University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

It was just ten in the morning of the succeeding day
when my uncle Ro and myself came in sight of the old
house at the Nest. I call it old, for a dwelling that has
stood more than half a century acquires a touch of the venerable,
in a country like America. To me it was truly old,
the building having stood there, where I then saw it, for a
period more than twice as long as that of my own existence,
and was associated with all my early ideas. From childhood
I had regarded that place as my future home, as it
had been the home of my parents and grand-parents, and,
in one sense, of those who had gone before them for two
generations more. The whole of the land in sight—the rich
bottoms, then waving with grass—the side-hills, the woods,
the distant mountains—the orchards, dwellings, barns, and
all the other accessaries of rural life that appertained to the
soil, were mine, and had thus become without a single act of

injustice to any human being, so far as I knew and believed.
Even the red man had been fairly bought off by Herman
Mordaunt, the patentee, and so Susquesus, the Redskin of
Ravensnest, as our old Onondago was often called, had ever
admitted the fact to be. It was natural that I should love
an estate thus inherited and thus situated. No civilized
man, no man, indeed, savage or not, had ever been
the owner of those broad acres, but those who
were of my own blood. This is what few besides Americans
can say; and when it can be said truly, in parts of
the country where the arts of life have spread, and amid the
blessings of civilization, it becomes the foundation of a sentiment
so profound, that I do not wonder those adventurerserrant
who are flying about the face of the country, thrusting
their hands into every man's mess, have not been able
to find it among their other superficial discoveries. Nothing
can be less like the ordinary cravings of avarice than the
feeling that is thus engendered; and I am certain that the
general tendency of such an influence is to elevate the feelings
of him who experiences it.

And there were men among us, high in political station—
high as such men ever can get, for the consequence of
having such men in power is to draw down station itself
nearer to their own natural level—but men in power had
actually laid down propositions in political economy which,
if carried out, would cause me to sell all that estate, reserving,
perhaps, a single farm for my own use, and reinvest
the money in such a way as that the interest I obtained
might equal my present income! It is true, this theory was
not directly applied to me, as my farms were to fall in by
the covenants of their leases, but it had been directly applied
to Stephen and William Van Rensselaer, and, by implication,
to others; and my turn might come next. What business
had the Rensselaers, or the Livingstons, or the Hunters,
or the Littlepages, or the Verplancks, or the Morgans, or the
Wadsworths, or five hundred others similarly placed, to entertain
“sentiments” that interfered with “business,” or that
interfered with the wishes of any straggling Yankee who
had found his way out of New England, and wanted a particular
farm on his own terms? It is aristocratic to put sentiment
in opposition to trade; and TRADE ITSELF IS NOT TO

BE TRADE ANY LONGER THAN ALL THE PROFIT IS TO BE
FOUND ON THE SIDE OF NUMBERS. Even the principles of
holy trade are to be governed by majorities!

Even my uncle Ro, who never owned a foot of the property,
could not look at it without emotion. He too had
been born there—had passed his childhood there—and loved
the spot without a particle of the grovelling feeling of avarice.
He took pleasure in remembering that our race had
been the only owners of the soil on which he stood, and had
that very justifiable pride which belongs to enduring respectability
and social station.

“Well, Hugh,” he cried, after both of us had stood gazing
at the grey walls of the good and substantial, but certainly
not very beautiful dwelling, “here we are, and we now may
determine on what is next to be done. Shall we march
down to the village, which is four miles distant, you will
remember, and get our breakfasts there?—shall we try one
of your tenants?—or shall we plunge at once in medias res,
and ask hospitality of my mother and your sister?”

“The last might excite suspicion, I fear, sir. Tar and
feathers would be our mildest fate did we fall into the hands
of the Injins.”

“Injins! Why not go at once to the wigwam of Susquesus,
and get out of him and Yop the history of the state
of things. I heard them speaking of the Onondago at our
tavern last night, and while they said he was generally
thought to be much more than a hundred, that he was still
like a man of eighty. That Indian is full of observation,
and may let us into some of the secrets of his brethren.”

“They can at least give us the news from the family;
and though it might seem in the course of things for pedlars
to visit the Nest House, it will be just as much so for them
to halt at the wigwam.”

