“Cease,” screamed Skerry in sudden panic. His terror was so plain that Roger relented and the listeners roared with laughter. The shoemaker began to look about him uneasily and to sidle toward the door. This meeting that he had called together for the ruin of his enemies had become suddenly no happy place for him. One or two of the younger men began to crowd him into a corner whence he could not escape, the anger in their eyes boding ill for the mischief-making cobbler. But Master Simon interfered. “No, no, lads,” he said. “Wherefore humiliate him further? The matter is at an end so here let it rest.” It was an odd look, half gratitude and half baffled fury, that Samuel Skerry bent upon them as he slipped away. As Master Simon stood looking after him, some one brushed against his arm. It was the Indian whose entrance Margeret had noticed earlier in the afternoon. She recognised him suddenly now as the one who had led the band of his comrades when they came to say good-bye to the priest. With silent dignity he stepped forth, wrapped in his blanket, his black eyes shining in the candlelight. “There is one more word to be said in this affair of Monsieur Simon,” he began, “and that word is mine.” His English was good, but had, beside his own guttural accent, a foreign flavour as though he had been taught by one whose native tongue was French. “Speak on, friend,” said Goodman Allen, as the men drew back to give him space. “I, too, was a friend of that French father who dwelt in the wood,” he pursued. “He led me to the Christian faith and taught me to walk in upright ways. I and my comrades, we loved him dearly, we loved Monsieur Simon too for the help that he gave. And we love also that garden of his, the spot where we worshipped together and said our last farewell. Our little father is dead now, dead in his own happy France and we know that he sleeps the quieter for knowing of that last mass we said together.” A slight noise of the door’s opening and closing caused no interruption. Samuel Skerry had stolen out into the dark, but he went unheeded, so intent were the men upon what the Indian had to say. “Of late,” the tale continued, “a secret word has come from the settlements in Canada, a message that has been passed on from tribe to tribe. The French love not the English and have been stirring up the Indians to strike at the New England settlers, to destroy their towns where they can, and to cut off the outlying farms. You have heard of such deeds all about you: you knew that they were ordered by the French but do you know why you have been spared? It was because we who loved Monsieur Simon would not listen to evil counsel, because that garden of his has become, for us, a sacred spot, because when danger threatened, we ringed you round and held you safe. The English Puritans are great and powerful, but it is well for them, nevertheless, to have the wandering Jesuits and the humble red men for their friends.”