RQYAL AMERICANS 
 
 M ART H ALLOCF^FOOTE 
 

 
J)all0dt Joote 
 
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 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
THE ROYAL 
 AMERICANS 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY HALLOCK FOOTE 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 be flrticrsiDc 
 
 1910 
 
COPYRIGHT, IpIO, BY MARY HALLOCK FOOTK 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published April IQIO 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 1 
 
 BOOK II 
 THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 53 
 
 BOOK III 
 CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 119 
 
 BOOK IV 
 THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 207 
 
 BOOK V 
 THE WINE IS DRUNK ............ 2G9 
 
 BOOK VI 
 MEN OF THE GRANTS 291 
 
 BOOK VII 
 
 " THE LIGHT LIES ON THE FARTHER HILLS " . 361 
 
 Mi891i 
 
BOOK I 
 
 A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 
 
THE ROYAL AMERICANS-,:. 
 
 CHAPTER L ?;....:: 
 
 AT Fort Ontario, owing to the sojourn there of a young 
 English lady, wife of an officer of the Regular troops 
 attached to the garrison, a new-born infant was added to 
 the impedimenta of war, on a certain anxious night of 
 midsummer, 1756. 
 
 Concerning this date, colonial history says that at mid 
 night of August the twelfth, Montcalm, having closed the 
 harbor and cut off relief by land, opened his trenches on 
 the little log-walled fort, first to fall of the British out 
 posts at the mouth of the Oswego. 
 
 If the subaltern s baby had been a royal heir, expected 
 by a nation, no more drums would have rolled or soldiers 
 mustered or cannon noised its arrival. Indeed, the wise 
 ones said that event had been measurably hastened by 
 the summons of the enemy s guns. But Lieutenant Yelver- 
 ton remarked that his prompt little daughter evidently 
 knew she had no time for parleying with existence, if she 
 would be born under her country s flag before it struck 
 to the French. 
 
 As love had fetched her there, so love was waiting with 
 both hands to cherish her first needs. None of those unnatu 
 ral sounds of the night assailed the flower-soft ears pressed 
 to the silky head in its swan-skin coverings. But the mother 
 lay and listened to the pounding of the guns, and watched 
 
THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 the shapes of men in the torchlight rushing past her win 
 dow, and forbore to ask for the one she wanted, not to 
 divide a king s officer from his duty when it needed him 
 raotft. It had been .one of her resolves never to hamper 
 Kim by heY jSresenW there, more than nature s necessities 
 
 Her own* work* "was- done and well done, they assured 
 her. (Who " they " might have been, in a place like that, 
 we can only imagine !) Joanna Gourlie, her worthy Scotch 
 maid, said that " seeven pund an a bittie for a female 
 was nane sae ill." Had it been a man-child more would 
 naturally have been expected. So, the mother might listen 
 and wait, and rest if she could. It was not in his power who 
 had brought her there to give her rest, now not if her 
 life depended on it. There could be no truce from those 
 shattering guns, while powder and ball were left to put in 
 them. 
 
 But by sunset of the following day, the silence came 
 which meant surrender. The lady had her rest. From Fort 
 Oswego brave Colonel Mercer who had but one day more 
 to live signaled Ontario s garrison to spike its empty 
 cannon and retire across the river into the shelter of his 
 own walls. 
 
 This movement was performed after dark, in great silence 
 and secrecy. " Not a man was lost," only, the young 
 mother had died in her litter as they lifted her out of the 
 bateau. 
 
 We leave it to the period to account for delicate English 
 dames in such places on the eve of a great war in which 
 savages were the fearful weapon used on both sides. There 
 were an hundred and twenty of the " gentle ones," as Deer- 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 
 
 slayer calls them (and doubtless some were gentle), among 
 the prisoners, when Oswego surrendered, two days later, 
 to Montcalm. 
 
 This count included the women of both garrisons and 
 perhaps children, among them the babe of Lieutenant 
 Yelverton in Joanna s faithful arms. The mother where 
 they buried her, and how, who knows ? She left her spirit, 
 her capacity for life and love, and her blood of the ancient 
 franklins, to this child of the Western Wilderness. 
 
 Beautiful the New World clothed in the light of Eden 
 must have dawned on these adventurous children who took 
 such proud risks for the sake of being together ! But their 
 happiness was short, and for one at least it may have been 
 hurt a little since she had married her lover under her 
 father s displeasure and run away with him to America. 
 Those extraordinary, willful old fathers were beloved, it 
 seems. They were alive at all events, and life and strong 
 wills and huge affections prone to anger are apt to go to 
 gether in this world. And when her child was born in the 
 heat of that August night, in a log hut shaken by cannon, 
 did the young mother, as she drifted away from her pain 
 and her confused sense of the world around her, pass in 
 dreams of the home she was never to see again: the old, 
 cool, great-roomed house, in an old walled garden where 
 nightingales sang and roses perfumed the moonlight on 
 the silent paths, or stealing into the waters of a moat that 
 reflected her beams in the time of the Edwards ? 
 
 For that sluggish trickle beneath ancestral walls, a dry 
 ditch dug by soldiers and defended by cannon ; for roses 
 and moonlight, the fire-arrows sudden blossom on the dark 
 and the ring of gun-flashes against the woods where Mont- 
 
THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 calm s batteries were speaking ; for songs of nightingales, 
 the roar of the Frenchman s guns and the dreadful sala- 
 quois, the death-whoop of his savages swarming at the 
 gunners backs. 
 
 Such contrasts life and love will continue to afford their 
 eager participants, and poets will sing to the end of 
 days : 
 
 " Come ! let us make love deathless, thou and I, 
 Seeing that our footing on this earth is brief." 
 
 When Mr. Edmund Yelverton, within a few hours, be 
 came a father, a widower, and a prisoner of war, he had less 
 than four-and-twenty years to back these rapid experi 
 ences ; and his wife was an infant in law when she died. 
 There remained a girl-baby in the arms of a sunburned 
 young Scotch woman, who, as it happened, would have 
 died or done anything else required of her except forsake 
 that unmilitary bundle she carried out of the fort on the 
 night of the evacuation. 
 
 Here comes into the story a misty if not mythical figure 
 who belongs in it solely on the word of Joanna. No one 
 else concerned, except the unconscious babe, ever saw him, 
 and Joanna could pronounce no more of his name or 
 names in a manner to be recognized than that he was a 
 Lieutenant and a Chevalier " Honory" ; the main fact 
 about him being that he could bring unusual things to 
 pass, either through personal magnetism or interest with 
 higher powers. 
 
 But first he breaks into the tale by saving her silly 
 bundle from the clutch of an Huron war-chief who was 
 about to do what might have been expected one of 
 those moments which Frenchmen and English as well, 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 
 
 when they bound themselves to these terrible allies, always 
 thought they could avert, but seldom did. 
 
 In this case the chevalier was not too late ; but he was 
 forced to bargain with his horrid confederate for the inno 
 cent trophy on such terms as alliances with savages neces 
 sitate. We leave the details of this transaction to Joanna, 
 who told them unfalteringly "to her dying day." Some of 
 them she may have borrowed unconsciously in the course 
 of many retellings. The air was full of such incidents, all 
 very much alike, as savages are, and not easily overdrawn. 
 
 She went too far, however, in claiming to have witnessed 
 anything resembling a massacre on the night of August 14. 
 The English mind became distorted by what was done a 
 year later, with no extenuation, at Fort William Henry. 
 No such wholesale atrocities can be set against Montcalm s 
 great name in connection with the fall of Oswego. But if 
 no English prisoners were murdered, how could the young 
 Lieutenant Honore have purchased an Englishman s scalp 
 " fresh" to exchange for the English babe ? (Joanna must 
 answer for this ! ) And why does history tell us that Mont- 
 calm gave the order to fire on his Indian friends, if they 
 were doing nothing to warrant so extraordinary and dan 
 gerous a step ! 
 
 It is certain that great gentleness and chivalry were 
 shown in her case : for, while the military prisoners were 
 sent north to Montreal to be exchanged, a confused mass 
 of persons, sick and wounded and non-combatants, who 
 incumbered the boats, were turned back at Fort Frontenac, 
 our intrepid Joanna being amongst them. Had she remained 
 with them undistinguished, great suffering would have 
 been hers, and the babe very likely must have died. But 
 
8 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 her gallant deliverer had not forgotten to complete his 
 work. Through his instrumentality a nurse was procured 
 for the scarce breathing infant a woman of the Caugh- 
 nawagas, the " praying Indians " from the Jesuit colony 
 on the St. Lawrence. Thence, invested with a white flag, 
 with boatmen who were guides and a priest bearing a billet 
 from the Sieur de Montcalm himself, the subaltern s baby 
 went down river, borne as it were on the palms of the 
 hands of its enemies, to the great carrying-place where 
 General Webb had arrived too late to save Oswego, 
 or anything else, himself excepted. 
 
 From here the way is open. We are among our friends 
 of the Long House. At Albany the St. Lawrence woman 
 goes back with the priest, enriched for life according to 
 savage needs, which was done in Yelverton s name by a 
 brother officer at Fort Frederick to Joanna s peculiar 
 wrath, who always maintained that both woman and priest 
 were spies and paid by the French already. 
 
 Colonel Philip Schuyler of the Flats, son of the renowned 
 Quider, remembered well the young lieutenant and his 
 bride, who had dined at his house on the river highway of 
 the armies. Madam Schuyler, in her prime, was too great 
 a personage to need here more than the mention of her 
 name to account for the young father s instant thought of 
 her in his extremity. (What kind and motherly advice she 
 had given his sweet girl, taking her apart, after the fine 
 dinner her husband gave to the officers of the new battalion 
 marching north to their wild little outpost !) She never 
 would have questioned a claim of this nature on personal 
 grounds, but recognized it as one of the simple human 
 exigencies of those cruel times. 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 
 
 The loss of Oswego, moreover, was a blow felt all down 
 the Hudson in every hamlet and farm, for with it fell the 
 last barrier between them and the French, save Fort John 
 son and the wavering tribes Sir William might be able 
 to influence. 
 
 To the Flats, then, Joanna found her way with the babe 
 of war. Her instructions were to learn from Madam Schuy- 
 ler if possible some means of communicating with one 
 Adrian Deyo, a Calvinist minister of Huguenot descent, 
 who had married in his student days abroad, Catherine 
 Yelverton, our lieutenant s second cousin, the one woman 
 in the colonies on whom he could base a claim in blood to 
 succor his waif babe. These persons he knew to be in fair 
 circumstances, the dominie s father having been one of 
 twelve patentees, called the Duzine of Nieu Palz, who settled 
 some fifty years earlier a rich tract of land on some creek or 
 "kill" inland and west of the Hudson. But the distance 
 of this village from the Flats, whether north or south, Mr. 
 Yelverton knew no more than any young Englishman 
 knew of the " Dutch " settlements up the river. Everything 
 the English had not themselves planted in the Province 
 they renamed was " Dutch " to them. 
 
