through twice. Then I turned to Singing Arrow. I
was glad she was a savage. If she had been white, man or woman, I
should have been obliged to go through a long explanation, and I was
not in the mood for it. Now savages are content to begin things in the
middle, and omit questions. It may be indolence with them, and it may
be philosophy. I have never decided to my satisfaction. But the fact
serves.

"Do you think that you were followed?" I asked.

The girl sat up and shook her head. "Only by the stars and the
clouds," she answered.

I felt relieved. "And how did you happen to come this way?" I went on.
"What did they tell you at the Pottawatamie Islands?"

She stopped to laugh. "That you went the other way," she replied, and
she swept her arm to the southwest.

I shrugged my shoulders. "And you thought I lied to them?"

She nodded her answer. "The bird who hides her nest cries and makes a
great noise and runs away from it," she explained. "You told all the
Pottawatamies who would listen that you were going southwest. So I
went southeast."

I could afford to let her laugh at me. "We stopped at that island over
there," I said, without comment. "Now we will follow this shore line
for a distance south. You must go with us. Singing Arrow, did they
tell you at the islands that the English prisoner was a woman, and that
she is now my wife?"

The girl did not answer nor look in my direction. She pulled her
blanket over her head, and sat as stiffly as a badger above his hole.
I could not determine whether the news of the marriage was a surprise
or not. It did not matter. I lit my pipe and let her work it out.

"Are you coming?" I asked at last. "I must go back to the island now."

She rose and pulled her blanket around her. She was typically Indian
at the moment, unreadable and cold. But she nodded in acquiescence and
went to her canoe.

I found my own canoe and we paddled side by side. The sun was over the
horizon now and fish were jumping. I saw a great bass that must have
weighed five pounds spring his whole length out of the water for a fly.
A sportsman in France would have traveled leagues to have seen such a
fish, and here it lay ready for my hand. Perhaps after all there was
no need to search for reasons for the exultation that was possessing me.

A few moments brought us to the island, and we rounded the point and
came into the cove. The little camp was awake and startled by my