The sun had set; the pallid daylight lingering along the forest edges by the river grew sickly and died.  And after a little the Mohican halted on a hillock, and we cart our packs from us and peered around.

The forms of rocks took dim shape all about us, huge slabs and benches of stone, from which great bushes of laurel and rhododendron spread, forming beyond us an entangled and impenetrable jungle.

And under these we crawled and lay, listening for snakes.  But there seemed to be none there, though our rocky fastness was a very likely place.  And after we had eaten and emptied our canteens, the two Oneidas went out on guard to the eastern limit of the rocks; and the Sagamore and I lay on our sides, facing each other in the dark.  And for a while we lay there, neither of us speaking.  Finally I said under my breath: 

“Then I am one of the Hidden People.”

“Yes, brother,” he replied very gently.

“Tell me why you believe this to be true.  Tell me all you know.”

For a little while the Mohican lay there very silent, and I did not stir.  And presently he said: 

“It was in ’57, Loskiel, when I first laid eyes on you.”

“What!”

“I am more than twice your age.  You were then three years old.”

In my astonishment it occurred to me that instead of twenty-two I was now twenty-five years of age, if what the Mohican said were true.

“Listen, Loskiel, blood-brother of mine, for you shall hear the truth now—­ the truth which Guy Johnson never told you.

“It was in ’57; Munro lay at Fort William Henry; Webb at Fort Edward; and Montcalm came down from the lakes with his white-coats and Hurons and shook his sword at Munro and spat upon Webb.

“Then came Sir William Johnson to Webb with half a thousand Iroquois.  And because Sir William was the only white man we Delawares trusted, and in spite of his Iroquois, three Mohicans offered their services—­ the Great Serpent, young Uncas, and I, Mayaro, Sagamore of the Siwanois.”

He paused, then with infinite contempt: 

“Webb was a coward.  Nor could Sir William kick him forward.  He lay shivering behind the guns at Edward; and Fort William Henry fell.  And the white-coats could do nothing with their Hurons; the prisoners fell under their knives and hatchets—­ soldiers, women, little children.

“When Montcalm had gone, Webb let us loose.  And, following the trail of murder, in a thicket among the rocks we came upon a young woman with a child, very weak from privation.  Guy Johnson and I discovered them—­ he a mere youth at that time.

“And the young woman told him how it had been with her—­ that her husband and herself had been taken by the St. Regis three years before—­ that they had slain her husband but had offered her no violence; that her child had been born a few weeks later and that the St. Regis chief who took her had permitted her to make of it a Hidden Person.