The knight lifted his head, and spoke more bitterly: "Poison stirs in our English blood, driving us from home, leading us across seas to fight unthanked for our country's cause. What gadfly of madness stings us on thus to build the foundations of Empire? What honour shall be rendered to pioneers? Who shall seek our graves and pause to say, 'Here lies one who fought to plant the red-cross flag in the face of its enemies'? Fools, fools, fools! We forsake home and kindred in pursuit of a dream, rise up for our unrewarded effort, and fail. So we are gone and our deeds lie buried in our graves." "One leaf makes not a summer," replied Penfold. "The one cannot be discerned by the eye, and yet that one does its share in making the tree perfect. We also have our part to play. Our lives are obscure. Our deeds shall live, if not our names. Let others reap the harvest." The knight rose, frowning at the sun-lit scene. "There is a cave a league away," he said. "There sorrow and myself shall dwell. Seek not to find me." He placed a hand upon his breast. "Something has broken there," he said; and then went with drooping head, striking the trees in the blindness of his flight. Hough stood low upon the shore between the islets. He heard the footsteps of his captain, and spoke: "See where our friend's wife goes. Closing her ears to my good counsel, she went into the hut, and returned with bow and arrows and a knife. These she placed in her canoe, and yonder she goes to find the track of that papist priest who has brought sorrow to us all." "Said she as much?" "Ay. 'Onawa, your sister, has brought this trouble upon you and us,' said I, as she pushed away. 'She it was who smote down George Flower by treachery, and she it was who brought the Frenchman to our hiding-place.'" "Said she anything?" "Never a word. But her eyes strained upon the knife." Then the two lonely men returned to New Windsor, the slow day passed, and night enwrapped in cloud fell upon the land. The fires of the allied tribes spotted the forest with scarlet, and between the black trees the upright figures of warriors, fully painted and feathered, crossed as they threaded the mazes of the dance. Five thousand fighters were there gathered, the best and bravest of the Oneidas, Senacas, and Onandagas, mad to avenge their wrongs. Spies were posted at every point; a hundred watched the fortress, passing the word from man to man. In a chain they stretched from the height above the river to the council fire, where the nine sachems sat muttering in whispers and drawing omens from the flight of the smoke and the burning of the logs. "Shuswap, great chief of the Cayugas, the woman your daughter would speak to you," a voice sounded. "Let her come near," answered the old man.