Katryne  never  made  such  unsatisfactory  bargains  as
that  day  in  the  market.  There  was  not  much  to  buy


THE   SAVAGES  ARE  COMING.  241

besides  meat  and  fish,  though  the  time  of  ripened  vege-
tables and  fruit  would  bring  heaps  of  green  and  gold
and  crimson  from  the  farms  of  New  Netherland.  In
buying  a  little — just  a  roast  of  lamb  that  had  been
brought  from  a  New  Haerlem  farm — what  mistakes  she
made  in  counting  her  wampum,  and  how  testily  she  spoke
to  the  New  Haerlem  farmer  !  She  had  been  so  cruel  to
Harold  Wharton  !  Her  only  consolation,  she  told  herself,
was  that  it  was  something  done  for  Geertruyd's  sake.
On  her  unhappy  way  home  she  abruptly  halted  and
asked  herself,  "What  if  Harold  Wharton,  moved  by
something  she  had  said,  should  go  to  the  war  ?  Was
that  a  kind  thing  to  Geertniyd,  to  set  up  her  husband  as
a  target  for  the  guns  and  arrows  of  savages  ?"

The  thorn  in  Katryne's  breast  now  sank  deeper.  All
that  day  she  was  very  lonely.  That  long  point  curving
like  a  sickle  by  the  gateway  of  the  sea,  Sandy  Hook,
was  not  more  lonely  in  winter,  when  the  waves  broke
upon  it,  than  the  heart  of  Katryne  Schuyler.  When  at
twilight  she  toiled  up  to  Johanna's  old  chamber  behind
the  eastern  gable,  she  gave  one  look  into  the  attic  opposite,
and  saw  the  box  from  which  had  mysteriously  been  stolen
those  papers  about  one  Katryne.  When  that  possible
chance  for  information  had  been  abstracted,  how  solitary
she  felt,  this  girl  without  certain  descent  !  To-day  she
had  deliberately  cast  off  a  rope  binding  her  to  somebody
she  knew  and  loved,  and  with  whom  she  might  have  had  a
friendly,  proper  acquaintance,  though  another's  husband.
