"Why are you reckless? You have crashed through here as careless of
noise as a stag with the hounds hot behind."

He dropped to the ground, and took one slim moccasined foot in his
hand. He looked at it soberly. "It seems a small thing, does it not,
to cause so much ill-will between us? It has neither weight nor mental
force above it, that it should make the earth tremble. No, monsieur,
you are searching for excuses for your annoyance with me. You are
annoyed all the time. I vex you by my silence, still more by my
speech. We are to be some time together, and I do not want to be a
constant canker. Is it not possible for you to forget me, to ignore
me?"

I saw he was in earnest. "And so you really do not know what irritated
me? Are you so little of a woodsman?"

"I have never traveled through the woods."

I gave him a dubious glance. "Yet you were weeks with the Hurons after
your capture."

I saw him set his teeth hard as if at a memory. "We traveled by water
ways. I was little on the shore except at night."

A sudden picture sickened me. The nightly camp and this slender lad
with his curious air of daintiness, and the great oily Hurons lounging
in the dirt and smoke.

"Were they cruel to you?" I broke out.