"We are here, we cannot get away and, moreover, we have given our word. We are fed and clothed. In the spring things will be better. We cannot expect everything at once."
"The men say that this land will never be good farming land, father. After the pine trees are cut, we shall have nothing. I would find that Schoharie which the Indians gave us. There is our home."
Slowly the winter passed. In the cold of January little John Frederick, so loved and cherished, died, and was the first of the colony to be buried in the new land.
"Now," said John Conrad, "it is our land, indeed."
In April Magdalena was married by a clergyman who came from the older German settlement across the river. The wedding was merry: even Margareta, who had heard but once from her lover, put anxiety away and smiled and danced the old-fashioned dances of Gross Anspach weddings. When Magdalena had gone to the little log house with her husband, John Conrad sat before his door.
"She has done well. Now of nine, only four are left me."
Once during the winter Conrad saw an Indian. The tall figure crossed the end of a little glade and as fast as he could Conrad pursued it. But the Indian had vanished; there was neither sound nor motion in the still forest. Gradually, their lands taken from them, themselves often ill-treated, the Indians were withdrawing from the neighborhood of the settlements.
In great excitement Conrad hurried to his father.
"Father, I have seen an Indian. Let us ask him to guide us to Schoharie!"
"Let us go without permission. I can fight, father."
Again John Conrad regarded his son with astonishment.
"We have come for peace, not for war. God knows we have suffered enough from war! Let me hear no more of such madness, Conrad, and sit no more with the young men, but with your sisters."
In the early spring tools were given out for the cutting of the pine trees and slashes were made in the tough bark so that the sap might gather. In two years the trees would be felled and burned in kilns.
In the early summer came a new command. Over the great continent evil forces were astir. Like the bent bow, the line of the French and their allied Indians stretched from Montreal to New Orleans, its curve including the Mississippi; like the string within stretched the English line. There was conflict at Montreal where the Five Nations were true to their English alliance, and thither the Germans were to go in three companies. At once they forgot their wrongs and willingly they started, John Conrad in command of a company.