The fellow’s face hardened and his eyes blazed.  He started to speak, then shut his mouth with a snap, turned on his heel, and strode across the treeless glade to where his noisy riders were saddling up, tightening girths, buckling straps, and examining the unshod feet of their horses or smoothing out the burrs from mane and tail.  The red sun glittered on their spurs, rifles, and the flat buckles of their cross-belts.  Their uniform was scarlet and green, but some wore beaded shirts of scarlet holland, belted in with Mohawk wampum, and some were partly clothed like Cayuga Indians and painted with Seneca war-symbols—­a grewsome sight.

There were savages moving about the fire—­or I took them for savages, until one half-naked lout, lounging near, taunted me with a Scotch burr in his throat, and I saw, in his horribly painted face, a pair of flashing eyes fixed on me.  And the eyes were blue.

There was something in that ghastly masquerade so horrible, so unspeakably revolting, that a shiver of pure fear touched me in every nerve.  Except for the voice and the eyes, he looked the counterpart of the Senecas moving about near us; his skin, bare to the waist, was stained a reddish copper hue; his black hair was shaved except for the knot; war-paint smeared visage and chest, and two crimson quills rose from behind his left ear, tied to the scalp-lock.

“Let him alone; don’t answer him; he’s worse than the Indians,” whispered Sir George.

Among the savages I saw two others with light eyes, and a third I never should have suspected had not Sir George pointed out his feet, which were planted on the ground like the feet of a white man when he walked, and not parallel or toed-in.

But now the loud-voiced riders were climbing into their saddles; the officer in scarlet, who had cursed and questioned us, came towards us leading a horse.

“You treacherous whelps!” he said, fiercely; “if a flag can’t go to you safely, we must send one of you with it.  By Heaven! you’re both fit for roasting, and it sickens me to send you!  But one of you goes and the other stays.  Now fight it out—­and be quick!”

An amazed silence followed; then Sir George asked why one of us was to be liberated and the other kept prisoner.

“Because your sneaking rebel friends fire on the white flag, I tell you!” cried the fellow, furiously; “and we’ve got to get a message to them.  You are Captain Sir George Covert, are you not?  Very good.  Your rebel friends have taken Captain Walter Butler and mean to hang him.  Now you tell your people that we’ve got Colonel Ormond and we’ll exchange you both, a colonel and a captain, for Walter Butler.  Do you understand?  That’s what we value you at; a rebel colonel and a rebel captain for a single loyal captain.”

Sir George turned to me.  “There is not the faintest chance of an exchange,” he said, in French.

“Stop that!” threatened the man in scarlet, laying his hand on his hanger.  “Speak English or Delaware, do you hear?”