made welcome. A common fear, it seemed, lay over all the nations--
Wyandots and Attiwandaronks from the west and north of Lake Erie,
Nettaways and Tobacco Indians from around Nottawasaga Bay, Ottawas
and Pottawatamies from the far west--who had not yet made their peace
with the English. But Menehwehna, whose fear of arriving too late
had kept him anxious throughout the voyage, grew cheerful again.

They landed and pitched their camp on a spit of land close beside
their old friend the Ottawa chief from L'Arbre Croche, to whose lodge
Menehwehna at once betook himself to learn the news. But John, weary
with the day's toil, threw himself down and slept.

A touch on his shoulder awakened him at dawn, and he opened his eyes
to see Menehwehna standing above him, gun in hand and dressed for an
expedition.

"Come," commanded Menehwehna, adding, as John's gaze travelled around
upon the sleepers, "We two, alone."

John caught up his gun, and the pair stepped out into the dawn
together. An Indian path led through the forest to the southward,
and Menehwehna took it, walking ahead and rapidly. Twice he turned
about and looked John in the face with a searching gaze, but held on
his way again without speaking. They walked in a dawn which as yet
resembled night rather than day; a night grown diaphanous and
ghostlike, a summer night surprised in its sleep and vanishing before
their footfall. The flicker of fire-flies hurrying into deeper
shades seemed, by a trick of eyesight, to pass into the glint of dew.
The birds had not yet broken into singing, the shadows stirred with
whispers, as though their broods of winged and creeping things held
breath together in alarm. A thin mist drifted through the
undergrowth, muffling the roar of distant waters; and at intervals
the path led across a clearing where, between the pine-trunks to the
left, the lake itself came into view, with clouds of vapour heaving
on its bosom.

These clearings grew more frequent until at length Menehwehna halted
on the edge of one which sloped straight from his feet to a broad and
rushing river. There, stepping aside, he watched John's eyes as they
fell on Fort Niagara.

It stood over the angle where the river swept into the lake; its
timbered walls terraced high upon earthworks rising from the
waterside, its roofs already bathed in sunlight, its foundations
standing in cool shadow. Eyes no doubt were watching the dawn from
its ramparts; but no sign of