y to you to come farther and force its
secrets from it?"

He clutched his rosary, and I knew I had touched one of his
temptations. He loved the wilderness as I have never seen it loved.
Even his fellow priests and the few soldiers and traders crowded him.
He wanted the land alone,--alone with his Indians. He would not look
at the blue track.

"It is the path of ambition, and it is strewn with wrecks. Come back
to us here, my son."

But I would not look away from the west. "Some day I shall come back.
Not now. Father, I married Ambition. She lives in the wilderness. I
think I shall abide with her the next year."

He frowned at me. "Where has Madame de Montlivet gone?"

"She has started for her home in England, father."

He tapped his teeth with his forefinger. "You sent a curious guard
with her. Take the advice of an old man who has lived among Indians.
It is usually unwise to mix tribes."

"What do you mean?"

"You should have sent a guard of Ottawas with your wife and Starling."

"They were all Ottawas."

"No, they were more than half Hurons. I counted."

I jammed my teeth together and tried to think. I had just said that
the west was calling me, that I was untrammeled. Untrammeled! Why, I
was enmeshed, choked by conflicting duties. I put my head back, and
breathed hard.

"Father, are you sure? Cadillac himself saw to it that they were all
Ottawas."

The priest stepped forward and wiped his handkerchief across my face.
It was wet. "My son, take this more calmly. Cadillac does not know
one Indian from another. Does this mean harm?"

I shook the sweat from my fingers. "I do not know what it means. But
I must go west. I must. Hundreds of men depend on me. Father
Carheil?"

"Yes, my son."

"I bound you once on this very spot. May I bind you again?"

"With promises?"

"Yes. Will you see Cadillac at once, tell him what you know, and have
a company of Ottawas sent in pursuit of Lord Starling? Will you
yourself see that it is rightly done?"

His foot drummed a tattoo. "I ask no favors of the commandant."

"Father!"

"Oh yes, I"----

"Then go at once, I beg you. Hasten."

He shook his head at me, but he turned and ran. I watched him a
moment, then I stepped in the canoe.

"I will take a paddle," I told Pierre. "I can do something with my
left hand. Singing Arrow must take one, too."

It had come to me before in my life to be compelled to force the
apparently im