This consideration decided the matter, and away we went
towards the ravine or glen, on the side of which stood the
primitive-looking hut that went by the name of the “wigwam.”
The house was a small cabin of logs, neat and
warm, or cool, as the season demanded. As it was kept
up, and was whitewashed, and occasionally furnished anew
by the landlord—the odious creature! he who paid for so
many similar things in the neighbourhood—it was never

unfit to be seen, though never of a very alluring, cottage-like
character. There was a garden, and it had been properly
made that very season, the negro picking and pecking
about it, during the summer, in a way to coax the vegetables
and fruits on a little, though I well knew that the regular
weedings came from an assistant at the Nest, who was
ordered to give it an eye and an occasional half-day. On
one side of the hut there was a hog-pen and a small stable
for a cow; but on the other the trees of the virgin forest,
which had never been disturbed in that glen, overshadowed
the roof. This somewhat poetical arrangement was actually
the consequence of a compromise between the tenants of the
cabin, the negro insisting on the accessories of his rude civilization,
while the Indian required the shades of the woods
to reconcile him to his position. Here had these two singularly
associated beings—the one deriving his descent from
the debased races of Africa, and the other from the fierce
but lofty-minded aboriginal inhabitant of this continent—
dwelt nearly for the whole period of an ordinary human
life. The cabin itself began to look really ancient, while
those who dwelt in it had little altered within the memory
of man! Such instances of longevity, whatever theorists
may say on the subject, are not unfrequent among either
the blacks or the “natives,” though probably less so among
the last than among the first, and still less so among the
first of the northern than of the southern sections of the republic.
It is common to say that the great age so often
attributed to the people of these two races is owing to ignorance
of the periods of their births, and that they do not
live longer than the whites. This may be true, in the main,
for a white man is known to have died at no great distance
from Ravensnest, within the last five-and-twenty years, who
numbered more than his six score of years; but aged negroes
and aged Indians are nevertheless so common, when
the smallness of their whole numbers is remembered, as to
render the fact apparent to most of those who have seen
much of their respective people.

There was no highway in the vicinity of the wigwam, for
so the cabin was generally called, though wigwam, in the
strict meaning of the word, it was not. As the little building
stood in the grounds of the Nest House, which contain

two hundred acres, a bit of virgin forest included, and exclusively
of the fields that belonged to the adjacent farm, it
was approached only by foot-paths, of which several led to
and from it, and by one narrow, winding carriage-road,
which, in passing for miles through the grounds, had been
led near the hut, in order to enable my grandmother and
sister, and, I dare say, my dear departed mother, while she
lived, to make their calls in their frequent airings. By this
sweeping road we approached the cabin.

“There are the two old fellows, sunning themselves this
fine day!” exclaimed my uncle, with something like tremor
in his voice, as we drew near enough to the hut to distinguish
objects. “Hugh, I never see these men without a
feeling of awe, as well as of affection. They were the
friends, and one was the slave of my grandfather; and as
long as I can remember, have they been aged men! They
seem to be set up here as monuments of the past, to connect
the generations that are gone with those that are to come.”

“If so, sir, they will soon be all there is of their sort. It
really seems to me that, if things continue much longer in
their present direction, men will begin to grow jealous and
envious of history itself, because its actors have left descendants
to participate in any little credit they may have
gained.”

“Beyond all contradiction, boy, there is a strange perversion
of the old and natural sentiments on this head among
us. But you must bear in mind the fact, that of the two
millions and a half the State contains, not half a million,
probably, possess any of the true York blood, and can consequently
feel any of the sentiments connected with the
birth-place and the older traditions of the very society in
which they live. A great deal must be attributed to the
facts of our condition; though I admit those facts need not,
and ought not to unsettle principles. But look at those two
old fellows! There they are, true to the feeling and habits
of their races, even after passing so long a time together in
this hut. There squats Susquesus on a stone, idle and disdaining
work, with his rifle leaning against the apple-tree;
while Jaaf—or Yop, as I believe it is better to call him—is
pecking about in the garden, still a slave at his work, in
fancy at least.”

“And which is the happiest, sir—the industrious old man
or the idler?”

“Probably each finds most happiness in indulging his
own early habits. The Onondago never would work, however,
and I have heard my father say, great was his happiness
when he found he was to pass the remainder of his
days in otium cum dignitate, and without the necessity of
making baskets.”

