Suckahanna’s story was more passionate and the women made her tell it over and over again. How she had met John and feared him, how he had treated her gently and never known that she had understood every word he said, that she had heard him tell her that she was beautiful, that she had heard him say that she was lovable. The women sighed at that and the young braves giggled and dug each other in the ribs. Then Suckahanna told them how she waited and waited for him, in the cruelty of the white man’s world at Jamestown; and that when she gave him up she had been glad of a refuge with the People and glad of the kindness of Attone, who had been a husband that any woman might admire and love. And at this part of the story the young women nodded and glanced over to Attone in neutral judicial appreciation as if it had not occurred to any of them that Attone was now a free man. Then Suckahanna told them how she had heard of a new white man who had made a clearing in the wood and built a house and had planted a flower at his doorstep. She told them that at that word, at that single piece of news, she knew at once that John had come back to the land of the Great Hare and she went alone to stand in the shadow of the trees and see him. And that when she saw him, her heart went out to him and she knew then that he was still the only man she had ever loved and ever would love and she went straight to Attone and to the werowance and told them that the man she loved was an Englishman living alone in the forest and asked their permission to go to him.

But they were wise, she said now, and cautious, and they made her wait and watch him. And they realised as they watched him that he did not have the skill to keep himself. He could not feed himself and dig his fields and keep his fire in. It was too much work for a single white man to do. Even the children of the Great Hare live together so that the women can garden and the men can hunt and they can all work together. Then Suckahanna went to the werowance and to her husband Attone, and told them that she would like to be released to go to the Englishman and help him to make his home in the land of the Hare.

But again, they were too wise. They said that the Englishman could not be trusted with the children of Attone. That when Suckahanna returned to him he might take her as a servant and not as a wife. Or he might take her and then abandon her, as white men like to do. They said she should wait and watch.