A feature by no means insignificant in the popularity of the village was the church bell.  The Indians loved music, and this bell charmed them.  On still nights the savages in distant towns could hear at dusk the deep-toned, mellow notes of the bell summoning the worshipers to the evening service.  Its ringing clang, so strange, so sweet, so solemn, breaking the vast dead wilderness quiet, haunted the savage ear as though it were a call from a woodland god.

“You have arrived most opportunely,” continued Mr. Zeisberger.  “Mr. Edwards and Mr. Young are working to establish other missionary posts.  Heckewelder is here now in the interest of this branching out.”

“How long will it take me to learn the Delaware language?” inquired Jim.

“Not long.  You do not, however, need to speak the Indian tongue, for we have excellent interpreters.”

“We heard much at Fort Pitt and Fort Henry about the danger, as well as uselessness, of our venture,” Jim continued.  “The frontiersmen declared that every rod of the way was beset with savage foes, and that, even in the unlikely event of our arriving safely at the Village of Peace, we would then be hemmed in by fierce, vengeful tribes.”

“Hostile savages abound here, of course; but we do not fear them.  We invite them.  Our work is to convert the wicked, to teach them to lead good, useful lives.  We will succeed.”

Jim could not help warming to the minister for his unswervable faith, his earnest belief that the work of God could not fail; nevertheless, while he felt no fear and intended to put all his heart in the work, he remembered with disquietude Colonel Zane’s warnings.  He thought of the wonderful precaution and eternal vigilance of Jonathan and Wetzel—­men of all men who most understood Indian craft and cunning.  It might well be possible that these good missionaries, wrapped up in saving the souls of these children of the forest, so full of God’s teachings as to have little mind for aught else, had no knowledge of the Indian nature beyond what the narrow scope of their work invited.  If what these frontiersmen asserted was true, then the ministers’ zeal had struck them blind.

Jim had a growing idea of the way in which the savages could be best taught.  He resolved to go slowly; to study the redmen’s natures; not to preach one word of the gospel to them until he had mastered their language and could convey to their simple minds the real truth.  He would make Christianity as clear to them as were the deer-trails on the moss and leaves of the forest.

“Ah, here you are.  I hope you have rested well,” said Mr. Zeisberger, when at the conclusion of this long recital Nell and Kate came into the room.

“Thank you, we feel much better,” answered Kate.  The girls certainly looked refreshed.  The substitution of clean gowns for their former travel-stained garments made a change that called forth the minister’s surprise and admiration.