“Loskiel, my friend, and now my own blood-brother, what magic singing birds have so enchanted your two ears.  She is but a child, lonely and ragged—­ a tattered leaf still green, torn from the stem by storm and stress, blown through the woodlands and whirled here and yonder by every breath of wind.  Is it fit that my brother Loskiel should notice such a woman?”

“She is in need, my brother.”

“Give, and pass on, Loskiel.”

“That is not giving, O my brother.”

“Is it to give alone, Loskiel?  Or is it to give—­ that she may render all?”

“Yes, honestly to give.  Not to take.”

“And yet you know her not, Loskiel.”

“But I shall know her yet!  She has so promised.  If she is friendless, she shall be our friend.  For you and I are one, O Sagamore!  If she is cold, naked, or hungry, we will build for her a fire, and cover her, and give her meat.  Our lodge shall be her lodge; our friends hers, her enemies ours.  I know not how this all has come to me, Mayaro, my friend—­ even as I know not how your friendship came to me, or how now our honour is lodged forever in each other’s keeping.  But it is true.  Our blood has made us of one race and parentage.”

“It is the truth,” he said.

“Then tell me her name, that I may write it to my friend in Albany.”

“I do not know it,” he said quietly.

“She never told you?”

“Never,” he said.  “Listen, Loskiel.  What I now tell to you with heart all open and my tongue unloosened, is all I know of her.  It was in winter that she came to Philipsburgh, all wrapped in her red cloak.  The White Plains Indians were there, and she was ever at their camp asking the same and endless question.”

“What question, Mayaro?”

“That I shall also tell you, for I overheard it.  But none among the White Plains company could answer her; no, nor no Congress soldier that she asked.

“The soldiers were not unkind; they offered food and fire—­ as soldiers do, Loskiel,” he added, with a flash of Contempt for men who sought what no Siwanois, no Iroquois, ever did seek of any maiden or any chaste and decent woman, white or red.

“I know,” I said.  “Continue.”

“I offered shelter,” he said simply.  “I am a Siwanois.  No women need to dread Mohicans.  She learned this truth from me for the first time, I think.  Afterward, pitying her, I watched her how she went from camp to camp.  Some gave her mending to do, some washing, enabling her to live.  I drew clothing and arms and rations as a Hudson guide enrolled, and together she and I made out to live.  Then, in the spring, Major Lockwood summoned me to carry intelligence between the lines.  And she came with me, asking at every camp the same strange question; and ever the soldiers laughed and plagued and courted her, offering food and fire and shelter—­ but not the answer to her question.  And one day—­ the day you came to Poundridge-town—­ and she had sought for me through that wild storm—­ I met her by the house as I came from North Castle with news of horsemen riding in the rain.”