"You wouldn't really have starved him, would you, Dave? Somehow it seemed pretty hard."
The hunter laughed heartily.
"Bless your heart, lad," he replied. "Don't you be troubled about the way we dealt with Garay. I knew all the while that he would never get to the starving point, or I wouldn't have tried it with him. I knew by looking at him that his isn't the fiber of which martyrs are made. I calculated that he would give up last night or this morning."
"Are we going to take him back with us a prisoner?"
"That's the trouble. As a spy, which he undoubtedly is, his life is forfeit, but we are not executioners. For scouts and messengers such as we are he'd be a tremendous burden to take along with us. Moreover, I think that after his long fast he'd eat all the game we could kill, and we don't propose to spend our whole time feeding one of our enemies."
"Call Tayoga," said Robert.
The Onondaga came and then young Lennox said to his two comrades:
"Are you willing to trust me in the matter of Garay, our prisoner?"
"Yes," they replied together.
Robert went to the man, who was still immersed in his gross feeding, and tapped him on the shoulder.