Though ravenous for food and broken-headed, I forgot my state, and
turned off the road of escape to stare at her like a tame deer.

She lowered her eyes wisely, and I got near enough without taking fright
to see a book spread open on the blanket, showing two illuminated pages.
Something parted in me. I saw my mother, as I had seen her in some past
life:--not Marianne the Mohawk, wife of Thomas Williams, but a fair
oval-faced mother with arched brows. I saw even her pointed waist and
puffed skirts, and the lace around her open neck. She held the book in
her hands and read to me from it.

I dropped on my knees and stretched my arms above my head, crying aloud
as women cry with gasps and chokings in sudden bereavement. Nebulous
memories twisted all around me and I could grasp nothing. I raged for
what had been mine--for some high estate out of which I had fallen into
degradation. I clawed the ground in what must have seemed convulsions to
the girl. Her poppet cried and she hushed it.

"Give me my mother's book!" I strangled out of the depths of my throat;
and repeated, as if torn by a devil--"Give me my mother's book!"

She blanched so white that her lips looked seared, and instead of
disputing my claim, or inquiring about my mother, or telling me to
begone, she was up on her feet. Taking her dress in her finger tips and
settling back almost to the ground in the most beautiful obeisance I
ever saw, she said--

"Sire!"

Neither in Iroquois nor in Iroquois-French had such a name been given to