at the
doorway, a black silhouette against the fading sky. The Onondaga knew
that he would watch until the storm came in full flood, and nothing
would escape his keen eyes and ears. Dagaeoga was a worthy pupil of
Willet, known to the Hodenosaunee as the Great Bear, a man of surpassing
skill.

Tayoga also heard the rushing of the rain, far off, coming, perhaps,
from Andiatarocte, and presently he saw the flashes of lightning, every
one a vast red blaze to his feverish eyes. It was only by the light of
these saber strokes across the sky that he could now see Robert, as the
dark had come, soon to be followed by floods of rain. Then he closed his
eyes, and calling incessantly for sleep, refused to open them again.
Sleep came by and by, though it was Tarenyawagon, the sender of dreams,
who presided over it, because as he slept, and his fever grew higher,
visions, many and fantastic, flitted through his disordered brain.

Robert watched until long after the rain had been pouring in sheets,
and it was pitchy dark in the cave. Then he felt of Tayoga's forehead
and his pulse, and observed the fever, though without alarm. Tayoga's
wound was clean and his blood absolutely pure. The fever was due and it
would run its course. He could do nothing more for his comrade at
present, and lying down on his own spread of leaves, he soon fell
asleep.

Robert's slumber was not sound. Although the Onondaga might be watched
over by Tododaho, Areskoui and even Manitou himself, he had felt the
weight of responsibility. The gods protected those who protected
themselves, and, even while he slept, the thought was nestling somewhere
in his brain and awoke him now and then. Upon every such occasion he sat
up and looked out at the entrance of the cave, to see, as he had hoped,
only the darkness and black sheets of driving rain, and also upon every
occasion devout thanks rose up in his throat. Tayoga had not prayed to
his patron saint and to the great Areskoui and Manitou in vain, else in
all that wilderness, given over to night and storm, they would not have
found so good a refuge and shelter.

Tayoga's fever increased, and when morning came, with the rain still
falling, though not in such a deluge as by night, it seemed to Robert,
who had seen many gunshot wounds, that it was about at the zenith. The
Onondaga came out of his sleep, but he was delirious for a little while,
Robert sitting by him, covering him with his blanket and seeing that his
h