ga Wolf; but I am not brother to you."

"And why not to the twin clan of my adopted nation?" he asked angrily.

"Yours is a cleft ensign and a double clan," I sneered; "which are you,
Gray Wolf or Yellow Wolf?"

"Yellow," he said, struggling to keep his temper; "and if we Delawares
of the Wolf-Clan are not named in the Book of Rites, nevertheless we
sit as ensigns among the noble, and on the same side of the
council-lodge as your proud Oneidas. We have three in the council as
well as you, Mr. Renault. If you were a Mohawk I should hold my peace,
but a Delaware may answer an Oneida. And so I answer you, sir."

How strange it seems now--we two white men, gentlemen of quality,
completely oblivious to blood, birth, tradition, breeding--our primal
allegiance, our very individualities sunk in the mystical freemasonry
of a savage tie which bound us to the two nations we assumed to speak
for, Oneida and Delaware--two nations of the great Confederacy of the
Iroquois that had adopted us, investing us with that clan nobility of
which we bore the ensign.

And we were in deadly earnest, too, standing proudly, fiercely, for our
prerogatives; he already doubly suspicious of me because the Oneida
nation which had adopted me stood for the rebel cause, yet, in his
mealy-mouthed way, assuming that by virtue of Wolf clanship, as well as
by that sentiment he supposed was loyalty to the King, I would do
nothing to disrupt the council which I now knew must decide upon the
annihilation of the Oneida nation, as well as upon the raid he
contemplated.

"Do you imagine that I shall sit with head averted while four nations
and your Delawares combine to plan the murder of my Oneidas?" I
demanded passionately. "When the council sits at Thendara I shall send
a belt to every clan in the Oneida nation, and I care not who knows
it!"

He rose, pale and menacing. "Mr. Renault," he said, "do you understand
that a word from you would be a treason to the King? You can be a
clansman of the Wolf and at the same time be loyal to the King and to
the Iroquois Confederacy; but you can not send a single string of
wampum to the Oneidas and be either loyal to the Six Nations or to your
King. The Oneidas are marked for punishment; the frontier is
doomed--doomed, even though this frittering commander in New York will
neither aid me nor his King. A word of warning to the Oneidas is a
warning to the rebels. And that, sir, I can not contemplate, and you
must shrin