might be
considered the earliest cartographer of this region, and some of his
maps, copied from the sand, are extant to this day. Captain Demere laid
the papers of this unfinished task carefully aside, and by way of giving
his hospitality more grace took the head of the table himself.

But Odalie could not eat, and wept steadily on as if for the purpose of
salting her food with tears, and Fifine's hunger seemed appeased by the
feast of her eyes. Now and again her head in its little white mob-cap
turned actively about, and she seemed as if she might have entered upon
a series of questions save for the multiplicity of objects that
enthralled her attention at once. Captain Demere desisted from
insistence after one or two well-meant efforts, and the man who had
served the table waited in doubt and indecision.

"It's a hard life for women on the frontier," the officer observed as if
in polite excuse for Odalie's ill-mannered tears that she could not
control.

"And for men," she sobbed, thinking of Alexander and marveling if the
Indians would carry him on without resistance to Chote,--for he could
not know she had found lodgement in the fort,--or further still and
enslave him--many captives had lived for years in Indian tribes--she had
heard of this even in Carolina; or would they murder him in some
trifling quarrel or on the discovery of his nationality or to make
easier the robbery of the packhorses. Ah, why had she brought so much;
why had she hampered their flight and risked their lives for these
paltry belongings, treasures to the Indians, worth the shedding of much
blood? How could she have sacrificed to these bits of household gear
even her own comfort! She remembered, with an infinite yet futile wish
to recall the moment, how eagerly Sandy had urged the abandonment of
these poor possessions, that she might herself mount the horse and ease
her bleeding and torn feet. Is every woman an idolater at heart, Odalie
wondered. Do they all bow down, in the verity of their inner worship, to
a few fibers of woven stuff and some poor fashioning of potter's clay,
and make these feeble, trivial things their gods? It seemed so to her.
She had bled for the things she had brought through the wilderness. She
had wept for others that she had left. And if for such gear Sandy had
come to grief--"I wonder--I wonder if I could find a pretext to care for
them still!"

But she only said aloud, with a strong effort to control her attentio