"You are wet; you have been in the water."
"Oh! it is a little thing."
"I thought you were the great one, or the Spider. I have not seen them since the morning."
"Maybe they have gone a journey. What says the medicine?"
"It says that until they return safe as when they went, it will not speak," said Compton, with a chill suspicion growing in his mind.
She laughed. "Look again, son of my friend. Maybe they will not return except the things be done that must be done."
"What things?"
"I have said. The things that will make our people strong for the going out—the swift canoes and the shooting fire. That is my word."
"And this is my word. If any injury befall them, the medicine that is here"—and he tapped the book—"will work against yon and yours."
He looked at her very sternly, attempting to carry the matter with a high hand, for he judged from her words that something had happened to his friends.