“Marie Loskiel. "

“How came you by this?” I stammered, the quick tears blinding me.

“I took it from the St. Regis hunter whom Tahoontowhee slew.”

“Was he my mother’s murderer!”

“Who knows?” said the Sagamore softly.  “Yet, this needle-book is a poor thing for an Indian to treasure—­ and carry in a pouch around his neck for twenty years.”

The glow-worm spark in my tinder grew dull and went out.  For a long while I lay there, thinking, awed by the ways of God—­ so certain, so inscrutable.  And understood how at the last all things must be revealed—­ even the momentary and lightest impulse, and every deepest and most secret thought.

Lying there, I asked of the Master of Life His compassion on us all, and said my tremulous and silent thanks to Him for the dear, sad secret that His mercy had revealed.

And, my lips resting on my mother’s needle-book, I thought of Lois, and how like mine in a measure was her strange history, not yet fully revealed.

“Sagamore, my elder brother?” I said at last.

“Mayaro listens.”

“How is it then with Lois de Contrecoeur that you already knew she was of the Hidden Children?”

“I knew it when I first laid eyes on her, Loskiel.”

“By what sign?”

“The moccasins.  She lay under a cow-shed asleep in her red cloak, her head on her arms.  Beside her the kerchief tied around her bundle lay unknotted, revealing the moccasins that lay within.  I saw, and knew.  And for that reason have I been her friend.”

“You told her this?”

“Why should I tell her?”

There was no answer to this.  An Indian is an Indian.

I said after a moment: 

“What mark is there on the moccasins that you knew them?”

“The wings, worked in white wampum.  A mother makes a pair with wings each year for her Hidden One, so that they will bring her little child to her one day, swiftly and surely as the swallow that returns with spring.”

“Has she told you of these moccasins—­ how every year a pair of them is left for her, no matter where she may be lodged?”

“She has told me.  She has shown me the letter on bark which was found with her; the relics of her father; this last pair of moccasins, and the new message written within.  And she asked me to guide her to Catharines-town.  And I have refused.

“No, Loskiel, I have never doubted that she was of the Hidden People.  And for that reason have I been patient and kind when she has beset me with her pleading that I show to her the trail to Catharines-town.

“But I will not.  For although in rifle dress she might go with us—­ nay, nor do I even doubt that she might endure the war-path as well as any stripling eager for honour and his first scalp taken—­ I will not have her blood upon my hands.

“For if she stir thither—­ if she venture within the Great Shadow—­ the ghouls of Amochol will know it.  And they will take her and slay her on their altar, spite of us all—­ spite of you and me and your generals and colonels, and all your troops and riflemen—­ spite of your whole army and its mighty armament, I say it—­ I, a Siwanois Mohican of the Enchanted Clan.  A Sagamore has spoken.”