"The sun has gone to sleep many times, Teganouan, since you left the great white house of the church at St. Francis. You have heard the counsel of evil men, who think only of the knife and the hatchet and the musket, who have no dream but to slay their brothers." He was speaking slowly and in a kindly voice, as a father might speak to a son who has wandered from the right. "Have you forgotten the talk of the holy Fathers, when they told you the words of the Book of the Great Spirit, who is to all your Manitous and Okis as the sun is to the stars. Have you forgotten the many moons that passed while you lived in the great white house,--when you gave your promise, the promise of an Onondaga, that you would be a friend to the white man, that you would believe the words of the Great Spirit and live a peaceful life? Have you forgotten, Teganouan, the evil days when your enemy, the fire-water, took possession of your heart and led you away from the white house into the lodges of them that do wrong,--how when the good spirit returned to you and you came back to the arms of the Faith, you were received as a son and a brother? The holy Fathers did not say, 'This warrior has done that which he should not do. Let him be punished. We have no place for the wrongdoer.' No; they did not say this. They said, 'The lost is found. He that wandered from the fold has returned.' And they welcomed the lost one, and bade him repent and lead a right life. Have you forgotten, Teganouan?" The Indian had slowly lowered his musket. "Teganouan has not forgotten," he replied. "He has a grateful heart toward the holy Fathers of the great white house. When he was sick, they brought him their good doctor and told him to live. He believed that the white men were his brothers, that they would do to him as the Fathers had promised. But when Teganouan came to the white men, and asked to be made like they were, he left behind in his village a brother and a sister and a father who said that he was a traitor, who said that he was false to the trust of his blood and his nation, that he was not of their blood." "And did he believe them? Did he not know, better than they could, that the faith of the white man is also the faith of the redman; that the love of the white man includes all who breathe and speak and hunt and trade and move upon the earth?" "Teganouan has not forgotten. He heard the words of the Fathers, and he believed that they were true; but when the white Captain took from the Onondagas five score of their bravest warriors and called them slaves, when he took the brother of Teganouan, borne by the same mother and fed by the same hand, to be a slave of the mighty Chief-Across-the-Water, could he remember what the holy Fathers had said,--that all men were brothers?" "Teganouan has heard what the White Chief, the Big Buffalo, has said, that the evil man who was treacherous to the Onondagas shall be punished?"