Yes; to search--for something to help me--some record--God knows!--I
have searched and searched--" She stretched out her bare arms and gazed
hopelessly around the paper-littered floor.

"Will not Sir John uphold you with his testimony?" I asked.

"He? No! He also denies it. What can a woman expect of a man who has
broken parole?" she added, in contempt.

I leaned toward her, speaking slowly, and with deadly emphasis:

"Dare Walter Butler deny what the Iroquois Nation may attest?"

"He dare," she said, burning eyes on mine. "I am more Algonquin than
Huron, and more than nine-tenths white. What is it to the Iroquois that
this man puts me away? It was the Mohican and Lenape who veiled their
faces, not the Iroquois. What is it to white men that he took me and
has now put me away? What is it to them that he now takes another?"

"Another? Whom?" My lips scarcely formed the question.

"I do not know her name. When he returned from the horrors of Cherry
Valley Sir Frederick Haldimand refused to see him. Yet he managed to
make love to Sir Frederick's kinswoman--a child--as I was when he took
me----"

She closed her eyes. I saw the lashes all wet again, but her voice did
not tremble: "He is at Niagara with his Rangers--or was. And--when I
came to him he laughed at me, bidding me seek a new lover at the
fort----"

Her voice strangled. Twisting her fingers, she sat there, eyes closed,
dumb, miserable. At last she gasped out: "O Quiver-bearer, with a white
voice and a skin scarce whiter than my own, though your nation be
sundered from the Long House, though I be an outcast of clans and
nations, speak to me kindly, for my sadness is bitter, and the ghost of
my dead honor confronts me in every f