So it is. Like tame
beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man leaves
his own camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps, so that
not even our own women are left to us."
It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for
Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling
at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds.
They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they
were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but
turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced of
good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in the
next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of
reincarnation, taking courage to face the failure of the life they now
lived. Not by logic or the teaching of any school had they reached this
revelation, but through an inner sense. They were not hopeful and
wondering and timid; they were only sure. Their philosophy, their
religion, whether heathen or human, was inborn. They had comfort in it
and in each other.
After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in his window which
burned all night, answering to the lantern-light at the door of
Tekewani's home--the lights of exile and of an alliance which had behind
it the secret influences of past ages and vanished peoples.
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