"Ten years younger than I. I am thirty-two. Our mother died when he was born. Good Aunt Ditmar, our sainted mother's sister, took him home since my father and I, poor youngster, naturally did not know how to help ourselves. When he was a couple of years old he came again to us, though his aunt would gladly have kept him. But father did not stand any too well with uncle, and was jealous, fearing that his child would become entirely estranged from him. So I waited on and brought up the little orphaned rogue as best I could, and, since he grew so, I thought that any mother would be proud of the boy. Then, when I could no longer carry him, I played with him, and taught him the little I had learned, and so we have been together day and night, and an angry word has never passed between us, though he was as wild and intractable as a young bear. Father's position in respect to him was very difficult, being himself a determined man and quite passionate. Once, being at variance, father raised his hand against the eleven-year-old boy, who was as brave and proud as a man. He ran away into the woods and did not return, so that we thought that he had either committed suicide, or had been torn in pieces by the bears. Meanwhile my young gentleman stuck among the Indians at Oneida Lake and did not let anything be seen or heard of him for three years, until, a few days after father's death, he suddenly entered the block-house where I sat alone and sad. At first I did not know him, for he had grown a couple of heads taller and was dressed in Indian style. But he fell upon my neck and wept bitterly, and said: "'I heard by chance that our father was lying on his death-bed. I have been walking three days and three nights to see him again.' In the midst of his weeping he threw back his head and, with sparkling eyes, exclaimed: 'But do not think that I have forgiven him for striking me; but I am sorry that I ran away.' So he came again as he had gone, wild and proud, and at the next moment soft and kind." Lambert was silent. After a short pause he said: "I wish I had told you all this before; you would then not have been so frightened last evening." "And this morning," said Catherine to herself. Lambert continued: "They here call him the Indian, and the name fits him in more than one respect. At least no Indian would undertake to compete with him in those things in which they chiefly excel. In all their arts Conrad beats them; and then he loves the hunt, the forest and rambling ways just as the red-skins do. But his heart is true as pure gold, and in that he is not a red-skin, who are all as false as a jack-o'-lantern in the swamp. For this reason we all here on the Mohawk and on the Schoharie, old and young, love him. Wherever there are German settlers there he comes on his hunting expeditions, and is everywhere welcome. The people sleep without fear when he is there, for they know they are guarded by the best rifle in the colony."