COMMITTAL.
While Woodfield was a prisoner in the camp of the Algonquins, his comrades, who had searched for him in vain, made their sad parting from George Flower upon the Windy Arm where the waters mourn for ever.
This promontory had been so named by the Indians because it thrust itself far out, like an arm, into Lake Couchicing, meeting the full force of every wind. It made a suitable spot, thought the survivors, for an Englishman's grave, being rough and rugged and strong to behold, like the man whom they had known and loved and lost.
When Hough had done droning his prayers, they heaped the soil into the form of a mound, which they covered with warm peat. While thus employed they beheld Shuswap passing down to the beach, where a dozen long canoes lay ready for a start. One, which was covered with green branches, had already been launched, and was rocking gently upon the shallows. The Englishmen hastened to complete their work, when they discovered that the sachem was awaiting them with impatience.
Then a mournful procession crossed glass-like Couchicing, headed by the sad canoe where boy and hound slept together as they had been wont to do at home. It reached the fringed shore opposite, amid the sorrowful cries of the paddlers. The canoes were carried across the strip of land and down again to the water where the country was in splendour. Here Nature struck no mourning note. Only a few stripped trees leaning out, held from falling by tougher comrades which supported them on either side, spoke mutely of the presence of death after life; and even so showed strong green saplings from some living nerve of the half-decayed roots to proclaim the final triumph of life over death.
So they continued, until wild islets stood out, their banks humped with beaver mounds, and the lost waters began to shout with the mourners, and the swelling north wind shook the shore. The paddlers wrenched the canoes round, chanting as they worked, and the whitecap waves slapped the frail birch-bark sides.
No man stood beside young Richard's grave. A flock of noisy birds pecked amid the fresh-turned soil and flung themselves away before the carriers. Sir Thomas took no part in these last rites. From that pierced body of his son the jewel of great price had been snatched, and the setting he left for others to handle.
The mother stood beside old Shuswap, her bosom heaving vengefully as the warriors consigned her son to the ground. After the heathen rites had been performed, Hough's stern voice repeated the prayers which he had but recently offered over his brother of the sword, and when he had done green branches were flung into the grave, then a weight of stones, and finally the rich, red clay stopped the mouth of earth which had opened to devour her own. The Indians swept away, shouting a song of war. The waters raced on; and wind and rapids met below with the noise of thunder.
Penfold walked among the trees; and there, scarce a stone's cast from the sounding water, he came upon the knight, huddled upon the stem of a fallen pine, his hands spread out across his knees, his head down, and on the ground between his feet the two parts of a broken sword.
The old yeoman came near and wrecked the silence by a gruff word of sympathy; but Sir Thomas did not look at him. Presently he made a blind movement and extended one lean arm towards the ground.
"If you would serve me, friend," he said in a hollow voice, "cast these fragments into yonder water. My son, whom I should have trained as a man of peace, took that sword from my hand. My Richard's blood lies heavy on me now."
"Not so," said Penfold strongly. "The boy was his father's son. Would you have seen him grow a weakling? Sons bred beside an enemy's camp must fight or be found unworthy of their name."
"The sword has fallen," said the knight. "Last night I had a dream." A shiver coursed through him. "Take up the sword with which I killed my son and bury it in the water. I have sworn to lay hand on it no more."
"I have lost a friend," muttered the yeoman. "One known to me by hearth and in field, at work and pleasure. I have buried him this day in a strange land. I grow old, and my friends drop from me as acorns shed from the oak, but while my eye is steady and my arm strong I shall fight for England's empire over sea. Old age, when dotage grows, is time sufficient to mourn for friends. While strength remains a man must work. Country, then friends, myself the last. 'Tis the motto of the Penfolds of County Berks."
"You have no flesh and blood to mourn."
"What is relationship if it be not friendship? Know you not that two brothers may fall in hatred from one another, and yet either have a friend dear to his heart as his own soul? Our troubles we carry to our pastor. Our highest love to the woman who stays for us on our way through life. Such friendship binds more firmly than any tie of blood."
"Speak not to me," cried the bitter man. "My ambition has fallen to the ground."
"Stand by yonder mound," cried Penfold. "The boy shall speak."
"Vengeance shall not bring him back."
"Had you fallen he would have gone upon his way stronger than before."
"He was young and I grow old."
"Yet I am older far." And the yeoman shook himself like an old lion. "There is work for me."
