I did not paddle, but seated myself
beside the woman on the crushed leaves and watched in inactivity and
silence while the starlight came. As the dusk deepened we slipped by
strange islands, but I held the canoes straight in advance till a
limestone headland rose white out of the blurred, violet water. The
star shine showed a deep bay and wavering lights among the trees. I
touched the woman's shoulder.

"The largest of the Pottawatamie Islands," I explained. "I have had
maps. Pray God we may find what we seek."

The canoes bumped and slid upward on the sand, and I left the men on
guard, and taking the woman's hand led her toward the lights. A rabble
of dogs trooped upon us and gave tongue, and black shapes, arrow-laden,
clustered out of the wigwams.

"Peca," I cried, in greeting, and again, "Where is your chief? Where
is Onanguisse?"

A French voice answered, "Who calls?" The mat that hung before the
entrance of the nearest lodge was pulled aside, and smoke and red light
flared out of the opening. I saw the black robe of a priest!

"Father Nouvel, Father Nouvel!" I cried like a schoolboy. "You are
indeed here!"

The priest stooped to pass through the skin-draped opening, and came
peering into the starlight.

"Who calls Father Nouvel?" he demanded in a mellow voice, rich in
intonations. "What, an Indian woman, monsieur! Who are you? What
means this?"

I led the woman forward. "Father Nouvel, this is Mademoiselle
Starling, an Englishwoman who was captured by the Indians. We have
traveled fast and far to find you. Can you marry us at once?"

It was badly done. I had jumbled my speech without wit or address,
like a peasant dragging his milkmaid before the village cure. The
woman may have felt my clumsiness. She dropped my hand, and curtsied
deeply to the father, and he, staring, checked the hand that he had
raised to extend to her, and bowed deeply in turn. It was a meeting,
not of priest and refugee, but of a man and woman who had known the
world. Father Nouvel was very old and his skin was wrinkled ivory, but
at this moment he wore his cassock as if it were a doublet slashed with
gold. His command was an entreaty.

"Come nearer, daughter. I wish to see your face."

She followed him close to the flaring light that poured from the
wigwam, and he looked at her as unsparingly as if she were a portrait
of paint and oil.

"I have never seen you," he decided. "Yet the name Starling,--it is