I fired a few shots into their rifle-smoke, then lay watching and waiting, and listening ever for the loud explosion of my Indian's piece, which would mean that the painted Tories and the Mohawks were stealing upon us from the mainland. Every twenty minutes or so the men in the batteau-skiff let off a rifle shot at Summer House, and the powder-cloud rising among the dead weeds, pinxters, and button-ball bushes, discovered the location of their craft. Sometimes, as I say, I took a shot at the smoke; but time was the essence of my contract, and God knows it contented me to stand siege whilst Penelope and Nick, with waggon and cattle, were plodding westward toward Mayfield. * * * * * About four o'clock in the afternoon I was hungry and went to get me a piece in the pantry. Then I took Yellow Leaf's place whilst he descended to appease his hunger. We ate our bread and meat together on the roof, our rifles lying cocked across our knees. "Brother," said I, munching away, "if, indeed, you be, as they say, a tree-eater, and live on bark and buds when there is no game to kill, then I think your stomach suffers nothing by such diet, for I want no better comrade in a pinch, and shall always be ready to bear witness to your bravery and fidelity." He continued to eat in silence, scraping away at his hot soupaan with a pewter spoon. After he had licked both spoon and pannikin as clean as a cat licks a saucer, he pulled a piece of jerked deer meat in two and gravely chewed the morsel, his small, brilliant eyes ever roving from the water to the mainland. Presently, without looking at me, he said quietly: "When I was only a poor hunter of the Montagnais, I said to myself, 'I am a man, yet hardly one.'[23] I learned that a Saguenay was a real man when my brother told me. [Footnote 23: Kon-kwe-ha. Literally, "I am a little of a real man."] "My brother cleared my eyes and wiped away the ancient mist of tears. I looked; and lo! I found that I was a real man. I was made like other men and not like a beast to be kicked at and stoned and driven with sticks flung at me in the forest." "The Yellow Leaf is a warrior," I said. "The Oneida Anowara[24] bear witness to scalps taken in battle by the Yellow Leaf. Tahioni, the Wolf, took no more." [Footnote 24: "Tortoise," or Noble Clan.] "Ni-ha-ron-ta-kowa,"[25] said the Saguenay proudly, "onkwe honwe![26] Yet it was my _white_ brother who cleared my eyes of mist. Therefore, let him give me a new name--a warrior's name--meaning that my vision is now clear." [Footnote 25: He is an Oneida.] [Footnote 26: "A real man," in Canienga dialect. The Saguenay's Iroquois is mixed and imperfect.]