“Had I my say,” remarked Boyd loudly, “I’d take a regiment and scour me out these rattlesnakes from the Proprietary, and pack ’em off to prison, bag and baggage!”

Lana had knelt, making a cup of her hand, and was drinking from the silvery thread of water at our feet.  Now, as Boyd spoke, she straightened up and cast a shower of sparkling drops in his face, saying calmly that she prayed God he might have the like done for him when next he needed a cooling off.

“Lanette,” said he, disconcerted but laughing, “do you mean in hell or at the Iroquois stake?”

Whereupon Lana flushed and said somewhat violently that he should not make a jest of either hell or stake; and that she for one marvelled at his ill-timed pleasantries and unbecoming jests.

So here was a pretty quarrel already sur le tapis; but neither I nor Lois interposed, and Lana, pink and angry, seated herself on the moss and gazed steadily at our watchful Indians.  But in her fixed gaze I saw the faint glimmer of tears.

After a moment Boyd got up, went down to her, and asked her pardon.  She made no answer; they remained looking at each other for another second, then both smiled, and Boyd lay down at her feet, resting his elbow on the moss and his cheek on his hand, so that he could converse with me across her shoulder.

And first he cautioned both Lana and Lois to keep secret whatever was to be said between us two, then, nodding gaily at me: 

“You were quite right, Loskiel, in speaking to the General about the proper trap for this Wizard-Sachem Amochol, who is inflaming the entire Seneca nation to such a fury.”

“I know no other way to take and destroy him,” said I.

“There is no other way.  It must be done secretly, and by a small party manoeuvring ahead and independently of our main force.”

“Are you to command?” I asked.

“I am to have that honour,” he said eagerly, “and I take you, your savages, and twenty riflemen——­”

“What is this?” said Lana sharply; but he lifted an impatient hand and went on in his quick, interested manner, to detail to me the plan he had conceived for striking Amochol at Catharines-town, in the very midst of the Onon-hou-aroria.

“Last night,” he said, “I sent out Hanierri and Iaowania, the headquarters scouts; and I’m sorry I did, for they came in this morning with their tails between their legs, saying the forest swarmed with the Seneca scouts, and it was death to stir.

“And I was that disgusted—­ what with their cowardice and the aftermath of that headquarters punch—­ that I bade them go paint and sing their death-songs——­”

“Oh, Lord!  You should not lose your temper with an Indian!” I said, vexed at his indiscretion.

“I know it.  I’ll not interfere with your tame wolves, Loskiel.  But Hanierri madded me; and now he’s told Dominie Kirkland’s praying Indians, and not one o’ them will stir from Tioga—­ the chicken-hearted knaves!  What do you think of that, Loskiel?”