“That I do not know, my son. But bear this in mind, good Chatémuc: against a soldier fighting for the cross the powers of hell cannot prevail. Remember, Chatémuc, that unless that blaze is turned to ashes in their sight, my prayers and exhortations will be of no avail. We’ll leave them pagans as we found them, unless their sacred fire no longer burns.”
The vibrant notes in the friar’s rich voice rekindled the light in the Indian’s gloomy eyes.
“Either the fire or a Mohican shall die, my father!” exclaimed the warrior, in low, earnest tones. “Chatémuc, your son in Christ, has sworn an oath.”
Meanwhile the high spirits of Louis de Sancerre had cast their spell upon Katonah, a maiden whose ready smile seldom changed to laughter. But on this bright spring day, treading a flower-bedecked path by the side of a man whose delicately chiselled face was to her eyes a symbol of all the joy of life, it was not hard for the Mohican maiden to affect a gayety uncharacteristic of a race lacking in vivacity.
“They are splendid fellows,” remarked de Sancerre, gazing at the stalwart messengers from the Brother of the Sun. “With ten thousand men like these, Turenne could have marched around the world. But our mission to them is one of peace. I must teach them the steps of the menuet.”
“And what is that?” asked Katonah, glancing over her shoulder to see whether Chatémuc’s rebuking eye was fixed upon her. To her great satisfaction she discovered that her brother seemed to be absorbed in the words of the gray friar.
“The menuet, ma petite? ’Twas made for you. ’Tis a coupée, a high step and a balance. Your untrammelled grace, Katonah, would hurt the eyes of mesdames at Versailles.”
Little of this the Indian maiden understood, but she realized intuitively that her cavalier had been paying her an honest compliment. Her quick ear, more sensitive to the changes in his voice than to all other sounds, had learned to detect and dread a sarcastic note in his tones that often cut her to the heart. But on this gay noontide of a day at the close of what the sun-worshippers called the Moon of Strawberries, Louis de Sancerre was a joyous, frank, vivacious man who paid the beautiful savage at his side acceptable homage with his eyes and in whose words she could find nothing to wound her pride.
“When we reach this sun-baked centre of idolatry, ma petite,” remarked De Sancerre, presently, “we must make an effort to remain side by side. Though I should pass a thousand years in harems of the Turks, I could not forget the face of that old hag who came to haunt me by my lonely couch. ’Tis her you are to find—for the greater glory of our Mother Church. But bear this in mind, petite, that I must have some speech with her before the friar seizes on her tongue and makes her Spanish eloquent for Christ. I’d ask her of a miracle, before good Membré goes to work with his.”
For Katonah the glory of the day had passed. The gleam of happiness died slowly in her eyes, and the smile which lingered still upon her lips had lost its joyousness. Not only had the mocking echo returned to de Sancerre’s voice, but he had recalled to the girl’s mind the story that he had told her, earlier in the day, of a Spanish maiden whose name had come to him so strangely in the dark hours of the night. It was, then, the memory of a maiden over-sea which had led the Frenchman’s footsteps toward the city of the sun! The misery in Katonah’s heart crept into her voice.