Amid many calls of adieu and bon voyage from the kindly French people the travellers set off. The sun was not yet up, but as the three cantered to the ford close beside the blockhouse, that frowned from the southwest corner of the fort, the morning gun boomed and the Stars and Stripes flung out to the breeze. An instant later, as the horses splashed through the shallow water, the sun thrust out through a gash in the clouds above the eastern forest, lighting up the snapping banner with its seventeen emblematic stars. A moment more, and the dew-studded fields began to glisten like diamonds, coruscating with many-colored fire, and the mists that lay along the river shredded and swirled in rainbow tints. The wind sprang up and the vast arch of the heavens thummed with reverberant murmurs, inarticulate voices of a world new born, thrilling with the ever-fresh hopes with which it had thrilled since the morning of time. For a few miles the road ran through open fields that stretched along the north bank of the Maumee, a sunlit water strung with necklaces of bubbles that streamed away from the long grasses that lay upon its surface. A faint freshness rose like perfume from the stream, diffusing itself through the amber air. Here and there limbs of sunken trees protruded from the water, token of the great trunks submerged beneath its flood; round them castles of foam swelled and sank, chuckling away into nothingness. Then came the forest, a mounting line stretching across the path. Fragrant at first and warm with the morning sun it swiftly closed in, dim and moist and cool, arching above the road and the heads of the travellers. Side by side rode Jack and Alagwa. The girl’s heart was beating high, leaping in unison with the stride of the horse that bore her. Gone were the fancies and questionings of the night. For good or for ill she had sent the message to Tecumseh. She had kept faith with those who had cared for her for so many years. She had insured Jack’s safety so long as she should remain with him. It was all done and could not be undone. Some day, she knew, she must pay for it all, pay to the uttermost, but that day was not yet. Till it came she would forget. Resolutely she put all fear of the future behind her, living only in and for the moment.