“Mayaro,” I said, “I ask these things only because I pity her and wish her well. It is for her safety I fear. Could you tell me where she may have gone?”

“Fowls to the home-yard; the wild bird to the wood,” he said gravely. “Where do the rosy-throated pigeons go in winter? Does my brother Loskiel know where?”

“Sagamore,” I said earnestly, “this maid is no wild gypsy thing — no rose-tinted forest pigeon. She has been bred at home, mannered and schooled. She knows the cote, I tell you, and not the bush, where the wild hawk hangs mewing in the sky. Why has she fled to the wilderness alone?”

The Indian said cunningly:

“Why has my brother Loskiel abandoned roof and fire for a bed on the forest moss?”