 The Schuylers were as hospitable to the clergy as to the 
 army. Probably Madam had entertained every dominie 
 of note the classis of Amsterdam had sent out since she 
 became mistress of the Flats. She set Joanna forth in all 
 possible comfort on the last stage of her journey, which 
 ended in a cart-track following blazed trees to the little 
 Dutch-Palatine village on the Wallkill. 
 
 The babe so thrust upon him, Dominie Deyo does not 
 mention in his journal of that year until the day he held 
 
10 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 her at the font, when " there was born anew of water and 
 the Holy Ghost, Catherine Honoree, Infant daughter of 
 Lieut. Yelverton, my wife s cousin, restrained at Mont 
 real a prisoner of war whom God protect : being, the 
 said C. H. (so named for her mother and in memory of her 
 unknown deliverer) the first child of English parents bap 
 tized in the Church called by its founders, 1683, 1 eglise de 
 Nouveau Palatinat." 
 
 The infant s " witnesses " were Catherine Deyo and 
 Madam Schuyler, by proxy ; and on the side of male re 
 sponsibility, another stranger, Madam s house-chaplain, 
 sent with gifts for the occasion and charged to bring back 
 news of the babe, which she had better means of forward 
 ing to its father than our friends at the WaUkill. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 DOMINIE Deyo stood at his front gate, looking up the 
 village street. At the bridge it made a sharp turn ; his view 
 in that direction was stopped by a wall of forest, a part of 
 the original wilderness of his father s time. 
 
 He was dressed plainly as usual, wearing his own iron- 
 gray hair without powder, yet his appearance bore out a 
 general air of expecting company, emphasized by silk stock 
 ings and a remarkably fluted set of ruffles, which looked as 
 if fresh from the iron. In the kitchen-end of the house there 
 was running to and fro, rather more of a stir than the ap 
 proach of supper-time ordinarily would warrant. A little 
 black boy plucking pigeons in the wood-shed, clad in a 
 large apron, rubbed the down from his nostrils and tried 
 to hear what the women inside were saying. 
 
 Mis Honory not come home yet (Tob knew that of 
 course), and school out this hour and more. And Cap 
 tain Yelverton s orderly had ridden ahead to announce 
 him, and had gone back to Hoornbeck s tavern to get 
 beds for himself and two privates and the captain s man, 
 and stabling for their horses. The captain was out on a 
 "detail" what was a detail? And his little daughter, 
 whom he had not seen since two years, " kytin awa wi 
 yon Bassy Dunbar ! Sic a business ! " Mrs. Joanna washed 
 her hands of it. In her opinion that roving jockey was no 
 more a Dunbar than he was a prince. Names were easy 
 palmed off in a country full of Dutch bodies that called a 
 babe s witness at the font a peet-tante ! 
 
12 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 This of course was Joanna s jealousy of an acquaintance 
 sanctioned by the higher powers, against her judgment and 
 advice. Tob knew that also ; if he had n t his young eyes 
 would have been opened by Gulie the cook, a lady of his 
 own color, not always pleasant to live with but an ally in 
 the main against one who read the law to them both and 
 spared not the letter. 
 
 Three years ago the house lost its own, a sweeter, mis 
 tress : the dominie s beloved Catherine, who gave a 
 mother s love to the babe the " Great War " sent them, till 
 God took her, in the fifth year of that trust and the twelfth 
 of their marriage. She had prayed for a child of her own, 
 and the inscrutable answer to that prayer lay on her cold 
 breast and was buried with her. 
 
 The name was put away in the shrinking freshness of 
 that grief. Tentatively, while the household tried the new 
 name on its several tongues, the dominie s ward became 
 Honoree. Joanna in decency submitted, but she complained 
 of the change, when otherwise irritated. It had the effect 
 upon her nerves of the last straw. " A sair come-doon for 
 the puir lassiekie, to be ca d by a man s name and a French 
 man at that ! " 
 
 " She comes, dominie. They are here already," a neigh 
 bor trotted up-street to say. " The father has her up be 
 fore him on his horse. She is smiling, see ? She sits like 
 a trooper. I believe you, he will hold her tight now he has 
 got her once more again ! " 
 
 It was but half a mile as the village ran following the 
 bend of the creek, from Hoornbeck s tavern at one end to 
 the dominie s house at the other. Honoree s ride was a short 
 one, but a marvelous stroke of joy while it lasted. Her 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 13 
 
 father had overtaken her on the bridge, and said he was 
 her father, and put out his hand and the toe of his boot. 
 Bassy Dunbar had given her a hoist and fixed the pistol- 
 holster so it should not jam her knee. There was not much 
 room in front. The captain s arm tightened strong about 
 her she could feel him breathe and the horse s withers 
 twitch. Of course Bassy had to be left behind. A great 
 sunset broke out from the woods beyond the village, like 
 a burst of cheers. It splashed the road and the horse and 
 riders, and the little knots of people gathering, with flakes 
 of orange and gold. 
 
 Bassy found himself one of a group who watched, in 
 this spectacular light, the meeting at the dominie s gate. 
 
 Now the little girl is lifted down and the two men 
 grasp hands hard in silence. How pale does our dominie 
 look ! They walk up the cobbled path with the child be 
 tween them ; it is her father holds her hand. 
 
 A good vrow says, knitting her brows against the strong 
 low light : " He ought to thank God : this is the second 
 time he is back with his life and finds his child here the 
 same." 
 
 " Where would he find her but where he left her, 
 Anneke!" 
 
 " You know it is bad luck to say that. He might any 
 time find her dead already." 
 
 " More likely he might be married ! A handsome man 
 like him it is wonderful he stays single eight long years, 
 was n t it ? " 
 
 Anneke eyed her husband sharply. " I see no wonder in 
 that. But what is a man when God has taken away his 
 wife ! Did you see how he was powdered, as if he was 
 
14 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 going to sup with the Governor and Council ? What fool 
 ishness is that! An hour wasted when he might have 
 been hugging his child." 
 
 " The orderly told him she was not come at the house. 
 He says this captain takes always a man with him to 
 curl his hair and clean his boots." 
 
 "If he knew his duty that orderly would not talk so 
 much," said Bassy, the English boy, turning red. 
 
 The captain s servant clattered by, on his way back to 
 the tavern, leading his master s horse. The western woods 
 had put out their lights of welcome. At the dominie s, 
 doors were shut and windows beamed with candles. There 
 was nothing more to see, but plenty more to talk over in 
 one s own house before bedtime. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 BY the fire, after supper, Captain Yelverton lifted his 
 daughter to his kriee. He held her a little one side, the 
 better to scan her features, with shocks of memory at a 
 likeness he sees growing there. He bends down to ask 
 what it is we whisper ? 
 
 She fingers the bullion on his high-collared neck and 
 repeats, " Are you come to take us with you this time, 
 papa?" 
 
 The emphasis means that last year word was sent to 
 prepare her for a quick journey with her father and Joanna, 
 back to England home, the captain would have said. 
 Then all went blurred in rumors of war. Pontiac s Con 
 spiracy had broken out. The captain s leave was peremp 
 torily revoked. He passed out of their safe and simple 
 lives into a confused drama of wilderness warfare that 
 duel to the death between Red man and White, in which 
 the two races at times became one in ferocity, and the 
 virgin continent they strove for was the scene of deeds 
 which even the historian nowadays veils in fine print, in 
 his footnotes and appendices. 
 
 After the 51st regiment was disbanded, Yelverton had 
 obtained a company in the 60th Royal Americans. He was 
 on a pressing errand from his colonel to General Gage, 
 who had sent him with further instructions to Albany, 
 pending arrangements for a great summer campaign; 
 Bradstreet cooperating on the Lakes with Bouquet clean- 
 ing up the border westward from Carlisle. 
 
16 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 His words on public matters went over the child s head 
 while she renewed her acquaintance with her father s per 
 son ; from his strong, soft hands, slightly hairy below the 
 middle joint, half hid in lace that flowed out of a great 
 gold-braided cuff, to the solid curves of his lips and the 
 " fighting chin " which shared with a high-bridged nose 
 the honors of the profile. Add a warm blue eye, with cor 
 ners full of sweetness. 
 
 He was considered one of the finest officers in the colo 
 nial service at the time. A pretty lady told his daughter 
 so, a few months later. 
 
 In a voice that she knew was meant for her, he said he 
 had stopped in the village, where his fellow had shaved 
 him that he might kiss his little girl. He did so, once 
 more carefully, as if not used to the ceremony on so 
 small a scale. To her guardian he commented on the free 
 dom every one spoke of who was lately come from Eng 
 land, in the manners both of men and women of the highest 
 fashion. 
 
 " I am not sure but you are preserving over here better 
 samples in your colonial society of what an English lady 
 used to be. T is amazing how the point of view changes 
 when you are the father of a girl. But for a few worldly 
 reasons, I should be inclined to keep her here make 
 her a little Colonial, first and last. How think you, sir ? " 
 
 The dominie believed in not shirking any portion of 
 one s natural inheritance. " Character can be formed only 
 through manifold tests. Some she will encounter here, but 
 not all, nor perhaps the most searching." 
 
 Captain Yelverton answered nothing to this. He passed 
 the back of one finger over the soft cheek nearest him. 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 17 
 
 "And so you call her Honoree my little English 
 Catherine ! Strangely the fates have handled thee ! Born 
 in the American wilderness ; captured by the French ; saved 
 by a Frenchman a good one, God bless him ! Suckled 
 by a savage ; aided by the Dutch ; sheltered and trained 
 and cherished, must I take off my hat again to France, 
 dominie ? or do you call yourself " 
 
 " I am a son of the Protestant religion and a loyal sub 
 ject of King George," the dominie answered quietly. 
 
 Both men were smiling. They exchanged the warmest 
 glances. 
 
 " We must not forget Joanna s large share in this con- 
 comity of nations," said the elder. 
 
 " Have no fear, sir ! The Scotch thistle will find means 
 to make her presence known. It is an ill weed to crowd. 
 Have you so found it, dominie ? " 
 
 " Nay, I have no complaint. Those who dwell under one 
 roof can have few disguises ; Joanna hath not been able 
 to hide that under her prickles she wears a heart." 
 
 " My little one tells me she was up in a tree in the 
 hanging wood and saw her father s red coat down the road 
 and came running to see the soldiers. She was not 
 climbing trees, or playing with big boys when I saw 
 her last. Have we not shaken out a reef in our disci 
 pline? - 
 
 " I think we are the better for it," the dominie replied. 
 " Our good Joan was right. She had need to be more with 
 other children." 
 
 " Do you call that strapping lad who was with her a 
 child?" 
 
