"Were you ever awkward, Carus?"

"Awkward as a hound-pup learning to walk."

"I shall never believe it," she declared, laughing; and we moved forward on the Schenectady road, Murphy, Mount, Elerson, and the little Weasel trotting faithfully at heel, and the brown column trailing away in their dustless wake.

I had not yet forgotten the thrill of her quick embrace when, as we met at the breakfast-table by candle-light, I had told her of my commission and of our Governor's kindness. And just to see the flush of pride in her face, I spoke of it again; and her sweet eyes' quick response was the most wonderful to me of all the fortune that had fallen to my lot. I turned proudly in my saddle, looking back upon the people now entrusted to me—and as I looked, pride changed to apprehension, and a quick prayer rose in my heart that I, a servant of my country, might not prove unequal to the task set me.

Sobered, humbled, I rode on, asking in silence God's charity for my ignorance, and His protection for her I loved, and for these human souls entrusted to my care in the dark hours of the approaching trial.

North and northwest we traveled on a fair road, which ran through pleasant farming lands, stretches of woods, meadows, and stubble-fields. At first we saw men at work in the fields, not many, but every now and again some slow Dutch yokel, with his sunburned face turned from his labor to watch us pass. But the few farmhouses became fewer, and these last were deserted. Finally no more houses appeared, and stump-lots changed to tangled clearings, and these into second growth, and these at last into the primeval forests, darkly magnificent, through which our road, now but a lumber road, ran moist and dark, springy and deep with the immemorial droppings of the trees.

Without command of mine, four lithe riflemen had trotted off ahead. I now ordered four more to act on either flank, and called up part of the rear-guard to string out in double file on either side of the animals and wagon. The careless conversation in the ranks, the sudden laugh, the clumsy skylarking all ceased. Tobacco-pipes were emptied and pouched, flints and pans scrutinized, straps and bandoleers tightened, moccasins relaced. The batmen examined ropes, wagon-wheels, and harness, and I saw them furtively feeling for their hatchets to see that everything was in place.

Thankful that I had a company of veterans and no mob of godless and silly trappers, bawling contempt of everything Indian, I unconsciously began to read the signs of the forest, relapsing easily into that cautious custom which four years' disuse had nothing rusted.

And never had man so perfect a companion in such exquisite accord with his every mood and thought as I had in Elsin Grey. Her sweet, reasonable mind was quick to comprehend. When I fell silent, using my ears with all the concentration of my other senses, she listened, too, nor broke the spell by glance or word. Yet, soon as I spoke in low tones, her soft replies were ready, and when my ever restless eyes reverted, resting a moment on her, her eyes met mine with that perfect confidence that pure souls give.

At noon we halted to rest the horses and eat, the pickets going out of their own accord. And I did not think it fit to give orders where none were required in this company of Irregulars, whose discipline matched regiments more pretentious, and whose alignment was suited to the conditions. Braddock and Bunker Hill were lessons I had learned to regard as vastly more important than our good Baron's drill-book.

As I sat eating a bit of bread, cup of water in the other hand. Jack Mount came swaggering up with that delightful mixture of respect and familiarity which brings the hand to the cap but leaves a grin on the face.

"Well, Jack?" I asked, smiling.

"Have you noticed any sign, sir?" he inquired. Secretly self-satisfied, he was about to go on and inform me that he and Tim Murphy had noticed a stone standing against a tree—for I saw them stop like pointers on a hot grouse-scent just as we halted to dismount. I was unwilling to forestall him or take away one jot of the satisfaction, so I said: "What have you seen?"

Then he beamed all over and told me; and the Weasel and Tim Murphy came up to corroborate him, all eagerly pointing out the stone to me where it rested against the base of a black ash.

"Well," said I, smiling, "how do you interpret that sign?"

"Iroquois!" said the rangers promptly.

"Yes, but are they friendly or hostile?"

The question seemed to them absurd, but they answered very civilly that it was a signal of some sort which could only be interpreted by Indians, and that they had no doubt that it meant some sort of mischief to us.

"Men," I said quietly, "you are wrong. That stone leaning upon a tree is a friendly message to me from a body of our Oneida scouts."

They stared incredulously.

"I will prove it," said I. "Jack, go you to that stone. On the under side you will find a number of white marks made with paint. I can not tell you how many, but the number will indicate the number of Oneidas who are scouting for us ahead."

Utterly unconvinced, yet politely obedient, the blond giant strode off across the road, picked up the great stone as though it were a pompion, turned it over, uttered an exclamation, and bore it back to us.

"You see," I said, "twenty Oneida scouts will join us about two o'clock this afternoon if we travel at the same rate that we are traveling. This white circle traced here represents the sun; the straight line the meridian. Calculating roughly, I should set the time of meeting at two o'clock. Now, Jack, take the stone to the stream yonder and scrub off the paint with moss and gun-oil, then drop the stone into the water. And you, Tim Murphy, go quietly among the men and caution them not to fire on a friendly Oneida. That is all, lads. We march in a few moments."

The effect upon the rangers was amusing; their kindly airs of good-natured protection vanished; Mount gazed wildly at me; Tim Murphy, perfectly convinced yet unable to utter a word, saluted and marched off, while Elerson and the Weasel stood open-mouthed, fingering their rifles until the men began to fall in silently, and I put up Elsin and mounted my roan, motioning Murphy and Jack Mount to my stirrups.

"Small wonder I read such signs," I said. "I am an Oneida chief, an ensign, and a sachem. Come freely to me when signs of the Iroquois puzzle you. It would not have been very wise to open fire on our own scouts."

It seemed strange to them—it seemed strange to me—that I should be instructing the two most accomplished foresters in America. Yet it is ever the old story; all else they could read that sky and earth, land and water, tree and rock held imprinted for savant eyes, but they could not read the simple signs and symbols by which the painted men of the woods conversed with one another. Pride, contempt for the savage—these two weaknesses stood in their way. And no doubt, now, they consoled themselves with the thought that a dead Iroquois, friendly or otherwise, was no very great calamity. This was a danger, but I did not choose to make it worse by harping on it.

About two o'clock a ranger of the advanced guard came running back to say that some two score Iroquois, stripped and painted for war, were making signs of amity from the edge of the forest in front of us.

I heard Mount grunt and Murphy swearing softly under his breath as I rode forward, with a nod to Elsin.

"Now you will see some friends of my boyhood," I said gaily, unlacing the front of my hunting-shirt as I rode, and laying it open to the wind.

"Carus!" she exclaimed, "what is that blue mark on your breast?"

"Only a wolf," I said, laughing. "Now you shall see how we Oneidas meet and greet after many years! Look, Elsin! See that Indian standing there with his gun laid on his blanket? The three rangers have taken to cover. There they stand, watching that Oneida like three tree-cats."

As I cantered up and drew bridle Elerson called out that there were twenty savages in the thicket ahead, and to be certain that I was not mistaken.

The tall Oneida looked calmly up at me; his glittering eyes fell upon my naked breast, and, as he looked, his dark face lighted, and he stretched out both hands.

"Onehda!" he ejaculated.

I leaned from my saddle, holding his powerful hands in a close clasp.

"Little Otter! Is it you, my younger brother? Is it really you?" I repeated again and again, while his brilliant eyes seemed to devour my face, and his sinewy grip tightened spasmodically.

"What happiness, Onehda!" he said, in his softly sonorous Oneida dialect. "What happiness for the young men—and the sachems—and the women and children, too, Onehda. It is well that you return to us—to the few of us who are left. Koue!"

And now the Oneidas were coming out of the willows, crowding up around my horse, and I heard everywhere my name pronounced, and everywhere outstretched hands sought mine, and painted faces were lifted to mine—even the blackened visage of the war-party's executioner relaxing into the merriest of smiles.

"Onehda," he said, "do you remember that feast when you were raised up?"

"Does an Oneida and a Wolf forget?" I said, smiling.

An emphatic "No!" broke from the painted throng about me.

Elsin, sitting her saddle at a little distance, watched us wide-eyed.

"Brothers," I said quietly, "a new rose has budded in Tryon County. The Oneidas will guard it for the honor of their nation, lest the northern frost come stealing south to blight the blossom."

Two score dark eyes flashed on Elsin. She started; then a smile broke out on her flushed face as a painted warrior stalked solemnly forward, bent like a king, and lifted the hem of her foot-mantle to his lips. One by one the Oneidas followed, performing the proud homage in silence, then stepping back to stand with folded arms as the head of the column appeared at the bend of the road.

I called Little Otter to me, questioning him; and he said that as far as they had gone there were no signs of Mohawk or Cayuga, but that the bush beyond should be traversed with caution. So I called in the flanking rangers, replacing them with Oneidas, and, sending the balance of the band forward on a trot, waited five minutes, then started on with a solid phalanx of riflemen behind to guard the rear.

As we rode, Elsin and I talking in low tones, mile after mile slipped away through the dim forest trail, and nothing to alarm us that I noted, save once when I saw another stone set upon a stone; but I knew my Oneidas had also seen and examined it, and it had not alarmed them sufficiently to send a warrior back to me.

It was an Oneida symbol; but, of course, my scouts had not set it up. Therefore it must have been placed there by an enemy, but for what purpose except to arrest the attention of an Oneida and prepare him for later signals, I could not yet determine. Mount had seen it, and spoken of it, but I shook my head, bidding him keep his eyes sharpened for further signs.

Signs came sooner than I expected. We passed stone after stone set on end, all emphasizing the desire of somebody to arrest the attention of an Oneida. Could it be I? A vague premonition had scarcely taken shape in my mind when, at a turn in the road, I came upon three of my Oneida scouts standing in the center of the road. The seven others must have gone on, for I saw nothing of them. The next moment I caught sight of something that instantly riveted and absorbed my attention.

From a huge pine towering ahead of us, and a little to the right, a great square of bark had been carefully removed about four feet from the ground. On this fresh white scar were painted three significant symbols—the first a red oblong, about eighteen inches by four, on which were designed two human figures, representing Indians, holding hands. Below that, drawn in dark blue, were a pair of stag's antlers, of five prongs; below the antlers—a long way below—was depicted in black a perfectly recognizable outline of a timber-wolf.

I rode up to the tree and examined the work. The paint was still soft and fresh on the raw wood. Flies swarmed about it. I looked at Little Otter, making a sign, and his scarcely perceptible nod told me that I had read the message aright.

