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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The third romance, as yet incomplete and unpublished, deals with the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