“Or would you rather stay as you are?”

“No, father,” I answered, “I want to go.”

The camp had never been dearer.  I walked among the Indian children when the evening fires were lighted, and the children looked at me curiously as at an alien.  Already my people had cut me off from them.

“What I learn I will come back and teach you,” I told the young men and women of my own age.  They laughed.

“You are a fool, Lazarre.  There is a good home for you at St. Regis.  If you fall sick in De Chaumont’s house who will care?”

“Skenedonk is my friend,” I answered.

“Skenedonk would not stay where he is tying you.  When the lake freezes you will be mad for snowshoes and a sight of the St. Lawrence.”

“Perhaps so.  But we are not made alike.  Do not forget me.”

They gave me belts and garters, and I distributed among them all my Indian property.  Then, as if to work a charm which should keep me from breaking through the circle, they joined hands and danced around me.  I went to every cabin, half ashamed of my desertion, yet unspeakably craving a blessing.  The old people variously commented on the measure, their wise eyes seeing the change in one who had been a child rather than a young man among them.

If the wrench from the village was hard, the induction into the manor was harder.  Skenedonk took me in his boat, skirting the long strip of mountainous shore which separated us from De Chaumont.

He told me De Chaumont would permit my father to pay no more than my exact reckoning.

“Do you know who sends the money?” I inquired.

The Oneida did not know.  It came through an agent in New York.

“You are ten years older than I am.  You must remember very well when I was born.”

“How can that be?” answered Skenedonk.  “Nobody in the tribe knows when you were born.”

“Are children not like the young of other creatures?  Where did I come from?”

“You came to the tribe with a man, and Chief Williams adopted you.”

“Did you see the man?”

“No.  I was on the other side of the ocean, in France.”

“Who saw him?”

“None of our people.  But it is very well known.  If you had noticed anything you would have heard the story long ago.”

What Skenedonk said was true.  I asked him, bewildered—­“Why did I never notice anything?”

The Oneida tapped his bald head.

“When I saw you first you were not the big fellow with speaking eyes that you are to-day.  You would sit from sunrise to sunset, looking straight ahead of you and never moving except when food was put in your hand.  As you grew older the children dragged you among them to play.  You learned to fish, and hunt, and swim; and knew us, and began to talk our language.  Now at last you are fully roused, and are going to learn the knowledge there is in books.”

I asked Skenedonk how he himself had liked books, and he shook his head, smiling.  They were good for white men, very good.  An Indian had little use for them.  He could read and write and cast accounts.  When he made his great journey to the far country, what interested him most was the behavior of the people.