“You make a great mistake, Mynheer Jacobus,” said Robert.  “Tayoga is far worse than I am.  All the mischief that I have ever done was due to his example and persuasion.  It is my misfortune that I have a weak nature, and I am easily led into evil by my associates.”

“It iss not so.  You are equally bad.  Bring in your baggage und I will see if Caterina, der cook, cannot find enough for you three, who always eat like raging lions.”

The soldiers, who were to return immediately to Colonel William Johnson, rode away with their horses, and Robert, Tayoga and Willet took their packs into the house of Mynheer Huysman, who grumbled incessantly while he and a manservant and a maidservant made them as comfortable as possible.

“Would you und Tayoga like to haf your old room on the second floor?” he said to Robert.

“Nothing would please us better,” replied the lad.

“Then you shall haf it,” said Mynheer, as he led the way up the stair and into the room.  “Do you remember, Tayoga, how wild you wass when you came here to learn the good ways und bad ways uf the white people?”

“I do,” replied Tayoga, “and the walls and the roof felt oppressive to me, although we have stout log houses of our own in our villages.  But they were not our own walls and our own roof, and there was the great young warrior, Lennox, whom we now call Dagaeoga, who was to stay in the same room and even in the same bed with me.  Do you wonder that I felt like climbing out of a window at night, and escaping into the woods?”

“You were eleven then,” said Robert, “and I was just a shade younger.  You were as strange to me as I was to you, and I thought, in truth, that you were going to run away into the wilderness.  But you didn’t, and you began to learn from books faster than I thought was possible for one whose mind before then had been turned in another direction.”

“But you helped me, Dagaeoga.  After our first and only battle in the garden, which I think was a draw, we became allies.”

“Und you united against me,” said Mynheer Huysman.

“And you helped me with the books,” continued Tayoga.  “Ah, those first months were hard, very hard!”

“And you taught me the use of the bow and arrow,” continued Robert, “and new skill in both fishing and hunting.”

“Und the two uf you together learned new tricks und new ways uf making my life miserable,” grumbled Mynheer Huysman.

“But you must admit, Jacob,” said Willet, “that they were not the worst boys in the world.”

“Well, not the worst, perhaps, David, because I don’t know all the boys uf all the countries in the world, but when you put an Onondaga lad und an American lad together in alliance it iss hard to find any one who can excel them, because they haf the mischief uf two nations.”

“But you are tremendously glad to see them again, Jacob.  Don’t deny it.  I read it over and over again in your eyes.”