“Yop is looking at us; had we not better go up at once
and speak to them?”

“Yop may stare the most openly, but my life on it the
Indian sees twice as much. His faculties are the best, to
begin with; and he is a man of extraordinary and characteristic
observation. In his best days nothing ever escaped
him. As you say, we will approach.”

My uncle and myself then consulted on the expediency
of using broken English with these two old men, of which,
at first, we saw no necessity; but when we remembered
that others might join us, and that our communications with
the two might be frequent for the next few days, we changed
our minds, and determined rigidly to observe our incognitos.

As we came up to the door of the hut, Jaaf slowly left his
little garden and joined the Indian, who remained immoveable
and unmoved on the stone which served him for a seat.
We could see but little change in either during the five years
of our absence, each being a perfect picture, in his way, of
extreme but not decrepit old age in the men of his race. Of
the two, the black—if black he could now be called, his colour
being a muddy grey—was the most altered, though
that seemed scarcely possible when I saw him last. As for
the Trackless, or Susquesus, as he was commonly called, his
temperance throughout a long life did him good service,
and his half-naked limbs and skeleton-like body, for he wore
the summer dress of his people, appeared to be made of a
leather long steeped in a tannin of the purest quality. His
sinews, too, though much stiffened, seemed yet to be of
whip-cord, and his whole frame a species of indurated mummy
that retained its vitality. The colour of the skin was
less red than formerly, and more closely approached to that

of the negro, as the latter now was, though perceptibly different.

“Sago—sago,” cried my uncle, as we came quite near,
seeing no risk in using that familiar semi-Indian salutation.[1]
“Sago, sago, dis charmin' mornin; in my tongue, dat might
be guten tag.”

“Sago,” returned the Trackless, in his deep, guttural
voice, while old Yop brought two lips together that resembled
thick pieces of overdone beef-steak, fastened his redencircled
gummy eyes on each of us in turn, pouted once
more, working his jaws as if proud of the excellent teeth they
still held, and said nothing. As the slave of a Littlepage, he
held pedlars as inferior beings; for the ancient negroes of
New York ever identified themselves, more or less, with the
families to which they belonged, and in which they so often
were born. “Sago,” repeated the Indian, slowly, courteously,
and with emphasis, after he had looked a moment longer
at my uncle, as if he saw something about him to command
respect.

“Dis ist charmin' day, frients,” said uncle Ro, placing
himself coolly on a log of wood that had been hauled for
the stove, and wiping his brow. “Vat might you calls dis
coontry?”

“Dis here?” answered Yop, not without a little contempt.
“Dis is York Colony; where you come from to ask sich a
question?”

“Charmany. Dat ist far off, but a goot coontry; ant
dis ist goot coontry too.”

“Why you leab him, den, if he be good country, eh?”

“Vhy you leaf Africa, canst you dell me dat?” retorted
uncle Ro, somewhat coolly.

“Nebber was dere,” growled old Yop, bringing his blubber
lips together somewhat in the manner the boar works
his jaws when it is prudent to get out of his way. “I 'm
York-nigger born, and nebber seen no Africa; and nebber
want to see him, nudder.”

It is scarcely necessary to say that Jaaf belonged to a
school by which the term of “coloured gentleman” was never
used. The men of his time and stamp called themselves
“niggers;” and ladies and gentlemen of that age took them
at their word, and called them “niggers” too; a term that
no one of the race ever uses now, except in the way of reproach,
and which, by one of the singular workings of our
very wayward and common nature, he is more apt to use
than any other, when reproach is intended.

My uncle paused a moment to reflect before he continued
a discourse that had not appeared to commence under very
flattering auspices.

“Who might lif in dat big stone house?” asked uncle Ro,
as soon as he thought the negro had had time to cool a
little.

“Anybody can see you no Yorker, by dat werry speech,”
answered Yop, not at all mollified by such a question. “Who
should lib dere but Gin'ral Littlepage?”

“Vell, I dought he wast dead, long ago.”

“What if he be? It 's his house, and he lib in it; and
ole young missus lib dere too.”

