The air of the room was heavy and fetid to Tayoga. His free spirit
detected poison in the atmosphere of Quebec, and, for the moment, he
longed to be in the great, pure wilderness, pure at least to one of his
race. He opened the window more widely and inhaled the breeze which was
coming from the north, out of vast clean forests, that no white man
save the trapper had ever entered.
He looked upward, at first toward the blue sky and its clustering stars,
and then, turning his eyes to the open space near the inn, caught sight
of two shadowy figures. The Onondaga was alert upon the instant, because
he knew those figures, thin though they seemed in the dusk. One was
Tandakora, the Ojibway, and the other was Auguste de Courcelles, Colonel
in the French army, a pair most unlike, yet talking together earnestly
now.
Tayoga was not at all surprised. He had pierced the mind of de
Courcelles and he had expected him to seek Tandakora. He watched them a
full five minutes, until the Ojibway slipped away in the darkness, and
de Courcelles turned back toward the inn, walking slowly, and apparently
very thoughtful.
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