are simple fellows that do not respect his grandeur.  He fears that some day they may control the assembly by their votes.  He wants the Tidewater to be his castle, with porters and guards to hound away strangers.  Man alive, if you had tried to put reason into some of their heads, you would despair of human nature.  Let them get a hint of our preparations, and there will be petitions to Council and a howling about treason, and in a week you will be in gaol, Mr. Garvald.  So we must move cannily, as you Scots say.”

That conversation made me wary, and I got Faulkner to keep a special guard on the place when I was absent.  At the worst, he could summon Mercer, who would bring a rough crew from the water-side to his aid.  Then once more I disappeared into the woods.

In these days a new Shalah revealed himself.  I think he had been watching me closely for the past months, and slowly I had won his approval.  He showed it by beginning to talk as he loped by my side in our forest wanderings.  The man was like no Indian I have ever seen.  He was a Senecan, and so should have been on the side of the Long House; but it was plain that he was an outcast from his tribe, and, indeed, from the whole Indian brotherhood.  I could not fathom him, for he seemed among savages to be held in deep respect, and yet here he was, the ally of the white man against his race.  His lean, supple figure, his passionless face, and his high, masterful air had a singular nobility in them.  To me he was never the servant, scarcely even the companion, for he seemed like a being from another world, who had a knowledge of things hid from human ken.  In woodcraft he was a master beyond all thought of rivalry.  Often, when time did not press, he would lead me, clumsy as I was, so that I could almost touch the muzzle of a crouching deer, or lay a hand on a yellow panther, before it slipped like a live streak of light into the gloom.  He was an eery fellow, too.  Once I found him on a high river bank at sunset watching the red glow behind the blue shadowy forest.

“There is blood in the West,” he said, pointing like a prophet with his long arm, “There is blood in the hills which is flowing to the waters.  At the Moon of Stags it will flow, and by the Moon of Wildfowl it will have stained the sea.”

He had always the hills at the back of his head.  Once, when we caught a glimpse of them from a place far up the James River, he stood like a statue gazing at the thin line which hung like a cloud in the west.  I am upland bred, and to me, too, the sight was a comfort as I stood beside him.

“The Manitou in the hills is calling,” he said abruptly.  “I wait a little, but not long.  You too will follow, brother, to where the hawks wheel and the streams fall in vapour.  There we shall find death or love, I know not which, but it will be a great finding.  The gods have written it on my heart.”

Then he turned and strode away, and I did not dare to question him.  There was that about him which stirred my prosaic soul into a wild poetry, till for the moment I saw with his eyes, and heard strange voices in the trees.