awk, and
with the fine phrasing and apt allegory so dear to the Indian heart.
Daganoweda made a fitting reply, saying that the merit did not belong
to him but to Manitou, and then, leaving a half dozen of his warriors
to join in the watch, he and the others slept before the fire.

"It was well that you played so strongly upon the feelings of the
Mohawks at that test in the vale of Onondaga, Robert," said Willet. "If
you had not said over and over again that the Quebec of the French was
once the Stadacona of the Mohawks they would not have been here
tonight to save us. They say that deeds speak louder than words, but
when the same man speaks with both words and deeds people have got to
hear."

"You give me too much credit, Dave. The time was ripe for a Mohawk
attack upon the French."

"Aye, lad, but one had to see a chance and use it. Now, join all
those fellows in sleep. We won't move before noon."

But Robert's brain was too active for sleep just yet. While his
imaginative power made him see things before other people saw them, he
also continued to see them after they were gone. The wilderness battle
passed once more before him, and when he brushed his eyes to thrust it
away, he looked at the sleeping Mohawks and thought what splendid
savages they were. The other tribes of the Hodenosaunee were still
holding to their neutrality--all that was asked of them--but the
Mohawks, with the memories of their ancient wrongs burning in their
hearts, had openly taken the side of the English, and tonight their
valor and skill had undoubtedly saved the American force. Daganoweda
was a hero! And so was Tayoga, the Onondaga, always the first of red
men to Robert.

His heated brain began to grow cool at last. The vivid pictures that
had been passing so fast before his eyes faded. He saw only reality,
the blazing fire, the dusky figures lying motionless before it, and
the circling wall of dark woods. Then he slept.

Willet was the only white man who remained awake. He saw the great
fire die, and the dawn come in its place. He felt then for the first
time in all that long encounter the strangeness of his own position.
The wilderness, savages and forest battle had become natural to him,
and yet his life had once been far different. There was a taste of a
distant past in that fierce duel at Quebec when he slew the bravo,
Boucher, a deed for which he had never felt a moment's regret, and yet
when he balanced the old times against th