as they neared home. And two days after their arrival Ononwe
and Azoka were married.

In the midst of the marriage feast, which lasted a week, the great
thaw began; and thereafter for a month Menehwehna watched John
closely. But the springtime could not thaw the resolve which had
been hardening John's heart all the winter--to live out his life in
the wilderness and, when his time came, to die there a forgotten man.
He wondered now that he had ever besought Menehwehna for help to
return. Although it could never be proved against him, he must
acknowledge to himself that he, a British officer, was now in truth a
willing deserter. But to be a deserter he found more tolerable than
to return at the price of private shame.

Menehwehna, cheated of his fears, watched him with a new and growing
hope. The snows melted; May came with its flowers, June with its
heat, July with the roaring of bucks in the forest; and still the men
hung about the village, fishing and shooting, or making short
excursions to Sault Sainte-Marie or the bay of Boutchitouay, or the
mouth of the Mississaki river on the north side of the lake (where
the wildfowl were plentiful), but showing no disposition to go out
again upon the war-path as they had gone the year before. The frenzy
which then had carried them hundreds of miles from their homes seemed
now to be entirely spent, and the war itself to have faded far away.
Once or twice a French officer from Fort Mackinac was paddled across
and landed and harangued the Indians; and the Indians listened
attentively, but never stirred. Of the French soldiers drilling at
the fort they spoke now with contempt.

John saw no reason for this change, and set it down to that
flightiness of purpose which--as he had read in books--is common to
all savages. He had yet to learn that in solitary lands the very sky
becomes as it were a vast sounding-board, and rumour travels, no man
knows how.

It was on his return from the isles aux Castors, where with two score
young men of his tribe he had spent three weeks in fishing for
sturgeon, that he heard of the capture of Fort Niagara by the
English. Azoka announced it to him.

"Said I not how it would happen?" she reminded him. "But if you
leave us now, you must come back with her and see my boy. When he
comes to be born he shall be called Netawis. Ononwe and I are agreed
on it."

"I have no thought of leaving," John answered. "Fort Niagara is far
from here."