 " Bassy Dunbar may be perhaps thirteen. I do not know 
 
18 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 that his age is against him as company for a child. I think 
 he has a good clean mind." 
 
 " What persons of sorts have you around you here ? " 
 the captain inquired somewhat restively. 
 
 " We are of many sorts, my dear captain, chiefly re 
 markable to ourselves and our neighbors." 
 
 The captain smiled. But after his little girl was gone 
 to bed, he recurred with evident intention to the subject 
 of her friendships. " Dunbar," he said, " is a good name 
 in some parts of the world. Has this 4 Bassy anything by 
 chance that belongs to it? " 
 
 " He has himself," the dominie replied, " and a father 
 who answers indifferently to the title still, Isaac might 
 be worse. He might have been like his own father ! " 
 
 " You don t appear to lay much stress on blood in the 
 rising generation ? " 
 
 " But, my dear sir, it takes more than one kind of blood 
 to make a generation. Bassy s male progenitors have abun 
 dantly served the purpose of warnings. The examples come 
 down in the female line." 
 
 " I thought you had been all Dutch and Palatine and 
 Huguenot, in this valley ? " 
 
 " Our decalogue-breakers are more often English," the 
 dominie twinkled. " Nor is the Greathead grant in the 
 valley. T is difficult to say where it is, or is not ! The 
 present incumbent will not let the parchment out of her 
 hands ; the old records are in New York. It was a gift 
 of Charles the Second to a Major Greathead, for some 
 such service as may buy the love of kings. The major 
 fought under Cromwell : it may have been the reward of 
 a turncoat." 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 19 
 
 " There was a Greathead who sold out his non-conform 
 ist friends in the Farnley Wood Plot. That I believe is 
 history. But I thought we were speaking of Dunbars ? " 
 
 " Dunbar was the maiden name of Bassy s grandmother. 
 Jeremy Greathead gave her his, in marriage ; but as he had 
 given it to another woman before her, the gift did not hold 
 in law." 
 
 " 4 1 said in my haste all men are liars, " the captain 
 interposed with some flippancy. 
 
 " Jeremy truly had no difficulty that way. It was not, 
 though, his peculiar vice. He had others that led up to it. 
 Jerry was a sort of home-made pirate when he came over 
 here to subdue his father s lands. He married as he drank 
 wine or ate his dinner. The woman desired a ceremony of 
 some sort. He gave her her wish, and it happened to be 
 legal. It never incommoded him. He went back to England 
 on a visit, about the beginning of Queen Anne. There, in 
 his native village of Morley , he saw this goodly maid not half 
 his years Rose Dunbar. He married her, in his way ; 
 perhaps it was meant to be a better way this time, but the 
 result was the same for her. He brought her over here 
 to live, with a paid-off household in his back lands. There 
 were two women he had to deal with. The supplanted wife 
 he had got under his thumb completely ; but her grown-up 
 daughter Alison she was his own child ! She kept her 
 part of the bargain till a son was born (Isaac, the father 
 of Bassy), and now she thought she might raise her price. 
 She paid the young mother a visit choosing her time. 
 But Rose Dunbar had no wish to buy anything. She took 
 her babe, and nothing more that was Jeremy s, and went 
 up to Albany to see Dominie Schaats. From him she learned 
 
20 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 the very truth of her position. It was said the old man, after 
 dealing her this blow, helped her to her freedom covered 
 her concealment from him who would have searched her 
 out. 
 
 " Jeremy never saw his lost ones again. He died intes 
 tate ; the unloved daughter who broke up his home stands 
 seized to-day of all he left. Stands, do I say ! Alison keeps 
 her bed these eleven years no worse afflicted, I believe, 
 than by sloth and spleen. A pair of knavish old servants 
 spread tales about her and feed her superstitious mind. 
 They make their profit out of her decline. Latterly, Isaac, 
 who calls himself the Defrauded, hangs about the place. 
 His good, brave mother would not trust him with the proofs 
 of his paternity till she was beyond Jeremy s power. He 
 has been very busy in the matter since her death. He conjec 
 tures a will cutting off Alison in favor of his mother and 
 himself. The servants have whispered him that the dame 
 lies in her great oak bed across the door of her father s 
 safe- vault, to guard what she keeps there hid." 
 
 " Does the man do nothing for a living ? Does he live 
 upon this half-sister he is trying to oust ? " 
 
 " No, no. He does many things not anything steadily. 
 At his best he traces up old boundary-marks and makes 
 surveys for Mr. Croghan, Sir William s deputy. That is 
 since the Golden Act for the better collecting of quit- 
 rents. At his poorest we have him mousing about here, 
 writing me letters to point out what quarrels shall ensue 
 on the dame s decease if she name not him as her heir. 
 He sits by her bed for hours, hoping to pluck from her 
 rambling talk some admission to support his theory. But 
 that will is an obsession. Jeremy would have put his will 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 21 
 
 in safer hands than Alison s had he made one to disinherit 
 her. To be sure, his death was sudden " 
 
 " I should think the danger of future litigation might 
 be real enough." 
 
 " It is. There are no greater nuisances in settling up a 
 country than these old derelict grants that lie unf ores ted, 
 to rip up later titles that are floated over them in igno 
 rance. Now I have told you a long tale about persons you 
 will never think of again " 
 
 " I leave you to do my thinking, here, sir. If you choose 
 this boy with the crooked ancestry for a squire o the 
 woods to our little maid, I shall not say nay. You know 
 him better than I can." 
 
 " Did you see anything crooked in his countenance ? " 
 
 " Not a bit. He looks you in the eye." 
 
 " / see in him " said the dominie, " that good Yorkshire 
 grandmother who made her long fight alone, with a son 
 who could have been small comfort to her. I should like 
 to see the best blood in that tough old stock have its 
 chance. Not at any better breed s expense. But I trust 
 that boy ; and I judge his influence over our little maid, 
 by her face and her words when she has been with him." 
 
 " I would not deny him his chance of so sweet a trust 
 but are there no little wenches for my baby to play at 
 dolls with?" 
 
 " Alas ! " the dominie smiled and spread his hands. 
 " Our excellent Joanna hath taken her stand on the ques 
 tion, raised by herself, whether it were meet the daughter 
 of a gentleman who holds His Majesty s commission should 
 be * evened with the daughters of the butcher, the baker, 
 -an sic like. (Thy pardon, good Joan !) The village has 
 
22 THE KOYAL AMEEICANS 
 
 heard of it. Enough! We are poor artisan-farmers, but 
 we have our pride. Are we not the seed of the Kighteous 
 the stones the old-world builders rejected ? No ; the feudal 
 idea will never take root in such soil as this. But, for the 
 present, I like well enough the coolness Joanna s pride hath 
 created. There is much gossip of a hardening kind spoke 
 here before children which only nerves well padded " 
 
 " As your Dutch goodwives pad their petticoats ? " 
 
 "Aye," the dominie assented, without smiling. "The 
 very incidents of this war " 
 
 The captain nodded quickly. After a silence, he said : 
 "You have heard what they did to poor Gordon, at Ve- 
 nango ? two days and two nights over slow fires till he 
 died ! That is their tribute to bravery." 
 
 " My God my God ! " the dominie groaned aloud. 
 "Yet how much more guilty are we according to 
 Christ s they know not what they do ! who sow our vices 
 among them, and use their natural ferocity against our own 
 brothers ! It is the unpardonable sin on both sides, to use 
 the savages in our wars. And still we pray to the same 
 God in the name of the same merciful Saviour. Thy little 
 one prays for her father, mon capitaine ; morning and 
 evening, she prays for thee. Prayers such as those are 
 not lost twixt earth and heaven. Thou shalt be spared." 
 
 " I ought to live," said the captain simply. " I owe it to 
 my motherless child. But suppose, in this big campaign 
 that will finish some of us, I should be one? It occurs to 
 me there are matters I had best acquaint you with, dom 
 inie, that you may know, if I should fall, what my child 
 will have to depend on." 
 
 The dominie s gentle gaze showed deep attention. 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 23 
 
 " My Catherine whom I lost was the only child of the 
 second Mrs. Gentrey, who died before the old squire. She 
 brought him the Holte property; and she left it equally 
 between his daughter, Sophia, her step-child, and her own 
 flesh and blood. The entail of Littledene is restricted to 
 male heirs, and Squire Gentrey was bereaved of his sons. 
 The estate s incomes are not large, but he managed to 
 save decent portions for his two daughters before he was 
 through with it. When he lost his last son, his hope 
 centred in Catherine. She was the beauty, the one whose 
 age might suit with a marriage to the heir, his nephew, 
 who was a young widower with a child not likely to grow 
 up. But she met me. To part on the eve of a campaign 
 in America was like death to us both. You know the step 
 we took. 
 
 " Her father made bitter haste to change his will, and 
 died, almost the next day, of heart disease complicated 
 with wrath. Sophia Gentrey has half of the Holte property 
 from my wife s mother. She has her own and my wife s 
 portion also from their father. She ought to do something 
 for little Catherine. She ought surely to will back to her 
 her own mother s patrimony, that was left away from her 
 by my fault. My wife was under age when she died. Her 
 half of the Holte estate was then in the hands of her trus 
 tees, and so remains, tied up, in England, for my little girl. 
 By the terms of her grandmother s will, a small allowance, 
 about ninety pounds, comes to her yearly ; which I have 
 never touched. It is in three per cent bank annuities, and 
 Sir William Baker has the management. I will empower 
 you to draw it for her use ; and, if I fall, t will pay her 
 expenses over to England to her Aunt Sophia. 
 
24 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " You have my worldly reasons now for sending her. 
 The child has lain on her aunt s conscience, I infer, since 
 she appears to have less affection for her than is natural. 
 I know no better way to increase her love than to give her 
 the care of the child personally. The more she does for her 
 the more she will incline to do. Sophia is not a mean-hearted 
 woman. 
 
 " I m a poor dog of a younger son ; but if I see this 
 war out, that will end my fighting. I shall settle on a slice 
 of bounty land over here and raise beef and cabbages. 
 But that will be when, as your learned Dr. Smith says, 
 4 The doors of the temple of Janus are closed once more 
 in this western world. " 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ONE hot July morning, during school vacation, Honoree 
 was taken up behind her cousin, riding pillion on her scar 
 let cushion, old Didymus broad haunches working be 
 neath her. 
 
 They were bound for the wood-lots, formerly held in 
 commonalty but now to be divided, on the business of 
 fencing the dominie s portion, and were as far on their 
 road as a certain watering-trough near the upper gate of a 
 property known as Quaker Meadows ; Jonathan Havergal, 
 the owner, being one of the very few Friends settled so 
 far up the Hudson. 
 
 The home-lot was on the south slope of a lovely valley 
 lighted by tall poplars filled with sunshine, that lazy 
 steaming midsummer morning. A slow rustle in their tops 
 showed the air in motion, though every other leaf was still ; 
 the sumach and alder bushes loaded with dust and the 
 roadside cedars dun with it. 
 