The message was for me, personally and exclusively; and the red man who had traced it there not an hour since was an Iroquois, either Canienga, Onondaga, Cayuga, or Seneca—I know not which. Roughly, the translation of the message was this: The Wolf meant me because about it were traced the antlers, symbol of chieftainship, and below, on the ground, the symbol of the Oneida Nation, a long, narrow stone, upright, embedded in the moss. The red oblong smear represented a red-wampum belt; the figures on it indicated that, although the belt was red, meaning war, the clasped hands modified the menace, so that I read the entire sign as follows:

"An Iroquois desires to see you in order to converse upon a subject concerning wars and treaties."

"Turn over that stone, Little Otter," I said.

"I have already done so," he replied quietly.

"At what hour does this embassy desire to see me?"

He held up four fingers in silence.

"Is this Canienga work?"

"Mohawk!" he said bitterly.

The two terms were synonymous, yet mine was respectful, his a contemptuous insult to the Canienga Nation. No Indian uses the term Mohawk in speaking to or of a Mohawk unless they mean an insult. Canienga is the proper term.

"Is it safe for me to linger here while all go forward?" I asked Little Otter, lowering my voice so that none except he could hear me.

He smiled and pointed at the tree. The tree was enormous, a giant pine, dwarfing the tallest tree within range of my vision from where I sat my horse. I understood. The choice of this great tree for the inscription was no accident; it now symbolized the sacred tree of the Six Nations—the tree of heaven. Beneath it any Iroquois was as safe as though he stood at the eternal council-fire at Onondaga in the presence of the sachems of the Long House. But why had this unseen embassy refused to trust himself to this sanctuary? Because of the rangers, to whom no redskin is sacred.

"Jack Mount," I said, "take command and march your men forward half a mile. Then halt and await me."

He obeyed without a word. Elsin hesitated, gave me one anxious, backward glance, but my smile seemed to reassure her, and she walked her black mare forward. Past me marched the little column. I watched it drawing away northward, until a turn in the forest road hid the wagon and the brown-clad rear-guard. Then I dismounted and sat down, my back to the giant pine, my rifle across my knees, to wait for the red ambassador whom I knew would come.

Minute after minute slipped away. So still it grew that the shy forest creatures came back to this forest runway, made by dreaded man; and because it is the work of a creature they dread and suspect, their curiosity ever draws them to man-made roads. A cock-grouse first stepped out of the thicket, crest erect, ruff spread; then a hare loped by, halting to sniff in the herbage. I watched them for a long while, listening intently. Suddenly the partridge wheeled, crest flattened, and ran into the thicket, like a great rat; the hare sat erect, flanks palpitating, then leaped twice, and was gone as shadows go.

I saw the roadside bushes stir, part, and, as I rose, an Indian leaped lightly into the road and strode straight toward me. He was curiously painted with green and orange, and he was stark naked, except that he wore ankle-moccasins, clout, and a fringed pouch, like a quiver, covered with scarlet beads in zigzag pattern.

He did not seem to notice that I was armed, for he carried his own rifle most carelessly in the hollow of his left arm, and when he had halted before me he coolly laid the weapon across his moccasins.

The dignified silence that always precedes a formal meeting of strange Iroquois was broken at length by a low, guttural exclamation as his narrow-slitted eyes fell upon the tattoo on my bared breast: "Salute, Roy-a-neh!"

"Welcome, O Keeper of the Gate," I said calmly.

"Does my younger brother know to which gate-warden he speaks?" asked the savage warily.

"When a Wolf barks, the Eastern Gate-Keepers of the Long House listen," I replied. "It was so in the beginning. What has my elder brother of the Canienga to say to me?"

His cunning glance changed instantly to an absolutely expressionless mask. My white skin no longer made any difference to him. We were now two Iroquois.

"It is the truth," he said. "This is the message sent to my younger brother, Onehda, chief ensign of the Wolf Clan of the Oneida nation. I am a belt-bearer. Witness the truth of what I say to you—by this belt. Now read the will of the Iroquois."

He drew from his beaded pouch a black and white belt of seven rows. I took it, and, holding it in both hands, gazed attentively into his face.

"The Three Wolves listen," I said briefly.

"Then listen, noble of the noble clan. The council-fire is covered at Onondaga; but it shall burn again at Thendara. This was so from the first, as all know. The council therefore summons their brother, Onehda, as ensign of his clan. The will of the council is the will of the confederacy. Hiro! I have spoken."

"Does a single coal from Onondaga still burn under the great tree, my elder brother?" I asked cautiously.

"The great tree is at Onondaga," he answered sullenly; "the fire is covered."

Which was as much as to say that there was no sanctuary guaranteed an Oneida, even at a federal council.

"Tell them," I said deliberately, "that a belt requires a belt; and, when the Wolves talk to the Oneidas, they at Thendara shall be answered. I have spoken."

"Do the Three Wolves take counsel with the Six Bears and Turtles?" he asked, with a crafty smile.

"The trapped wolf has no choice; his howls appeal to the wilderness entire," I replied emphatically.

"But—a trapped wolf never howls, my younger brother; a lone wolf in a pit is always silent."

I flushed, realizing that my metaphor had been at fault. Yet now there was to be nothing between this red ambassador and me except the subtlest and finest shades of metaphor.

"It is true that a trapped wolf never howls," I said; "because a pitted wolf is as good as a dead wolf, and a dead wolf's tongue hangs out sideways. But it is not so when the pack is trapped. Then the prisoners may call upon the Wilderness for aid, lest a whole people suffer extermination."

"Will my younger brother take counsel with Oneidas?" he asked curiously.

"Surely as the rocks of Tryon point to the Dancers, naming the Oneida nation since the Great Peace began, so surely, my elder brother, shall Onehda talk to the three ensigns, brother to brother, clan to clan, lest we be utterly destroyed and the Oneida nation perish from the earth."

"My younger brother will not come to Thendara?" he inquired without emotion.

"Does a chief answer as squirrels answer one to another?—as crow replies to crow?" I asked sternly. "Go teach the Canienga how to listen and how to wait!"

His glowing eyes, fastened on mine, were lowered to the symbol on my breast, then his shaved head bent, and he folded his powerful arms.

"Onehda has spoken," he said respectfully. "Even a Delaware may claim his day of grace. My ears are open, O my younger brother."

"Then bear this message to the council: I accept the belt; my answer shall be the answer of the Oneida nation; and with my reply shall go three strings. Depart in peace, Bearer of Belts!"

Lightly, gracefully as a tree-lynx, he stooped and seized his rifle, wheeled, passed noiselessly across the road, turned, and buried himself in the tufted bushes. For an instant the green tops swayed, then not a ripple of the foliage, not a sound marked the swift course of the naked belt-bearer through the uncharted sea of trees.

Mounting my roan, I wheeled him north at a slow walk, preoccupied, morose, sadly absorbed in this new order of things where an Oneida now must needs answer a Mohawk as an Iroquois should once have answered an Erie or an Algonquin. Alas for the great League! alas for the mighty dead! Hiawatha! Atotarho! Where were they? Where now was our own Odasete; and Kanyadario, and the mighty wisdom of Dekanawidah? The end of the Red League was already in sight; the Great Peace was broken; the downfall of the Confederacy was at hand.

At that northern tryst at Thendara, the nine sachems allotted to the Canienga, the fourteen sachems of the Onondaga, the eight Senecas, the Cayuga ten must look in vain for nine Oneidas. And without them the Great Peace breaks like a rotten arrow where the war-head drops and the feathers fall from the unbound nock.

Strange, strange, that I, a white man of blood untainted, must answer for this final tragic catastrophe! Without me, perhaps, the sachems of the three clans might submit to the will of the League, for even the surly Onondagas had now heeded the League-Call—yes, even the Tuscaroras, too. And as for those Delaware dogs, they had come, belly-dragging, cringing to the lash of the stricken Confederacy, though now was their one chance in a hundred years to disobey and defy. But the Lenape were ever women.

Strange, strange, that I, a white man of unmixed blood, should stand in League-Council for the noblest clan of the Oneida nation!

That I had been adopted satisfied the hereditary law of chieftainship; that I had been selected satisfied the elective law of the sachems. Rank follows the female line; the son of a chief never succeeded to rank. It is the matron—the chief woman of the family—who chooses a dead chief's successor from the female line in descent; and thus Cloud on the Sun chose me, her adopted; and, dying, heard the loud, imperious challenge from the council-fire as the solemn rite ended with:

"Now show me the man!"

And so, knowing that the antlers were lifted and the quiver slung across my thigh, she died contented, and I, a lad, stood a chief of the Oneida nation. Never since time began, since the Caniengas adopted Hiawatha, had a white councilor been chosen who had been accepted by family, clan, and national council, and ratified by the federal senate, excepting only Sir William Johnson and myself. That Algonquin word "sachem," so seldom used, so difficult of pronunciation by the Iroquois, was never employed to designate a councilor in council; there they used the title, Roy-a-neh, and to that title had I answered the belt of the Iroquois, in the name of Kayanehenh-Kowa, the Great Peace.

For what Magna Charta is to the Englishman, what the Constitution is to us, is the Great Peace to an Iroquois; and their gratitude, their intense reverence and love for its founder, Hiawatha, is like no sentiment we have conceived even for the beloved name of Washington.

Now that the Revolution had split the Great Peace, which is the Iroquois League, the larger portion of the nation had followed Brant to Canada—all the Caniengas, the greater part of the Onondaga nation, all the Cayugas, the one hundred and fifty of our own Oneidas. And though the Senecas did not desert their western post as keepers of the shattered gate in a house divided against itself, they acted with the Mohawks; the Onondagas had brought their wampum from Onondaga, and a new council-fire was kindled in Canada as rallying-place of a great people in process of final disintegration.

It was sad to me who loved them, who knew them first as firm allies of New York province, who understood them, their true character, their history and tradition, their intimate social and family life.

And though I stood with those whom they struck heavily, and who in turn struck them hip and thigh, I bear witness before God that they were not by nature the fiends and demons our historians have painted, not by instinct the violent and ferocious scourges that the painted Tories made of these children of the forest, who for five hundred years had formed a confederacy whose sole object was peace.

I speak not of the brutal and degraded gens de prairie—the horse-riding savages of the West, whose primal instincts are to torture the helpless and to violate women—a crime no Iroquois, no Huron, no Algonquin, no Lenni-Lenape can be charged with. But I speak for the gens de bois—the forest Indians of the East, and of those who maintained the Great League, which was but a powerful tribunal imposing peace upon half a continent.

