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secret and promise.
    Browne felt a murderous moment pass between them and shifted his legs to brace himself. But Shaw only slammed his fist on the table. Then Shaw lay his head, face down, in the circle of his arms, and Browne left without another word.

VII

    In late April when scattered groups of coastal New England Indians returned to fishing encampments on the seaward reaches of the rivers, and when the first tumult of spring run-off had subsided enough to make canoe travel practical, Browne and Shaw set off by river and bay to find Jared Higgins among the Indians. Early in the voyage down the tidal river into the bay they were tracing the exact route Jared Higgins and Kathrin Coffin had traveled nearly a year before.
    Browne had kept Shaw’s secret. Not even Elizabeth Higgins knew from him anything of her husband. Between Shaw and Browne there had grown a trust, if no friendship. Gradually, Shaw had come to agree to take Browne in search of Higgins. Might not Browne and Higgins together, Shaw had been persuaded to believe, find a way out of the apparent dilemma that Higgins must either remain in secret exile or condemn his family by return?
    They had passed the estate of the wealthiest man in the Piscataqua Plantations, one of the original pioneers sent by no less than Captain Mason himself to oversee the settlement and exploitation of the region. It seemed an estate in progress, but even now the most imposing monument to civilization in the wilderness that Browne had seen north of Boston. The owner’s expanding manor house, his gardens, cornfields, orchards, pastures, timber lots, barn and outbuildings—all sweeping alongthe gently-rising grassy west bank of the river—struck Browne as the realization of what would have seemed until now an impossible ideal. He was unaware of his gaping until Shaw, behind him, laughed.
    They had passed down through the thousands of alewives running upstream. Now on the first summery morning of the year, their canoe floated into the mouth of the river opening into Great Bay. Sunshine glittered off the spreading water with intolerable brightness. Salt marshes spread wide the margins between forest and water. The men saw the huge distant trees of the forest, open and parklike, the home of deer and fowl. In the labor and heat of paddling, Browne had removed his linen shirt. The cool, rank air from the water and marshes bathed their bodies. Across the bay thousands of geese were taking off and landing on the bright water. Swans glided by, their wings whistling overhead.
    From time to time one of the men would dip into a small cask to drink cider from his earthen mug. As their canoe slid along one shore of the bay, birds croaked, chattered, and sang their spring polyphonies. Big trees with moss-covered trunks grew closer to the water’s edge now, only occasionally pushed back by an interval of marsh or mead. As the canoe approached several white pines two hundred and fifty feet tall, three great herons broke from the tree closest to the shore.
    But for a hunter’s isolated and empty wigwam, there was no sign of humanity in this portion of the bay. As the morning wore on towards noon, the men spotted an occasional, distant fishing shallop, and once they saw a lone man fowling from a canoe, but they traveled in the signs and sounds of wilderness only. At midday they paddled to a small island to eat and rest.
    They ate in silence, at times drawing from their rundlet of beer. Browne lay back on a soft rotting log to doze. They were both anxious to complete the search for Higgins, yet they lazed a while longer in the sun. Shaw was miserable in his leisure, aman who had been protecting his friend from evil, who had broken the ring of protection, and who now had to face the friend. Wouldn’t the friend lash out, like an animal protecting its family? Yet Shaw, like Browne, lay in the sun, digesting his food, relaxing his muscles and back. Each man waited for the other to