rowd your house and so insure our discomfort?"

"None at all, sir," answered the host good naturedly. "If you think you
can do better, try for lodgings at the store-keeper's."

"The store-keeper's!" Doctor Chantry's hysterical cry turned some
attention to us. "I shall do nothing of the kind. I demand the best you
have, sir."

"The best I can give you," amended our host. "You see we are very full
of politicians from Washington. They crowd to the spring."

My master turned his nose like the inflamed horn of a unicorn against
the politicians from Washington, and trotted to the fireplace where
blazing knots cheered a great tap-room set with many tables and benches.

And there rested Skenedonk in silent gravity, toasting his moccasins.
The Iroquois had long made Saratoga a gathering place, but I thought of
this Oneida as abiding in St. Regis village; for our people did not come
to the summer hunting in May.

Forgetting that I was a runaway I met him heartily, and the fawn eyes in
his bald head beamed their accustomed luster upon me. I asked him where
my father and mother and the rest of the tribe were, and he said they
had not left St. Regis.

"And why are you so early?" I inquired.

He had been at Montreal, and had undertaken to guide a Frenchman as far
as Saratoga. It is not easy to surprise an Indian. But I wondered that
Skenedonk accepted my presence without a question, quite as if he had
himself made the appointment.

However, the sights to be seen put him out of my head. Besides the
tap-room crowded with men there was a parlor in which women of fashion
walked about, contrasting with the place. They had all been to a spring
to drink water; for only one spring was greatly used then; and they
talked about the medicinal effects. Some men left the stronger waters,
which could be had at a glittering portcullised bar opposite the
fireplace in the tap-room, to chat with these short-waisted beauties. I
saw one stately creature in a white silk ball costume, his stockings
splashed to the knees with mud from the corduroy road.

But the person who distinguished himself from everybody else by some
nameless attraction, was a man perhaps forty years old, who sat in a
high-backed settle at a table near the fire. He was erect and thin as a
lath, long faced, square browed and pale. His sandy hair stood up like
the bristles of a brush. Carefully dressed, with a sword at his side--as
many of the other men had--he filled my idea