"Not all; for there is a lady who still mourns his loss, as if she had been his widow."
"Good—do' squaw don't mourn fery long time. Sometime not always."
"Pray, Trueflint, do you happen to know any thing of a man called the Chainbearer? He was in the regiment, too, and you must have seen him in the war."
"Sartain—know Chainbearer—know him on war-path—know him when hatchet buried. Knew Chainbearer afore ole French war. Live in wood wid him—one of us. Chainbearer my friend."
"I rejoice to hear this, for he is also mine; and I shall be glad to come into the compact, as a friend of both."
"Good—Susquesus and young landlord friend of Chainbearer—good."
"It is good, and a league that shall not be forgotten easily by me. The Chainbearer is as honest as light, and as certain as his own compass, Trueflint—true, as yourself."
"'Fraid he make broom 'fore great while, too," said the Indian, expressing the regret I have no doubt he felt, very obviously in his countenance.
Poor old Andries! But for the warm and true friends he had in my father, Colonel Dirck, and myself, there was some danger this might be the case, indeed. The fact that he had served his country in a revolution would prove of little avail, that country being too poor to provide for its old servants, and possibly indisposed, had she the means.[7] I say this without intending to reflect on either the people or the government; for it is not easy to make the men of the present day understand the deep depression, in a pecuniary sense, that rested on the land for a year or two after peace was made. It recovered, as the child recovers from indisposition, by the vigor of its constitution and the power of its vitality; and one of the means by which it recovered, was by turning to the soil, and wielding the sickle instead of the sword. To continue the discourse:
"The Chainbearer is an honest man, and, like too many of his class, poor," I answered; "but he has friends; and neither he nor you, Sureflint, shall be reduced to that woman's work without your own consent, so long as I have an unoccupied house, or a farm, at Ravensnest."