 Amidst the shimmering of the poplars could be seen 
 the roofs and chimneys of a comfortable, gray home 
 stead. 
 
 It was so still, a dog could be heard barking down in 
 that valley ; he barked incessantly. The cause of his pro 
 longed irritation showed itself presently: a horseman 
 climbing the hill, who would lately have passed the house 
 gate. He was a fat man, a heavy load for the small sorrel 
 pony that carried him, her heaving sides glossy with 
 sweat. At her tail trotted a meaner sort of person, judg- 
 
26 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 ing by his soiled blue cottonade frock, and coon-skin cap 
 in midsummer, which caused his face to run streams. 
 
 On the hilltop both men paused to wrestle with the 
 pony, who had bolted for the farm gate, refusing to pass it. 
 
 Her rider cast his weight on her bit, sawing her mouth 
 cruelly, while the other belabored her with his goad. The 
 pretty creature at this seemed to go quite wild. A cloud 
 of dust arose, amidst which she whirled and plunged, till 
 he that had been basting her suddenly found himself laid 
 flat by her heels with a foolish grin on his astonished 
 features. 
 
 The dominie dismounted, setting Honoree upon the 
 ground, and leaving Didymus, his dripping nose poised 
 wonderingly above the watering-trough. To the large per 
 son on horseback he addressed himself politely, though 
 with a certain smiling condescension. 
 
 " Diedrich, I think you go the wrong way to work with 
 that filly. She makes ready to throw herself. If you be 
 underneath t will go hard with a man of your size." 
 
 Honoree had been watching a brace of lads come run 
 ning toward the gate through the stubble-fields, neck and 
 neck. The taller drew ahead, flung himself over the gate, 
 and stood up before the dominie, a man in height, but with 
 a simple, almost childlike face. His paleness and heaving 
 chest showed excitement, yet his voice was kept under. 
 
 " Friend, may I call thy attention ? This pony was 
 my father s not an hour ago. Now she is taken by the 
 town ; but shall the sheriff abuse her ? She is not his. If 
 she is to be sold, he is hurting her value by such treat 
 ment." 
 
 " You say well, my son. Your father is Jonathan Hav- 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 27 
 
 ergal ? He is a kind man to his creatures. Better get down, 
 sheriff, while the little vixen is quiet. See, how she knows 
 the right touch ! " 
 
 The younger boy had come up by this, and stood at the 
 pony s head stroking her with hands that trembled. His 
 face showed heat and fury. Honoree looked at him with 
 wonder at his great beauty, for such faces were not often 
 seen in that community. 
 
 " Better get down, Diedrich, while you are able to man 
 age it," the dominie urged, very cheerful. 
 
 " Yes," Diedrich panted, wiping his huge countenance. 
 " Once I am down, how then shall I come up again ? It is 
 best we look ahead a little." 
 
 " It may not be necessary," the dominie encouraged him, 
 "if you found a purchaser who would save you the 
 trouble." 
 
 "Here? Now? You will buy her yourself, dominie? I 
 heard that you was wanting a pad with proper furniture, 
 for the use of a " 
 
 " Tell me : who has a lien upon the beast? By what pro 
 cess of law is she seized?" 
 
 " For taxes, dominie. She will to-morrow be sold after 
 milking time in front of Hoornbeck s tavern. If you like 
 to bespeak her, I will have it known, at the price you give. 
 I think there will not be so many bidders." 
 
 " I shall not be one, if you fight with her to town ! Be 
 assured of that. What can you say for her, lads? Is she 
 kind?" 
 
 " If she be not crossed," David Havergal replied. " She 
 is pure-bred Narragansett. My brother Simeon broke her 
 to bridle. She hath not pulled in harness. But my father 
 
28 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 is not selling her. If he were, he would not teach her 
 meanness first." 
 
 " The law, I understand, is selling her. Now, could I 
 be told," said the dominie, " what hold the law can have 
 upon her, the property of a neighbor who pays his dues to 
 all men?" 
 
 " Not his tax for the army, dominie," the schout inter 
 posed. " He has four big sons loping about his bowerie and 
 two are fit for militia, but his conscience is against war ; 
 and our Council leaves none of those loopholes which the 
 Quakers crawl through, I am told, in the Pennsylvania 
 Assembly, when they vote on war supplies. They pay 
 money, as they say, for the King s use, and it goes for 
 fighting ; but they think maybe they do not know that ; or 
 they pay for buying wheat and corn and other grains 
 for the troops ; those other grains being fine and black, 
 namely gunpowder. Times being what they are, I see the 
 difficulty of those Quakers. They have joined themselves 
 to their peace principles and set them above human lives 
 yes, even little childs and women " 
 
 "I think the law need not complain," spoke up the elder 
 Havergal. " Last year they took one of our Cots wolds, a 
 thoroughbred ram from England, worth five times what 
 any other man of my father s acres had to pay." 
 
 " The costs are something, dominie." The sheriff ig 
 nored the younger speaker. " They must be taken from the 
 price. The Quaker will have it so. His conscience is an 
 expense to him; I would not deny it." 
 
 " Could we leave my father s conscience, now, and let 
 us get to the pony, if this person wants to buy her ? " 
 
 It was the younger boy, who looked not more than 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 29 
 
 fourteen, who spoke in this manner, alluding to Dominie 
 Deyo. 
 
 The dominie smiled his amusement. These Quaker lads 
 entertained him vastly ; and he recognized in Francis the 
 age when shyness with boys of character takes the form of 
 surliness. 
 
 " If I bid on her, I will bid precisely five pounds less 
 to-morrow, Diedrich, if you ride the beast to town." 
 
 " And if I do not ride her," Diedrich pondered, " how 
 then do I get to town?" 
 
 " How did you get to town last year when you levied on 
 the sheep? " 
 
 David s hand went up to his mouth. Francis covered 
 his face and shuddered with laughter. Honoree had less 
 sense and laughed aloud. It was a critical moment, with 
 the sheriff s dignity in the balance. 
 
 " This is compounding," he grumbled. " Five pounds 
 less if I ride her ! what for a scheme is that ? To make me 
 walk on my feet to town. I am a heavy man. Well, I buy 
 her myself. Five pounds will pay tax and costs. I pay five 
 pounds for her to pull a dump-cart." 
 
 " And rob thy neighbor, Diedrich ? I will treble your 
 bid, to-morrow, if you keep off her back to-day. The differ 
 ence, when the law is satisfied, belongs to the owner." 
 
 " He has a right to forfeit some things for his stubborn 
 ness, dominie." 
 
 " That would be a fine, not a collection. Our Council 
 does not punish law-abiding citizens for their religious prin 
 ciples. We do not persecute the Quakers." 
 
 The set, young faces of the Quaker lads softened at this 
 generous protest from one of the " hireling ministry." 
 
30 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " I am honest, dominie, but I am not a fool. No man 
 not a dunderhead would lead a riding beast and carry his 
 own weight, a day like this. I would be ashamed to be 
 seen on the road." 
 
 Here David, who had kept his eyes upon the dominie, 
 was ready with an offer of a horse better suited to the 
 sheriff s weight, if he would but delay until the hay-team 
 came in at noon ; and " mother," he was sure, would be 
 pleased to have him sit to dinner with them. 
 
 This timely piece of diplomacy carried the day. The 
 Havergal boys might be satisfied that their pet had found 
 a good home. Honoree was excited but mystified and 
 when David turned to her, and said pleasantly that he 
 hoped she would ride Melissa down to visit them some day, 
 if her friends gave leave, she flushed but dared not trust 
 herself to reply. 
 
 " What do you call her, then, Melissa ? " the dominie 
 inquired, entering the parley ; " Melissa, know thy mistress ! 
 She is thine, little one. Thy father s gift, delayed these 
 many weeks by thy old cousin s prudence. But here we 
 know the whole history. Thy brother Simeon broke her," 
 the dominie turned to David smiling, " and which brother 
 hath been most her rider ? " 
 
 " My little brother Francis," said David. 
 
 Francis turned away quickly, but Honoree had caught 
 sight of his face. His sense of loss overcame him. 
 
 " Do we want to take away his pony ? " she whispered 
 to her cousin. " May we not give it him back and buy 
 another?" 
 
 " We may not spend thy father s bounty twice, but we 
 can give the pony and go without. Thy father in that case 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 31 
 
 loses his pleasure in the gift and thou the practice in rid 
 ing he desired for thee ; but we may consider of it." 
 
 "No," said David sternly, "Francis will get over it. 
 He is the youngest ; he is not used to being crossed." 
 
 Francis had turned his back to hide his features, which 
 were not under his control. But now, he faced about, angry 
 at being discussed. He looked handsomer than ever. 
 
 " 4 No cross, no crown, " said the dominie kindly. 
 " Thou art greatly privileged, my son, to be so early called 
 to a share in thy father s sacrifice. I do not agree with its 
 object, but I hold that man in honor, whatsoever he pro 
 fess, who stands ready to be a loser by his faith." 
 
 " I would rather have Melissa ; and I do not agree with 
 father, either," said Francis, fixing his eyes on the ground. 
 
 This was the spot on the sun of that day s happiness, 
 long remembered by Honoree the black drop in her 
 cup of joy. But Francis, and his loss, was a sentiment. 
 Melissa was a fact. 
 
 It was like her guardian, had Honoree but known him, 
 to ponder a thing for weeks, and thereafter in five min 
 utes reach a decision. When Joanna fretted over so hasty 
 a bargain, with the child s safety in the balance, he merely 
 said that he would take a Quaker s word, even in a horse- 
 trade. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OUK dominie took in the " Pennsylvania Gazette," but 
 carefully kept the files in his study, where often he read 
 aloud to Joanna the latest news from the stricken border. 
 Honoree could hear his voice tremble, and Joanna s sharp 
 exclamations, but if she joined them the reading ceased. 
 
 No child could be told the incidents of that war. Strong 
 men were driven mad by the deaths their friends and kin 
 dred died. They lost the power to feel as human beings 
 toward the savages. Witness the Conestoga murders ! The 
 Reverend John Elder of the little church at Paxton had 
 been in earnest correspondence with Dominie Deyo as to 
 this deed, for which his wild flock was held responsible. 
 He believed they were being condemned without a fair 
 hearing. 
 
 That the dominie took his friend s side in the argument 
 which raged through the country at this time will appear 
 by his words at his own table. 
 
 Friend Havergal had stopped to dinner after a morning 
 in the dominie s study on a matter of private business. 
 Whatever its nature it was not alluded to at table ; but 
 Friend Havergal seemed depressed. The untoward topic 
 came up ; and he spoke with bitterness, the facts being of 
 the kind that need no pressing home. Perhaps he did not 
 observe the little girl listener. 
 
