He, too, was struck by the splendid figure and pose of Big Fox, and he was impressed, moreover, by a sense of something familiar, though he could not name it.

It haunted him and troubled him, but remained a mystery.

He collected his shrewd wits and said: "As I told you, the warriors who bring the peace belts are strangers to me.

Yet the Shawnees, when I left the head village, but a few days ago, wished war at once against the white settlements, and the Shawnees do not change their minds quickly." "Is the word of a renegade, of one who would slay his own people, to be weighed against that of a warrior ?" Big Fox spoke with lofty contempt, not gazing at Braxton Wyatt, but straight into the eyes of Gray Beaver.

The old chief felt the power of that look, and wavered under it.
"It is true," he said, "that the Shawnees, a moon ago, were for war; but Big Fox, Brown Bear, and The Bat have come, bearing peace belts from them, and what our eyes see must be true." There was a murmur again, but it was very faint now.