Dorothy and I walked side by side, like two champions in amiable confab
before a friendly battle, intimately aloof from the gaping crowd which
follows on the flanks of all true greatness.

Out across the deep-green meadow we marched, the others trailing on
either side with eager advice to me, or chattering of contests past,
when Walter Butler and Brant--he who is now war-chief of the loyal
Mohawks--cast hatchets for a silver girdle, which Brant wears still; and
the patroon, and Sir John, and all the great folk from Guy Park were
here a-betting on the Mohawk, which, they say, so angered Walter Butler
that he lost the contest. And that day dated the silent enmity between
Brant and Butler, which never healed.

This I gathered amid all their chit-chat while we stood under the
willows near the spring, watching Ruyven pace the distance from the post
back across the greensward towards us.

Then, making his heel-mark in the grass, he took a green willow wand and
set it, all feathered, in the turf.

"Is it fair for Dorothy to cast her own hatchet?" asked Harry.

"Give me Ruyven's," she said, half vexed. Aught that touched her sense
of fairness sent a quick flame of anger to her cheeks which I admired.

"Keep your own hatchet, cousin," I said; "you may have need of it."

"Give me Ruyven's hatchet," she repeated, with a stamp of her foot which
Ruyven hastened to respect. Then she turned to me, pink with defiance: