The monologue suddenly ceased, and, after a silent moment, a groan from the heart of the agonized man came to the ears of those outside. Presently, he emerged, white and wretched-looking, his face drawn with weariness and disappointment.
Yet, in his eyes there was something that made the two rascally Ojibways shift uneasily. Donald was not sure whether or not he had heard a smothered snicker, during the moment that he found himself alone in the cabin, but he intended to find out.
“Tom,” he said, “where are the hunting-grounds to which you are going?
“By Beaver Lake.”
“You are much too far south to be on the way to Beaver Lake. Something else has brought you here.”
“My mother is getting old; she prefers to travel the forest, and not the muskeg trails. For that we came south.”
“Every other winter, she has traveled them safely, Tom. Something else has brought you here.”
“I swear it is not so, Captain,” said the Indian, in a tone of defiance rather than of humility—a tone that proved him untruthful then and there.
“You lie, Tom Seguis!” cried McTavish fiercely. All the disappointments of the day leaped into rage at this provoking answer.
“If I do, I learned it from white men,” came the insulting answer.