 Honoree had never heard of the Conestoga murders. 
 She was spared the full force of his allusions. But had 
 a cannon gone off outside the window she could not have 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 33 
 
 been more astounded than by her gentle cousin s reply, 
 It was Presbyterian against Quaker ; even with the broad 
 est minds, such differences counted on the side of prejudice. 
 
 " You Quakers can forgive a red man the sins of his 
 nature, but not a white man crazed by the agonies he 
 has seen his loved ones suffer, both those that died and 
 those that could not die ! Yet these men who take the 
 brunt of the Indian raids are very near sons of the 
 Wild, themselves, by training and necessity. Call them 
 fanatics say they took land not open to settlement. God 
 knows they are paying the price. Others who point at 
 their bloody hands will reap without scruple where those 
 hands have sown. The best of them it is known are men 
 of mark : moral in their lives, religious, clean, and brave 
 as lions. But mad, driven beside themselves by deeds that 
 would shame the fiends in hell ! 
 
 " Was it not the act of madmen, sending a wagon-load 
 of their dead through the streets of Philadelphia, to con 
 vince the reluctant sight of those who would deny the 
 truth of the Indian atrocities ? who bought guns fast 
 enough when they imagined that their own comfortable 
 homes were threatened, but served out only sermons to 
 the Presbyterians fighting for their lives on the border ! " 
 
 Friend Havergal listened with lips set. He raised his 
 eyes eyes like his son David s, full of blue fire. He 
 spoke amid a silence of deepest sensation. 
 
 " Has any heathen savage done a worse thing than mur 
 der a camp-mate sleeping the man who lies down by his 
 side in the woods alone ? Or put a bullet in his back follow 
 ing his steps on a peaceful trail? So it hath been done to 
 a friendly Indian by a white trader, more than once since 
 
34 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 our Christian goverments have set a price on scalps equal 
 to a year s labor at the plough. Have not young men 
 styling themselves Ministers of the Gospel of Christ gone 
 out on these murder-parties ? In defense of English homes, 
 I hear thee say. Have not the savages homes, which we 
 cheat them out of, robbing friend and foe alike ? And is 
 thee aware that within this year it was proposed, and the 
 plan approved by Sir Jeffrey Amherst, to send in blan 
 kets infected with smallpox to be distributed among the 
 Indian villages ? Is this life so much to a Christian be 
 liever that he would preserve it at the price of such acts 
 as these? 
 
 " There be ways, as our own people have shown, for 
 savage and Christian to divide the wilderness. We have 
 weak brothers amongst us, as there are brutal men with 
 you ; but history hath not shown the Friends to have been 
 cowards. Anxiety for the flesh, and prejudice, and unchari- 
 tableness is not my faith, more than ferocity and drunken 
 ness and cheating is thine ! If the holy experiment is to 
 be judged by its failures, were it not well that some of you 
 look to your own ? " 
 
 " There is a large beam in mine own eye, at this moment, 
 my dear sir," the dominie responded instantly, with his old 
 serenity and cheer. " Consider that I cast it out ! Woe to 
 that man who having set meat before a friend shall rob 
 him of digestion ! " 
 
 " Nay, nay. This subject is more than meat, and a little 
 warmth in a good cause need make no man s belly proud. 
 I move with thee, however, that speech be discontinued 
 between us for the present, but let our views be exchanged 
 on paper, if thee will take so much pains. When I can get 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 35 
 
 my facts together and set them in order, I will enter my 
 arguments for thy leisure consideration, if thee will do the 
 same for mine. I think we stand for about the best that is 
 meant on both sides." 
 
 " Agreed," the dominie replied ; " but let us not go 
 astray on the main contention between us, which is not one 
 of Christian theory. Peace is the end and Charity the hope, 
 with us as with you. War exists as death and disease exist. 
 We cut off a man s leg that the man may not die. We do 
 not advocate the knife, nor let the man die because gan 
 grene is sinful and we wash our hands of it." 
 
 " This is anticipating the feast," said Friend Havergal 
 smiling ; " silence before meat is our way of approaching the 
 gifts of our Maker ; and surely the table where souls com 
 mune and minds wrestle for the truth is set by the Holy 
 Spirit. I look forward to a plenteous repast." 
 
 The dominie smiled and stretched his glass across the 
 table. " To our better understanding with the blessing 
 of God ! 
 
 " And yet," he added quaintly, setting down his empty 
 glass, " the longer you make the legs of a triangle the 
 farther they stand apart. I was young and now am old, yet 
 never have I seen that Quaker whom Presbyterian argu 
 ments had moved a hair s breadth from his contention, nor 
 that Presbyterian who hath owned himself convinced " 
 
 " Halt there, my friend ! As to that Presbyterian, thee 
 has the more to learn. We, the people called in scorn 
 Quakers, have come out of the bondage where ye abide. 
 We are born of fathers who can remember praying and 
 singing in your churches ; praying very likely for the ar 
 mies of the king. 4 Slay me these people these children 
 
36 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 of Moab ! We prayed even as others, till our minds were 
 opened. A tree does not grow towards its root." 
 
 " We are branches of the same tree, and growth shall 
 be denied to none that seek the Light, nor will God quench 
 one of us. Let us praise him for that one great root, the 
 church of the Protestant martyrs. Fair and goodly is our 
 heritage." 
 
 The dominie extended his white hand as the two men 
 rose from the table. Friend Havergal grasped it in his that 
 was horny and brown. 
 
 " You, the Quakers, are the fighters, if we come to it ! 
 You will be beaten never ! except by yourselves. The 
 best argument we have for war is that the great days of 
 every sect are its fighting days." 
 
 " Thy argument is an argument for poverty and perse 
 cution and suffering, as the hotbed of great souls, and such 
 souls make history for the faiths of men. In the sense that 
 to receive a blow is better than to give one, I agree as to 
 thy fighting." 
 
 Quotations from the correspondence that ensued were 
 frequent in the dominie s journal of that winter. Towards 
 spring, as the evenings grew shorter and farm work in 
 creased, the discussion appears to have languished. 
 
 But it left a " concern " on Friend Havergal s retentive 
 mind, brooding in solitude, that ripened into a fixed and 
 vital purpose, fraught with trial to one of his sons. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN the summer of 63 Madam Schuyler had sent for 
 her godchild to visit her at the Flats, which invitation 
 included Joanna, who thought she could not be spared 
 but was much upholden by the remembrance. 
 
 The dominie made ready to accompany his ward, when 
 news came that the house so rich in family association 
 and famed for its hospitality, in a summer s hour was 
 burned to the ground ; Madam seated on the lawn calmly 
 watching the destruction of her home and giving direc 
 tions to her servants which of its treasures first to save. 
 Spring saw Madam settled in Albany, but the invita 
 tion was not renewed. And now this autumn, two years 
 later, brought the lost opportunity within reach again, 
 and again it fell short of fulfillment. 
 
 On the very day Madam Schuyler s letter was read 
 with such proud excitement, Honoree "came down" with 
 the measles, and before she was well enough to have made 
 so considerable a journey, inclement weather set in. 
 
 Her father comforted her, saying that a visit in the 
 spring would be altogether more joyous and memorable. 
 He could not explain she would " see when the time 
 came." So hope re-tricked her beams once more, and 
 visions of the great visit beguiled the long winter s wait 
 ing- 
 There was the more time for dreaming, that the little 
 dreamer was not sent to school, her eyes not being strong 
 since her sickness, Joanna told her. She had daily lessons 
 
38 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 in her cousin s study, lessons that were talks. (Ah, how the 
 cousin could talk, when they were by themselves, and snow 
 came down and silenced the fields and whitened the lijrht 
 
 O 
 
 outside !) The dominie wondered that his solitary pupil 
 should seem so content. She never spoke of her big boy- 
 playmate, who appeared to have gone out of her mind com 
 pletely. Honoree thought of Bassy often, but not to miss 
 him ; he had no part in her home life except in the dreams. 
 She asked no news of him, she did not ask about the 
 sledding or the skating, or the frozen nests in the hanging 
 wood, where he and she had hunted birds eggs last spring. 
 All would be there still when life began once more. 
 
 But one afternoon, in the study s quiet, her thoughts 
 came to the surface : 
 
 "I wonder who it was Joanna let in one night when I 
 was sick? Somebody who came in here, and she ran up 
 and shut my door." 
 
 " Did not Joanna tell thee ? " 
 
 " No, cousin, she put me off. Now why did she ? I 
 guessed it was Bassy Dunbar. But she would not say " 
 
 " To spare thee a disappointment in not seeing him, it 
 may be." 
 
 " Would he have catched the measles of me ? " 
 
 " That was not thought of. Thou wert too ill to have 
 seen any one, my littlest." 
 
 " But Joanna might have said it was he. I could have 
 sent a message. Is he gone back to school yet? " 
 
 " He went yes. But he will not return for some time 
 it is possible. He goes a journey to see his father." 
 
 Honoree waited for these statements to clear themselves. 
 
 " He has gone to Fort Johnson, which is nearest of the 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 39 
 
 forts that keep us safe down here. He goes to find Mr. 
 Croghan s whereabouts, the surest way, he thinks, to find 
 his father." 
 
 " Does he not know himself where his father is? " 
 
 " It appears not but in a general way." 
 
 " I wonder what has happened ? " Honoree said to her 
 self, aloud. 
 
 The dominie felt for his snuff-box, sprung the lid open 
 and shut again several times. He trotted one foot on the 
 sanded floor. The gritty sound always gave Honoree 
 shivers. 
 
 44 Bassy thinks it no longer possible to endure what he 
 meets with here at school and in the village. 4 Madam 
 Wind hath been busy finding a place to put her foot in. 
 Thou knowest that lady s tricks ! She hath blown upon a 
 spark till it runs a flame, saying evil things of Bassy s 
 father. It is hard for the boy here alone. So he goes to 
 seek that father they malign perhaps to ask him to right 
 himself. He comes to me for the best way to approach that 
 great man, Sir William Johnson who is always kind, 
 but was far from great in one way of speaking when I 
 knew him first. I assured our Bassy, though he did not ask, 
 that I believe nothing of these stories that run about." 
 
 44 Could my cousin tell me what Madam Wind has 
 been saying? " 
 
 44 Surely : but it would not be worth thy while to re 
 member." 
 
 44 1 need not remember, but I wish I knew." 
 
