ame de Montlivet had asked if she
might come in for a moment and listen to the council, and he had
referred the matter to me. It had seemed a strange request, but I
could see no reason for refusing it. The woman had seen Indians in
camp and field; it was perhaps no wonder that she wished to see the
machinery of their politics. It was agreed that Dubisson should bring
her in for a short time.

Yet when she did come in I could not look at her. Longuant had just
finished speaking, and I had all my mind could handle to do him justice
as I wished. He spoke as the moderate leader who desired that his
people leave the hatchet unlifted if they could do so with safety. He
gave a robe stained with red to show that his people remembered the
French who had died for them.

I knew, as I repeated Longuant's speech, that I was doing it well,
helping it out with trick and metaphor. And I also knew, with a shrug
for my childishness, that my wits were working more swiftly than they
had, because the woman was listening. I saw the whole scene with added
vividness and significance because her eyes rested on it, too. Once I
glanced up and looked at her briefly. Day had slipped into dusk, and
the bare, shadow-haunted room was lighted with torches stuck in the
crannies of the log walls. The flaring light lapped her like a waving
garment and showed her daintily erect, silk-clad, elate and resolute, a
flower of a carefully tended civilization. And then my eyes went back
where they belonged, to the lines of warriors robed like senators,
attentive and august, full of wisdom where the woman knew nothing, yet
blank as animals to the treasures of her mind. The contrast thrilled
through me like a violin note. I heard my tongue use imagery that I
did not know was in me. The woman waited till I was through, and I
could feel that she was listening. Then she turned with Dubisson and
they went out of the door.

Longuant was the last of our garrison Indians to speak, and when he
finished it remained to Cadillac to sum up the situation. He picked
out the oldest men from each delegation and stood before them. Yet,
though he spoke to all, it was at Longuant that he looked.

"Listen," he said. "Hast ever seen the moon in the lake when the
evening is clear and the weather calm? It appears in the water, yet
nothing is truer than that it is in the sky. Some among you are very
old; but know, that were you all to return to early youth and tak