Now, there had been three generations of generals among
the Littlepages, counting from father to son. First, there
had been Brigadier General Evans Littlepage, who held
that rank in the militia, and died in service during the revolution.
The next was Brigadier General Cornelius Littlepage,
who got his rank by brevet, at the close of the same
war, in which he had actually figured as a colonel of the
New York line. Third, and last, was my own grandfather,
Major General Mordaunt Littlepage: he had been a captain
in his father's regiment at the close of the same struggle,
got the brovet of major at its termination, and rose to
be a Major General of the militia, the station he held for

many years before he died. As soon as the privates had
the power to elect their own officers, the position of a Major
General in the militia ceased to be respectable, and few gentlemen
could be induced to serve. As might have been
foreseen, the militia itself fell into general contempt, where
it now is, and where it will ever remain until a different
class of officers shall be chosen. The people can do a great
deal, no doubt, but they cannot make a “silk purse out of
a sow's ear.” As soon as officers from the old classes shall
be appointed, the militia will come up; for in no interest in
life is it so material to have men of certain habits, and notions,
and education, in authority, as in those connected with
the military service. A great many fine speeches may be
made, and much patriotic eulogy expended on the intrinsic
virtue and intelligence of the people, and divers projects entertained
to make “citizen-soldiers,” as they are called; but
citizens never can be, and never will be turned into soldiers
at all, good or bad, until proper officers are placed over
them. To return to Yop—

“Bray vhat might be der age of das laty dat you callet
olt young missus?” asked my uncle.

“Gosh! she nutten but gal—born sometime just a'ter ole
French war. Remember her well 'nough when she Miss
Dus Malbone. Young masser Mordaunt take fancy to her,
and make her he wife.”

“Vell, I hopes you hafn't any objection to der match!”

“Not I; she clebber young lady den, and she werry
clebber young lady now.”

And this of my venerable grandmother, who had fairly
seen her four-score years!

“Who might be der master of das big house now?”

“Gin'ral Littlepage, does n't I tell ye! Masser Mordaunt's
name, my young master. Sus, dere, only Injin; he
nebber so lucky as hab a good master. Niggers gettin'
scarce, dey tells me, now-a-days, in dis world!”

“Injins, too, I dinks; dere ist no more redskins might be
blenty.”

The manner in which the Onondago raised his figure, and
the look he fastened on my uncle, were both fine and startling.
As yet he had said nothing beyond the salutation;
but I could see he now intended to speak.

“New tribe,” he said, after regarding us for half a minute
intently; “what you call him — where he come from?”

“Ja, ja—das ist der anti-rent redskins. Haf you seen
'em, Trackless?”

“Sartain; come to see me—face in bag — behave like
squaw; poor Injin—poor warrior!”

“Yees, I believes dat ist true enough. I can't bear soch
Injin! — might not be soch Injin in world. Vhat you call
'em, eh?”

Susquesus shook his head slowly, and with dignity.
Then he gazed intently at my uncle; after which he fastened
his eyes, in a similar manner on me. In this manner
his looks turned from one to the other for some little time,
when he again dropped them to the earth, calmly and in
silence. I took out the hurdy-gurdy, and began to play a
lively air—one that was very popular among the American
blacks, and which, I am sorry to say, is getting to be not
less so among the whites. No visible effect was produced
on Susquesus, unless a slight shade of contempt was visible
on his dark features. With Jaaf, however, it was very different.
Old as he was, I could see a certain nervous twitching
of the lower limbs, which indicated that the old fellow
actually felt some disposition to dance. It soon passed
away, though his grim, hard, wrinkled, dusky, grey countenance
continued to gleam with a sort of dull pleasure for
some time. There was nothing surprising in this, the indifference
of the Indian to melody being almost as marked as
the negro's sensitiveness to its power.

It was not to be expected that men so aged would be disposed
to talk much. The Onondago had ever been a silent
man; dignity and gravity of character uniting with prudence
to render him so. But Jaaf was constitutionally garrulous,
though length of days had necessarily much diminished
the propensity. At that moment a fit of thoughtful
and melancholy silence came over my uncle, too, and all
four of us continued brooding on our own reflections for two
or three minutes after I had ceased to play. Presently the
even, smooth approach of carriage-wheels was heard, and
a light, summer vehicle that was an old acquaintance, came
whirling round the stable, and drew up within ten feet of
the spot where we were all seated.