Left alone to themselves, unharassed by men of my blood and color, they are a kindly and affectionate people, full of sympathy for their friends in distress, considerate of their women, tender to their children, generous to strangers, anxious for peace, and profoundly reverent where their League or its founders were concerned.

Centuries of warfare for self-preservation have made them efficient in the arts of war. Ferocity, craft, and deception, practised on them by French, Dutch, and English, have taught them to reply in kind. Yet these somber, engrafted qualities which we have recorded as their distinguishing traits, no more indicate their genuine character than war-paint and shaven head display the customary costume they appear in among their own people. The cruelties of war are not peculiar to any one people; and God knows that in all the Iroquois confederacy no savage could be found to match the British Provost, Cunningham, or Major Bromfield—no atrocities could obscure the atrocities in the prisons and prison-ships of New York, the deeds of the Butlers, of Crysler, of Beacraft, and of Bettys.

For, among the Iroquois, I can remember only two who were the peers in cruelty of Walter Butler and the Tory Beacraft, and these were the Indian called Seth Henry, and the half-breed hag, Catrine Montour.

Pondering on these things, perplexed and greatly depressed, I presently emerged from the forest-belt through which I had been riding, and found our little column halted in the open country, within a few minutes' march of the Schenectady highway.

The rangers looked up at me curiously as I passed, doubtless having an inkling of what had been going on from questioning the Oneida scouts, for Murphy broke out impulsively, "Sure, Captain, we was that onaisy, alanna, that Elerson an' me matched apple-pipps f'r to inthrojuce wan another to that powwow forninst the big pine."

"Had you appeared yonder while I was talking to that belt-bearer it might have gone hard with me, Tim," I said gravely.

Riding on past the spot where Jack Mount stood, his brief authority ended, I heard him grumbling about the rashness of officers and the market value of a good scalp in Quebec; and I only said: "Scold as much as you like, Jack, only obey." And so cantered forward to where Elsin sat her black mare, watching my approach. Her steady eyes welcomed, mine responded; in silence we wheeled our horses north once more, riding stirrup to stirrup through the dust. On either side stretched abandoned fields, growing up in weeds and thistles, for now we were almost on the Mohawk River, the great highway of the border war down which the tides of destruction and death had rolled for four terrible years.

There was nothing to show for it save meadows abandoned to willow scrub, fallow fields deep in milk-weed, goldenrod, and asters; and here and there a charred rail or two of some gate or fence long since destroyed.

Far away across the sand-flats we could see a ruined barn outlined against the sunset sky, but no house remained standing to the westward far as the eye could reach. However, as we entered the highway, which I knew well, because now we were approaching a country familiar to me, I, leading, caught sight of a few Dutch roofs to the east, and presently came into plain view of the stockade and blockhouses of Schenectady, above which rose the lovely St. George's church and the heavy walls and four demi-bastions of the citadel which is called the Queen's Fort.

As we approached in full view of the ramparts there was a flash, a ball of white smoke; and no doubt a sentry had fired his musket, such was evidently their present state of alarm, for I saw the Stars and Stripes run up on the citadel, and, far away, I heard the conch-horn blowing, and the startled music of the light-infantry horns. Evidently the sight of our Oneidas, spread far forward in a semicircle, aroused distrust. I sent Murphy forward with a flag, then advanced very deliberately, recalling the Oneidas by whistle-signal.

And, as we rode under the red rays of the westering sun, I pointed out St. George's to Elsin and the Queen's Fort, and where were formerly the town gates by which the French and Indians had entered on that dreadful winter night when they burned Schenectady, leaving but four or five houses, and the snowy streets all wet and crimsoned with the blood of women and children.

"But that was many, many years ago, sweetheart," I added, already sorry that I had spoken of such things. "It was in 1690 that Monsieur De Mantet and his Frenchmen and Praying Indians did this."

"But people do such things now, Carus," she said, serious eyes raised to mine.

"Oh, no——"

"They did at Wyoming, at Cherry Valley, at Minnisink. You told me so in New York—before you ever dreamed that you and I would be here together."

"Ah, Elsin, but things have changed now that Colonel Willett is in the Valley. His Excellency has sent here the one man capable of holding the frontier; and he will do it, dear, and there will be no more Cherry Valleys, no more Minnisinks, no more Wyomings now."

"Why were they moving out of the houses in Albany, Carus?"

I did not reply.

Presently up the road I saw Murphy wave his white flag; and, a moment later, the Orange Gate, which was built like a drawbridge, fell with a muffled report, raising a cloud of dust. Over it, presently, our horses' feet drummed hollow as we spurred forward.

"Pass, you Tryon County men!" shouted the sentinels; and the dusty column entered. We were in Schenectady at last.

As we wheeled up the main street of the town, marching in close column between double lines of anxious townsfolk, a staff-officer, wearing the uniform of the New York line, came clattering down the street from the Queen's Fort, and drew bridle in front of me with a sharp, precise salute.

"Captain Renault?" he asked.

I nodded, returning his salute.

"Colonel Gansvoort's compliments, and you are directed to report to Colonel Willett at Butlersbury without losing an hour."

"That means an all-night march," I said bluntly.

"Yes, sir." He lowered his voice: "The enemy are on the Sacandaga."

I stiffened in my stirrups. "Tell Colonel Gansvoort it shall be done, sir." And I wheeled my horse, raising my rifle: "Attention!—to the left—dress! Right about face! By sections of four—to the right—wheel—March! ... Halt! Front—dress! Trail—arms! March!"

The veterans of Morgan, like trained troop-horses, had executed the maneuvers before they realized what was happening. They were the first formal orders I had given. I myself did not know how the orders might be obeyed until all was over and we were marching out of the Orange Gate once more, and swinging northward, wagons, bat-horses, and men in splendid alignment, and the Oneidas trotting ahead like a pack of foxhounds under master and whip. But I had to do with irregulars; I understood that. Already astonished and inquiring glances shot upward at me as I rode with Elsin; already I heard a low whispering among the men. But I waited. Then, as we turned the hill, a cannon on the Queen's Fort boomed good-by and Godspeed!—and our conch-horn sounded a long, melancholy farewell.

It was then that I halted the column, facing them, rifle resting across my saddle-bow.

"Men of New York," I said, "the enemy are on the Sacandaga."

Intense silence fell over the ranks.

"If there be one rifleman here who is too weary to enter Johnstown before daylight, let him fall out."

Not a man stirred.

"Very well," I said, laughing; "if you Tryon County men are so keen for battle, there's a dish o' glory to be served up, hot as sugar and soupaan, among the Mayfield hills. Come on, Men of New York!"

And I think they must have wondered there in Schenectady at the fierce cheering of Morgan's men as our column wheeled northwest once more, into the coming night.

* * * * *

We entered Johnstown an hour before dawn, not a man limping, nor a horse either, for that matter. An officer from Colonel Willett met us, directing the men and the baggage to the fort which was formerly the stone jail, the Oneidas to huts erected on the old camping-ground west of Johnson Hall, and Elsin and me to quarters at Jimmy Burke's Tavern. She was already half-asleep in her saddle, yet ever ready to rouse herself for a new effort; and now she raised her drowsy head with a confused smile as I lifted her from the horse to the porch of Burke's celebrated frontier inn.

"Colonel Willett's compliments, and he will breakfast with you at ten," whispered the young officer. "Good night, sir."

"Good night," I nodded, and entered the tavern, bearing Elsin in my arms, now fast asleep as a worn-out child.



CHAPTER XI

THE TEST

I was awakened by somebody shaking me. Bewildered, not recognizing my landlord, but confusing him with the sinister visions that had haunted my sleep, I grappled with him until, senses returning, I found myself sitting bolt upright in a shaky trundle-bed, clutching Jimmy Burke by the collar.

"Lave go me shirrt, sorr," he pleaded—"f'r the saints' sake, Misther Renault! I've the wan shirrt to me back——"

"Confound you, Jimmy!" I yawned, dropping back on my pillow; "what do you mean by choking me?"

"Chocken', is it, sorr!" exclaimed the indignant Irishman; "'tis me shcalp ye're afther liftin' wid a whoop an' a yell, glory be! I'll throuble ye, Captain Renault, f'r to projooce me wig, sorr!"

Clutched in my left hand I discovered the unfortunate landlord's wig, and I lay there amused and astonished while he haughtily adjusted it before the tiny triangle of glass nailed on the wall.

"Shame on you, Jimmy Burke, to wear a wig to cheat some honest Mohawk out of his eight dollars!" I yawned, rubbing my eyes.

"Mohawks, is it? Now, God be good to the haythen whin James Burrke takes the Currietown thrail——"

"You're exempt, you fat rascal!" I said, laughing; and the dumpy little Irishman gave me a sly grin as he retied his stock and stood smoothing down his rumpled wig before the glass.

"Och! divil a hair has he left on the wig o' me!" he grumbled. "Will ye get up, sorr? 'Tis ten o'clock, lackin' some contrairy minutes, an' the officers from the foort do be ragin' f'r lack o' soupaan——"

"Are they here?" I cried, leaping out of bed. "Why didn't you say so? Where's my tub of water? Don't stand there grinning, I tell you. Say to Colonel Willett I'll join him in a second."

The fat little landlord retreated crab-wise. I soused my clipped head in the tub, took a spatter-bath like a wild duck in a hurry, clothed me in my gay forest-dress, making no noise lest I wake Elsin, and ran down the rough wooden stairs to the coffee-room, plump into a crowd of strange officers, all blue and buff and gilt.

"Well, Carus!" came a cool, drawling voice from the company; and I saw the tall, gaunt figure of Colonel Marinus Willett sauntering toward me, his hawk's nose wrinkled into a whimsical smile.

"Colonel," I stammered, saluting, then sprang forward and grasped the veteran's outstretched hand, asking his pardon for my tardiness.

"What a great big boy!" he commented, holding my hand in both of his, and inspecting me from crown to heel. "Is this the lad I've heard of—below—" His nose wrinkled again, and his grimly humorous mouth twitched. "Carus, you've grown since I last saw you at the patroon's, romping a reel with those rosy Dutch lassies from Vrooman's—eh? That's well, my son; the best dancers were ever the best fighters! Look at Tim Murphy! As for me, I never could learn to dance with you Valley aristocrats. Carus, you should know my officers." And he mentioned names with a kindly, informal precision characteristic of a gentleman too great to follow conventions, too highly bred to ignore them. The consequent compromise was, as I say, a delightfully formal informality which reigned among his entourage, but never included himself, although he apparently invited it. In this, I imagine, he resembled his Excellency, and have heard others say so; but I do not know, for I never saw his Excellency.

