While his glance was turned towards the prairie a boat suddenly collided gently with his own, and, to his amazement, he found a powerful Indian seated in a birch canoe alongside.
The Indian made a cordial yet dignified signal of friendship, and almost exhausted his English vocabulary with his greeting, “How do?”
In despair, the other pointed to his dying companion and then to the woods beyond, indicating that the murderer had fled.
The Indian took in the situation at a glance, and paddling to the shore he gathered from the armless socket of an aged live oak, a handful of spiders’ webs; this done, he removed the other bandages and placed the webs against the wound.
The fine clinging meshes of the webs did what the cloths had failed to do, and the terrible bleeding stopped. De Leon opened his eyes at length, and his friend rejoiced to see that he was sensible and as yet, at least, free from fever.
“Friend, come here to me,” faintly whispered the wounded man, after looking wistfully at George Montgomery for a time.
“I am going to leave you, George,” and his voice rested tenderly as a woman’s on the other’s name; “and now that I am dying I want to tell you about a wrong I did you. Stoop lower.”
CHAPTER IX.
ALICE MONTGOMERY’S health steadily drooped as the weeks went by and brought no sign from her husband in reply to her loving message, and when at length she received the letter written by her husband on leaving the monastery its utter hopelessness served only to add to her misery and to further undermine her health.
“We must take our poor darling south for the winter,” said the old grandmother to her husband, “or we shall lose her,” and her sad-eyed partner sighed acquiescence.