“It is a natural path for him:  he will go to his own.  I stayed and talked with De Chaumont, and I bring you an offer.  De Chaumont will take Lazarre into his house, and have him taught all that a white boy should know.  You will pay the cost.  If you don’t, De Chaumont will look into this annuity of which you give no account.”

“I have never been asked to give account.  Could Lazarre learn anything?  The priest has sat over him.  He had food and clothing like my own.”

“That is true.  But he is changed.  Marianne will let him go.”

“The strange boy may go,” said my mother.  “But none of my own children shall leave us to be educated.”

I got up and went into the cabin.  All three knew I had heard, and they waited in silence while I approached my mother and put my hands on her shoulders.  There was no tenderness between us, but she had fostered me.  The small dark eyes in her copper face, and her shapeless body, were associated with winters and summers stretching to a vanishing point.

“Mother,” I said, “is it true that I am not your son?”

She made no answer.

“Is it true that the chief is not my father?”

She made no answer.

“Who sends money to be spent on me every year?”

Still she made no answer.

“If I am not your son, whose son am I?”

In the silence I turned to Skenedonk.

“Isn’t my name Lazarre Williams, Skenedonk?”

“You are called Lazarre Williams.”

“A woman told me last night that it was not my name.  Everyone denies me.  No one owns me and tells whose child I am.  Wasn’t I born at St. Regis?”

“If you were, there is no record of your birth on the register.  The chief’s other children have their births recorded.”

I turned to my father.  The desolation of being cut off and left with nothing but the guesses of strangers overcame me.  I sobbed so the hoarse choke echoed in the cabin.  Skenedonk opened his arms, and my father and mother let me lean on the Oneida’s shoulder.

I have thought since that they resented with stoical pain his taking their white son from them.  They both stood severely reserved, passively loosening the filial bond.

All the business of life was suspended, as when there is death in the lodge.  Skenedonk and I sat down together on a bunk.

“Lazarre,” my father spoke, “do you want to be educated?”

The things we pine for in this world are often thrust upon us in a way to choke us.  I had tramped miles, storming for the privileges that had made George Croghan what he was.  Fate instantly picked me up from unendurable conditions to set me down where I could grow, and I squirmed with recoil from the shock.

I felt crowded over the edge of a cliff and about to drop into a valley of rainbows.

“Do you want to live in De Chaumont’s house and learn his ways?”

My father and mother had been silent when I questioned them.  It was my turn to be silent.