"Let him alone! If you try to drag him out of the manor I will appeal to the authority of Le Ray de Chaumont." My father spoke to me with sharp authority-- "Lazarre!" "What do you call him?" the little man inquired, ambling beside the chief. "Eleazer Williams is his name. But in the lodges, at St. Regis, everywhere, it is Lazarre." "How old is he?" "About eighteen years." "Well, Thomas Williams," said my fretful guardian, his antagonism melting to patronage, "I will tell you who I am, and then you can feel no anxiety. I am Doctor Chantry, physician to the Count de Chaumont. The lad cut his head open on a rock, diving in the lake, and has remained unconscious ever since. This is partly due to an opiate I have administered to insure complete quiet; and he will not awake for several hours yet. He received the best surgery as soon as he was brought here and placed in my hands by the educated Oneida, Skenedonk." "I was not near the lodge," said my father. "I was down the lake, fishing." "I have bled him once, and shall bleed him again; though the rock did that pretty effectually. But these strapping young creatures need frequent blood-letting." The chief gave him no thanks, and I myself resolved to knock the little doctor down, if he came near me with a knife. "In the absence of Count de Chaumont, Thomas," he proceeded, "I may direct you to go and knock on the cook's door, and ask for something to eat before you go home." "I stay here," responded my father. "There is not the slightest need of anybody's watching beside the lad to-night. I was about to retire when you were permitted to enter. He is sleeping like an infant." "He belongs to me," the chief said. Doctor Chantry jumped at the chief in rage. "For God's sake, shut up and go about your business!" It was like one of the little dogs in our camp snapping at the patriarch of them all, and recoiling from a growl. My father's hand was on his hunting knife; but he grunted and said nothing. Doctor Chantry himself withdrew from the room and left the Indian in possession. Weak as I was I felt my insides quake with laughter. My very first observation of the whimsical being tickled me with a kind of foreknowledge of all his weak fretfulness. My father sat down on the floor at the foot of my couch, where the wax light threw his shadow, exaggerating its unmoving profile. I noticed one of the chairs he disdained as useless; though when eating or drinking with white men he sat at table with them. The chair I saw was one that I faintly recognized, as furniture of some previous experience, slim legged, gracefully curved, and brocaded. Brocaded was the word. I studied it until I fell asleep.