“O Sagamore!  Roya-neh!  Noble of the three free clans of a free Mohican people!  Our people have need of you.  The path is dark to Catharines-town.  Terror haunts those frightful shades.  Roya-nef!  We need you!

“Brother!  Is there occasion for belts between us to confirm a brother’s words, when this leathern girth I wear around my body carries a red wampum which all may see and read—­ my war axe and my knife?”

I raised my right arm slowly, and drew with my forefinger a great circle in the air around us: 

“Brother!  Listen attentively!  Since a Sagamore has read the belt I yesterday delivered, the day-sun has circled us where we now stand.  It is another day, O Roya-neh!  In yonder fireplace new ashes whiten, new embers redden.  We have slept (touching my eyelids and then laying my right hand lightly over his); we have eaten (again touching his lips and then my own); and now—­ now here—­ now, in this place and on this day, I have returned to the Mohican fire —­ the Fire of Tamanund!  Now I am seated (touching both knees).  Now my ears are open.  Let the Sagamore of the Mohicans answer my belt delivered!  I have spoken, O Roya-neh!”

For a full five minutes of intense silence I knew that my bold appeal was being balanced in the scales by one of a people to whom tradition is a religion.  One scale was weighted with the immemorial customs and usages of a great and proud people; the other with a white man’s subtle and flattering recognition of these customs, conveyed in metaphor, which all Indians adore, and appealing to imagination—­ an appeal to which no Huron, no Iroquois, no Algonquin, is ever deaf.

In the breathless silence of suspense the irritable, high-pitched voice of Colonel Sheldon came to my ears.  It seemed that after all he had sent out a few troopers and that one had just returned to report a large body of horsemen which had passed the Bedford road at a gallop, apparently headed for Ridgefield.  But I scarcely noted what was being discussed in the further end of the hall, so intent was I on the Sagamore’s reply—­ if, indeed, he meant to answer me at all.  I could even feel Boyd’s body quivering with suppressed excitement as our elbows chanced to come in contact; as for me, I scarce made out to control myself at all, and any nether lip was nearly bitten through ere the Mohican lifted his symmetrical head and looked me full and honestly in the eyes.

“Brother,” he said, in a curiously hushed voice, “on this day I come to you here, at this fire, to acquaint you with my answer; answering my brother’s words of yesterday.”

I could hear Boyd’s deep breath of profound relief.  “Thank God!” I thought.

The Sagamore spoke again, very quietly: 

“Brother, the road is dark to Catharines-town.  There are no stars there, no moon, no sun—­ only a bloody mist in the forest.  For to that dreadful empire of the Iroquois only blind trails lead.  And from them ghosts of the Long House arise and stand.  Only a thick darkness is there—­ an endless gloom to which the Mohican hatchets long, long ago dispatched the severed souls they struck!  In every trail they stand, these ghosts of the Kanonsi, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga—­ ghosts of the Tuscarora.  The Mohawk beasts who wear the guise of men are there.  Mayaro spits upon them!  And upon their League!  And upon their Atotarho the Siwanois spit!”