"And for that reason," I went on, "I give you my confidence. 'Tis true, of course, that in my travels I am keeping my eyes open for information useful to my people. If, for instance, you sent me back to New York I should have to tell at once of meeting this expedition and the deductions I had drawn from it."
"Hah!" said Le Moyne. "I don't know that I shall! I hadn't thought of that."
"Then I should not like to be in your dilemma," I replied. "After all, as Père Hyacinthe told you, I am a member of the Provincial Council. You can't very well incarcerate me without trial in time of peace."
"Get on with your story, Monsieur," he adjured impatiently.
"I am hoping," I pursued, "to learn much of value. No Englishman that I know of hath traversed the Wilderness Country across the Mississippi. I would learn to what extent our people and the French are known to its tribes, and what is their disposition to the English, as also, the value of the land and its geographic condition."
"My faith, Monsieur, but you are frank!" protested the Frenchman.
"I am trying to be," I said. "But you may believe me or not, Chevalier. I should not be here for that reason alone, nor would my comrades yonder."
And I described to him as simply as possible the combination of circumstances which had brought Tawannears, Corlaer and myself upon this venture. 'Twas not a story easily to be compressed, and again and again he drove me off the main trail into byways, for bits of it had come to him in the past—as, for instance, the matter of Gahano's death and the grief of Tawannears—so it was very late when I finished. My comrades were asleep, and over the brow of the shallow glen I could see the groups of sleepers around the dying fires. By the shore where the canoes were beached and at intervals along the edge of the encampment stood the sentinels. Except ourselves, they were the only souls awake.
I looked at them because my eyes were wet. In repeating my story I had resurrected painful memories that the recent weeks had buried. The old wound had reopened. I did not like to think of the house in Pearl Street. At that moment I thought I never wanted to enter it again. I loathed the idea of returning to New York. And I did not want the Frenchman to see my grief.
I was brought back to the present by a crash of sparks as he withdrew a heavy log from the fire, and the flames flared lower.