"I wish you to know. Madame, I am succeeding in my intriguing among the tribes. I talk more than I trade. You would smile at my rhetoric and call me a mountebank, but I am succeeding. I tell the tribes that when more than one Englishman reaches here the whole race will follow and will overflow the hunting grounds as a torrent does the lowlands. I tell them the English will bring the Iroquois. I show them that the French are their only protection. They listen, for what I say is not new. It has been talked around their fires for a long time, but the tribes are not powerful enough to act alone, and they have lacked a leader who could unite them. I think that they will follow me if I call them to war, madame!"
She looked at me steadily. "War upon whom, monsieur?"
"War upon the Iroquois. Upon the English if they venture near."
"And you tell me this because"——
"Because I wish sincerity between us."
My hat lay at her feet, and she pressed its sorry plume between her fingers. "Monsieur, if you had heard news of Lord Starling during this last week you would have told me at once."
"I should have told you at once, madame. I am glad you introduced this matter. Does your mind still hold? Or do you now think that we should seek your cousin?"
Again she lowered her eyes, but I did not miss the sudden flash in them. "My cousin chose his path. Why need we interfere? Have you—have you theories as to where he can be?"
I flicked my finger at a wandering robin. "I am as guiltless of theories as that bird. It is passing strange. Your cousin and our ghostly Huron seem to have gone up in vapor."
"Our ghostly Huron, monsieur?"