“Nothing that concerns you.”

“But how could I have a Bourbon ear if it didn’t concern me?”

“Who said you had such an ear?”

“Madame de Ferrier.”

The chief grunted.

“At least she told De Chaumont,” I repeated exactly, “I was the boy she saw in London, that her father said had all the traits of the Bourbons.  Where is London?”

The chief paddled without replying.  Finding him so ignorant on all points of the conversation, or so determined to put me down, I gazed awhile at our shadow gliding in the water, and then began again.

“Father, do you happen to know who Bonaparte is?”

This time he answered.

“Bonaparte is a great soldier.”

“Is he a white man or an Indian?”

“He is a Frenchman.”

I meditated on the Frenchmen I dimly remembered about St. Regis.  They were undersized fellows, very apt to weep when their emotions were stirred.  I could whip them all.

“Did he ever come to St. Regis?”

The chief again grunted.

“Does France come to St. Regis?” he retorted with an impatient question.

“What is France, father?”

“A country.”

“Shall we ever go there to hunt?”

“Shall we ever go the other side of the sunrise to hunt?  France is the other side of the sunrise.  Talk to the squaws.”

Though rebuked, I determined to do it if any information could be got out of them.  The desire to know things was consuming.  I had the belated feeling of one who waked to consciousness late in life and found the world had run away from him.  The camp seemed strange, as if I had been gone many years, but every object was so wonderfully distinct.

My mother Marianne fed me, and when I lay down dizzy in the bunk, covered me.  The family must have thought it was natural sleep.  But it was a fainting collapse, which took me more than once afterwards as suddenly as a blow on the head, when my faculties were most needed.  Whether this was caused by the plunge upon the rock or the dim life from which I had emerged, I do not know.  One moment I saw the children, and mothers from the neighboring lodges, more interested than my own mother:  our smoky rafters, and the fire pit in the center of unfloored ground:  my clothes hanging over the bunk, and even a dog with his nose in the kettle.  And then, as it had been the night before, I waked after many hours.

By that time the family breathing sawed the air within the walls, and a fine starlight showed through the open door, for we had no window.  Outside the oak trees were pattering their leaves like rain, reminding me of our cool spring in the woods.  My bandaged head was very hot, in that dark lair of animals where the log bunks stretched and deepened shadow.

If Skenedonk had been there I would have asked him to bring me water, with confidence in his natural service.  The chief’s family was a large one, but not one of my brothers and sisters seemed as near to me as Skenedonk.  The apathy of fraternal attachment never caused me any pain.  The whole tribe was held dear.