 44 Thou hast heard mention of a Goody Greathead who 
 lives in a lonesome spot and never leaves her bed ? She 
 has suffered a loss of some papers and money, that were 
 
40 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 kept in a bricked vault entered through her bedroom. Some 
 persons or person had digged a passage underground and 
 picked a hole up through the floor. T was thought too clever 
 a trick for any common sneak thief. Who could have done 
 this ? it is asked. We ask the next person, who may have 
 heard some other say that Bassy s father has been seen about 
 the place. He is an ingenious man and knows more about 
 the dame s earth-cellar and other earthly things of hers 
 than any save herself. Madam Wind is listening : Woof ! 
 it goes, like ashes in a draft. We are smothered, we forget 
 who said it, or what it was that we heard, but we repeat it 
 and add what we cannot remember. Little folk catch it 
 from their elders, and when it gets to the playground a 
 small boy can cry Son of a Thief and escape a thrashing, 
 for Bassy does not fight with little boys. He spanks them 
 in rows and drops them over the fence, and they gather 
 and stone him. And next, the Foolish, he marches in to 
 Master Geddes and to him he says: 
 
 " 4 Do you think there is the son of a thief in this school, 
 sir? 
 
 " And the master hesitates. Bassy demands of him, yes 
 or no, and gets for answer that Master Geddes has pity for 
 him does not blame him. 
 
 " * Because my father is a thief? Is that why you pity 
 me, sir ? Take back your pity, and this with it ! and be 
 glad that you will see me here no more ! 
 
 " And he smites him on either ear, as he explains, for 
 listening to lies, and on the mouth for spreading them. 
 
 " It is but just to say in thy friend s defense that he 
 had proof the master had so done. But;" the dominie 
 raised his shoulders slightly, " when the wine is spilt, of 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 41 
 
 what use to recork the bottle I^Bassy will go to school no 
 more. Neither thou, my child to that school. For where 
 they let in Madam Wind, folk who would keep their eyes 
 and mouths clear of the smother she raises were best out 
 side. 
 
 " Now, there s for Madam Wind ! and I pray thee 
 have no commerce with that person, nor ever repeat about 
 another what thou wouldst not have said about thyself, or 
 any whom thou lovest." 
 
 A blankness fell on the days to come. They were to 
 have done such things together, she and Bassy. The winter 
 sports they had never shared ! How much would be wasted 
 now! 
 
 Neither did she understand Bassy s turning his back 
 on the talkers, running away from them, jeered by Madam 
 Wind, who seemed to point a pliant finger and flirt her 
 blowing mantle. 
 
 " If they called thee a thief, my cousin," said Honoree, 
 " I wonder if I should care ? " 
 
 "Truly, I wonder ! " said the cousin, looking at her curi 
 ously. 
 
 " It would be like saying * it rains when the sun was 
 shining! That person would be laughed at." 
 
 " I have lived many years in this place, cherie, and my 
 best of fathers before me. Bassy s father is little known, 
 and much talked about by inferior persons. The servants 
 of Goody Greathead will have owed him a grudge. His 
 visits disturbed their plans. These tales having their source 
 in the house that was robbed, it gives them some color to 
 begin with. I would not say our neighbors talk more than 
 others." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 COLONEL BRADSTREET S good work of that summer 
 ended with the relief of Detroit. Afterward, he was lured 
 into premature treaty-making, for which he lacked authority, 
 with emissaries of the Shawanoes and Delawares who 
 turned out to be a blind. In September he lay sulking at 
 Sandusky, idle and furious under a reprimand from Gen 
 eral Gage ; and Bouquet, failing to get any assistance out 
 of him, finished the campaign and practically the war 
 alone. 
 
 In the meadows on the Muskingum, chiefs of three 
 nations assembled to hear his terms. It was in November 
 the peace-belts were exchanged, and on this occasion about 
 two hundred white captives were delivered to their friends : 
 for this was the sternly insisted on demand for which the 
 whole country blessed the hero of Bushy Run. 
 
 Captain Yelverton s description of this event was shared 
 in the family circle, servants included. Every word was 
 fire to his little girl s imagination. She forgot her own 
 self-centred dreams, and went about the house seeing a 
 real country filled with living men deciding the fate of a 
 doomed people. The great plateau; the roof of boughs 
 where her father sat with Colonel Bouquet and his officers 
 to receive the sullen war-chiefs ; the meadows stretched in 
 sunlight where the army was drawn up ; all the uniforms 
 of all the battalions : the tartans of the 42d Highlanders, 
 the scarlet of the Grenadiers and of the 60th Royal Amer- 
 cans (she gloried in that name, for her father s sake), 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 43 
 
 the Virginians in their picturesque hunting-dress, the 
 soberer colors of the Pennsylvania Provincials ; and com 
 ing from the woods opposite, taking the centre of the 
 stage, the stately sachems and war-chiefs, " looking neither 
 to the right hand nor the left " not deigning, under the 
 eyes of the enemy, to notice his display of strength with 
 the silent threat it conveyed. 
 
 After Turtle Heart of the Delawares had spoken, chiefs 
 of the other tribes went through the ceremony of concur 
 rence, each laying at the commander s feet a wampum belt 
 and a bundle of small sticks, to signify the number of 
 prisoners he pledged his tribe to surrender. 
 
 These, by Colonel Bouquet s demand, were to include 
 " Englishmen, Frenchmen, women and children, those 
 adopted into your tribes, married, or living amongst you 
 under any denomination or pretext whatsoever." 
 
 What a reckoning of grief and tears ! Fathers, brothers, 
 husbands, relatives acting for those too far away or too 
 poor to leave their homes, traveled to meet the army. A 
 passion of sympathy went out to them on the way with 
 offers of money and food and homes for the unclaimed 
 among the captives. Hardly a frontier family but had borne 
 its share through friends if not members, in some tragedy 
 of the Indian wars. 
 
 No man could look on with keener emotion than Cap 
 tain Yelverton, at the heartbreaking estrangements, the 
 still more shocking recognitions of these scenes, when the 
 forest gave up its dead. But for the mercy of God and the 
 careless kindness of a young French boy, he himself had 
 been one of these haggard fathers seeking in vain, or 
 dreading what he might find. 
 
44 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 In a group of older youths and girls, brought in like 
 wild animals tied to prevent their escape, some few there 
 were whom no one claimed ; who knew not their former 
 names ; whom long captivity had deadened of every mem 
 ory or association by which their past could be traced. 
 These were to be provided for by the provincial authorities 
 or the charity of individuals. 
 
 Among them there was one young girl, observed of all 
 for some distinction aside from beauty, disguised as she 
 was by her savage adornments. It might have been her 
 age she appeared about thirteen. A few years would 
 decide the future of her womanhood, and the poor child 
 was nobly made. She had come from some tribe farther 
 west, the interpreter explained ; she was an accident, a 
 freak of fate among these prisoners, who were mainly of 
 the Virginia and Pennsylvania borders. 
 
 Captain Yelverton spoke a few simple words to her in 
 French. Her face brightened. She laid a finger on her lip 
 and shook her head, to signify she could not answer him, 
 then touched her ears and her forehead, nodding to show 
 that she understood the sounds. 
 
 " And in the funniest little crooning voice," he wrote, 
 " smiling as if vastly pleased with herself, she started the 
 tune, if you could call it a tune, of C etait un vigneron. I 
 have heard our canoe- men chant it by the hour. The 
 words were of no language, a child s jumble of half-remem 
 bered sounds. It was altogether, considering her earnestness 
 and pleasure in the performance, a touching experiment, 
 And here I set up my claim ! 
 
 " A French Catholic saved my own babe, a French Prot 
 estant is giving her a noble training. Therefore, in grati- 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 45 
 
 tude to God who puts mercy into the hearts of men without 
 distinction of race or religion, I lay my thank-offering at 
 the feet of France. 
 
 " For one of these, the poorest surely of God s poor, 
 cut off from the past, with no future that owns them, 
 neither of the savages nor of us one of these I knew 
 must belong to me. Whatever portion of my means she may 
 require, I devote to this child of my protection ; and as I 
 shall do by her, may God so do unto my child also ; and 
 whether she be good or evil, I will stand by her as my own 
 flesh and blood." 
 
 ( The dominie s voice failed him ; Joanna s tears fell 
 quietly, thinking of old griefs ; yet they had not dried their 
 eyes before each had begun secretly to fear the outcome of 
 this good soldier s vow. Heart and soul they were with 
 him in taking it, but how was he to carry it out ! 
 
 In the next letter, written on the homeward march, the 
 captain s new responsibility was already become a problem. 
 
 " I may have to legally adopt this child," he wrote, " and 
 give her my name to save her from an anomalous position. 
 For one of her age and ignorance, it would be the more 
 perilous that she hath the promise of much beauty. Every 
 one remarks it now that she is rid of her Indian finery, 
 and her hair & skin cleansed of grease. I am fearful she 
 will be compromised by this dangerous gift, unless she be 
 placed where it shall command respect. Two young men of 
 the Virginia Provincials have spoke to her of marriage ; 
 one of them is following her still, and I would be loth to 
 say what might be said of the conduct of more than one 
 of our own officers towards her; one I could name, with 
 daughters in England older than she. You know what we 
 
46 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 are ! I may have to call out some of these gay old fellows 
 yet. 
 
 " The Pennsylvania Assembly, the same that so harassed 
 us with its unnatural obstinacy, our colonel calls it, hath 
 passed him a vote of thanks & recommends him to the 
 King for promotion. It would not be surprising if some 
 others went up a grade or two when Bouquet sends in his 
 report. 
 
 " I am granted a few days leave after we reach Phila 
 delphia which I propose spending in New York on some 
 private business. Shall take Charlotte with me. What say 
 you to having her baptized Charlotte Sophia, after our 
 good queen ? Charlotte sounds well either in French or 
 Dutch or English. I shall put her in care of one of Mr. 
 Philip Schuyler s supercargoes and send her up to Albany 
 to the generous friend who succored my own child. Madam 
 Schuyler approves what I have done but is puzzled how I 
 am to carry on my guardianship without a wife to help me. 
 I have hinted a mother were as good ; and she has been 
 that to me. She replies that her years gain upon her ; she 
 has nieces and nephews, a great store of young relatives 
 who take up her mind ; she may not extend her vicarious 
 motherhood beyond its present scope, or in new & peculiar 
 ventures. And she disagrees with me as to the station in 
 life suited to my young charge. In her opinion it were 
 better she be given a plainer start, beginning with house 
 work and the catechism, which in my judgement would 
 drive her back to the wilderness. Madam, however, offers 
 her house as a present refuge ; what I may decide as to the 
 child s future will depend on certain matters in New York 
 which I am not now prepared to speak of. 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 47 
 
 " Have you, sir, any advice of your own to offer on this 
 question ? It is likely to be a serious one, as serious as 
 my heartfelt intention was, and is, toward this helpless 
 being." 
 
