among
the Thousand Isles, and soon Lake Ontario opened before them,
spreading its blue waters to the horizon. But John heeded neither
green islands nor blue lake, nor their beauty, nor their peace, but
only the shame in his heart. He saw only the dazzle on the water,
heard only the swirl around his paddle, stroke by stroke, hour after
hour; prayed only for fatigue to drug the ache and bring about
oblivion with the night.

Coasting the shore they came at the close of day upon the charred
skeletons of three ships lifting their ribs out of the shallows
against the sunset, and beyond these, where the water deepened, to a
deserted quay.

They landed; and while they climbed the slope towards the fort, out
of one of its breaches its only inhabitant crawled to them--a young
dog, gaunt and tame with hunger.

The dog fawned upon Menehwehna. But John turned his back on the
smoke-blackened walls in a sick despair, seated himself on the slope,
and let his gaze travel southward over the shoreless water.
Beyond the rim of it would lie Oswego, ruined by the French as the
English had ruined Frontenac.

The dog came and stretched itself at his feet, staring up with eyes
that seemed at once to entreat his favour and to marvel why he sat
there motionless. Menehwehna had stepped down to the canoe to fetch
food for it, and by and by returned with a handful of biscuit.

"He will be useful yet," said Menehwehna, seating himself beside the
dog and feeding it carefully with very small pieces. "He cannot be
more than a year old, and before the winter is ended we will make a
hunter of him."

John did not answer.

"You will come with me now, brother?" Still Menehwehna kept his eyes
on the dog. "There is no other way."

"There is one way only," answered John, with his eyes fastened on the
south. "Teach me to build a canoe, and let me cross the water alone.
If I drown, I drown."

"And if you reached? Your countrymen are all gathering back to the
south; until the snow has come and passed, there will be no more
fighting. You are better with me. Come, and when the corn begins to
shoot again you shall tell me if you are minded to return."

"Menehwehna, you do not understand."

"I have studied you, my brother, when you have not guessed it; and I
say to you that if you went back now to your people it would be
nothing to their gain, nor to yours, for the desire of fighting has
gone out of you. Now in my nation we do not wonder w