The knight lifted his head, and spoke more bitterly:
"Poison stirs in our English blood, driving us from home, leading us across seas to fight unthanked for our country's cause. What gadfly of madness stings us on thus to build the foundations of Empire? What honour shall be rendered to pioneers? Who shall seek our graves and pause to say, 'Here lies one who fought to plant the red-cross flag in the face of its enemies'? Fools, fools, fools! We forsake home and kindred in pursuit of a dream, rise up for our unrewarded effort, and fail. So we are gone and our deeds lie buried in our graves."
"One leaf makes not a summer," replied Penfold. "The one cannot be discerned by the eye, and yet that one does its share in making the tree perfect. We also have our part to play. Our lives are obscure. Our deeds shall live, if not our names. Let others reap the harvest."
The knight rose, frowning at the sun-lit scene.
"There is a cave a league away," he said. "There sorrow and myself shall dwell. Seek not to find me."
He placed a hand upon his breast.
"Something has broken there," he said; and then went with drooping head, striking the trees in the blindness of his flight.
Hough stood low upon the shore between the islets. He heard the footsteps of his captain, and spoke:
"See where our friend's wife goes. Closing her ears to my good counsel, she went into the hut, and returned with bow and arrows and a knife. These she placed in her canoe, and yonder she goes to find the track of that papist priest who has brought sorrow to us all."
"Said she as much?"
"Ay. 'Onawa, your sister, has brought this trouble upon you and us,' said I, as she pushed away. 'She it was who smote down George Flower by treachery, and she it was who brought the Frenchman to our hiding-place.'"
"Said she anything?"
"Never a word. But her eyes strained upon the knife."
Then the two lonely men returned to New Windsor, the slow day passed, and night enwrapped in cloud fell upon the land. The fires of the allied tribes spotted the forest with scarlet, and between the black trees the upright figures of warriors, fully painted and feathered, crossed as they threaded the mazes of the dance. Five thousand fighters were there gathered, the best and bravest of the Oneidas, Senacas, and Onandagas, mad to avenge their wrongs. Spies were posted at every point; a hundred watched the fortress, passing the word from man to man. In a chain they stretched from the height above the river to the council fire, where the nine sachems sat muttering in whispers and drawing omens from the flight of the smoke and the burning of the logs.
"Shuswap, great chief of the Cayugas, the woman your daughter would speak to you," a voice sounded.
"Let her come near," answered the old man.
His keen eyes distended. He had looked, prepared to behold his younger daughter, but instead his eyes fell upon Tuschota, her sister. The father noted her warlike bearing, the bow slung upon her shoulders, the arrows and knife thrust through her girdle. He saw also the sternness of her countenance.
"What would you, daughter?"
"Where is Onawa, my sister?"
"I know not," said the sachem.
"Find her and bring her forth. She led hither the Frenchman who has slain my son."
The sachems turned and their black eyes glittered upon her.
"It is false," cried Shuswap.
"She desires to win the French doctor for husband. She brought him therefore to the lake that he might lie in wait to kill the Englishmen. One man Onawa killed with her own hand. My son is your son. Your daughter, my sister, must die."
She spoke, and passed away into the glow of the forest.
Shuswap dashed his grey head to the ground.
"She must die," muttered the counsellors.
The news travelled like an evil wind from fire to fire. All the tribes swore by their gods that the woman who had sought to betray them must die. Not till then might Shuswap lift up his head among them. They danced more cruelly, maddened by disgrace.
A runner came from the depths of the forest, spots of blood thrown from his flying heels. Three hours had he run at that speed. He passed the warriors and their fires and reached the council. All the sachems sat erect, save only old Shuswap, who lay forward, his head upon the dust.
"Oskelano comes upon us at the head of the tribes of the Algonquins," spoke the messenger. "They carry the fire-tubes given them by the French."
The sachems sat like figures of stone.
"Which way do they come?" demanded Piscotasin, surnamed Son of the Weasel, the learned chief of the Oneidas.
"From the north."
"They shall find us ready."
The messenger passed back. Straightway the forest shivered with a wild cry for battle until the leaves were shed like rain.
There came another runner.
"A fire-float passes down the Father of Waters."
"It is well," said the Son of the Weasel. "It is the signal of the friendly Dutch."
Thereupon commenced that great advance of the confederate tribes which descendants speak of to this day. The flower and strength of the Iroquois, that great people which from time immemorial had ruled the north-eastern land from the coast to the chain of inland seas, went out to avenge their wrongs. The women rushed to find shelter from their hereditary enemies the pitiless Algonquins. The army poured away in a roaring torrent, draining the forest, leaving the fires licking the sharp breeze with forked tongues, leaving only one man behind:
Old Shuswap, doubled in the dust.