"Now, gentlemen," said Colonel Willett casually, as he seated himself at the head of the table. And we sat down at the signal, I next to the Colonel at his nod of invitation.

The fat little landlord, Burke, notorious for the speed with which he fled from Sir John Johnson when that warrior-baronet raided Johnstown, came bustling into the coffee-room like a fresh breeze from the Irish coast, asking our pleasure in a brogue thick enough to season the bubbling, steaming bowl of hasty-pudding he set before us a moment later.

"Jimmy," said an officer, glancing up at him where he stood, thick legs apart, hands clasped behind him, and jolly head laid on one side, "is there any news of Sir John Johnson in these parts?"

"Faith," said Burke, with a toss of his head, "'tis little I bother meself along wid the likes o' Sir John. Lave him poke his nose into the Sacandagy an' dhrown there, bad cess to him! We've a thrick to match his, an' wan f'r the pig!"

"I'm glad to know that, Jimmy," said another officer earnestly. "And if that's the case. Captain Renault's Rangers might as well pack up and move back to Albany."

"Sure, Captain dear," he said, turning to me, "'tis not f'r the likes o' Jimmy Burke to say it, but there do be a fri'nd o' mine in the Rangers, a blatherin', blarneyin', bog-runnin' lad they call Tim Murphy. 'Tis f'r his sake I'd be glad to see the Rangers here—an' ye'll not misjudge me, sorr, that Jimmy Burke is afeared o' Sir John an' his red whippets!"

"Oh, no," I said gravely; "I'm quite ready to leave Johnstown to your protection, Jimmy, and march my men back to-night—with Colonel Willett's permission——"

"Sorra the day! Och, listen to him, Colonel dear!" exclaimed the landlord, with an appealing glance at Willett. "Wud ye lave us now, wid th' ould women an' childer huddled like catthle in the foort, an' Walther Butler at Niagary an' Sir John on the Sacandagy! Sure, 'tis foolin' ye arre, Captain dear—wid the foine ale I have below, an' divil a customer—the town's that crazy wid fear o' Sir John! 'Tis not f'r meself I shpake, sorr," he added airily, "but 'tis the jooty o' the military f'r to projooce thraffic an' thrade an' the blessing of prosperity at the p'int o' the bagnet, sorr."

"In that case," observed Willett, "you ought to stay, Carus. Burke can't attend to his tavern and take time to chase Sir John back to the lakes."

"Thrue f'r ye, sorr!" exclaimed Burke, with a twinkle in his gray eye. "Where wud th' b'ys find a dhram, sorr, wid Jimmy Burke on a scout, sorr, thrimmin' the Tories o' Mayfield, an' runnin' the Scotch loons out o' Perth an' the Galways, glory be!"

He bustled out to fetch us a dish of pink clingstone peaches, grown in the gardens planted by the great Sir William. Truly, Sir John had lost much when he lost Johnson Hall; and now, like a restless ghost drawn back to familiar places, he haunted the spot that his great father had made to bloom like a rose in the wilderness. He was out there now, in the sunshine and morning haze, somewhere, beyond the blue autumn mist in the north—out there, disgraced, disinherited, shelterless, sullenly brooding, and plotting murder with his motley mob of Cayugas and painted renegades.

Colonel Willett rose and we all stood up, but he signaled those who had not finished eating to resume their places, and laying a familiar hand on my arm led me to the sunny bench outside the door where, at his nod, I seated myself beside him. He drew a map from his breast-pocket and studied in silence; I waited his pleasure.

The veteran seemed to have grown no older since I had last seen him four years since—indeed, he had changed little as I remembered him first, sipping his toddy at my father's house, and smiling his shrewd, kindly, whimsical smile while I teased him to tell me of the French war, and how he had captured Frontenac.

I was but seventeen years old when he headed that revolt in New York City, and, single-handed, halted the British troops on Broad Street and took away their baggage. I was nineteen when he led the sortie from Stanwix. I had already taken my post in New York when he was serving with his Excellency in the Jerseys and with Sullivan in the west.

Of all the officers who served on the frontier, Marinus Willett was the only man who had ever held the enemy at check. Even Sullivan, returning from his annihilation of Indian civilization, was followed by a cloud of maddened savages and renegades that settled in his tracks, enveloping the very frontier which, by his famous campaign, he had properly expected to leave unharassed.

And now Marinus Willett was in command, with meager resources, indeed, yet his personal presence on the Tryon frontier restored something of confidence to those who still clung to the devastated region, sowing, growing, garnering, and grinding the grain that the half-starved army of the United States required to keep life within the gaunt rank and file. West Point, Albany, Saratoga called for bread; and the men of Tryon plowed and sowed and reaped, leaving their dead in every furrow—swung their scythes under the Iroquois bullets, cut their blood-wet hay in the face of ambush after ambush, stacked their scorched corn and defended it from barn, shack, and window. With torch and hatchet renegade and Iroquois decimated them; their houses kindled into flame; their women and children, scalped and throats cut, were hung over fences like dead game; twelve thousand farms lay tenantless; by thousands the widows and orphans gathered at the blockhouses, naked, bewildered, penniless. There remained in all Tryon County but eight hundred militia capable of responding to a summons—eight hundred desperate men to leave scythe and flail and grist-mill for their rifles at the dread call to arms. Two dozen or more blockhouses, holding from ten to half a hundred families each, were strung out between Stanwix Fort and Schenectady; these, except for a few forts, formed the outer line of the United States' bulwarks in the north; and this line Willett was here to hold with the scattered handful of farmers and Rangers.

Yet, with these handfuls, before our arrival he had already cleaned out Torlock; he had already charged through the flames of Currietown, and routed the renegades at Sharon—leading the charge, cocked-hat in hand, remarking to his Rangers that he could catch in his hat all the balls that the renegades could fire. Bob McKean, the scout, fell that day; nine men, bound to saplings, were found scalped; yet the handful under Willett turned on Torlock and seized a hundred head of cattle for the famishing garrison of Herkimer. Wawarsing, Cobleskill, and Little Falls were ablaze; Willett's trail lay through their smoking cinders, his hatchets hung in the renegades' rear, his bullets drove the raiders headlong from Tekakwitha Spring to the Kennyetto, and his Oneidas clung to the edges of invasion, watching, waiting, listening in the still places for the first faint sound of that advance that meant the final death-grapple. It was coming, surely coming: Sir John already harrying the Sacandaga; Haldimand reported on the eastern lakes; Ross and the Butlers expected from Niagara, and nothing now to prevent Clinton from advancing up the Hudson from New York, skirting West Point, and giving the entire north to the torch. This was what confronted Tryon County; but the army needed grain, and we were there to glean what we might between fitful storms, watching that solid, thunderous tempest darkening the north from east to west, far as the eye could see.

Colonel Willett had lighted his clay pipe, and now, map spread across his knees and mine, he leaned over, arms folded, smoking, and examining the discolored and wrinkled paper.

"Where is Adriutha, Carus?" he drawled.

I pointed out the watercourse, traced in blue, showing him the ancient site and the falls near by.

"And Carenay?"

Again I pointed.

"Oswaya?"

"Only tradition remains of that lost village," I said. "Even in the Great Rite those who pronounce the name know nothing more than that it once existed. It is so with Kayaderos and Danascara; nobody now knows exactly where they were."

"And Thendara?"

"Thendara was, and will be, but is not. In the Great Rite of the Iroquois that place where the first ceremony, which is called 'At the wood's edge,' begins is called Thendara, to commemorate the ancient place where first the Holder of Heaven talked face to face with the League's founder, Hiawatha."

The hawk-faced veteran smoked and studied the map for a while; then he removed the pipe from his mouth, and, in silence, traced with the smoking stem a path. I watched him; he went back to the beginning and traced the path again and yet again, never uttering a word; and presently I began to comprehend him.

"Yes, sir," I said; "thus will the Long House strike the Oneidas—when they strike."

"I have sent belts—as you suggested," observed Willett carelessly.

I was delighted, but made no comment; and presently he went on in his drawling, easy manner: "I can account for Sir John, and I can hold him on the Sacandaga; I can account for Haldimand only through the cowardice or treachery of Vermont; but I can hold him, too, if he ever dares to leave the lakes. For Sir Henry Clinton I do not care a damn; like a headless chicken he tumbles about New York, seeing, hearing nothing, and no mouth left to squawk with. His head is off; one of his legs still kicks at Connecticut, t'other paddles aimlessly in the Atlantic Ocean. But he's done for, Carus. Let his own blood cleanse him for the plucking!"

The gaunt Colonel replaced his pipe between his teeth and gazed meditatively into the north:

"But where's Walter Butler?" he mused.

"Is he not at Niagara, sir?" I asked.

Willett folded his map and shoved it into his breast-pocket. "That," he said, "is what I want you to find out for me, Carus."

He wheeled around, facing me, his kindly face very serious:

"I have relieved you of your command, Carus, and have attached you to my personal staff. There are officers a-plenty to take your Rangers where I send them; but I know of only one man in Tryon County who can do what is to be done at Thendara. Send on your belt to Sachems of the Long House. Carus, you are a spy once more."

I had not expected it, now that the Oneidas had been warned. Chilled, sickened at the thought of playing my loathsome role once more, bitter disappointment left me speechless. I hung my head, feeling his keen eyes upon me; I braced myself sullenly against the overwhelming rush of repulsion surging up within me. My every nerve, every fiber quivered for freedom to strike that blow denied me for four miserable years. Had I not earned the right to face my enemies in the open? Had I not earned the right to strike? Had I not waited—God! had I not waited?

Appalled, almost unmanned, I bowed my head still lower as the quick tears of rage wet my lashes. They dried, unshed.

"Is there no chance for me?" I asked—"no chance for one honest blow?"

His kind eyes alone answered; and, like a school-boy, I sat there rubbing my face, teeth clenched, to choke back the rebellious cry swelling my hot throat.

"Give me an Oneida, then," I muttered. "I'll go."

"You are a good lad, Carus," he said gently. "I know how you feel."

I could not answer.

"You know," he said, "how many are called, how few chosen. You know that in these times a man must sink self and stand ready for any sacrifice, even the supreme and best."

