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102. “I have no choice, ’twould seem, but accept your hospitality, O Maker of Magic. So I pray you bring me to a place where I may rest.”

Sequanawah laid a hand on his sleeve. “You come,” he said.

As David turned away, he caught again the mocking gleam that lay at the back of  the sachem’s placid gaze.

The village was fully awake now, and men old and young sat by the doors of the wigwams or moved among them, and women  were at their tasks in the first rays of sunlight that came around the green-clad shoulder of the mountain. Dogs snarled and fought underfoot over the bones thrown to  them from the dwellings. Young boys ran and shouted or sat in circles at their games. David’s passing elicited only the faintest interest amongst the older Indians, but the young boys and children, most of whom had  doubtless never before set eyes on a white-face, regarded him with unconcealed curiosity. Many left their play and followed to the far side of the stockade where a wigwam  stood slightly removed from the rest. Into this Sequanawah conducted the prisoner. A very old woman crouched above a fire on