ief could single me out for such generous
praise--me, a man who had lent himself to a work abhorrent--a work
taken up only because there was none better fitted to accomplish a
thing that all shrank from.

Seated once more, I looked up to see Colonel Hamilton regarding me with
decorous amusement.

"It may interest you, Mr. Renault, to know what certain British agents
reported to Sir Henry Clinton concerning you."

"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