do
not dread the coming hospitality of Madame Langlade."

The priest shook his head sadly.

"It is a great and terrible war," he said, "though I cannot doubt that
France will prevail, but I fear for you, my son, a captive in the vast
wilderness. Although you are an enemy and a heretic I have only good
feeling for you, and I know that the great Chevalier, St. Luc, also regards
you with favor."

"Know you anything of St. Luc?" asked Robert eagerly.

"Only that the expedition he was to lead against Albany has turned back and
that he has gone to Canada to fight under the banner of Montcalm, when he
comes with the great leaders, De Levis, Bourlamaque and the others."

"I thought I might meet him."

"Not here, with Charles Langlade."

The priest spent the night with them and in the morning, after giving them
his blessing, captors and captive alike, he departed on his long and
solitary journey to Montreal.

"A good man," said Robert, as he watched his tall, thin figure disappear in
the surrounding forest.

"Truly spoken," said the Owl. "I am little of a churchman myself, the
forest and the war trail please me better, but the priests are a great prop
to France in the New World. They carry with them the authority of His
Majesty, King Louis."

A week later they reached a small Indian village on Lake Ontario where the
Owl at present made his abode, and in the largest lodge of which his
patient spouse, the Dove, was awaiting him. She was young, much taller than
the average Indian woman, and, in her barbaric fashion, quite handsome. But
her face was one of the keenest and most alert Robert had ever seen. All
the trained observation of countless ancestors seemed stored in her and now
he understood why Langlade had boasted so often and so warmly of her skill
as a guard. She regarded him with a cold eye as she listened attentively to
her husband's instructions, and, for the remainder of that winter and
afterward, she obeyed them with a thoroughness beyond criticism.

The village included perhaps four hundred souls, of whom about a hundred
were warriors. Langlade was king and Madame Langlade, otherwise the Dove,
was queen, the two ruling with absolute sovereignty, their authority due to
their superior intelligence and will and to the service they rendered to
the little state, because a state it was, organized completely in all its
parts, although composed of only a few hundred human beings. In the bitter
weather that came