"'My friend,' said he, 'you have said enough: if you tell me that your friend, or the friend or the enemy of any man, takes the hand of a fair daughter on that ground to-night, an Ioway chief will not offend the Great Spirit by raising the war-cry there. No Ioway can spill the blood of an enemy on the ground where the hands and the hearts of man and woman are joined together. This is the command of the Great Spirit, and an Ioway warrior cannot break it. My friend, these warriors you see around me with myself had sworn to kill the first human being we met on our war excursion; we shall not harm you, so you see that I give you your life. You will therefore keep your lips shut, and we will return in peace to our village, which is far up the river, and we shall hereafter meet our friends, the white people, in the great city,[25] as we have heretofore done, and we have many friends there. We shall do no harm to any one. My face is now blackened, and the night is dark, therefore you cannot know me; but this arrow you will keep--it matches with all the others in my quiver, and by it you can always recognize me, but the meeting of this night is not to be known.' He gave me the arrow, and with these words turned his canoe, and joining his companions was in a moment out of sight. My arrow being passed under my hat-band, and finding that the current had by this time drifted me down a mile or two below the place where I designed to land, and beyond the power of reaching it with my two awkward logs of wood, I steered my course onward toward St. Louis, rapidly gliding over the surface of the broad river, and arrived safely at the shore in front of the town at a late hour in the night, having drifted a distance of more than thirty-five miles. My two logs were an ample price for a night's lodging, and breakfast and dinner the next day; and I continued my voyage in a Mackinaw boat on the same day to _Vide Pouche_, a small French town about twenty miles below, where my business required my presence. The wedding party proceeded undisturbed, and the danger they had been in was never made known to them, as I promised the War-chief, who gave me as the condition of my silence the solemn promise, that he would never carry his feelings of revenge upon innocent persons any farther.