CHAPTER VIII
METIPOM QUESTIONS
The wigwam was so large that forty men might have sat within it, but when David, thrust through the opening by Sequanawah, entered, it was comparatively empty. A man, a woman, three young children, and a few dogs squatted or lay about the fire in the center. The man was smoking a long pipe, the squaw was preparing breakfast. The smoke from the small fire mingled with that of the sachem’s pipe and filled the dwelling with acrid fumes that made the boy’s eyes blink and smart. The dogs arose, growling, and crept forward to sniff at his heels, while the sachem only nodded without taking his pipe from his mouth and the squaw looked up stolidly from her task. Sequanawah spoke and the sachem answered a dozen words. Sequanawah stepped to the doorway and called. The call was taken up without. Silence fell in the wigwam save for the sizzling of the none too dry fagots and the suspicious whining of the dogs, which, finding nothing
