He dropped a knife at her feet. The girl caught it up and sped onward like a deer. The old man was a Christian. The maid was heathen. Old mind and young working independently, the former actuated by the religion of altruism, the latter wrought upon by nature, had entertained in secret the self-same plan of rescuing the young Englishman from his terrible plight. CHAPTER XVIII. COMMITTAL. While Woodfield was a prisoner in the camp of the Algonquins, his comrades, who had searched for him in vain, made their sad parting from George Flower upon the Windy Arm where the waters mourn for ever. This promontory had been so named by the Indians because it thrust itself far out, like an arm, into Lake Couchicing, meeting the full force of every wind. It made a suitable spot, thought the survivors, for an Englishman's grave, being rough and rugged and strong to behold, like the man whom they had known and loved and lost. When Hough had done droning his prayers, they heaped the soil into the form of a mound, which they covered with warm peat. While thus employed they beheld Shuswap passing down to the beach, where a dozen long canoes lay ready for a start. One, which was covered with green branches, had already been launched, and was rocking gently upon the shallows. The Englishmen hastened to complete their work, when they discovered that the sachem was awaiting them with impatience. Then a mournful procession crossed glass-like Couchicing, headed by the sad canoe where boy and hound slept together as they had been wont to do at home. It reached the fringed shore opposite, amid the sorrowful cries of the paddlers. The canoes were carried across the strip of land and down again to the water where the country was in splendour. Here Nature struck no mourning note. Only a few stripped trees leaning out, held from falling by tougher comrades which supported them on either side, spoke mutely of the presence of death after life; and even so showed strong green saplings from some living nerve of the half-decayed roots to proclaim the final triumph of life over death. So they continued, until wild islets stood out, their banks humped with beaver mounds, and the lost waters began to shout with the mourners, and the swelling north wind shook the shore. The paddlers wrenched the canoes round, chanting as they worked, and the whitecap waves slapped the frail birch-bark sides. No man stood beside young Richard's grave. A flock of noisy birds pecked amid the fresh-turned soil and flung themselves away before the carriers. Sir Thomas took no part in these last rites. From that pierced body of his son the jewel of great price had been snatched, and the setting he left for others to handle.