"For that, but not for that only. Brother, have you never loved a friend so that you felt his friendship worthless to you unless you owned it all? Have you never felt the need on you to test him, though the test lay a hundred leagues away? So far have I brought you, O Netawis, to show you your countrymen. In a while the fort yonder will wake, and you shall see them on the parapet in their red coats, and if the longing come upon you to return to them, we will cross over together and I will tell my tale. They will believe it. Look! Will you be an Englishman again?" "Let us turn back," answered John wearily. "That life is gone from me for ever." "Say to me that you have no wish to go." "I had a wish once," said John, letting the words fall slowly as his eyes travelled over the walls of the fort. "It seemed to me then that no wish on earth could be dearer. Many things have helped to kill it, I think." He passed a hand over his eyes and let it drop by his side. "I have no wish to leave you, Menehwehna." The Indian stood up with a short cry of joy and laid a hand on his shoulder. "No, my friend," John continued in the same dull voice; "I will say to you only what is honest. If I return with you, it is not for your sake." "So that you return, Netawis, I will have patience. There was a time when you set your face against me; and this I overcame. Again there was a time when you pleaded with me that I should let you escape; and still I waited, though with so small a hope that when my child Azoka began to listen for your step I scolded her out of her folly." "In that you did wisely, Menehwehna. It is not everything that I have learned to forget." "I told her," said Menehwehna simply, "that, as the snow melts and slides from the face of a rock, so one day all thought of us would slip from your heart and you would go from us, not once looking back. Even so I believed. But the spring came, and the summer, and I began to doubt; and, as I questioned you, a hope grew in my heart, and I played with it as a bitch plays with her pups, trying its powers little by little, yet still in play, until a day came when I discovered it to be strong and the master of me. Then indeed, my brother, I could not rest until I had put it to this proof." He lit his pipe solemnly, drew a puff or two and handed it to John. "Let us smoke together before we turn back. He that has a friend as well as wife and children needs not fear to grow old." John stretched out a hand and touched the earthen pipe bowl. His fingers closed on it--but only to let it slip. It fell, struck against the edge of the tree stump and was shivered in pieces. Across the valley in Fort Niagara the British drums were sounding the _reveille_.