"Of where?"
The old man asked the question with trembling, faltering lips, eager, yet fearful of mistake.
"Of Cornwall, and Major under——"
"My son—my son!" The cry that went up rent the air and startled even the birds o'erhead. Old Tom was down on his knees, his arms encircling his patient, and with streaming eyes uplifted to the heavens, he murmured fervently, "God, great God, I thank thee! Thou art very good." And then to his new-found son: "But they told me that mother and you were dead. The black sealed letter! Who sent it? It reached me after Proctor and Tecumseh's defeat at the——Ah! I see it all. Another scheme of Lanyan's! A curse upon their race! But no, I must be merciful since God has been merciful to me in restoring to me, in my old age, a son. Thy mother, lad?"
"Is well when I left home and there will be many happy days for her when we return! and as for me, I'm not dead, although the Indians did near finish me."
"And ye were all these years searching for me?"
"No; mother and I thought you were dead, and yet, at times, we would have hope of you still being alive. I was searching mainly for the honour of grandfather and to remove the stain from our name."
"A true son of your race," said the old man warmly and with pride. "Ye are just the same as I was at your age. I might have known ye for my son, and yet the letter of your death and your mother's death took all thought on that subject from my mind."
The pilot with a sense of delicacy, and wondering to himself, had withdrawn from the scene at the start, but was now returning. He saw them seated side by side on the bearskin, and seating himself near them listened with interest to the tales of both father and son.
Before beginning his narrative of his eventful life he turned to the pilot.