He leaned forward, looking at me steadily.

“Loskiel,” he said, “when first I heard your name from her, and that it was you who wanted Mayaro, suddenly it seemed to me that magic was being made.  And—­ I myself gave her her answer—­ the answer to the question she had asked at every camp.”

“Good God!” said I, “did you, then know the answer all the while?  And never told her?” But at the same moment I understood how perfectly characteristic of an Indian had been his conduct.

“I knew,” he said tranquilly, “but I did not know why this maiden wished to know.  Therefore was I silent.”

“Why did you not ask her?” But before he spake I knew why too.

“Does a Sagamore ask idle questions of a woman?” he said coldly.  “Do the Siwanois babble?”

“No.  And yet—­ and yet——­”

“Birds sing, maidens chatter.  A Mohican considers ere his tongue is loosed.”

“Aye—­ it is your nature, Sagamore....  But tell me—­ what was it in the mention of my name that made you think of magic?”

“Loskiel, you came two hundred miles to ask of me the question that this maid had asked in every camp.”

“What question?”

“Where lay the trail to Catharines-town,” he said.

“Did she ask that?” I demanded in astonishment.

“It was ever the burden of her piping—­ this rosy-throated pigeon of the woods.”

“That is most strange,” said I.

“It is doubtless sorcery that she should ask of me an interview with you who came two hundred miles to ask of me the very question.”

“But, Mayaro, she did not then know why I had come to seek you.”

“I knew as quickly as I heard your name.”

“How could you know before you saw me and I had once made plain my business?”

“Birds come and go; but eagles see their natal nest once more before they die.”

“I do not understand you, Mayaro.”

He made no answer.

“Merely to hear my name from this child’s lips, you say you guessed my business with you?”

“Surely, Loskiel—­ surely.  It was all done by magic.  And, at once, I knew that I should also speak to her, there in the storm, and answer her her question.”

“And did you do so?”

“Yes, Loskiel.  I said to her:  ’Little sad rosy-throated pigeon of the woods, the vale Yndaia lies by a hidden river in the West.  Some call it Catharines-town.’”

I shook my head, perplexed, and understanding nothing.

“Yndaia?  Did you say Yndaia, Mayaro?”

Then, as he looked me steadily in the eye, my gaze became uneasy, shifted, fell by an accident upon the blood-red bear reared on his hind legs, pictured upon his breast.  And through and through me passed a shock, like the dull thrill of some forgotten thing clutched suddenly by memory—­ yet clutched in vain.

Vain was the struggle, too, for the faint gleam passed from my mind as it had come; and if the name Yndaia had disturbed me, or seeing the scarlet ensign on his breast, or perhaps both coupled, had seemed to stir some distant memory, I did not know.  Only it seemed as though, in mental darkness, I had felt the presence of some living and familiar thing—­ been conscious of its nearness for an instant ere it had vanished utterly.