Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/229

Rh ful spoke with eloquence and were loud in their demands that the village be moved far from the shores of the spirit-ridden lake. One or two even affirmed that they had seen the great hand of the kultus tamahnawus rise from the water and drag the canoe into the depths. But this I did not believe. For I know that young men who are stricken with fear are more apt to see with the eyes of the heart than with the eyes of the head. And there are many strange and terrible things told which, in truth, never occurred. Many of the older men were like-minded. For they knew that to move from good hunting grounds at the coming on of winter is bad. I told the young men that the canoe had struck upon a rock and had been destroyed after the manner of canoes since the memory of man. I told them they would find the broken canoe and the bodies of the drowned ones upon the bank of the river below.

"In the morning I selected three young men and three old men and we started at a point far below to search the banks of the river. In an eddy, revolving close beside the bank, we found fragments of the broken canoe with the bark battered and scraped where it had pounded against the