absence. Pierre was searching the horizon from under a red, hairy
hand, and Labarthe was looking to the priming of his arquebus. Only
the woman sat steadfast. All this I saw at a glance.

I rushed the canoes to the shore, and helped the Indian girl to alight
as I would have helped any woman. I gave one look at the men, and
said, "Be still," and then I led Singing Arrow to the woman.

"Madame," I said, "here is the Indian girl who befriended you when you
were a prisoner. It was she who passed us last night. She comes to me
with documents from Cadillac, and I have great reason to be grateful to
her. I commend her to you, madame."

I doubt that the woman heard much of my speech, though I made it
earnestly. She was looking at the Indian girl, and the Indian girl at
her. I should have liked cordiality between them, but I did not expect
it. The woman would do her best, but she would not know how. I had
come to think her gracious by nature, and she would treat this girl
with courtesy, but she was a great lady while Singing Arrow was a
squaw, and she would remember it. Yet Singing Arrow, even though she
might admit her inferiority to a white man, would think herself the
equal of any woman of whatever rank or race. I could not see how the
gulf could be bridged.

But bridged it was, and that oddly. The woman stood for a moment half
smiling, and then suddenly tears gathered in her eyes. She put out her
hand to Singing Arrow, and the Indian took it, and they walked together
back into the trees. They could not understand each other, and I
wondered what they would do. But later I heard them laughing.

Well, the woman was destined to surprise me, and she had done it again.
I had thought her too finely woven and strong of fibre to be easily
emotional. It was some hours before it came to me that she had not
been with another woman since the night the savages had found her in
the Connecticut farmhouse. All the world had been a foe to be feared
and parried except myself, and I had been a despot. Perhaps she did
not know herself. Perhaps she would welcome Benjamin Starling after
all. No matter what her horror of him, she could at least be natural
with him, if only to show her scorn.

CHAPTER XVI

THE STORM

We embarked in good season that morning and followed the line of the
peninsula in its slant to the southwest. It was a pleasant shore,
limestone-scarped and tree-bannered, and we paddled so near to