"Some day, if you are accepted amongst the Ga-go-sra, you may," returned de Veulle. "Be ready with the letter, I beg you. I must start early with the daylight if I am to be in time for the feast."
The Cahnuagas drove us from the bank with kicks and blows of their paddle-blades, and the white men followed leisurely, laughing now and then as we dodged some particularly vicious attack upon our heads and faces. As it was, when we were flung into a bare log-walled room within the palisade we were covered with bruises. 'Twas the real beginning of our torment.
In the morning our arms were untied and we were given a mess of half-cooked Indian meal. Then the rawhides were rebound, and we set forth upon a trail that led from the river southeastward into the forest. A Cahnuaga walked behind each of us, tomahawk in hand. De Veulle himself brought up the rear, his musket always ready.
I prefer not to think of that day. The heat of early Summer was in the air, and although it was cooler in the forest than in the open, a host of insects attacked us; and with our hands bound, we could not fight them off. Ta-wan-ne-ars had the thick hide of his race, and they bothered him less than they did me; but we were both in agony by the time we made camp and the smoke-smudge kindled by our guards in self-protection gave us temporary relief.
The next day was much the same. If we hesitated in our pace or staggered, the savage nearest to us used the flat of his tomahawk or his musket-butt. Ta-wan-ne-ars walked before me in the column, and the sight of his indifference, his disdainful air toward all the slights put upon him, maintained my courage when otherwise it must have yielded.
On the third day, shortly after noon, I was astonished to hear faintly, but very distinctly, a bell ringing in the forest. And I remembered the words of the Cahnuaga who had been last of his brethren to die in that fight in the glade on the Great Trail—
"A building with a tower and a bell that rings."
"La Vierge du Bois welcomes you," hailed de Veulle from behind us. "The bell rings you in. Ah, there will be bright eyes and flushed cheeks at sight of you!"
He laughed in a pleasant, melodious way.
"White cheeks to flush for you, Ormerod, and red cheeks to grow duskier for our friend the chief here! What a fluttering of hearts there will be!"