When the others were taken up with their devotions he crept to the tent-flap, and firelight shone broadly on his dark side-countenance, separating him in race from the Hurons. He was a Frenchman. But his stiff black hair was close shorn except one bristling tuft, his oily skin had been touched with paint, and he wore the full war-dress of his foster tribe.
“Massawippa,” whispered this proselyte, raising the lodge-flap, “I have something here for you.”
The girl was telling her beads with a soft mutter in the little penances her priest had imposed upon her. He could see but her blurred figure in her dim shrine.
“Massawippa! La Mouche brings you a baked fish,” he whispered in the provincial French.
Her undisturbed voice continued its muttered orisons.
“Massawippa!” repeated the youth, speaking this time in Huron, his tone entreating piteously. “La Mouche brings you a baked fish. It comes but now from the fire.”
Her voice ceased with an indrawing of the breath, and she hissed at La Mouche.
“Return it then to the fire and thyself with it, thou French log!” she uttered in a screaming whisper in Huron, and hissed at him again as her humble lover dropped the lodge-flap.
The candles shone mellowly from the sheltered altar upon kneeling Indians, but La Mouche slunk off into the darkness.