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[Illustration: Elsin Grey.]



_The_

RECKONING



BY

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

AUTHOR OF "CARDIGAN," "THE MAID-AT-ARMS," "THE KING IN YELLOW," ETC.



NEW YORK
A. WESSELS COMPANY
1907


Copyright, 1905, by
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

_Published September, 1905_

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N.Y.




PREFACE


The author's intention is to treat, in a series of four or five
romances, that part of the war for independence which particularly
affected the great landed families of northern New York: the Johnsons,
represented by Sir William, Sir John, Guy Johnson, and Colonel Claus;
the notorious Butlers, father and son; the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers,
and others.

The first romance of the series, Cardigan, was followed by the second,
The Maid-at-Arms. The third in order is not completed. The fourth is the
present volume.

As Cardigan pretended to portray life on the baronial estate of Sir
William Johnson, the first uneasiness concerning the coming trouble, the
first discordant note struck in the harmonious councils of the Long
House, so, in The Maid-at-Arms, which followed in order, the author
attempted to paint a patroon family disturbed by the approaching rumble
of battle. That romance dealt with the first serious split in the
Iroquois Confederacy; it showed the Long House shattered though not
fallen; the demoralization and final flight of the great landed families
who remained loyal to the British Crown; and it struck the key-note to
the future attitude of the Iroquois toward the patriots of the
frontier--revenge for their losses at the battle of Oriskany--and ended
with the march of the militia and Continental troops on Saratoga.

The third romance, as yet incomplete and unpublished, deals with the
war-path and those who followed it, led by the landed gentry of Tryon
County, and ends with the first solid blow delivered at the Long House,
and the terrible punishment of the Great Confederacy.

The present romance, the fourth in chronological order, picks up the
thread at that point.

The author is not conscious of having taken any liberties with history
in preparing a framework of facts for a mantle of romance.

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.

NEW YORK, _May 26, 1904_.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                PAGE

   I.--THE SPY                                            1

  II.--THE HOUSEHOLD                                     24

 III.--THE COQ D'OR                                      44

  IV.--SUNSET AND DARK                                   67

   V.--THE ARTILLERY BALL                                97

  VI.--A NIGHT AND A MORNING                            127

 VII.--THE BLUE FOX                                     164

VIII.--DESTINY                                          188

  IX.--INTO THE NORTH                                   212

   X.--SERMONS IN STONES                                239

  XI.--THE TEST                                         266

 XII.--THENDARA                                         289

XIII.--THENDARA NO MORE                                 313

 XIV.--THE BATTLE OF JOHNSTOWN                          336

  XV.--BUTLER'S FORD                                    366




TO MY FRIEND

J. HAMBLEN SEARS

WHOSE UNSELFISH FRIENDSHIP AND SOUND ADVICE

I ACKNOWLEDGE IN THIS

DEDICATION




    I

    _His muscle to the ax and plow,
    His calm eye to the rifle sight,
    Or at his country's beck and bow,
    Setting the fiery cross alight,
    Or, in the city's pageantry,
    Serving the Cause in secrecy,--
    Behold him now, haranguing kings
    While through the shallow court there rings
    The light laugh of the courtezan;
    This the New Yorker, this the Man!_


    II

    _Standing upon his blackened land,
    He saw the flames mount up to God,
    He saw the death tracks in the sand,
    And the dead children on the sod,
    He saw the half-charred door, unbarred,
    The dying hound he left on guard,
    And that still thing he once had wed
    Sprawled on the threshold dripping red:
    Dry-eyed he primed his rifle pan;
    This the New Yorker, this the Man!_


    III

    He plowed the graveyard of his dead
    And sowed the grain to feed a host;
    In silent lands untenanted
    Save by the Sachems' painted ghost
    He set the ensign of the sun;
    A thousand axes rang as one
    In the black forest's falling roar,
    And through the glade the plowshare tore
    Like God's own blade in Freedom's van;
    This the New Yorker, and the Man!

R. W. C.




PROLOGUE

ECHOES OF YESTERDAY


His Excellency's system of intelligence in the City of New York I never
pretended to comprehend. That I was one of many agents I could have no
doubt; yet as long as I remained there I never knew but three or four
established spies with residence in town. Although I had no illusions
concerning Mr. Gaine and his "Gazette," at intervals I violently
suspected Mr. Rivington of friendliness to us, and this in spite of his
Tory newspaper and the fierce broadsides he fired at rebels and
rebellion. But I must confess that in my long and amiable acquaintance
with the gentleman he never, by word or hint or inference, so much as
by the quiver of an eyelash, corroborated my suspicion, and to this day
I do not know whether or not Mr. Rivington furnished secret information
to his Excellency while publicly in print he raged and sneered.

Itinerant spies were always in the city in spite of the deadly watch
kept up by regular and partizan, and sometimes they bore messages for
me, the words "Pro Gloria" establishing their credentials as well as
mine. They entered the city in all guises and under all pretexts, some
as refugees, some as traitors, some wearing the uniform of Tory
partizan corps, others attired as tradesmen, farmers, fishermen, and
often bearing passes, too, though where they contrived to find passes I
never understood.

It was a time of sullenness and quick suspicion; few were free from
doubt, but of those few I made one--until that day when my enemy
arrived--but of that in its place, for now I mean to say a word about
this city that I love--that we all love, understanding how alone she
stood in seven years' chains, yet dauntless, dangerous, and defiant.

For upon New York fell the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment of
God fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town
in cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote the
powder-ship, the _Morning Star_, where she swung at her moorings off
from Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder that
shook the shoreward houses into ruins.

I think that, take it all in all, New York met and withstood every
separate horror that war can bring, save actual assault and sack.
Greater hardships fell to the lot of no other city in America, for we
lost more than a half of our population, more than a fourth of the city
by the two great fires. Want, with the rich, meant famine for the poor
and sad privation for the well-to-do; smallpox and typhus swept us;
commerce by water died, and slowly our loneliness became a maddening
isolation, when his Excellency flung out his blue dragoons to the very
edges of the river there at Harlem Bridge.

I often think it strange that New York town remained so loyal to the
cause, for loyalty to the king was inherent among the better classes.
Many had vast estates, farms, acres on acres of game parks, and lived
like the landed gentry of old England. Yet, save for the DeLanceys, the
Crugers, their kinsmen, the Fannings, kin to the Tryons, Frederick
Rhinelander, the Waltons, and others too tedious to mention, the
gentlemen who had the most to lose through friendliness to the cause of
liberty, chose to espouse that cause.

As for the British residents there, they remained in blameless loyalty
to their King, and I, for one, have never said one word to cast a doubt
upon the purity of their sentiments.

But with all this, knowing what must come, no other city in America so
gaily set forth upon the road to ruin as did patriotic New York. And
from that dreadful hour when, through the cannon smoke on Brooklyn
Heights, she beheld the ghastly face of ruin leering at her across the
foggy water--from that heart-breaking hour when the British drums
rolled from the east, and the tall war-ships covered themselves with
sm