He laid his hand on my shoulder: "Carus, I felt as you do now when his Excellency asked me to leave the line and the five splendid New York regiments just consolidated and given me to lead. But I obeyed; I gave up legitimate ambition; I renounced hope of that advancement all officers rightly desire; I left my New York regiments to come here to take command of a few farmers and forest-runners. God and his Excellency know best!"

I nodded, unable to speak.

"There is glory and preferment to be had in Virginia," he said; "there are stars to be won at Yorktown, Carus. But those stars will never glitter on this faded uniform of mine. So be it. Let us do our best, lad. It's all one in the end."

I nodded.

"And so," he continued pleasantly, "I send you to Thendara. None knows you for a partizan in this war. For four years you have been lost to sight; and if any Iroquois has heard of your living in New York, he must believe you to be a King's man. Your one danger is in answering the Iroquois summons as an ensign of a nation marked for punishment. How great that danger may be, you can judge better than I."

I thought for a while. The Canienga who had summoned me by belt could not prove I was a partizan of the riflemen who escorted me. I might have been absolutely non-partizan, traveling under escort of either side that promised protection from those ghostly rovers who scalped first and asked questions afterward.

The danger I ran as clan-ensign of a nation marked for punishment was an unknown quantity to me. From the Canienga belt-bearer I had gathered that there was no sanctuary for an Oneida envoy at Thendara; but what protection an ensign of the Wolf Clan might expect, I could not be certain of.

But there was one more danger. Suppose Walter Butler should appear to sit in council as ensign of his mongrel clan?

"Colonel," I said, "there is one thing to be done, and, as there is nobody else to accomplish this dog's work, I must perform it. I am trying not to be selfish—not to envy those whose lines are fallen in pleasant places—not to regret the happiness of battle which I have never known—not to desire those chances for advancement and for glory that—that all young men—crave——"

My voice broke, but I steadied it instantly.

"I had hoped one day to do a service which his Excellency could openly acknowledge—a service which might, one day, permit him to receive me. I have never seen him. I think, now, I never shall. But, as you say, sir, ambitions like these are selfish, therefore they are petty and unworthy. He does know best."

The Colonel nodded gravely, watching me, his unlighted pipe drooping in his hand.

"There is one thing—before I go," I said. "My betrothed wife is with me. May I leave her in your care, sir?"

"Yes, Carus."

"She is asleep in that room above—" I looked up at the closed shutters, scarcely seeing them for the blinding rush of tears; yet stared steadily till my eyes were dry and hot again, and my choked and tense throat relaxed.

"I think," said the Colonel, "that she is safer in Johnstown Fort than anywhere else just now. I promise you, Carus, to guard and cherish her as though she were my own child. I may be called away—you understand that!—but I mean to hold Johnstown Fort, and shall never be too far from Johnstown to relieve it in event of siege. What can be done I will do on my honor as a soldier. Are you content?"

"Yes."

He lowered his voice: "Is it best to see her before you start?"

I shook my head.

"Then pick your Oneida," he muttered. "Which one?"

"Little Otter. Send for him."

The Colonel leaned back on the bench and tapped at the outside of the tavern window. An aide came clanking out, and presently hurried away with a message to Little Otter to meet me at Butlersbury within the hour, carrying parched corn and salt for three days' rations.

For a while we sat there, going over personal matters. Our sea-chests were to be taken to the fort; my financial affairs I explained, telling him where he might find my papers in case of accident to me. Then I turned over to him my watch, what money I had of Elsin's, and my own.

"If I do not return," I said, "and if this frontier can not hold out, send Miss Grey with a flag to New York. Sir Peter Coleville is kin to her; and when he understands what danger menaces her he will defend her to the last ditch o' the law. Do you understand, Colonel?"

"No, Carus, but I can obey."

"Then remember this: She must never be at the mercy of Walter Butler."

"Oh, I can remember that," he said drily.

For a few moments I sat brooding, head between my hands; then, of a sudden impulse, I swung around and laid my heart bare to him—told him everything in a breath—trembling, as a thousand new-born fears seized me, chilling my blood.

"Good God!" I stammered, "it is not for myself I care now, Colonel! But the thought of him—of her—together—I can not endure. I tell you, the dread of this man has entered my very soul; there is terror at a hint of him. Can I not stay, Colonel? Is there no way for me to stay? She is so young, so alone——"

Hope died as I met his eye. I set my teeth and crushed speech into silence.

"The welfare of a nation comes first," he said slowly.

"I know—I know—but——"

"All must sacrifice to that principle, Carus. Have not the men of New York stood for it? Have not the men of Tryon given their all? I tell you, the army shall eat, but the bread they munch is made from blood-wet grain; and for every loaf they bake a life has been offered. Where is the New Yorker who has not faced what you are facing? At the crack of the ambushed rifle our people drop at the plow, and their dying eyes look upon wife and children falling under knife and hatchet. It must be so if the army is to eat and liberty live in this country we dare call our own. And when the call sounds, we New Yorkers must go, Carus. Our women know it, even our toddling children know it, God bless them!—and they proudly take their chances—nay, they demand the chances of a war that spares neither the aged nor the weak, neither mother nor cradled babe, nor the hound at the door, nor the cattle, nor any living thing in this red fury of destruction!"

He had risen, eyes glittering, face hardened into stone. "Go to your betrothed and say good-by. You do not know her yet, I think."

"She is Canadienne," I said.

"She is what the man she loves is—if she honors him. His cause is hers, his country hers, his God is her God!"

"Her heart is with neither side——"

"Her heart is with you! Shame to doubt her—if I read her eyes! Read them, Carus!"

I wheeled, speechless; Elsin Grey stood before me, deadly pale.

After a moment she moved forward, laying her hand on my shoulder and facing Colonel Willett with a smile. All color had fled from her face, but neither lip nor voice quivered as she spoke:

"I think you do understand, sir. We Canadiennes yield nothing in devotion to the women of New York. Where we love, we honor. What matters it where the alarm sounds? We understand our lovers; we can give them to the cause of freedom as well here in Tryon County as on the plains of Abraham—can we not, my betrothed?" she said, looking into my face; but her smile was heart-breaking.

"Child, child," said Willett, taking her free hand in both of his, "you speak a silent language with your eyes that no man can fail to understand."

"I failed," I said bitterly, as Willett kissed her hand, placed it in mine, and, turning, entered the open door.

"And what blame, Carus?" she whispered. "What have I been to you but a symbol of unbridled selfishness, asking all, giving nothing? How could you know I loved you so dearly that I could stand aside to let you pass? First I loved you selfishly, shamelessly; then I begged your guilty love, offering mine in the passion of my ignorance and bewilderment."

Her arm fell from my shoulder and nestled in mine, and we turned away together under the brilliant autumn glory of the trees.

"That storm that tore me—ah, Carus—I had been wrecked without your strong arm to bear me up!"

"It was you who bore me up, Elsin. How can I leave you now!"

"Why, Carus, our honor is involved."

"Our honor!"

"Yes, dear, ours."

"You—you bid me go, Elsin?"

"If I bid you stay, what would avail except to prove me faithless to you? How could I truly love you and counsel dishonor?"

White as a flower, the fixed smile never left her lips, nor did her steady pace beside me falter, or knee tremble, or a finger quiver of the little hand that lay within my own.

And then we fell silent, walking to and fro under the painted maple-trees in Johnstown streets, seeing no one, heeding no one, until the bell at the fort struck the hour. It meant the end.

We kissed each other once. I could not speak. My horse, led by Jack Mount, appeared from the tavern stables; and we walked back to the inn together.

Once more I took her in my arms; then she gently drew away and entered the open door, hands outstretched as though blinded, feeling her way—that was the last I saw of her, feeling her dark way alone into the house.

Senses swimming, dumb, deafened by the raging, beating pulses hammering in my brain, I reeled at a gallop into the sunny street, north, then west, then north once more, tearing out into the Butlersbury road. A gate halted me; I dismounted and dragged it open, then to horse again, then another gate, then on again, hailed and halted by riflemen at the cross-roads, which necessitated the summoning of my wits at last before they would let me go.

Now riding through the grassy cart-road, my shoulders swept by the fringing willows, I came at length to the Danascara, shining in the sunlight, and followed its banks—the same banks from which so often in happier days I had fished. At times I traveled the Tribes Hill road, at times used shorter cuts, knowing every forest-trail as I did, and presently entered the wood-road that leads from Caughnawaga church to Johnstown. I was in Butlersbury; there was the slope, there the Tribes Hill trail, there the stony road leading to that accursed house from which the Butlers, father and son, some five years since, had gone forth to eternal infamy.

And now, set in a circle of cleared land and ringed by the ancient forests of the north, I saw the gray, weather-beaten walls of the house. The lawns were overgrown; the great well-sweep shattered; the locust-trees covered with grapevines—the cherry- and apple-trees to the south broken and neglected. Weeds smothered the flower-gardens, where here and there a dull-red poppy peered at me through withering tangles; lilac and locust had already shed foliage too early blighted, but the huge and forbidding maples were all aflame in their blood-red autumn robes. Here the year had already begun to die; in the clear air a faint whiff of decay came from the rotting heaps of leaves—decay, ruin, and the taint of death; and, in the sad autumn stillness, something ominous, something secret and sly—something of malice.

Seeing no sign of my Oneida, I walked my horse across the lawn and up to the desolate row of windows. The shutters had been ripped off their hinges; all within was bare and dark; dimly I made out the shadowy walls of a hallway which divided the house into halves. By the light which filtered through the soiled windows I examined room after room from the outside, then, noiselessly, tried the door, but found it bolted from within as well as locked from without. Either the Butlers or the commissioners of sequestration must have crawled through a window to do this. I prowled on, looking for the window they had used as exit, examining the old house with a fascinated repugnance. The clapboards were a foot wide, evidently fashioned with care and beaded on the edges. The outside doors all opened outward; and I noted, with a shudder of contempt, the "witch's half-moon," or lunette, in the bottom of each door, which betrays the cowardly superstition of the man who lived there. Such cat-holes are fashioned for haunted houses; the specter is believed to crawl out through these openings, and then to be kept out with a tarred rag stuffed into the hole—ghosts being unable to endure tar. Faugh! If specters walk, the accursed house must be alive with them—ghosts of the victims of old John Butler, wraiths dripping red from Cherry Valley—children with throats cut; women with bleeding heads and butchered bodies, stabbed through and through—and perhaps the awful specter of Lieutenant Boyd, with eyes and nails plucked out, and tongue cut off, bound to the stake and slowly roasting to death, while Walter Butler watched the agony curiously, interested and surprised to see a disemboweled man live so long!