My heart was in my mouth, at this unexpected interruption,
and I could perceive that my uncle was scarcely less
affected. Amid the flowing and pretty drapery of summer
shawls, and the other ornaments of the female toilet, were
four youthful and sunny faces, and one venerable with
years. In a word, my grandmother, my sister, and my
uncle's two other wards, and Mary Warren, were in the
carriage; yes, the pretty, gentle, timid, yet spirited and
intelligent daughter of the rector was of the party, and
seemingly quite at home and at her ease, as one among
friends. She was the first to speak even, though it was in
a low, quiet voice, addressed to my sister, and in words that
appeared extorted by surprise.

“There are the very two pedlars of whom I told you,
Martha,” she said, “and now you may hear the flute well
played.”

“I doubt if he can play better than Hugh,” was my dear
sister's answer. “But we 'll have some of his music, if it
be only to remind us of him who is so far away.”

“The music we can and will have, my child,” cried my
grandmother, cheerfully; “though that is not wanted to
remind us of our absent boy. Good morrow, Susquesus;
I hope this fine day agrees with you.”

“Sago,” returned the Indian, making a dignified and
even graceful forward gesture with one arm, though he did
not rise. “Weadder good—Great Spirit good, dat reason.
How squaws do?”

“We are all well, I thank you, Trackless. Good morrow,
Jaaf; how do you do, this fine morning?”

Yop, or Jaap, or Jaaf, rose tottering, made a low obeisance,
and then answered in the semi-respectful, semi-familiar
manner of an old, confidential family servant, as the
last existed among our fathers:

“T'ank 'ee, Miss Dus, wid all my heart,” he answered.
“Pretty well to-day; but ole Sus, he fail, and grow ol'er
and ol'er desp'ate fast!”

Now, of the two, the Indian was much the finest relic of
human powers, though he was less uneasy and more stationary
than the black. But the propensity to see the mote
in the eye of his friend, while he forgot the beam in his
own, was a long-established and well-known weakness of

Jaaf, and its present exhibition caused everybody to smile.
I was delighted with the beaming, laughing eyes of Mary
Warren in particular, though she said nothing.

“I cannot say I agree with you, Jaaf,” returned my
smiling grandmother. “The Trackless bears his years
surprisingly; and I think I have not seen him look better
this many a day than he is looking this morning. We are
none of us as young as we were when we first became acquainted,
Jaaf — which is now near, if not quite, three-score
years ago.”

“You nuttin' but gal, nudder,” growled the negro. “Ole
Sus be raal ole fellow; but Miss Dus and Masser Mordaunt,
dey get married only tudder day. Why dat was a'ter de
revylooshen!”

“It was, indeed,” replied the venerable woman, with a
touch of melancholy in her tones; “but the revolution took
place many, many a long year since!”

“Well, now, I be surprise, Miss Dus! How you call
dat so long, when he only be tudder day?” retorted the
pertinacious negro, who began to grow crusty, and to speak
in a short, spiteful way, as if displeased by hearing that to
which he could not assent. “Masser Corny was little ole,
p'r'aps, if he lib, but all de rest ob you nuttin' but children.
Tell me one t'ing, Miss Dus, be it true dey's got a town at
Satanstoe?”

“An attempt was made, a few years since, to turn the
whole country into towns, and, among other places, the
Neck; but I believe it will never be anything more than a
capital farm.”

“So besser. Dat good land, I tell you! One acre down
dere wort' more dan twenty acre up here.”

“My grandson would not be pleased to hear you say
that, Jaaf.”

“Who your grandson, Miss Dus. Remember you hab
little baby tudder day; but baby can't hab baby.”

“Ah, Jaaf, my old friend, my babies have long since
been men and women, and are drawing on to old age. One,
and he was my first born, is gone before us to a better
world, and his boy is now your young master. This young
lady, that is seated opposite to me, is the sister of that young

master, and she would be grieved to think you have forgotten
her.”