 Here was an opportunity more than hinted at for the 
 dominie to repeat his unselfish experiment in fatherhood. 
 His confidant, the journal, reveals a struggle in his mind, 
 but he did not put himself in the way of further responsi 
 bility, nor did he, it is probable, offer much advice. Like 
 Madam Schuyler, he was feeling his years. He, too, 
 would have needed a woman s help in such an undertak 
 ing, and he knew that Joanna with all her rugged virtues 
 was not fitted for the task. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN the dominie s front dooryard his Morella cherry 
 trees were parting with their "perishable crowns." For 
 over a week they had kept the feast of beauty. Now every 
 light wind drove a fairy storm of petals from the bough. 
 Flights of perfumed drift blew into the entry door, and 
 Joanna was careless of sweeping them out. She and Gulie 
 and Tob, laden with bundles, made journeys in turn from 
 the house to the chaise at the gate being packed for the 
 long drive to Rondout. Nor did Joanna forget, in doing 
 up her parcels of goodies, the fresh breezy sloop- voyage to 
 follow, up through the Middle Grounds to Albany. 
 
 Honoree took her farewells contentedly. In a few weeks 
 too few, she feared Joanna would come to fetch 
 her home from Madam Schuyler s. (She was going up in 
 care of Mistress Van Wagenen, wife of Master Van 
 Wagenen of the sloop Lorenzo Douw.) No one told her 
 that the home journey would extend itself, without stop 
 ping, from Albany to England. Captain Yelverton had 
 made up his mind, but he thought it too soon to broach a 
 plan so largely at the mercy of circumstance. The dominie 
 differed from him. Perhaps for his own sake he would 
 have liked to see what these moments might say to the 
 child in their fullest significance. 
 
 They traveled toward the river by a road unknown to 
 Honoree beyond a few of its nearest miles. (The same that 
 Joanna had carried her over, an infant in search of a home.) 
 As the strange woods closed around them, the.child became 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 49 
 
 silent ; her face had a flush and her eyes a light of rapture. 
 The good cousin drove on as silent as she, another silence 
 that was very tender of her own. If his eyes grew a trifle 
 moist at times, it might have been the wind which met 
 them freshly as rise after rise, obscured by trees, lifted 
 them out of the valley. 
 
 When they came to the first farmhouse on Stone 
 Ridge, the town of Kingston below them sparkling in the 
 westering sun, he roused and said : 
 
 " My little one will take a message from me to Madam 
 Schuyler? It is to repeat my particular thanks for her 
 kindness and pains in regard to our young friend Bassy 
 Dunbar, and to say I have the best accounts of him." 
 
 Honoree looked up quickly. " Will Bassy be in Al 
 bany?" 
 
 "Nay he is at Schuyler s Mills, a long way north of us." 
 The dominie waved his whip over toward the Catskills. 
 " Madam hath procured him a place up there under the 
 boumeister on her nephew s estate. He will learn all the 
 steps from the forest to the farm and the troubles that 
 come between. He may even, if he have the wit, find his 
 way to a mansion like Colonel Philip s new one in Al 
 bany, and a village like Schuylerville on his own lands." 
 
 But Honoree sighed over this turn in her friend s affairs. 
 When last heard from (her cousin had got a letter about 
 Christmas) Bassy and his father were setting out with 
 Mr. Croghan s peace mission, escorted by soldiers, into 
 Pontiac s very country, bearing presents to soften the 
 tribes that still held out, and to gather up certain white 
 prisoners for whom hostages were held at Fort John 
 son. 
 
50 THE ROYAL AMEEICANS 
 
 This journey had entered strongly into the dreams, nor 
 had the blank that followed caused impatience. Her cousin 
 had said they would not be " out " till spring. And now 
 Bassy had turned his back on romance and martial peace 
 missions, and was going to work like any Dutch boy, at 
 Schuyler s Mills ! 
 
 " But does n t he want to be with his father so much 
 trouble to find him, and all?" 
 
 " His father, my dear Isaac Dunbar is he is not 
 living. I did not speak of it to thee when Bassy s second 
 letter came. His death was sudden. It was in consequence 
 of a singular misadventure that befell the expedition. Thou 
 knowest what it was they started out for ? Mr. Croghan s 
 party had nothing to do with trade. Yet there were seventy 
 pack-mules in his train, and more awaiting him at Fort 
 Loudon. Presents to that amount the borderers refused to 
 believe in. They suspected that trade was beginning in 
 secret with the tribes at their back, before peace was quite 
 assured. Even they accused Mr. Croghan of an interest in 
 those goods. 
 
 " This, said they, means powder and bullets to fit 
 out Indian war-parties, to come and murder us in spring. 
 
 " These people do not stop to argue. They blacked 
 their faces and dressed themselves like savages and am 
 bushed that offending pack-train at a place called Sidling 
 Hill. 
 
 " Bassy s father had the luck, as he thought, to be one 
 of those private persons favored by Mr. Croghan. He 
 had a rich stake in goods going in to skim the cream of 
 the market before the rush began these points have a 
 significance I am unable to explain to thee, little one. 
 
A DEBT TO THE ENEMY 61 
 
 Bassy s letter told the story very well, very justly all con- 
 sidered, for a lad of his age. 
 
 " The traders were ordered to unload their stuff on that 
 wild, snow-covered steep. There was a terrible turmoil 
 of that unpacking many frightened animals plunging 
 and struggling. Bassy s father was struck down in the 
 melee " The dominie drew a breath. " He was 
 fatally injured in some way. But there was no bloodshed. 
 Every kindness was shown the dying man. The mountain 
 eers took Bassy to their homes. They gave him back his 
 father s beasts and equipage. They would have made him 
 one of their band, and the boy in his loneliness was 
 minded at first to stay and cast in his lot with them. But 
 I am glad to say he waited for advice. He carries too 
 broad a head on his shoulders to use it like the Paxton 
 men, to stop Indian bullets with. 
 
 "Now, wilt thou not forget my message to Madam 
 Schuyler? Not the first day, but some seasonable time 
 when she may recall our Bassy s name. She is a lady 
 of many benefactions. More good deeds pass out of her 
 mind from day to day than most of us can lay to our 
 credit in a lifetime." 
 
 But the dominie had lost his listener. They had climbed 
 the last ridge overlooking the river. Below them, half in 
 shadow, half in gleam, lay the bending flood. A line of 
 hills to the east borrowed along their heights the flush of 
 a spring sunset that spent its brief moment in hurried, 
 hectic splendor. A single lazy sail drifted past the gleam 
 into the night shadows inshore. 
 
 " That must be the Lorenzo making her landfall," said 
 the dominie. 
 
52 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 A voice at his elbow sighed in ecstacy, " the river, the 
 river ! Oh, cousin ! " 
 
 Eight going on nine years the little girl had lived 
 and flourished within thirty miles of it and never could say 
 she had seen the Hudson. Children in those days were 
 taught to wait. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE Lorenzo beat up against light head winds, feeling 
 her way over the shoals of the Middle Grounds, the Scylla 
 and Charybdis of the old North River sloop captains. In 
 "two ebbs and a flood" and flood- tides are weak in 
 spring, meeting the freshets of the upper Hudson she 
 tied up at her Albany berth about supper-time, as the cows 
 of the leading citizens were strolling home from pasture. 
 The city at this date was still half country ; every house 
 had its garden, well, and shade trees. The water-front was 
 lined with greenery between the shore and the long, wide 
 street that ran parallel, with wooden docks strutting out 
 on piles; the Lorenzo lay up in one of the slips between, 
 that smelled of fresh-water mud at low tide. She carried 
 a cargo of Ulster County flagstones, and hemlock bark 
 for the tanneries. A monster sturgeon lay flapping and 
 heaving on her forward deck. 
 
 On the passage up, Vrow Van Wagenen had watched 
 the little girl studying this big fish by the hour. She heard 
 them speak of it as " Albany beef," or so many barrels of 
 sturgeon oil. To her it was Leviathan in chains. She saw 
 nothing humorous or common or commercial in its vast, 
 slow-dying bulk. A spike as thick as an oar was thrust 
 through its jaws. Men kicked it in passing, with their 
 clumsy boots. Great fins, marvelously made as a butter 
 fly s wing, slowly fanned the monster s agony. That mighty 
 engine, its tail, swung to and fro on the planks, slippery 
 with its blood, like the rudder of an abandoned boat. 
 
56 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Once, when no one saw her, the child laid her hand 
 softly on its armor-plated side. Was there any feeling in 
 that huge, dark-stained case, fretted in patterns like an 
 Indian carving ? The life in it was so strong, yet so far 
 to reach. 
 
 " His heart is as firm as a stone ; yea, as hard as a piece 
 of the nether millstone, " she whispered. 
 
 This dying gladiator of the deep, captured between the 
 narrow hills, remained in the child s memory as the most 
 striking feature of her first journey from home. It sym 
 bolized the tragedy which is put the other way for children, 
 always, in the fairy-tales, of dumb, insuperable strength 
 turned through artifice to nothingness. 
 
 You could " draw out Leviathan with an hook." You 
 could bind him for your maidens ! You could walk past 
 " the terrible doors of his face," and thrust at them with 
 a cowhide shoe ! 
 
 When Master Van Wagenen dropped anchor in a for 
 eign port, his sloop was his hotel. The wife did not go 
 ashore that evening ; she was satisfied to see her husband 
 properly dress himself before landing to escort his little 
 passenger up to Madam Schuyler s door. Not unlikely he 
 might have a chance to enter that mansion. His purse- 
 shaped, striped cap, that dangled over one shoulder in 
 piratical fashion, was changed for a cocked beaver, his 
 watch coat and yarn hose rolled up over his knees, for a good 
 cloth suit, albeit homespun, and shoes with steel buckles. 
 
 Job Taylor, the new deck-hand, already ashore with 
 Honoree s box and parcels on a wheelbarrow, was so un 
 prepared for the transformation wifely vanity had effected 
 in the old man s familiar figure, that he took off his hat to 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 57 
 
 him respectfully as to a stranger; an inadvertence that 
 shook the deep sides of the jolly sloop-master with pump- 
 ings of inward laughter. 
 
 The wide street they were climbing showed a few lamps 
 and lights in houses, though it was but little after sunset. 
 Above this street loomed the outworks of the old fort on 
 a higher hill, and side streets ran out between lanes and 
 gardens where spring bonfires winked in the dusk through 
 a smother of pearly smoke blown along the ground. There 
 were blossoms on the orchard trees, less advanced than 
 those of the Wallkill. 
 
 Turning up a street of brick houses parallel to the river, 
 they came to high gabled fronts, and deep doorways with 
 lamps hung over them, and stoops where young people 
 sat out on the steps talking and laughing, or catching up 
 songs in chorus with other singers on neighboring stoops. 
 
 From one of these a young girl ran down the steps, stared 
 after our traveler a second, and then gave chase calling, 
 " Catherine, Catherine Yelverton, wait for me ! " 
 
 " Is Polly Watts gone crazy ? " they were asking each 
 other on the stoop. 
 
 A voice in a Dutch accent answered : " Did you hear 
 that name she was screaming ? " 
 
 Honoree had turned at the light-heeled step and rustle 
 of silks behind her ; she saw a lovely girl running into the 
 arms of the wind that tossed her buoyant petticoats about, 
 and lifted the lace cap-frills from the piled dark hair 
 dressed back from a charming, laughing face. 
 
