, and pushed our
frontier up to the hills--ay, and beyond them. But tell that to the
ordinary planter, and he will assign you to the devil. He fears these
new-comers, who are simple fellows that do not respect his grandeur. He
fears that some day they may control the assembly by their votes. He
wants the Tidewater to be his castle, with porters and guards to hound
away strangers. Man alive, if you had tried to put reason into some of
their heads, you would despair of human nature. Let them get a hint of
our preparations, and there will be petitions to Council and a howling
about treason, and in a week you will be in gaol, Mr. Garvald. So we
must move cannily, as you Scots say."

That conversation made me wary, and I got Faulkner to keep a special
guard on the place when I was absent. At the worst, he could summon
Mercer, who would bring a rough crew from the water-side to his aid.
Then once more I disappeared into the woods.

In these days a new Shalah revealed himself. I think he had been
watching me closely for the past months, and slowly I had won his
approval. He showed it by beginning to talk as he loped by my side in
our forest wanderings. The man was like no Indian I have ever seen. He
was a Senecan, and so should have been on the side of the Long House;
but it was plain that he was an outcast from his tribe, and, indeed,
from the whole Indian brotherhood. I could not fathom him, for he
seemed among savages to be held in deep respect, and yet here he was,
the ally of the white man against his race. His lean, supple figure,
his passionless face, and his high, masterful air had a singular
nobility in them. To me he was never the servant, scarcely even the
companion, for he seemed like a being from another world, who had a
knowledge of things hid from human ken. In woodcraft he was a master
beyond all thought of rivalry. Often, when time did not press, he would
lead me, clumsy as I was, so that I could almost touch the muzzle of a
crouching deer, or lay a hand on a yellow panther, before it slipped
like a live streak of light into the gloom. He was an eery fellow, too.
Once I found him on a high river bank at sunset watching the red glow
behind the blue shadowy forest.

"There is blood in the West," he said, pointing like a prophet with his
long arm, "There is blood in the hills which is flowing to the waters.
At the Moon of Stags it will flow, and by the Moon of Wildfowl it will
have stained the sea."

He had