Jaaf laboured under the difficulty so common to old age;
he was forgetful of things of more recent date, while he remembered
those which had occurred a century ago! The
memory is a tablet that partakes of the peculiarity of all
our opinions and habits. In youth it is easily impressed,
and the images then engraved on it are distinct, deep and
lasting, while those that succeed become crowded, and take
less root, from the circumstance of finding the ground
already occupied. In the present instance, the age was so
great that the change was really startling, the old negro's
recollections occasionally coming on the mind like a voice
from the grave. As for the Indian, as I afterwards ascertained,
he was better preserved in all respects than the
black; his great temperance in youth, freedom from labour,
exercise in the open air, united to the comforts and abundance
of semi-civilized habits, that had now lasted for near
a century, contributing to preserve both mind and body.
As I now looked at him, I remembered what I had heard in
boyhood of his history.

There had ever been a mystery about the life of the Onondago.
If any one of our set had ever been acquainted with
the facts, it was Andries Coejemans, a half-uncle of my dear
grandmother, a person who has been known among us by
the sobriquet of the Chainbearer. My grandmother had
told me that “uncle Chainbearer,” as we all called the old
relative, did know all about Susquesus, in his time—the
reason why he had left his tribe, and become a hunter, and
warrior, and runner among the pale-faces—and that he had
always said the particulars did his red friend great credit,
but that he would reveal it no further. So great, however,
was uncle Chainbearer's reputation for integrity, that such
an opinion was sufficient to procure for the Onondago the
fullest confidence of the whole connection, and the experience
of four-score years and ten had proved that this confidence
was well placed. Some imputed the sort of exile in
which the old man had so long lived to love; others to war;
and others, again, to the consequences of those fierce personal
feuds that are known to occur among men in the savage

state. But all was just as much a mystery and matter
of conjecture, now we were drawing near to the middle of
the nineteenth century, as it had been when our forefathers
were receding from the middle of the eighteenth! To return
to the negro.

Although Jaaf had momentarily forgotten me, and quite
forgotten my parents, he remembered my sister, who was
in the habit of seeing him so often. In what manner he
connected her with the family, it is not easy to say; but he
knew her not only by sight, but by name, and, as one might
say, by blood.

“Yes, yes,” cried the old fellow, a little eagerly, `champing'
his thick lips together, somewhat as an alligator snaps
his jaws, “yes, I knows Miss Patty, of course. Miss Patty
is werry han'some, and grows han'somer and han'somer
ebbery time I sees her—yah, yah, yah!” The laugh of
that old negro sounded startling and unnatural, yet there
was something of the joyous in it, after all, like every negro's
laugh. “Yah, yah, yah! Yes, Miss Patty won'erful
han'some, and werry like Miss Dus. I s'pose, now, Miss
Patty wast born about 'e time dat Gin'ral Washington die.”

As this was a good deal more than doubling my sister's
age, it produced a common laugh among the light-hearted
girls in the carriage. A gleam of intelligence that almost
amounted to a smile also shot athwart the countenance of
the Onondago, while the muscles of his face worked, but he
said nothing. I had reason to know afterwards that the
tablet of his memory retained its records better.

“What friends have you with you to-day, Jaaf,” inquired
my grandmother, inclining her head towards us pedlars
graciously, at the same time; a salutation that my uncle
Ro and myself rose hastily to acknowledge.

As for myself, I own honestly that I could have jumped
into the vehicle and kissed my dear grandmother's still good-looking
but colourless cheeks, and hugged Patt, and possibly
some of the others, to my heart. Uncle Ro had more
command of himself; though I could see that the sound of
his venerable parent's voice, in which the tremour was
barely perceptible, was near overcoming him.

“Dese be pedlar, ma'am, I do s'pose,” answered the black.
“Dey's got box wid somet'in' in him, and dey 's got new

kind of fiddle. Come, young man, gib Miss Dus a tune—
a libely one; sich as make an ole nigger dance.”

I drew round the hurdy-gurdy, and was beginning to
flourish away, when a gentle, sweet voice, raised a little
louder than usual by eagerness, interrupted me.

“Oh! not that thing, not that; the flute, the flute!” exclaimed
Mary Warren, blushing to the eyes at her own boldness,
the instant she saw that she was heard, and that I was
about to comply.

It is hardly necessary to say that I bowed respectfully,
laid down the hurdy-gurdy, drew the flute from my pocket,
and, after a few flourishes, commenced playing one of the
newest airs, or melodies, from a favourite opera. I saw the
colour rush into Martha's cheeks the moment I had got
through a bar or two, and the start she gave satisfied me
that the dear girl remembered her brother's flute. I had
played on that very instrument ever since I was sixteen, but
I had made an immense progress in the art during the five
years just passed in Europe. Masters at Naples, Paris, Vienna
and London had done a great deal for me; and I trust
I shall not be thought vain if I add, that nature had done
something, too. My excellent grandmother listened in profound
attention, and all four of the girls were enchanted.

