The Queen turned to the gentleman who sat nearest to her.
Now the Queen conversed rapidly and in a low tone with Peter Schuyler--too rapidly for the Weisers to understand. She mentioned one Hunter of whom they knew nothing, and they waited uneasily, afraid that their audience was at an end and that nothing had been accomplished. When the doorkeeper came forward and led them away, leaving their Indian friends behind, their hearts sank. They made obeisance to the Queen and went slowly toward the door, not daring to speak. Then they saw that Colonel Schuyler followed them.
"This day one week at this hour the Queen will see you again. Can you find your way thither?"
"Oh, yes, my lord!" answered John Conrad.
Outside the two met again curious glances, heard again amused comment. But they regarded neither, scarcely indeed saw the smiles or heard the laughter. Hope had once more taken up an abode in their weary hearts.
Daily in the week which followed, Conrad made his way from Blackheath to St. James's Palace, where he gazed at the stone archway and then wandered farther hoping to see again the Indians. To the other Germans the Weisers said nothing of their hopes. The Indians had led them into the city and had there held conversation with them through an interpreter,--beyond that fact they did not go. Their fellow countrymen had been too often cruelly disappointed; until the blessed possibilities of which the Weisers dreamed had become certainties, they would say nothing.
Yet hope in their own hearts rose higher and higher. Once more Conrad read his little book, finding in his new acquaintances proof of all that was said in praise of the Indian and contradiction of all that was said in his disparagement. The word "Schoharie" he wrote down and said over and over in his waking hours and in his dreams at night.
He had formed a friendship with a lad of his own age, Peter Zenger by name, who, with his ailing father, had suffered as the Weisers had suffered and who had a similar longing for the new land. From Peter during this week he held aloof, determined to tell his secret to no one.
Conrad thought a great deal of his father and of the attentive way in which the Queen and her court had listened to him. His father was poor and he had miserable clothes, yet he had not trembled. Of all the Germans no one, not even the magistrate of Oberdorf, who was so certain of his own powers, could have done so well.