The Montagnais straightened his body and threw back his narrow, dangerous head. "Haih!" he said. "I hear my brother's voice coming to me through the forests! Very far away beyond the mountains I hear the panther-cry of the Mengwe! My axe is bright! I am in my paint. Koué! I go!" * * * * * He left within the hour; and I had become attached to the wild rover of the Saguenay, and missed him the more, perhaps, because of my own sore heart which beat so impotently within my idle body. That Herkimer had taken him disconcerted and discouraged me; but there was a more bitter blow in store for a young soldier of no experience in discipline or in the slow habit of military procedure; for, judge of my wrath when one rainy day in August comes Nick Stoner to me in a new uniform of the line, saying that Colonel Livingston's regiment lacked musicians, and he had thought it best to transfer and to 'list and not let opportunity go a-glimmering. "My God, Jack," says he, "you can not blame me very well, for my father is drafted to the same regiment, and my brother John is a drummer in it. It is a marching regiment and certain to fight, for there be three Livingstons commanding of it, and who knows what old Herkimer can do with his militia, or what the militia themselves can do?" "You are perfectly right, Nick," said I in a mortified voice. "I am not envious; no! only it wounds me to feel I am so utterly forgotten, and my application for transfer unnoticed." Nick took leave of us that night, sobered not at all by the imminence of battle, for he danced around my chamber in Burke's Inn, a-playing upon his fife and capering so that Penelope was like to suffocate with laughter, though inclined to seriousness. We supped all together in my chamber as we had so often gathered at Summer House, but if I were inclined to gloomy brooding, and if Penelope seemed concerned at parting with a comrade, Nick permitted no sad reflexions to disturb us whom he was leaving behind. He made us drink a very devilish flip-cup, which he had devised in the tap-room below with Jimmy Burke's aid, and which filled our young noddles with a gaiety not natural. He sang and offered toasts, and played on his fife and capered until we were breathless with mirth. Also, he took from his new knapsack a penny broadside,--witty, but like most broadsides of the kind, somewhat broad,--which he had for thrippence of a pedlar, the same being a parody on the Danbury Broadside; and this he read aloud to us, bursting with laughter, while standing upon his chair at table to recite it: THE EXPEDITION TO JOHNSTOWN[32] (In search of provisions) Scene--New York City (_Enter_ General Sir Wm. Howe and Mrs. ----, preceded by Fame in cap and bells, flourishing a bladder.) _Fame_ (speaks)