The Oneida did not know. It came through an agent in New York. "You are ten years older than I am. You must remember very well when I was born." "How can that be?" answered Skenedonk. "Nobody in the tribe knows when you were born." "Are children not like the young of other creatures? Where did I come from?" "You came to the tribe with a man, and Chief Williams adopted you." "Did you see the man?" "No. I was on the other side of the ocean, in France." "Who saw him?" "None of our people. But it is very well known. If you had noticed anything you would have heard the story long ago." What Skenedonk said was true. I asked him, bewildered--"Why did I never notice anything?" The Oneida tapped his bald head. "When I saw you first you were not the big fellow with speaking eyes that you are to-day. You would sit from sunrise to sunset, looking straight ahead of you and never moving except when food was put in your hand. As you grew older the children dragged you among them to play. You learned to fish, and hunt, and swim; and knew us, and began to talk our language. Now at last you are fully roused, and are going to learn the knowledge there is in books." I asked Skenedonk how he himself had liked books, and he shook his head, smiling. They were good for white men, very good. An Indian had little use for them. He could read and write and cast accounts. When he made his great journey to the far country, what interested him most was the behavior of the people. We did not go into the subject of his travels at that time, for I began to wonder who was going to teach me books, and heard with surprise that it was Doctor Chantry. "But I struck him with the little knife that springs out of a box." Skenedonk assured me that Doctor Chantry thought nothing of it, and there was no wound but a scratch. He looked on me as his pupil. He knew all kinds of books. Evidently Doctor Chantry liked me from the moment I showed fight. His Anglo-Saxon blood was stirred. He received me from Skenedonk, who shook my hand and wished me well, before paddling away. De Chaumont's house was full as a hive around the three sides of its flowered court. A ball was in preparation, and all the guests had arrived. Avoiding these gentry we mounted stairs toward the roof, and came into a burst of splendor. As far as the eye could see through square east and west windows, unbroken forests stretched to the end of the world, or Lake George wound, sown thick with islands, ranging in size from mere rocks supporting a tree, to wooded acres.