A little man, that I did not know was in the room, shuffled across the floor to keep my father from entering.  Around the base of his head he had a thin curtain of hair scarcely reaching his shoulders.  His nose pointed upward.  Its tip was the shape of a candle extinguisher.  He wore horn spectacles; and knee breeches, waistcoat and coat of black like the ink which fades to brown in a drying ink-horn.  He put his hands together and took them apart uncertainly, and shot out his lip and frowned, as if he had an universal grudge and dared not vent it.

He said something in a language I did not understand, and my father made no answer.  Then he began a kind of Anglo-French, worse than the patois we used at St. Regis when we did not speak Iroquois.  I made out the talk between the two, understanding each without hesitation.

“Sir, who are you?”

“The chief, Thomas Williams,” answered my father.

“Pardon me, sir; but you are unmistakably an Indian.”

“Iroquois chief,” said my father.  “Mohawk.”

“That being the case, what authority have you for calling yourself Thomas Williams?” challenged the little man.

“Thomas Williams is my name.”

“Impossible, sir!  Skenedonk, the Oneida, does not assume so much.  He lays no claim to William Jones or John Smith, or some other honest British name.”

The chief maintained silent dignity.

“Come, sir, let me have your Indian name!  I can hear it if I cannot repeat it.”

Silently contemptuous, my father turned toward me.

“Stop, sir!” the man in the horn spectacles cried.  “What do you want?”

“I want my boy.”

“Your boy?  This lad is white.”

“My grandmother was white,” condescended the chief.  “A white prisoner from Deerfield.  Eunice Williams.”

“I see, sir.  You get your Williams from the Yankees.  And is this lad’s mother white, too?”

“No.  Mohawk.”

“Why, man, his body is like milk!  He is no son of yours.”

The chief marched toward me.

“Let him alone!  If you try to drag him out of the manor I will appeal to the authority of Le Ray de Chaumont.”

My father spoke to me with sharp authority—­

“Lazarre!”

“What do you call him?” the little man inquired, ambling beside the chief.

“Eleazer Williams is his name.  But in the lodges, at St. Regis, everywhere, it is Lazarre.”

“How old is he?”

“About eighteen years.”

“Well, Thomas Williams,” said my fretful guardian, his antagonism melting to patronage, “I will tell you who I am, and then you can feel no anxiety.  I am Doctor Chantry, physician to the Count de Chaumont.  The lad cut his head open on a rock, diving in the lake, and has remained unconscious ever since.  This is partly due to an opiate I have administered to insure complete quiet; and he will not awake for several hours yet.  He received the best surgery as soon as he was brought here and placed in my hands by the educated Oneida, Skenedonk.”