“I can never get quite used to it,” he said.  “The wilderness is so immense, so menacing that when I am in it at night a little shiver will come now and then.  I suppose our remote ancestors who lived in caves must have had fear at their elbows all their lives.”

“Very likely,” said de Courcelles, thoughtfully, staring into the coals.  “It isn’t strange that many people have worshiped fire as God.  Why shouldn’t they when it brings light in the dark, and lifts up our souls, when it warms us and makes us feel strong, when it cooks our food and when in the earlier day it drove away the great wild animals, with which man was not able to fight on equal terms?”

“I am not one to undervalue fire,” said Robert.

“Few of us do in the forest.  The night grows chill, but two of our good Canadians will keep the coals alive until morning.  And now I suppose you are weary with your day’s travels and wish sleep.  I see that you have blankets of your own or I should offer you some of ours.”

Tayoga had been sitting before the fire, as silent as the Canadian Indians, his rifle across his knees, his eyes turned toward the blaze.  The glow of the flames fell upon him, disclosing his lofty countenance, his splendidly molded figure, and his superiority to the other Indians, who were not of the Hodenosaunee and who to him were, therefore, as much barbarians as all people who were not Greeks were barbarians to the ancient Greeks.  Not a word of kinship or friendship had passed between him and them.  For him, haughty and uncompromising, they did not exist.  For a long time his deep unfathomable eyes had never turned from the fire, but now he rose suddenly and said: 

“Someone comes in the forest!”

De Courcelles looked up in surprise.

“I hear nothing,” he said.

“Someone comes in the forest!” repeated Tayoga with emphasis.

De Courcelles glanced at his own Indians.  They had not yet moved, but in a moment or two they too rose to their feet, and then he knew that the Onondaga was right.  Now Robert also heard a moccasined and light footstep approaching.  A darker shadow appeared against the darkness, and the figure of an Indian, gigantic and sinister, stepped within the circle of the firelight.

It was Tandakora, the Ojibway.

CHAPTER VII

NEW FRANCE

The huge and savage warrior had never looked more malignant.  His face and his bare chest were painted with the most hideous devices, and his eyes, in the single glance that he cast upon Robert and his comrades, showed full of black and evil passions.  Then, as if they were no longer present, he stalked to the fire, took up some cooked deer meat that lay beside it, and, sitting down Turkish fashion like the other Indians, began to eat, not saying a word to the Frenchmen.