orest-trail!" She stretched out
her arms piteously:

"Teach me, brother; instruct me; heal my bruised heart of hate for this
young man who was my undoing--cleanse my fierce, desirous heart. I love
him no longer; I--I dare not hate him lest I slay him ere he rights my
wrongs. My sorrow is heavier than I can bear--and I am young, O
sachem--not yet eighteen--until the snow flies."

She laid her face in her hands once more; through her slim fingers the
bright tears fell slowly.

"Are you Christian, little sister?" I asked, wondering.

"I do not know. They say so. A brave Jesuit converted me ere I was
unstrapped from the cradle-board--ere I could lisp or toddle. God knows.
My own brother died in war-paint; my grandmother was French Margaret, my
mother--if she be my mother--is the Huron witch of Wyoming; some call
her Catrine, some Esther. Yet I was chaste--till _he_ took me--chaste as
an Iroquois maid. Thus has he wrought with me. Teach me to forgive him!"

And _this_ the child of Catrine Montour? This that bestial creature they
described to me as some slim, fierce temptress of the forests?

"Listen," I said gently; "if you are wedded by a magistrate, you are
his wife; yet if that magistrate falsely witnesses against you, you can
not prove it. I would give all I have to prove your marriage. Do you
understand?"

She looked at me, uncomprehending.

"The woman I love is the woman he now claims as wife," I said calmly.
Then, in that strange place, alone there together in the dim light, she
lying full length on the floor, her hands clasped on my knees, told me
all. And there, together, we took counsel how to bring this man to
judgment--not the Almighty's ultimate punishment, not even that stern
retribution which an outraged world might exact, but a merciful
penance--the public confession of the tie that bound him to this young
girl. For, among the Iroquois, an unchaste woman is so rare that when a
maiden commits the fault she is like a leper until death releases her
from her awful isolation.

Together, too, we searched the littered papers on the floor, piece by
piece, bit by bit, but all in vain. And while kneeling there I heard a
stealthy step behind me, and looked back over my shoulder, to see the
Oneida, Little Otter, peering in at us, eyeballs fairly starting from
his painted face. Lyn Montour eyed him silently, and without
expression, but I laughed to see how surely he had followed me as I had
expected; and motion