The stag, with his head upraised, still pulled at the tender top of a bush, and the deceitful wind, which blew from him toward Tayoga, brought no warning.  Nor did the squirrel chattering in the tree or the bird singing on the bough just over his head tell him that the hunter was near.  Tayoga looked again down the arrow at the chosen place on the gleaming body of the deer, and with a sudden and powerful contraction of the muscles, bending the bow a little further, loosed the shaft.

The arrow flew singing through the air as swift and deadly as a steel dart and was buried in the heart of the stag, which, leaping upward, fell, writhed convulsively a moment or two, and died.  The young Onondaga regarded his work a moment with satisfaction, and then walked forward, followed by his white comrade.

“One arrow was enough, Tayoga,” said Robert, “and I knew before you shot that another would not be needed.”

“The distance was not great,” said Tayoga modestly.  “I should have been a poor marksman had I missed.”

He pulled his arrow with a great effort from the body of the deer, wiped it carefully upon the grass, and returned it to gadasha, the quiver.  Arrows required time and labor for the making, but unlike the powder and bullet in a rifle, they could be used often, and hence at times the bow had its advantage.

Then the two worked rapidly and skillfully with their great hunting knives, skinning and removing all the choicer portions of the deer, and before they finished they heard the pattering of light feet in the woods, accompanied now and then by an evil whine.

“The wolves come early,” said Tayoga.

“And they’re over hungry,” said Robert, “or they wouldn’t let us know so soon that they’re in the thickets.”

“It is told sometimes, among my people, that the soul of a wicked man has gone into the wolf,” said Tayoga, not ceasing in his work, his shining blade flashing back and forth.  “Then the wolf can understand what we say, although he may not speak himself.”

“And suppose we kill such a wolf, Tayoga, what becomes of the wicked soul?”

“It goes at once into the body of another wolf, and passes on from wolf to wolf, being condemned to live in that foul home forever.  Such a punishment is only for the most vile, and they are few.  It is but the hundredth among the wicked who suffers thus.”

“The other ninety-nine go after death to Hanegoategeh, the land of perpetual darkness, where they suffer in proportion to the crimes they committed on earth, but Hawenneyu, the Divine Being, takes pity on them and gives them another chance.  When they have suffered long enough in Hanegoategeh to be purified he calls them before him and looks into their souls.  Nothing can be hidden from him.  He sees the evil thought, Lennox, as you or I would see a leaf upon the water, and then he judges.  And he is merciful.  He does not condemn and send to everlasting torture, because evil may yet be left in the soul, but if the good outweighs the bad the good shall prevail and the suffering soul is sent to Hawenneyugeh, the home of the just, where it suffers no more.  But if the bad still outweighs the good then its chance is lost and it is sent to Hanishaonogeh, the home of the wicked, where it is condemned to torture forever.”