Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/306

 she had given him life. Of her, he knew from ordinary sources of information that, twenty-three years ago, she had left him with a nomad Chippewa fisherman called Noah Jo and left with him a ring; since then, she had been searching for him, during all his life; a few months ago, when he was still in France, she had "got track" of him and was on her way to find him when her ship was torpedoed and she was injured. With this knowledge gained years ago from Azen Mabo and just now from Mrs. Wain, there blended in Barney's soul the story of his mother and himself told by the medium. He had never questioned that; still less did he care to question it now. It let him see his mother very clearly when she was a girl,—a beautiful, brave, forsaken girl, big with her baby about to be born, stumbling to the edge of the water on the shore of Huron near St. Florentin. The trees above her were bare, Barney knew; the ground was cold and wet with the melting snows; for it was April,—the moon of the breaking snowshoes; and there she was, heavy with the burden beneath her coat—lonely, very weak—stumbling and afraid. "She looked upon the water and seemed to think to cast herself in."

No, she did not think of that, Barney now was sure; or if she did, it was only in a flash of weakness. This woman, his mother, could never have been really weak; she could never have long thought about giving up. The Indian appeared in the canoe and took her in and ferried her across the narrow channel—ajawaodjigade—to the lonely rock where was his hut. There, alone with the Indian woman, she had given birth to her baby,—to him, Barney. She had called him "Dick."

That was the name given in that letter from Huston which had sent him first to Resurrection Rock; now