affair had to be cleverly managed. Food, medicines and clothing
were surreptitiously borne across the river; a bed of grass was
kept fresh under Long-Hair's back; his wound was regularly
dressed; and finally his weapons--a tomahawk, a knife, a strong
bow and a quiver of arrows--which he had hidden on the night of
his bold theft, were brought to him.

"Now go and sin no more," said good Father Beret; but he well knew
that his words were mere puffs of articulate wind in the ear of
the grim and silent savage, who limped away with an air of stately
dignity into the wilderness.

A load fell from Alice's mind when Father Beret informed her of
Long-Hair's recovery and departure. Day and night the dread lest
some of the men should find out his hiding-place and kill him had
depressed and worried her. And now, when it was all over, there
still hovered like an elusive shadow in her consciousness a vague
haunting impression of the incident's immense significance as an
influence in her life. To feel that she had saved a man from death
was a new sensation of itself; but the man and the circumstances
were picturesque; they invited imagination; they furnished an
atmosphere of romance dear to all young and healthy natures, and
somehow stirred her soul with a strange appeal.

Long-Hair's imperturbable calmness, his stolid, immobile
countenance, the mysterious reptilian gleam of his shifty black
eyes, and the soulless expression always lurking in them, kept a
fascinating hold on the girl's memory. They blended curiously with
the impressions left by the romances she had read in M.
Roussillon's mildewed books.