was not meant that he should be lost, it was not meant that Adrian Van
Zoon should triumph. He had been seized and carried away twice, and each
time, when escape seemed impossible, a hand mightier than that of man
had intervened in his favor.

He spoke a little of his thought once or twice when he stood on the deck
of the _Hawk_ on moonlight nights with Captain Whyte and Lieutenant
Lanham.

"You can't live with the Indians as much as I have," he said,
"especially with such a high type of Indian as the Iroquois, without
acquiring some of their beliefs which, after all, are about the same as
our own Christian religion. The difference is only in name. They fill
the air with spirits, good and evil, and have 'em contending for the
mastery. Now, I felt when I was on the island and even before that I was
protected by the good spirits of the Iroquois, and that they were always
fighting for me with the bad."

"I take it," said Captain Whyte, "that the Indian beliefs, as you tell
them, are more like the mythology of the old Greeks and Romans. I'm a
little rusty on my classics, but they had spirits around everywhere,
good and bad, always struggling with one another, and their gods
themselves were mixtures of good and evil, just like human beings. But
I'm not prepared to say, Mr. Lennox, that you weren't watched over. It
seems strange that of all the human beings on the slaver you should have
been the only one saved and you the only one not stained with crime.
It's a fact I don't undertake to account for. And you never found out
the name of the pirate captain?"

"Neither his nor that of his ship. It had been effaced carefully from