l, fool that I was to take the
desperate chance when a little parley, a little edging toward him, a
sudden blow might have served. Yet I was glad in my heart that I had
not used craft; cat traits are not instinctive with me; craft, stealth,
a purring ambush--faugh! I was no coward to beat him down unawares. I
had openly declared him prisoner, and I was glad I had done so. Why, I
might have shot him as we talked, had I been of a breed to do
murder--had I been inhuman enough to slay him, unwarned, before the
very eyes of the woman he had wronged, and who still hoped for mercy
from him lest she pass her life a loathed and wretched outcast among
the people who had accepted her as an Iroquois.

Thinking of these things which so deeply concerned me, I plodded
forward with the others, hour after hour, halting once to drink and to
eat a little of our parched corn, then to the unspotted trail once
more, imperceptibly gaining the slope of that watershed, the streams of
which feed the Mayfield Creek, and ultimately the Hudson.

Varicks we skirted, not knowing but Sir John's scouts might be in
possession, the peppery, fat patroon having closed his house and taken
his flock to Albany; and so traveling the forest east by south, made
for the head waters of that limpid trout-stream I had so often fished,
spite of the posted warnings and the indignation of the fat patroon,
who hated me.

I think it was about four o'clock in the afternoon when, pressing
through brush and windfall, we came suddenly out into a sunny road.
Beside the road ran a stream clattering down-hill over its stony bed--a
clear, noisy stream, with swirling brown trout-pools and rapids,
rushing between ledges, foaming around boulders, a joyous, rolicking,
dashing, headlong stream, that seemed to cheer us with its gay clamor;
and I saw the Oneida's stern eyes soften as he bent his gaze upon it.
Poor little Lyn Montour slipped, with a sigh, from her saddle, while my
horse buried his dusty nose in the sparkling water, drawing deep, cold
draughts through his hot throat. And here by the familiar head waters
of Frenchman's Creek we rested in full sight of the grist-mill above
us, where the road curved west. The mill-wheel was turning; a man came
to the window overlooking the stream and stood gazing at us, and I
waved my hand at him reassuringly, recognizing old Vanderveer.

Beyond the mill I could see smoke rising from the chimneys of the
unseen settlement. Presently a sm