There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with their war-party, by all means. After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these do not concern the story. It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in his quaint German dialect: "Come, walk with me outside the fort." We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank. There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple militia gathering. We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest old Brigadier laid open his heart to me. "I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily. I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?" feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew not of. "_I_ am wrong," he said, simply. "I do not understand you, Brigadier." "Say rather that _they_, who ought to know me better, do not understand me." "They? Whom do you mean?" "All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me. Nothing could be worse than that." "Suspect _you_, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!" "No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a colonel with Johnson--up yonder." The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights of day were paling over the black line of trees. "He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too, my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us, and his son _is_ with the Tories--up yonder." "But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march to-morrow." "Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and another married to Hendrick Frey, and _he_ is a Tory, too. All this is thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I feel they are talking of this." "Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."