“That music is worthy of being heard in a room,” observed
the former, as soon as I concluded the air; “and
we shall hope to hear it this evening, at the Nest House, if
you remain anywhere near us. In the mean time, we must
pursue our airing.”

As my grandmother spoke she leaned forward, and extended
her hand to me, with a benevolent smile. I advanced,
received the dollar that was offered, and, unable to
command my feelings, raised the hand to my lips, respectfully
but with fervour. Had Martha's face been near me,
it would have suffered also. I suppose there was nothing
in this respectful salutation that struck the spectators as very
much out of the way, foreigners having foreign customs,
but I saw a flush in my venerable grandmother's cheek, as
the carriage moved off. She had noted the warmth of the
manner. My uncle had turned away, I dare say to conceal
the tears that started to his eyes, and Jaaf followed towards
the door of the hut, whither my uncle moved, in order to

do the honours of the place. This left me quite alone with
the Indian.

“Why no kiss face of grandmodder?” asked the Onondago,
coolly and quietly.

Had a clap of thunder broken over my head, I could not
have been more astonished! The disguise that had deceived
my nearest relations — that had baffled Seneca Newcome,
and had set at naught even his sister Opportunity — had
failed to conceal me from that Indian, whose faculties might
be supposed to have been numbed with age!

“Is it possible that you know me, Susquesus!” I exclaimed,
signing towards the negro at the same time, by
way of caution; “that you remember me, at all! I should
have thought this wig, these clothes, would have concealed
me.”

“Sartain,” answered the aged Indian, calmly. “Know
young chief soon as see him; know fader—know mudder;
know gran'fader, gran'mudder—great-gran'fader; his fader,
too; know all. Why forget young chief?”

“Did you know me before I kissed my grandmother's
hand, or only by that act?

“Know as soon as see him. What eyes good for, if
don't know? Know uncle, dere, sartain; welcome home!”

“But you will not let others know us, too, Trackless?
We have always been friends, I hope?”

“Be sure, friends. Why ole eagle, wid white head, strike
young pigeon? Nebber hatchet in 'e path between Susquesus
and any of de tribe of Ravensnest. Too ole to dig
him up now.”

“There are good reasons why my uncle and myself
should not be known for a few days. Perhaps you have
heard something of the trouble that has grown up between
the landlords and the tenants, in the land?”

“What dat trouble?”

“The tenants are tired of paying rent, and wish to make
a new bargain, by which they can become owners of the
farms on which they live.”

A grim light played upon the swarthy countenance of the
Indian: his lips moved, but he uttered nothing aloud.

“Have you heard anything of this, Susquesus?”

“Little bird sing sich song in my ear—didn't like to
hear it.”

“And of Indians who are moving up and down the country,
armed with rifles and dressed in calico?”

“What tribe, dem Injin,” asked the Trackless, with a
quickness and a fire I did not think it possible for him to
retain. “What 'ey do, marchin' 'bout? — on war-path,
eh?”

“In one sense they may be said to be so. They belong
to the anti-rent tribe; do you know such a nation?”

“Poor Injin dat, b'lieve. Why come so late? — why no
come when 'e foot of Susquesus light as feather of bird? —
why stay away till pale-faces plentier dan leaf on tree, or
snow in air? Hundred year ago, when dat oak little, sich
Injin might be good; now, he good for nuttin'.”

“But you will keep our secret, Sus? — will not even tell
the negro who we are?”

The Trackless simply nodded his head in assent. After
this he seemed to me to sink back in a sort of brooding lethargy,
as if indisposed to pursue the subject. I left him to
go to my uncle, in order to relate what had just passed.
Mr. Roger Littlepage was as much astonished as I had been
myself, at hearing that one so aged should have detected
us through disguises that had deceived our nearest of kin.
But the quiet penetration and close observation of the man
had long been remarkable. As his good faith was of proof,
however, neither felt any serious apprehension of being betrayed,
as soon as he had a moment for reflection.