“Do you think she sent Paul?”

He made no answer.

“Madame de Ferrier does not know I have the book.”

“You haven’t it,” said Skenedonk.

“But you have.”

“If she wrote and sent a letter she expected it would be received.”

“When I said a letter I meant what is called a journal:  the writing down of what happens daily.  Johnny Appleseed got the book from an Indian.  That is how it was sent to me.”

“If you read it you will want to drop everything else and go to find her.”

This was the truth, for I was not under military law.

“Where is the book?”

“Down my back,” said Skenedonk.

I felt the loose buckskin.

“It isn’t there.”

“In my front,” said Skenedonk.

I ran my hand over his chest, finding nothing but bone and brawn.

“There it is,” he said, pointing to a curled wisp of board at the edge of the fire.  “I burnt it.”

“Then you’ve finished me.”

I turned and left him sitting like an image by the fire.

V

Before I left Fort Stephenson, I wrote a letter to Count de Chaumont, telling him about Paul’s death and asking for news of the De Ferriers.  The answer I begged him to send to Sandusky, which the British now despaired of taking.  But although Skenedonk made a long journey for it twice during the half year, I got no answer.

The dangerous work of the next few months became like a long debauch.  Awake, we were dodging betwixt hostile tribes, or dealing with those inclined to peace.  Asleep, I was too exhausted to dream.  It was a struggle of the white force of civilization with the red sense of justice.  I wrestled with Algonquin dialects as I had wrestled with Greek.  Ottawas and Chippewas, long friendly to the French, came more readily than other tribes to agreement with Americans.

Wherever I went I pushed the quest that was uppermost in my mind, but without finding any trace of Madame de Ferrier.

From the measure constantly taken betwixt other men of my time and myself, this positive knowledge resulted.

In spite of the fact that many treated me as a prince, I found myself an average man.  I had no military genius.  In argument, persuasive, graceful—­even eloquent—­were the adjectives applied to me; not sweeping and powerful.  I should have made a jog-trot king, no better than my uncle of Provence; no worse than my uncle of Artois, who would rather saw wood than reign a constitutional monarch, and whom the French people afterward turned out to saw wood.  My reign might have been neat; it would never have been gaudily splendid.  As an average man, I could well hold my own in the world.

Perry on the lakes, General Jackson in the southwest, Harrison in the west, and Lawrence on the ocean were pushing the war towards its close; though as late as spring the national capital was burned by the British, and a gentleman whom they gaily called “Old Jimmy Madison,” temporarily driven out.  But the battle on the little river Thames, in October, settled matters in the Northwest.