Oh, yes, there might well be phantoms in this ghastly mansion; but they had nothing to do with me; only the absent master of the house was any concern of mine; and, finding at last the window I sought for, I shoved it open and climbed to the sill, landing upon the floor inside, my moccasined feet making no more sound than the padded toes of a tree-cat.

Then to prowl and mouse, stepping cautiously, stooping warily to examine dusty scraps lying on the bare boards—a dirty newspaper, an old shoe with buckle missing, a broken pewter spoon—all the sordid trifles that accent desolation. Once or twice I thought to make out moccasin tracks in the dust, as though some furtive prowler had anticipated me here, but the light filtering through the crusted panes was meager and uncertain, and, after all, it mattered nothing to me.

The house was divided by a hallway; there were two rooms on either side, all bare and empty save for scraps here and there, and in one room the collapsed and dusty carcass of a rat. On the walls there was nothing except a nail driven into the clay, which was crumbling between the facing of whitewashed brick. From the heavy oaken timbers of the wooden ceilings hung smutty banners of ancient cobwebs, stirring above me as I moved. It was the very abomination of sinister desolation.

Some vague idea of finding something that might aid me—some scrap of evidence I might chance on to kindle hope with—some neglected trifle to damn him and proclaim this monstrous marriage void—it was this instinct that led me into a house abhorred. Nothing I found, save, on one foul window-pane, names, diamond-cut, scrawled again and again: "Lyn," and "Cherry-Maid," repeated a score of times.

And long I lingered, pondering who had written it, and what it might mean, and who was "Lyn." As for "Cherry-Maid," the name was used in the False Faces rites; and at that terrific orgy held on the Kennyetto before the battle of Oriskany, where the first split came in the walls of the Long House, and where that hag-sorceress, Catrine Montour, had failed to pledge the Oneidas to the war-post, the Cherry-Maid had taken part. Indeed, some said that she was a daughter of the Huron witch; but Jack Mount, who saw the rite, swore that the Cherry-Maid was but a beautiful child, painted from brow to ankle——

Suddenly I thought of the hag's daughter as Carolyn. Carolyn? Lyn! By heaven, the Cherry-Maid was Carolyn Montour, mistress of Walter Butler! Here in bygone days she had scrawled her name—here her title. And Walter Butler had been present at that frantic debauch where the False Faces cringed to their prophetess, Magdalen Brant. Perhaps it was there that this man had met his match in the lithe young animal whelped by the Toad-Woman—this slim, lawless, depraved child, who had led the False Faces in their gruesome rites and sacrifice!

I stared at the diamond scrawl; and before my eyes I seemed to see the three fires burning, the clattering rows of wooden masks, the white blankets of the sachems, the tawny, naked form of the Cherry-Maid, seated between samphire and hazel, her pointed fingers on her hips, her heavy hair veiling a laughing face, over which the infernal fire shadow played.

Ah, it was well! Beast linked to beast—what need of priest in the fierce mating of such creatures of the dusk? He was hers, and she his by all laws of nature, and in the eternal fitness of things vast and savage. They must live and breed in the half-light of forests; they must perish as the sun follows the falling trees, creeping ever inexorably westward.

Somberly brooding, I turned and descended into the cellar. There was little light here, and I cared not to strike flint. Groping about I touched with my foot remains of bottles of earthenware, then made my way to the door again and began to ascend.

The stairway seemed steeper and more tortuous to me. As I climbed I became uneasy at its length. Then, in a second, it flashed on me that I had blundered upon a secret stairway[1] leading upward from the cellar. At this same instant my head brushed the ceiling; I gave a gentle push, and a trap-door lifted, admitting me to another flight of stairs, up which I warily felt my way. This must end in another trap-door on the second floor—I understood that—and began to reach upward, feeling about blindly until my hands fell on a bolt. This I drew; it was not rusty, and did not creak, and, as I slid it back, to my astonishment my fingers grew wet and greasy. The bolt had been recently oiled!

[1] Evidences of this stairway still exist in the ancient house of Walter Butler.

Now all alert as a gray wolf sniffing a strange trail that cuts his own, I warily lifted the trap to a finger's breadth. The crack of light dazzled me; gradually my blurred sight grew clearer; I saw a low, oblong window under the eaves of the steep, pointed roof; and, through it, the sunlight falling on the bare floor of a room all littered with papers, torn letters, and tape-bound documents of every description. Could these be the Butler papers? I had heard that all documents had been seized by the commissioners after the father and son had fled. But the honorable commissioners of sequestration had evidently never suspected this stairway.

In spite of myself I started! How had I, then, entered it? Somebody must have mounted it before me, leaving the secret door open in the cellar, and I, groping about, had chanced upon it. But whoever left it open must have been acquainted with the house—an intimate here, if not one of the family!

When had this unknown entered? Was any one here now? At the thought my skin roughened as a dog bristles. Was I alone in this house?

Listening, motionless, nostrils dilated, every sense concentrated on that narrow crack of light, I crouched there. Then, very gradually, I raised the trap, higher, higher, laying it back against the upright of white oak.

I was in a tiny room—a closet, lighted by a slit of a window. Everywhere around me in the dust were small moccasin prints, pointing in every direction. I could see no door in the wooden walls of the closet, but I stepped out of the stair-well and leaned over, examining the moccasin tracks, tracing them, until I found a spot where they led straight up to the wall; and there were no returning tracks to be seen. A chill crept over me; only a specter could pass through a solid wall. The next moment I had bent, ear flattened to the wooden wainscot. There was something moving in the next room!



CHAPTER XII

THENDARA

Motionless, intent, holding my breath, I listened at the paneled wall. Through the wainscot I could hear the low rustling of paper; and I seemed to sense some heavier movement within, though the solid floor did not creak, nor a window quiver, nor a footfall sound.

And now my eyes began traveling cautiously over the paneled wall, against which I had laid my ear. No crack or seam indicated a hidden door, yet I knew there must be one, and gently pressed the wainscot with my shoulder. It gave, almost imperceptibly; I pressed again, and the hidden door opened a hair's breadth, a finger's breadth, an inch, widening, widening noiselessly; and I bent forward and peered into another closet like the one I stood in, also lighted by a loop for rifle-fire. As my head advanced, first a corner of the floor littered with papers came into my range of vision, then an angle of the wall, then a shadowy something which I could not at first make out—and I opened the door a little wider—scarcely an inch—holding it there.

The shadowy something moved; it was a human foot; and the next instant my eyes fell on a figure, partly in shade, partly in the light from the loophole—an Indian, kneeling, absorbed in deciphering a document held flat on the bare floor.

Astounded, almost incredulous, I glared at the vision. Gradually the shock of the surprise subsided; details took shape under my wondering eyes—the slim legs, doubled under, clothed with fringed and beaded leggings to the hips, the gorgeously embroidered sporran, moccasins, and clout, the smooth, naked back, gleaming like palest amber under curtains of stiffly strung scarlet-and-gold traders' wampum—traders' wampum? What did that mean? And what did those heavy, double masses of hair indicate—those soft, twisted ropes of glossy hair, braided half-way with crimson silk shot with silver, then hanging a cloudy shock of black to the belted waist?

Here was no Iroquois youth—no adolescent of the Long House attired for any rite I ever heard of. The hip-leggings were of magnificent Algonquin work; the quill-set, sinew-embroidered moccasins, too. That stringy, iridescent veil of rose, scarlet, and gold wampum on the naked body was de fantasie; the belt and knife-sheath pure Huron. As for the gipsy-like arrangement of the hair, no Iroquois boy ever wore it that way; it hinted of the gens de prairie. What on earth did it mean? There was no paint on limb or body to guide me. Never had I seen such a being so dressed for any rite or any practise in North America! Oh, if Little Otter were only here! I stole a glance out of the loop, but saw nothing save the pale sunshine on the weeds. If the Oneida had arrived, he had surely already found my horse tied in the lilac thicket, and surely he would follow me where the weeds showed him I had passed. He might wait for a while; but if I emerged not from the house I knew he would be after me, smelling along like a wolfhound until he had tracked me to a standstill. Should I wait for him? I looked at the kneeling figure. So absorbed was the strange young Indian in the document on the floor that I strained my eyes to make out its script, but could not decipher even the corner of the paper exposed to my view. Then it occurred to me that it was a strange thing for an Indian to read. Scarce one among the Iroquois, save Brant and the few who had been to Dr. Wheelock's school, knew A from Zed, or could more than scrawl their clan-mark to a birchen letter.

Suspicious lest, after all, I had to do with a blue-eyed Indian or painted Tory, I examined the unconscious reader thoroughly. And, after a little while, a strange apprehension settled into absolute conviction as I looked. So certain was I that every gathered muscle relaxed; I drew a deep, noiseless breath of relief, smiling to myself, and stepped coolly forward, letting the secret door swing to behind me with a deadened thud.

Like a startled tree-cat the figure sprang to its feet, whirling to confront me. And I laughed again, for I was looking into the dark, dilated eyes of a young girl.

"Have no fear," I began quietly; and the next instant the words were driven into my throat, for she was on me in one bound, hunting-knife glittering.

Round the walls we reeled, staggering, wrestling, clinched like infuriated wolverines. I had her wrist in my grip, squeezing it, and the bright, sparkling knife soon clattered to the boards, but she suddenly set her crooked knee inside mine and tripped me headlong, hurling us both sideways to the floor, where we rolled, desperately locked, she twisting and reaching for the knife again and again, until I kicked it behind me and staggered to my feet, dragging her with me in all her fury. But her maddened strength, her sinuous twisting, her courage, so astonished me that again and again she sent me reeling almost to my knees, taxing my agility and my every muscle to keep her from tripping me flat and recovering her knife. At length she began to sway; her dark, defiant eyes narrowed to two flaming slits; her distorted mouth weakened into sullen lines, through which I caught the flash of locked teeth crushing back the broken, panting breath. I held her like a vise; she could no longer move. And when at last she knew it, her rigid features, convulsed with rage, relaxed into a blank, smooth mask of living amber.

For a moment I held her, feeling her whole body falling loose-limbed and limp—held her until her sobbing breath grew quieter and more regular. Then I released her; she reeled, steadying herself against the wall with one hand; and, stepping back, I sank one knee, and whipped the knife from the floor.

