Alas! he counted without his hosts. The Chippeways when they heard of
the transaction would have none of it. The captive boy had been the
property of the tribe, they said, and they refused to part with him; he
must be given up by the Frenchman. And the latter had no choice but to
comply.
Black now were the nights, gloomy the days, for Andrew Kerr, the blacker
and the more gloomy for the false dawn that for brief space had cheered
him; unbearable was his burden, more hopeless and wretched than ever
before, a thousandfold, his captivity. It was as it might be with a man
dying of thirst if a cup of cold water were dashed from his lips and
spilt on the sandy desert at his feet. Who can blame the boy if only the
knowledge of what treatment he would avowedly receive from the young
Indians if he should play the squaw and weep, kept him from shedding
tears of misery and vexation.
A new master was now his, a chief of the Chippeways; a new squaw set him
hateful, degrading tasks, and ordered him about; the young men and the
squaws laughed him to scorn; life became more bitter than ever before.
Gradually, however, Kerr's new owners relaxed their severity of
treatment, and his lines grew less unpleasant. Time, indeed, made him
almost popular--embarrassingly popular--for there came a day when the
tribe more than hinted its desire that the Pale-face should wed one of
its most beauteous daughters.
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