Answering the signal of the Mohican, he sprang lightly into the stream and crossed the shallow water.  My Oneidas seemed to know him, for they accosted him smilingly, and Tahoontowhee turned and accompanied him back toward the spot where I was standing, naively exhibiting to the stranger his first scalp.  Which seemed to please the dusty and brier-torn runner, for he was all smiles and animation until he caught sight of me.  Then instantly the mask of blankness smoothed his features, so that when I confronted him he was utterly without expression.

I held out my hand, saying quietly: 

“Welcome, brother.”

“I thank my brother for his welcome,” he said, taking my offered hand.

“My brother is hungry,” I said.  “He shall eat.  He is weary because he has came a long distance.  He shall rest unquestioned.”  I seated myself and motioned him to follow my example.

The tall, lank fellow looked earnestly at me; Tahoontowhee lighted a pipe, drew a deep, full inhalation from it, passed it to me.  I drew twice, passed it to the runner.  Then Tahoontowhee laid a square of bark on the stranger’s knees; I poured on it from my sack a little parched corn, well salted, and laid beside it a bit of dry and twisted meat.  Tahoontowhee did the same.  Then, very gravely and in silence we ate our morning meal with this stranger, as though he had been a friend of many years.

“The birds sing sweetly,” observed Tahoontowhee politely.

“The weather is fine,” said I urbanely.

“The Master of Life pities the world He fashioned.  All should give thanks to Him at sunrise,” said the runner quietly.

The brief meal ended, Tahoontowhee laid his sack for a pillow; the strange Oneida stretched out on the ground, laid his dusty head on it, and closed his eyes.  The next moment he opened them and rose to his feet.  The ceremony and hospitality devolving upon me had been formally and perfectly accomplished.

As I rose, free now to question him without losing dignity in his eyes, he slipped the pouch he wore around in front, where his heavy knife and hatchet hung, and drew from it some letters.

Holding these unopened in my hand, I asked him who he was and from whom and whence he came.

“I am Red Wings, a Thaowethon Oneida of Ironderoga, runner for General Clinton—­ and my credentials are this wampum string, so that you shall know that I speak the truth!” And he whipped a string of red and black wampum from his pouch and handed it to me.

Holding the shining coil in my hands, I looked at him searchingly.

“By what path did you come?”

“By no path.  I left Otsego as you left, crossed the river where you had crossed, recrossed where you did not recross, but where a canoe had landed.”

“And then?”

“I saw the Mengwe,” he said politely, as the Sagamore came up beside him.

Mayaro smiled his appreciation of the Algonquin term, then he spat, saying: