"We honour our dead."
"He lies," said Tamarack.
"I speak truth!" I groaned. "If you honour your dead, if you honour those whom I have raised up in their places, free me, brothers of the Cayugas!"
"Free him!" cried many.
For a space the throng was quiet, then a distant movement to my left made me turn hopefully. The throng wavered, parted, opened, and a white man came elbowing his way to the stake.
He whispered to Tamarack; the aged sachem stretched out his arm, making a mystic sign.
Eagerly the white man turned and looked at me, and I cried out with rage and horror, for I was face to face with Walter Butler.
He spoke, but I scarcely heard him urging my death.
Terror, which had gripped me, gave place to fury, and that in turn left me faint but calm.
I heard the merciless words in which he delivered me to the savages; I heard him denounce me as a spy of Cresap and an agent of rebels. Then I lost his voice.