"Brother," said I, "would you shame me who, as you say, found you a wild beast and have taught you that you are a real man?"
"I am a man and a warrior," he said quickly.
"Real men and warriors are known by their actions, my younger brother. When there is war they shine their hatchets. When the call comes, they bound into the war-trail. Brother, the call has come! Hiero!"
The Montagnais straightened his body and threw back his narrow, dangerous head.
"Haih!" he said. "I hear my brother's voice coming to me through the forests! Very far away beyond the mountains I hear the panther-cry of the Mengwe! My axe is bright! I am in my paint. Koué! I go!"
He left within the hour; and I had become attached to the wild rover of the Saguenay, and missed him the more, perhaps, because of my own sore heart which beat so impotently within my idle body.
That Herkimer had taken him disconcerted and discouraged me; but there was a more bitter blow in store for a young soldier of no experience in discipline or in the slow habit of military procedure; for, judge of my wrath when one rainy day in August comes Nick Stoner to me in a new uniform of the line, saying that Colonel Livingston's regiment lacked musicians, and he had thought it best to transfer and to 'list and not let opportunity go a-glimmering.
"My God, Jack," says he, "you can not blame me very well, for my father is drafted to the same regiment, and my brother John is a drummer in it. It is a marching regiment and certain to fight, for there be three Livingstons commanding of it, and who knows what old Herkimer can do with his militia, or what the militia themselves can do?"
"You are perfectly right, Nick," said I in a mortified voice. "I am not envious; no! only it wounds me to feel I am so utterly forgotten, and my application for transfer unnoticed."