"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.