“Nay,” answered Charles, throwing back his head. “I have passed my word and I will not now draw back. Farewell.” He wrung Roger’s hand; then, drawing himself up to his full height, he repeated the Indians’ cry, and, bounding down the slope, stood at the river’s edge in full view of the canoes, which stopped paddling, the Indians in them showing signs of satisfaction at the sight of their new ally.
Two canoes came close up to the bank. In the first stood a chief, more gorgeously arrayed than his fellows, with ceremonial paint, scalp locks, eagle plumes, and armed with steel hatchet and stone war-club. He stretched out his hand to Charles, who immediately entered his canoe, renewed shouts from the Indians making him welcome.
And Roger, standing where his friend had left him, with his arms folded, saw Charles, as he stood beside the chief, look up at him and wave his cap in token of farewell, as his frail bark, taking the lead, was paddled down the stream, the others following in compact order.
Roger never moved until the last of the crews had disappeared and silence had once more fallen on the land; then he threw himself down on the spot where they had passed the night together, and, strong, brave man though he was, wept bitterly for the friend who had departed from him.
CHAPTER III
BAD NEWS
“Well, Loïs, I think it’s pretty nearly time Roger was back amongst us; he’s been gone over two months,” said Father Nat, standing beside Loïs, as she sat on the broad window-seat, a large basket of household linen beside her, which she was carefully sorting and arranging. She and her mother managed Father Nat’s household matters as well as their own, whilst he looked after the outdoor work of the two farms. Virtually they really formed but one community: all their interests were in common; but they maintained their separate establishments. Nokomis, a coloured woman, ruled in the kitchen of Omega Marsh, and in her department suffered no interference; but the linen was Loïs’ care: twice every week she spent the whole day putting it in order. When Father Nat made the above remark, she paused in what she was doing and said,—
“Two months, Father Nat! It is ten weeks since he started for Oswega.”
“Ten weeks, is it?” answered Nat. “He ought to be back, Loïs;” and turning away from her, he looked steadily out of the window.
“Yes, he ought,” she answered; “I understood he had left Oswega a month ago?”
“So he did,” answered Nat; “he went with some other traders to Miamis, you know—the village of Old Britain.”