e."

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.

We did not go into the subject of his travels at that time, for I began
to wonder who was going to teach me books, and heard with surprise that
it was Doctor Chantry.