That she now looked for death at my hands was perfectly evident, I being dressed as a forest-runner who knows no sex when murder is afoot. I saw the flushed face pale slightly; the lip curl contemptuously. Proudly she lifted her head, haughtily faced me.

"Dog of bastard nation!" she panted; "look me between the eyes and strike!"

"Little sister," I answered gravely, using the soft Oneida idiom, "let there be peace between us."

A flash of wonder lit her dark eyes. And I said again, smiling: "O Heart-divided-into-two-hearts, te-ha-eho-eh, you are like him whom we name, after 'The Two Voices'—we of the Wolf. Therefore is there peace and love 'twixt thee and me."

The wonder in her eyes deepened; her whole body quivered.

"Who are you with a white skin who speak like a crested sachem?" she faltered.

"Tat-sheh-teh, little sister. I bear the quiver, but my war-arrows are broken."

"Oneida!" she exclaimed softly, clasping her hands between her breasts.

I stepped closer, holding out my arms; slowly she laid her hands in mine, looking fearlessly up into my face. I turned her palms upward and placed the naked knife across them; she bent her head, then straightened up, looking me full in the eyes.

Still smiling, I laid both my hands on the collar of my hunting-shirt, baring throat and chest; and, as the full significance of the tiny tattoo dawned upon her, she shivered.

"Tharon!" she stammered. "Thou! What have I done!" And, shuddering, cast the knife at my feet as though it had been the snake that rattles.

"Little sister——"

"Oh, no! no! What have I done! What have I dared! I have raised my hand against Him whom you have talked with face to face——"

"Only Tharon has done that," I said gently, "I but wear his sign. Peace, Woman of the Morning. There is no injury where there is no intent. We are not yet 'at the Forest's Edge.'"

Slowly the color returned to lip and cheek, her fascinated eyes roamed from my face to the tattooed wolf and mark of Tharon crossing it. And after a little she smiled faintly at my smile, as I said:

"I have drawn the fangs of the Wolf; fear no more, Daughter of the Sun."

"I—I fear no more," she breathed.

"Shall an ensign of the Oneida cherish wrath?" I asked. "He who bears a quiver has forgotten. See, child; it is as it was from the beginning. Hiro."

I calmly seated myself on the floor, knees gathered in my clasped hands; and she settled down opposite me, awaiting in instinctive silence my next words.

"Why does my sister wear the dress of an adolescent, mocking the False Faces, when the three fires are not yet kindled?" I asked.

"I hold the fire-right," she said quickly. "Ask those who wear the mask where cherries grow. O sachem, those cherries were ripe ere I was!"

I thought a moment, then fixed my eager eyes on her.

"Only the Cherry-Maid of Adriutha has that right," I said. My heart, beating furiously, shook my voice, for I knew now who she was.

"I am Cherry-Maid to the three fires," she said; "in bud at Adriutha, in blossom at Carenay, in fruit at Danascara."

"Your name?"

"Lyn Montour."

I almost leaped from the floor in my excitement; yet the engrafted Oneida instinct of a sachem chained me motionless. "You are the wife of Walter Butler," I said deliberately, in English.

A wave of crimson stained her face and shoulders. Suddenly she covered her face with her hands.

"Little sister," I said gently, "is it not the truth? Does a Quiver-bearer lie, O Blossom of Carenay?"

Her hands fell away; she raised her head, the tears shining on her heavy lashes: "It is the truth."

"His wife?" I repeated slowly.

"His wife, O Bearer of Arrows! He took me at the False Faces' feast, and the Iroquois saw. Yet the cherries were still green at Danascara. Twice the Lenape covered their faces; twice 'The Two Voices' unveiled his face. So it was done there on the Kennyetto." She leaned swiftly toward me: "Twice he denied me at Niagara. Yet once, when our love was new—when I still loved him—he acknowledged me here in this very house, in the presence of a County Magistrate, Sir John Johnson. I am his wife, I, Lyn Montour! I have never lied to woman or man, O my elder brother!"

"And that is why you have come back?"

"Yes; to search—for something to help me—some record—God knows!—I have searched and searched—" She stretched out her bare arms and gazed hopelessly around the paper-littered floor.

"Will not Sir John uphold you with his testimony?" I asked.

"He? No! He also denies it. What can a woman expect of a man who has broken parole?" she added, in contempt.

I leaned toward her, speaking slowly, and with deadly emphasis:

"Dare Walter Butler deny what the Iroquois Nation may attest?"

"He dare," she said, burning eyes on mine. "I am more Algonquin than Huron, and more than nine-tenths white. What is it to the Iroquois that this man puts me away? It was the Mohican and Lenape who veiled their faces, not the Iroquois. What is it to white men that he took me and has now put me away? What is it to them that he now takes another?"

"Another? Whom?" My lips scarcely formed the question.

"I do not know her name. When he returned from the horrors of Cherry Valley Sir Frederick Haldimand refused to see him. Yet he managed to make love to Sir Frederick's kinswoman—a child—as I was when he took me——"

She closed her eyes. I saw the lashes all wet again, but her voice did not tremble: "He is at Niagara with his Rangers—or was. And—when I came to him he laughed at me, bidding me seek a new lover at the fort——"

Her voice strangled. Twisting her fingers, she sat there, eyes closed, dumb, miserable. At last she gasped out: "O Quiver-bearer, with a white voice and a skin scarce whiter than my own, though your nation be sundered from the Long House, though I be an outcast of clans and nations, speak to me kindly, for my sadness is bitter, and the ghost of my dead honor confronts me in every forest-trail!" She stretched out her arms piteously:

"Teach me, brother; instruct me; heal my bruised heart of hate for this young man who was my undoing—cleanse my fierce, desirous heart. I love him no longer; I—I dare not hate him lest I slay him ere he rights my wrongs. My sorrow is heavier than I can bear—and I am young, O sachem—not yet eighteen—until the snow flies."

She laid her face in her hands once more; through her slim fingers the bright tears fell slowly.

"Are you Christian, little sister?" I asked, wondering.

"I do not know. They say so. A brave Jesuit converted me ere I was unstrapped from the cradle-board—ere I could lisp or toddle. God knows. My own brother died in war-paint; my grandmother was French Margaret, my mother—if she be my mother—is the Huron witch of Wyoming; some call her Catrine, some Esther. Yet I was chaste—till he took me—chaste as an Iroquois maid. Thus has he wrought with me. Teach me to forgive him!"

And this the child of Catrine Montour? This that bestial creature they described to me as some slim, fierce temptress of the forests?

"Listen," I said gently; "if you are wedded by a magistrate, you are his wife; yet if that magistrate falsely witnesses against you, you can not prove it. I would give all I have to prove your marriage. Do you understand?"

She looked at me, uncomprehending.

"The woman I love is the woman he now claims as wife," I said calmly. Then, in that strange place, alone there together in the dim light, she lying full length on the floor, her hands clasped on my knees, told me all. And there, together, we took counsel how to bring this man to judgment—not the Almighty's ultimate punishment, not even that stern retribution which an outraged world might exact, but a merciful penance—the public confession of the tie that bound him to this young girl. For, among the Iroquois, an unchaste woman is so rare that when a maiden commits the fault she is like a leper until death releases her from her awful isolation.

Together, too, we searched the littered papers on the floor, piece by piece, bit by bit, but all in vain. And while kneeling there I heard a stealthy step behind me, and looked back over my shoulder, to see the Oneida, Little Otter, peering in at us, eyeballs fairly starting from his painted face. Lyn Montour eyed him silently, and without expression, but I laughed to see how surely he had followed me as I had expected; and motioned him away to await my coming.

It was, I should judge, nearly five o'clock when we descended by the open stairway to the ground floor. I held the window wide; she placed her hands on the sill and leaped lightly to the grass. I followed. Presently the lilac thicket parted and the tall Oneida appeared, leading my horse. One keen, cunning glance he gave at the girl, then, impassive, stood bolt upright beside my horse. He was superb, stripped naked to clout and moccasin, head shaved, body oiled and most elaborately painted; and on his broad breast glimmered the Wolf lined in sapphire-blue. When the long roll of the dead thundered through the council-house, his name was the fourth to be called—Shononses. And never was chief of the Oneida nation more worthy to lift the antlers that no grave must ever cover while the Long House endures.

"Has my brother learned news of the gathering in the north?" I asked, studying the painted symbols on his face and body.

"The council sits at dawn," he replied quietly.

"At dawn!" I exclaimed. "Why, we have no time, then——"

"There is time, brother. There is always time to die."

"To—die!" I looked at him, startled. Did he, then, expect no mercy at the council? He raised his eyes to me, smiling. There was nothing of fear, nothing of boastfulness, even, in attitude or glance. His dignity appalled me, for I knew what it meant. And, suddenly, the full significance of his paint flashed upon me.

"You think there is no chance for us?" I repeated.

"None, brother."

"And yet you go?"

"And you, brother?"

"I am ordered; I am pledged to take such chances. But you need not go, Little Otter. See, I free you now. Leave me, brother. I desire it."

"Shononses will stay," he said impassively. "Let the Long House learn how the Oneidas die."

I shuddered and looked again at his paint. It was inevitable; no orders, no commands, no argument could now move him. He understood that he was about to die, and he had prepared himself. All I could hope for was that he had mistaken the temper of the council; that the insolence of a revolted nation daring to present a sachem at the Federal-Council might be overlooked—might be condoned, even applauded by those who cherished in their dark hearts, locked, the splendid humanity of the ancient traditions. But there was no knowing, no prophesying what action a house divided might take, what attitude a people maddened by dissensions, wrought to frenzy by fraternal conflict, might assume. God knows the white man's strife was barbarous enough, brother murdering brother beneath the natal roof. What, then, might be looked for from the fierce, proud people whose Confederacy was steadily crumbling beneath our touch; whose crops and forests and villages had gone roaring up into flames as the vengeance of Sullivan, with his Rangers, his Continentals, and his Oneidas, passed over their lands in fire!

"Where sits the council?" I asked soberly.

"At the Dead-Water."

It was an all-night journey by the Fish House-trails, for we dared not strike the road, with Sir John's white demons outlying from the confluence to Frenchman's creek.

I looked at my horse. Little Otter had strapped ammunition and provisions to the saddle, leaving room for a rider. I turned to Lyn Montour; she laid her hands on my shoulders, and I swung her up astride the saddle.

