Lazarre | Page 5

answered some questions."
"That I will do as far as I am permitted."
"Do Monsieur and his brother know that the king is here?" inquired the elder De Ferrier, taking the lead.
"What reason have you to believe," responded Bellenger, "that the Count de Provence and the Count d'Artois have any interest in this boy?"
Philippe laughed, and kicked the turf.
"We have seen him many a time at Versailles, my friend. You are very mysterious."
"Have his enemies, or his friends set him free?" demanded the old Frenchman.
"That," said Bellenger, "I may not tell."
"Does Monsieur know that you are going to take him to America?"
"That I may not tell."
"When do you sail, and in what vessel?"
"These matters, also, I may not tell."
"This man is a kidnapper!" the old noble cried, bringing out his sword with a hiss. But Philippe held his arm.
"Among things permitted to you," said Philippe, "perhaps you will take oath the boy is not a Bourbon?"
Bellenger shrugged, and waved his hands.
"You admit that he is?"
[Illustration: "I will again ask permission to take my charge away"]
"I admit nothing, monsieur. These are days in which we save our heads as well as we can, and admit nothing."
"If we had never seen the dauphin we should infer that this is no common child you are carrying away so secretly, bound by so many pledges. A man like you, trusted with an important mission, naturally magnifies it. You refuse to let us know anything about this affair?"
"I am simply obeying orders, monsieur," said Bellenger humbly. "It is not my affair."
"You are better dressed, more at ease with the world than any other refugee I have seen since we came out of France. Somebody who has money is paying to have the child placed in safety. Very well. Any country but his own is a good country for him now. My uncle and I will not interfere. We do not understand. But liberty of any kind is better than imprisonment and death. You can of course evade us, but I give you notice I shall look for this boy in America, and if you take him elsewhere I shall probably find it out."
"America is a large country," said Bellenger, smiling.
He took the boy by the hand, and made his adieus. The old De Ferrier deeply saluted the boy and slightly saluted his guardian. The other De Ferrier nodded.
"We are making a mistake, Philippe!" said the uncle.
"Let him go," said the nephew. "He will probably slip away at once out of St. Bartholomew's. We can do nothing until we are certain of the powers behind him. Endless disaster to the child himself might result from our interference. If France were ready now to take back her king, would she accept an imbecile?"
The old De Ferrier groaned aloud.
"Bellenger is not a bad man," added Philippe.
Eagle watched her playmate until the closing gate hid him from sight. She remembered having once implored her nurse for a small plaster image displayed in a shop. It could not speak, nor move, nor love her in return. But she cried secretly all night to have it in her arms, ashamed of the unreasonable desire, but conscious that she could not be appeased by anything else. That plaster image denied to her symbolized the strongest passion of her life.
The pigeons wheeled around St. Bat's tower, or strutted burnished on the wall. The bell, which she had forgotten since sitting with the boy in front of the blacksmith shop, again boomed out its record of time; though it seemed to Eagle that a long, lonesome period like eternity had begun.

BOOK I
AWAKING

I
I remember poising naked upon a rock, ready to dive into Lake George. This memory stands at the end of a diminishing vista; the extreme point of coherent recollection. My body and muscular limbs reflected in the water filled me with savage pride.
I knew, as the beast knows its herd, that my mother Marianne was hanging the pot over the fire pit in the center of our lodge; the children were playing with other papooses; and my father was hunting down the lake. The hunting and fishing were good, and we had plenty of meat. Skenedonk, whom I considered a person belonging to myself, was stripping more slowly on the rock behind me. We were heated with wood ranging. Aboriginal life, primeval and vigor-giving, lay behind me when I plunged expecting to strike out under the delicious forest shadow.
When I came up the sun had vanished, the woods and their shadow were gone. So were the Indian children playing on the shore, and the shore with them. My mother Marianne might still be hanging her pot in the lodge. But all the hunting lodges of our people were as completely lost as if I had entered another world.
My head was bandaged, as I discovered when