Breakfast was cooked by Robert and Willet, and again it was luscious and varied.  Robert had risen early and he caught several of the fine lake trout that he broiled delicately over the coals.  He had also gathered grapes fresh with the morning dew, and wonderfully appetizing, and some of the best of the nuts were left over.  Bear, deer, venison and turkey they still had in abundance.

The morning itself was the finest they had encountered so far.  Much snow had fallen in the high mountains, but winter had not touched the earth here.  The deep colors of the leaves, moved by the light wind, shifted and changed like a prism.  The glorious haze of Indian summer hung over everything like a veil of finest gauze.  The air was surcharged with vitality and life.  It was pleasant merely to sit and breathe at such a time.

“I’ve always claimed,” said Robert, as he passed a beautifully broiled trout to Tayoga and another to the hunter, “that I can cook fish better than either of you.  Dave, I freely admit, can surpass me in the matter of venison and Tayoga is a finer hand with bear than I am, but I’m a specialist with fish, be it salmon, or trout, or salmon trout, or perch or pickerel or what not.”

“Your boast is justified, in very truth, Robert,” said Willet.  “I’ve known none other who can prepare a fish with as much tenderness and perfection as you.  I suppose ’tis born in you, but you have a way of preserving the juices and savors which defies description and which is beyond praise.  ’Tis worth going hungry a long while to put one’s tooth into so delicate a morsel as this salmon trout, and ’tis a great pity, too, that our guest, Monsieur Achille Garay, will not join us, when we’ve an abundance so great and a variety so rich.”

The wretched spy and intermediary could hear every word they said, and Robert fell silent, but the hunter and the Onondaga talked freely and with abounding zest.

“’Tis a painful thing,” said Willet, “to offer hospitality and to have it refused.  Monsieur Garay knows that he would be welcome at our board, and yet he will not come.  I fear, Robert, that you have cooked too many of these superlative fish, and that they must even go to waste, which is a sin.  They would make an admirable beginning for our guest’s breakfast, if he would but consent to join us.”

“It is told by the wise old sachems of the great League,” said Tayoga, “that warriors have gone many days without food, when plenty of it was ready for their taking, merely to test their strength of body and will.  Their sufferings were acute and terrible.  Their flesh wasted away, their muscles became limp and weak, their sight failed, pain stabbed them with a thousand needles, but they would not yield and touch sustenance before the time appointed.”

“I’ve heard of many such cases, Tayoga, and I’ve seen some, but it was always warriors who were doing the fasting.  I doubt whether white men could stand it so long, and ’tis quite sure they would suffer more.  About the third day ’twould be as bad as being tied to the stake in the middle of the flames.”