"Now," I said briefly; and we filed away into the north, the Oneida leading at a slow trot.

I shall never forget the gloom, the bitter misery of that dark trail where specters ever stared at me as I journeyed, where ghosts arose in every trail—pale wraiths of her I loved, calling me back to love again. And "Lost, lost, lost!" wept the little brooks we crossed, all sobbing, whispering her name.

What an end of all—to die now, leaving life's work unfinished, life's desire unsatisfied—all that I loved unprotected and alone on earth. What an end to it all—and I had done nothing for the cause, nothing except the furtive, obscure work which others shrank from! And now, skulking to certain death, was denied me even the poor solace of an honored memory. Here in this shaggy desolation no ray of glory might penetrate to gild my last hour with a hero's halo; contempt must be my reward if I failed. I must die amid the scornful laughter of Iroquois women, the shrill taunts of children, the jeers of renegade white men, who pay a thief more honor at the cross-roads gallows than they pay a convicted spy. Why, I might not even hope for the stern and dignified justice that the Oneida awaited—an iron justice that respected the victim it destroyed; for he came openly as a sachem of a disobedient nation in revolt, daring to justify his nation and his clan. But I was to act if not to speak a lie; I was to present myself as a sleek non-partizan, symbolizing only a nobility of the great Wolf clan. And if any man accused me as a spy, and if suspicion became conviction, the horrors of my degradation would be inconceivable. Yet, plying once more my abhorred trade, I could only obey, hope against hope, and strive to play the man to the end, knowing what failure meant, knowing, too, what my reward for success might be—a low-voiced "Thank you" in secret, a grasp of the hands behind locked doors—a sum of money pressed on me slyly—that hurt most of all—to put it away with a smile, and keep my temper. Good God! Does a Renault serve his country for money! Why, why, can they not understand, and spare me that!—the wages of the wretched trade!

Darkness had long since infolded us; we had slackened to a walk, moving forward between impervious walls of blackness. And always on the curtain of the inky shadow I saw Elsin's pallid face gazing upon me, until the vision grew so real that I could have cried out in my anguish, reeling forward, on, ever on, through a blackness thick as the very shadows of the pit that hides lost souls!

At midnight we halted for an hour. The Oneida ate calmly; Lyn Montour tasted the parched corn, and drank at an unseen spring that bubbled a drear lament amid the rocks. Then we descended into the Drowned Lands, feeling our spongy trail between osier, alder, and willow. Once, very far away, I saw a light, pale as a star, low shining on the marsh. It was the Fish House, and we were near our journey's end—perhaps the end of all journeys, save that last swift trail upward among those thousand stars!

It was near to dawn when we came out upon the marsh; and above, I heard the whir and whimpering rush of wild ducks passing, the waking call of birds, twittering all around us in the darkness; the low undertone of the black water flowing to the Sacandaga.

Over the quaking marsh we passed, keeping the trodden trail, now wading, now ankle-deep in cranberry, now up to our knees in moss, now lost in the high marsh-grass, on, on, through birch hummocks, willows, stunted hemlocks and tamaracks, then on firm ground once more, with the oak-mast under foot, and the white dawn silvering the east, and my horse breathing steam as he toiled on.

Suddenly I was aware of a dark figure moving through the marsh, parallel, and close to me. The Oneida stopped, stared, then drew his blanket around him and sat down at the foot of a great oak.

We had arrived at Thendara! Now, all around us in the dim glade, tall forms moved—spectral shapes of shadowy substance that drifted hither and thither, passing, repassing, melting into the gloom around, until I could scarce tell them from the shreds of marsh fog that rose and floated through the trees around us.

Slowly the heavens turned to palest gold, then to saffron. All about us shadowy throngs arose to face the rising sun. A moment of intense stillness, then a far, faint cry, "Koue!" And the glittering edge of the sun appeared above the wooded heights. Blinding level rays fell on the painted faces of the sachems of the Long House, advancing to the forest's edge; the Oneida strode forward, head erect, and I, with a sign to the girl at my side, followed.

As we walked through the long, dead grass, I, watching sidewise, noted the absence of the Senecas. Was it for them the condolence? Suddenly it struck me that to our side of the circle belonged the duty of the first rites. Who would speak? Not the Oneidas, for there was none, except Little Otter and myself. Who then? The Cayugas?

I shot a side glance among the slowly moving forms. Ah! that was it! A Cayuga sachem led the march.

The circle was already forming. I saw the Senecas now; I saw all the sachems seating themselves in a cleared space where a birch fire smoldered, sweetening the keen morning air with its writhing, aromatic smoke; I saw the Oneida cross proudly to his place on our side; and I seated myself beside him, raising my eyes to the towering figure of Tahtootahoo, the chief sachem and ensign of the great Bear Clan of the Onondaga nation, who stood beside the Cayuga spokesman in whispered conference.

To and fro strode the Cayuga, heavy head bent; to and fro, pacing the circle like a stupefied panther. Once his luminous eyes gleamed on mine, shifted blankly to the Oneida, and thence along the motionless circle of painted faces. Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga were there, forming half the circle; Oneida, Cayuga, and Tuscarora welded it to a ring. I glanced fearfully from ensign to ensign, but saw no Delaware present; and my heart leaped with hope. Walter Butler had lied to me; the Lenni-Lenape had never sat at this rite; his mongrel clan had no voice here. He had lied.

The pipe had been lighted and was passing in grave silence. I received it from a Tuscarora, used it, and handed it to the Oneida, watching the chief sachem of the Senecas as he arose to deliver his brief address of welcome. He spoke in the Seneca dialect, and so low that I could understand him only with greatest difficulty, learning nothing except that a Seneca Bear was to be raised up to replace a dead chief slain at Sharon.

Then a very old sachem arose and made a sign which was the symbol of travel. We touched hands and waited, understanding the form prescribed. Alas, the mourning Senecas had no longer a town to invite us to; the rite must be concluded where we sat; we must be content with the sky for the roof which had fallen in on the Long House, the tall oaks for the lodge-poles, the east and west for the doors broken down by the invasion.

Solemnly the names of the score and three legendary towns were recited, first those of the Wolf, next of the Tortoise, then of the Bear; and I saw my Wolf-brethren of the four classes of the Mohawks and Cayugas staring at me as I rose when they did and seated myself at the calling of my towns. And, by heaven! I noted, too, that the Tuscaroras of the Grey Wolf and the Yellow Wolf knew their places, and rose only after we were seated. Except for the Onondaga Tortoise, a cleft clan awaits the pleasure of its betters. Even a Delaware should know that much, but Walter Butler was ever a liar, for it is not true that the Anowara or Tortoise is the noble clan, nor yet the Ocquari. It is the Wolf, the Oquacho Clan; and the chiefs of the Wolf come first of all!

Suddenly the sonorous voice of the Seneca broke the silence, pronouncing the opening words of the most sacred rite of the Iroquois people:

"Now to-day I have been greatly startled by your voice coming through the forest to this opening——"

The deep, solemn tones of the ancient chant fell on the silence like the notes of a sad bell. It was, then, to be a double rite. Which nation among the younger brothers mourned a chief? I looked at the Oneida beside me; his proud smile softened. Then I understood. Good God! They were mourning him, him, as though he were already dead!

The Seneca's voice was sounding in my ears: "Now, therefore, you who are our friends of the Wolf Clan——" I scarcely heard him. Presently the "Salute" rolled forth from the council; they were intoning the "Karenna."

I laid my hand on the Oneida's wrist; his pulse was calm, nor did it quicken by a beat as the long roll of the dead was called:

"Continue to listen, Thou who wert ruler, Hiawatha! Continue to listen, Thou who wert ruler: That was the roll of you— You who began it— You who completed The Great League!— Continue to listen, Thou who wert ruler: That was the roll of you——"

The deep cadence of the chanting grew to a thunderous sound; name after name of the ancient dead was called, and the thrilling response swelled, culminating in a hollow shout. Then a pause, and the solemn tones of a single voice intoning the final words of gloom.

For ten full minutes there was not a sound except the faint snapping of the smoking birch twigs. Then up rose the chief sachem of the Cayugas, cast aside his blanket, faced the circle, dark, lean arm outstretched; and from his lips flowed the beautiful opening words of the Younger Nations:

"Yo o-nen o-nen wen-ni-teh onen——"

"Now—now this day—now I come to your door where you mourn.... I will enter your door and come before the ashes and mourn with you there. And these words will I speak to comfort you!"

The music of the voice thrilled me:

"To the warriors, to the women, and also to the children; and also to the little ones creeping on the ground, and also to those still tied to the cradle-board.... This we say, we three brothers....

"Now another thing we will say, we younger brothers. You mourn. I will clear the sky for you so that you shall not behold a cloud. And also I give the sun to shine upon you, so that you can look peacefully upon it when it goes down. You shall see it when it is going. Yea, ye shall look peacefully upon it when it goes down....

"Now another thing we say, we younger brothers. If any one should fall, then the antlers shall be left on the grave....

"Now another thing we say, we younger brothers. We will gird the belt on you with the quiver, and the next death will receive the quiver whenever you shall know that there is death among us, when the fire is made and the smoke is rising. This we say and do, we three brothers.

"Now I have finished. Now show me the man!"

Slowly the Oneida rose from my side and crossed the circle. Every eye was on him; he smiled as he halted, sweeping the throng with a tranquil glance. Then, drawing his blanket about him he stepped from the sanctuary of the council-ring out into the forest; and after him glided a Mohawk warrior, with face painted black, in token of his terrific office.

A dead silence fell upon the council.

The pulse was drumming in ears and throat when I arose; and, as the Mohawk executioner slipped noiselessly past me, I seized him by the clout-belt, and, summoning every atom of strength, hurled him headlong at my feet, so that he lay stunned and like one dead.

A roar of astonishment greeted me; a score of voices cried out savagely on my violation of the fire.

"It is you who violate it!" I answered, trembling with fury; "you who dare pronounce the sentence of death without consulting the four classes of the Oneida!"

A Mohawk sachem arose, casting his scarlet robes at his feet, and pointed at me, hissing: "Where are the Oneida classes? I dare you to tell us where the ensigns hide! Where are they? Speak!"

"Here!" I said, tearing my cape open. "Read that sign, O Canienga! I answer for the four classes of my nation, and I say that Oneida shall go free! Now let him who dare accuse me stand forth. It is a Wolf of Tharon who has spoken!"