Yet, somehow her safety must be now arranged, her worth and virtue clearly understood, her needs and dire necessities made known, so that when our army moved she might find a shelter, kind and respectable, within the Middle Fort, or at Schenectady, or anywhere inside our lines.

My pay was small; yet, having no soul dependent on my bounty and needing little myself, I had saved these pitiable dollars that our Congress paid us.  Besides, I had a snug account with my solicitor in Albany.  She might live on that.  I did not need it; seldom drew a penny; my pay more than sufficing.  And, after the war had ended—­ ended——­

Just here my heart beat out o’ step, and thought was halted for a moment.  But with the warm thought and warmer blood tingling me once again, I knew and never doubted that we had not done with one another yet, nor were like to, war or no war.  For in all the world, and through all the years of youth, I had never before encountered any woman who had shared with me my waking thoughts and the last and conscious moment ere I slept.  But from the time I lost this woman out of my life, something seemed also missing from the world.  And when again I found her, life and the world seemed balanced and well rounded once again.  And in my breast a strange calm rested me.

As I walked along the rutty lake road, all hatched and gashed by the artillery, I made up my mind to one matter.  “She must have clothes!” thought I, “and that’s flat!” Perhaps not such as befitted her, but something immediate, and not in tatters—­ something stout that threatened not to part and leave her naked.  For the brier-torn rags she wore scarce seemed to hold together; and her small, shy feet peeped through her gaping shoon in snowy hide-and-seek.

Now, coming hither from the fort, I had already noticed on the Stoney-Kill where our Oneidas lay encamped.  So when I sighted the first painted tree and saw the stone pipe hanging, I made for it, and found there the Indians smoking pipes and not in war paint; and their women and children were busy with their gossip, near at hand.

As I had guessed, there by the fire lay a soft and heavy pack of doeskins, open, and a pretty Oneida matron sewing Dutch wampum on a painted sporran for her warrior lord.

The lean and silent warriors came up as I approached, sullenly at first, not knowing what treatment to expect—­ more shame to the skin we take our pride in!

One after another took the hand I offered in self-respecting silence.

“Brothers,” I said, “I come to buy.  Sooner or later your young men will put on red paint and oil their bodies.  Even now I see your rifles and your hatchets have been polished.  Sooner or later the army will move four hundred miles through a wilderness so dark that neither sun nor moon nor stars can penetrate.  The old men, the women, the children, and the littlest ones still strapped to the cradle-board, must then remain behind.  Is it the truth I speak, my brothers?”