He had forced himself to learn and in
learning his books he had learned also to like the people of another
race around him who were good to him and who helped him in the first
hard days on the new road. So the young Onondaga felt an emotion much
like that of Robert as he walked about the room and touched the old
familiar things. Then he turned to Huysman.
"Mynheer Jacobus," he said, "you have a mighty body, and you have in
it a great heart. If all the men at Albany were like you there would
never be any trouble between them and the Hodenosaunee."
"Tayoga," said Huysman, "you haf borrowed Robert's tongue to cozen und
flatter. I haf not a great heart at all. I haf a very bad heart. I
could not get on in this world if I didn't."
Tayoga laughed musically, and Mynheer Jacobus gruffly bidding them not
to destroy anything, while he was gone, departed to see that Caterina,
the Dutch cook, fat like her master, should have ready a dinner,
drawing upon every resource of his ample larder. It is but truth to
say that the heart of Mynheer Jacobus was very full. A fat old
bachelor, with no near kin, his heart yearned over the two lads who
had spent so long a period in his home, and he knew them, too, for
what they were, each a fine flower of his own racial stock.
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