“So we go armed, Nantauquas,” I said. “Love and peace and goodwill consort not with such toys.”

“You may want them,” he went on, with no change in his low, measured tones. “If you see aught in the forest that you should not see, if they think you know more than you are meant to know, then those three, who have knives and tomahawks, are to kill you, whom they believe unarmed.”

“See aught that we should not see, know more than we are meant to know?” I said. “To the point, friend.”

“They will go slowly, too, through the forest to Jamestown, stopping to eat and to sleep. For them there is no need to run like the stag with the hunter behind him.”