Presently I missed the General, and, a moment later, Dorothy.  As I stood in the hallway, seeking for her, came Cecile, crying out that they were to have pictures and charades, and that General Schuyler, who was to be a judge, awaited me in the gun-room.

The door of the gun-room was closed.  I tapped and entered.

The General sat at the mahogany table, leaning back in his arm-chair; opposite sat Dorothy, bare elbows on the table, fingers clasped.  Standing by the General, arms folded, Jack Mount loomed a colossal figure in his beaded buckskins.

[Illustration:  “Jack mount loomed A colossal figure in his beaded buckskins".]

“Ah, Mr. Ormond!” said the General, as I closed the door quietly behind me; “pray be seated.  They are to have pictures and charades, you know; I shall not keep Miss Dorothy and yourself very long.”

I seated myself beside Dorothy, exchanging a smile with Mount.

“Now,” said the General, dropping his voice to a lower tone, “what was it you saw in the forest to-day?”

So Mount had already reported the apparition of the painted savage!

I told what I had seen, describing the Indian in detail, and repeating word for word his warning message to Mount.

The General looked inquiringly at Dorothy.  “I understand,” he said, “that you know as much about the Iroquois as the Iroquois do themselves.”

“I think I do,” she said, simply.

“May I ask how you acquired your knowledge, Miss Dorothy?”

“There have always been Iroquois villages along our boundary until last spring, when the Mohawks left with Guy Johnson,” she said.  “I have always played with Iroquois children; I went to school with Magdalen Brant.  I taught among our Mohawks and Oneidas when I was thirteen.  Then I was instructed by sachems and I learned what the witch-drums say, and I need use no signs in the six languages or the clan dialects, save only when I speak with the Lenni-Lenape.  Maybe, too, the Hurons and Algonquins have words that I know not, for many Tuscaroras do not understand them save by sign.”

“I wish that some of my interpreters had your knowledge, or a fifth of it,” said the General, smiling.  “Tell me, Miss Dorothy, who was that Indian and what did that paint mean?”

“The Indian was Joseph Brant, called Thayendanegea, which means, ’He who holds many peoples together,’ or, in plainer words, ’A bundle of sticks.’”

“You are certain it was Brant?”

“Yes.  He has dined at this table with us.  He is an educated man.”  She hesitated, looking down thoughtfully at her own reflection in the polished table.  “The paint he wore was not war-paint.  The signs on his body were emblems of the secret clan called the ‘False-Faces.’”

The General looked up at Jack Mount.

“What did Stoner say?” he asked.