st splendid costumes.

Night came, and the festival was still in progress. What the Indian did
he did with his whole heart, and all his strength. Darkness compelled
the ball games to cease, but the dancing went on by the light of the
fires and fresh banquets were spread for all who cared. Robert knew that
it might last for several days and that it would be useless until the
end for either him or St. Luc to mention the subject so dear to their
hearts. Hence came an agreement of silence, and all the while their
friendship grew.

It is true that official enemies may be quite different in private life,
and Robert found that he and St. Luc had much in common. There was a
certain kindred quality of temperament. They had the same courage, the
same spirit of optimism, the same light and easy manner of meeting a
crisis, with the same deadly earnestness and concentration concealed
under that careless appearance. It was apparent that Robert, who had
spent so much of his life in the forest, was fitted for great events and
the stage upon which men of the world moved. He had felt it in Quebec,
when he came into contact with what was really a brilliant court, with
all the faults and vices of a court, one of the main objects of which
was pleasure, and he felt it anew, since he was in the constant
companionship of a man who seemed to him to have more of that knightly
spirit and chivalry for which France was famous than any other he had
ever met. St. Luc knew his Paris and the forest equally well. Nor was
he a stranger to London and Vienna or to old Rome that Robert hoped to
see some day. It seemed to Robert that he had seen everything and done
everything, not that he boasted, even by indirection, but it was drawn
from him by the lad's own questions, back of which was an intense
curiosity.

Robert noticed also that Willet, to whom he owed so much, never
intervened. Apparently he still approved the growing friendship of the
lad and the Frenchman, and Tayoga, too, showed himself not insensible to
St Luc's charm. Although he was now among his own people, and in the
sacred vale of which they were the keepers, he still stayed in the
community house with Robert and sought the society of his white friends,
including St. Luc.

"I had thought," said Robert to the hunter the third morning after their
arrival, "that you would prefer for us to show a hostile face to St.
Luc, who is here to defeat our purpose, just as we are here to defeat
his."