"What did they say?" I asked curiously.
"They said, 'Mr. Renault is a rich young man who thinks more of his clothes than he does of politics, and is safer than a guinea wig-stand!'"
His face was perfectly grave, but the astonished chagrin on my countenance set his keen eyes glimmering, and in a moment more we both went off into fits of laughter.
"Lord, sir!" he exclaimed, dusting his eyes with a lace handkerchief, "what a man we lost when you lost your head! Why on earth did you affront Walter Butler?"
I leaned forward, emphasizing every point with a noiseless slap on my knee, and recounted minutely and as frankly as I could every step which led to the first rupture between Walter Butler and myself. He followed my story, intelligent eyes fixed on me, never losing an accent, a shade of expression, as I narrated our quarrel concerning the matter of the Oneidas, and how I had forgotten myself and had turned on him as an Iroquois on a Delaware, a master on an insolent slave.
"From that instant he must have suspected me," I said, leaning back in my chair. "And now, Colonel Hamilton, my story is ended, and my usefulness, too, I fear, unless his Excellency will find for me some place—perhaps a humble commission—say in the dragoons of Major Talmadge——"
"You travel too modestly," said Hamilton, laughing. "Why, Mr. Renault, any bullet-headed, reckless fellow who has done as much as you have done may ask for a commission and have it, too. Look at me! I never did anything, yet they found me good enough for a gun captain, and they gave me a pair o' cannon, too. But, sir, there are other places with few to fill them—far too few, I assure you. Why, what a shame to set you with a noisy, galloping herd of helmets, chasing skinners and cowboys with a brace of gad-a-mercy pistols in your belt!—what a shame, I say, when in you there lie talents we seek in vain for among the thousand and one numskulls who can drill a battalion or maneuver a brigade!"
"What talents?" I asked, astonished.
"Lord! he doesn't even suspect them!" cried Hamilton gaily. "I wish you might meet a few of our talented brigadiers and colonels; they have no doubts concerning their several abilities!" Then, suddenly serious: "Listen, sir. You know the north; you were bred and born to a knowledge of the Iroquois, their language, character, habits, their intimate social conditions, nay, you are even acquainted with what no other living white man comprehends—their secret rites, their clan and family laws and ties, their racial instincts, their most sacred rituals! You are a sachem! Sir William Johnson was one, but he is dead. Who else living, besides yourself, can speak to the Iroquois with clan authority?"
"I do not know," I said, troubled. "Walter Butler may know something of the Book of Rites, because he was raised up in place of some dead Delaware dog!—" I clinched my hand, and stood silent in angry meditation. Lifting my eyes I saw Hamilton watching me, amazed, interested, delighted.