“Français—French?” he asked, and in turn the big woodsman shook his head—nobody there spoke French. However, Dave knew a little Shawnee, a good deal of the sign-language, and the boy seemed to understand a good many words in English; so that the big woodsman pieced out his story with considerable accuracy, and turned to tell it to Jerome. The Indians had crossed the Big River, were as many as the leaves, and meant to attack the whites. For the first time they had allowed the boy to go on a war-party. Some one had treated him badly—he pointed out the bruises of cuffs and kicks on his body. The Indians called him White Arrow, and he knew he was white from the girdle of untanned skin under his breech-clout and because the Indian boys taunted him. Asked why he had come to the fort, he pointed again to his bruises, put both hands against his breast, and stretched them wide as though he would seek shelter in the arms of his own race and take them to his heart; and for the first time a smile came to his face that showed him plainly as a curious product of his race and the savage forces that for years had been moulding him. That smile could have never come to the face of an Indian. No Indian would ever have so lost himself in his own emotions. No white man would have used his gestures and the symbols of nature to which he appealed. Only an Indian could have shown such a cruel, vindictive, merciless fire in his eyes when he told of his wrongs, and when he saw tears in Lydia’s eyes, the first burning in his life came to his own, and brushing across them with fierce shame he turned Indian stoic again and stood with his arms folded over his bow and arrows at his breast, looking neither to right nor left, as though he were waiting for judgment at their hands and cared little what his fate might be, as perfect from head to foot as a statue of the ancient little god, who, in him, had forsaken the couches of love for the tents of war. II