 The little procession halted. Job wheeled his barrow 
 neatly aside as the young lady rushed past him to clasp 
 " Catherine " in her arms. 
 
58 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Hah ! did n t I know that cloak and hat though ! " was 
 her inexplicable greeting. " Have you just come ashore ? 
 and who is this with you ?" 
 
 Master Van Wagenen introduced himself, bowing 
 stoutly. 
 
 " And is this her baggage behind us ? " 
 
 " It is, lady. Job Taylor it is fetches it already. A 
 good boy, but slow. I haf him " 
 
 " Well, let him follow us, and we need not trouble you 
 the rest of the way, Master Van Wagenen. Best thanks 
 for taking such good care of her. She is with friends 
 now." 
 
 " Oh, I vas baid, I vas veil baid. Und she vas no drou- 
 bles all the time. The young lady will be some relations 
 with Madam Schuyler ? " 
 
 " You may be quite easy, Master Van Wagenen. We 
 are all relations here. Good-night to you, and a good voy 
 age home." 
 
 With a smile and nod not to be mistaken even by Mas 
 ter Van Wagenen, the imperative young lady dispensed 
 with his further company. The child, though, slipped back 
 to say her own farewell, and to be surprised and incom 
 moded by a hug which lifted her off the sidewalk. 
 
 " Ach, little one ! I hope I haf you my passenger when 
 you come down again once." 
 
 " Now we are rid of that snuffy old Dutchman, I shall 
 run back and say good-by to my hostess. Will she come 
 too ? Better not, perhaps. I can get away from them sooner 
 alone. How I want to see thee, child ! " 
 
 With a quick kiss, as though she kissed as easily as she 
 talked and laughed, this wonderful new friend ran back to 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 59 
 
 the house she had just left. Job sat down on the handle 
 of his wheelbarrow. 
 
 Could this possibly be Charlotte ? thought Honoree (or 
 "Catherine," she is to be now). That mysterious figure 
 in the future of her life, hoped for with ardent curiosity, 
 yet half-dreaded, as a stranger already occupying a larger 
 share of her own father s thoughts than seemed quite nat 
 ural. Her papa had said that Charlotte was remarked by 
 every one for her beauty. Could such a magic change 
 from savagery, in other ways, take place in six months ? 
 
 Lights broke out in the windows of the house with the 
 stoop, where Catherine heard much loud and merry " clatch- 
 ing." Her friend was not getting away so soon, after all. 
 
 Now she came, though, waving back two young gentle 
 men who seemed inclined to follow her. 
 
 " Not to-night a thousand thanks ! To-morrow, or 
 any night ! We have been a long journey ; we are tired." 
 
 "To-night it is & family party, eh?" one of the two 
 retorted, laughing. There was more laughing when they 
 rejoined the group on the steps. 
 
 " They tease me because I take possession of thy father s 
 little daughter. Now tell me who am I that assert my 
 rights in this high and mighty fashion ? " 
 
 " I cannot guess," whispered Catherine. " No one hath 
 spoke of my seeing here any one but Madam and Char 
 lotte." 
 
 " Who ? Oh, that ! WeU, I am not Charlotte nor 
 thy grandmother, sweet ! Who should it be that knew 
 that scarlet cloak and white French beaver as far as I 
 could see thee coming ? Who;** did thy father say chose 
 them for him ? " 
 
60 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " He said t was a lady that dressed in the highest taste," 
 Catherine quoted conscientiously. 
 
 " 4 A lady ! And was that all he said ?" 
 
 " I can remember no more," said Catherine. 
 
 " Well, well, here s discretion for us ! But what is thy 
 own opinion ? Behold the lady herself ! Does the fashion 
 of her please thee ? " 
 
 Catherine blushed, helplessly happy. "Perhaps my 
 papa did not know you would be here." 
 
 " Oh, he knew ! But t is all one. I knew his little Cath 
 erine, and she must know Polly Watts and learn to love 
 her, for I am one of thy father s best friends, I warn thee, 
 even though he never speaks of me. 
 
 " Here we come now to Aunt Schuyler s, and that is the 
 guard-house opposite ; and there is Caesar s black face peep 
 ing at us through the side-light." 
 
 Directly he opened the door, CaBsar, the black man in 
 livery, was given orders about Miss Yelverton s box, that 
 moment arriving per wheelbarrow. " Have it put in my 
 dressing-closet, tell Amanda." 
 
 A dark, slim young gentleman had entered the hall by 
 a door at the foot of the staircase. Excepting her father 
 in his best bravery, Catherine had seen no such fine speci 
 men of the dress and carriage belonging to the class that 
 mirrored fashion for the Colonies. Philip Schuyler was but 
 lately home from England, with the foundation of a great 
 experience and many little social hints a young man would 
 gather. At the moment, he looked like an amiable person 
 willing to be interrupted, who finds the interruption pleas- 
 anter than expected. He had a pipe between his teeth and 
 an open book in one hand. 
 
THE GKEAT ALBANY VISIT 61 
 
 Seeing Miss Watts, he removed the pipe and laid the 
 book against his heart, bowing with playfully exaggerated 
 ceremony. 
 
 " Now this I call a cheat ! To let me go out to tea and 
 not be told our distinguished traveler was coming ! Why, 
 you look as if you were all stark alone, cousin Philip ! " 
 
 " My looks do not deceive you, cousin Polly, if you leave 
 out Doctor Desauglier." 
 
 He waved the doctor s " Experimental Philosophy " at 
 the girl, who waved it back again. 
 
 " But where is everybody ! Is not Kitty with you ? " 
 
 " She is not. You have missed nothing but the learned 
 doctor and myself ; and some talk on business with Aunt 
 Schuyler. She is sleeping off the effects, like a sensible old 
 lady." 
 
 " Well ! I have brought a fine surprise for aunt. A 
 darling, a lovesome make thy best cheese to my 
 great cousin Philip Colonel Schuyler Caterina." 
 
 While Miss Polly Watts rattled away, the cousin s gaze 
 passed from her own rosy, laughing face to one rosier but 
 more shy, with dark, excited eyes lifted to his as he raised 
 the child from her deep curtsy, keeping the little hand in 
 his own. 
 
 " Is this the surprise ? a prize, I would swear ! You 
 bring her into port most handsomely, with your colors at 
 her peak. But where was she captured ? " 
 
 " On the highways of commerce, cousin Philip. In my 
 very arms I swept her up. She is mine, except she is her 
 father s Captain Yelverton and was fetched to this 
 very door in her nurse s arms, eight years how old art 
 thou, lambkin ? " 
 
62 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Nay, it was the Flats, I remember it well," said Philip 
 Schuyler. His eyes and smile betokened a recollection that 
 moved him still. 
 
 " Time has done much for the captain s little Ameri 
 can. But why is she adrift on the streets of Albany, to be 
 snatched by a free-booting Polly ? " 
 
 " Dropped here at sundown. The respectable Lorenzo 
 Douw brought her up from Rondout Landing. And / am 
 the author of those clothes ! Rondout forsooth ! Rondout 
 never saw the equal of that hat. Let us take her in to aunt. 
 Did you leave her in the dining-room ? " 
 
 " Soft yes ! The dear lady was dozing very peaceful." 
 
 Philip Schuyler was regarded by Madam quite as a son. 
 Fatherless from childhood, the Flats had been one of his 
 homes. He had married his " sweet Kitty V. R." with the 
 courage of that simple age, not when he was ready but 
 when he wanted to, and had gone on being a father and 
 making money and getting an education at home and 
 abroad. He was now an old fellow of thirty-three, looked 
 up to in rallying fashion by ambitious little cousins like 
 Miss Watts, who were eager to step out for themselves. 
 
 The charming smile he fixed upon Catherine had some 
 thing reflective in it. No doubt, after the manner of par 
 ents, he was comparing her height and color with that of 
 his Elizabeth (who was to grow up and marry Alexander 
 Hamilton), or his Margaret, who was to save her father s 
 life by her presence of mind from Tory assassins in his 
 own house. 
 
 Caesar opened a door across the hall, and stood beside 
 it while Colonel Schuyler, with his cousin on his arm, and 
 Catherine holding Polly s hand, passed in quietly. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CANDLES were burning on a mahogany lowboy against 
 the wainscot of a dark-ceiled room, but Madam s face was 
 seen more by the remaining light from a western window 
 next the chimney-piece, toward which her chair had been 
 moved from the tea-table. 
 
 Her head, in a majestic cap with a black ribbon round 
 the crown, was bent forward, her hands extended peace 
 fully on the chair-arms ; her chin was sunk in the folds 
 of a lace neckerchief crossed over her large, old woman s 
 bosom, that rested on the corresponding eminence beneath. 
 
 Catherine at first was disappointed in this revered 
 agent of so many personal destinies, to see only an elderly 
 woman with rather heavy features, whose corpulence filled 
 an armchair of the largest dimensions. But when Madam 
 raised her cap-crowned head, sighed, and opened her 
 dark, penetrating eyes with that look in them of saddened 
 power, and smiled her sovereign smile that comprehended 
 the whole group with its quiet, sustained kindness, the 
 little girl knew that this was the first great lady she had 
 ever seen. She fitted, to the eye of an artist, the peaceful, 
 dignified room, with its details of homely comfort, and 
 its rich, repressed atmosphere of the past. The row of 
 carved, high-backed chairs against the shadowy wainscot 
 belonged to the period of the portraits on the walls. Not 
 a romantic, hardly a handsome face among them, but as 
 real as the firm, hard touch of the painter could make 
 them ; men who would not have been flattered to be pret- 
 
64 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 tified ; keen, large-brained, tolerant, wise in the wisdom 
 of the world, strong in administration, sure in finance, 
 honest in diplomacy, generous in friendship, faithful to 
 family and religion. 
 
 Madam knew that she came of good stock ; her great 
 grief was that she could not help to perpetuate it in children 
 of her own. But there was her nephew Philip, as devoted 
 as a son, who had no parents of his own to be proud of him 
 in his great promise. 
 
 " Aunt Schuyler, we have brought you a little visitor. 
 Will you give her your blessing on her coming amongst 
 us?" 
 
 Philip made his speech a little long, purposely, seeing 
 that Madam s eyes were still drowsy. 
 
 " What was that sound in the street, a rumbling like a 
 gun-carriage passing ? Did I dream it ? I must have just 
 lost myself, before you came in." 
 
 " You may have heard the wheelbarrow coming up the 
 walk, with your godchild s trunk from the Landing." 
 
 " She came by the packet-sloop from Rondout, just in 
 to-night," PoUy explained further. 
 
 " My godchild ? " Madam smiled while she collected 
 herself. She was many times a godmother, and her god 
 children were in divers parts of the temporal kingdom. 
 Rondout, however, placed this one. 
 
 " Why, it must be Catherine Yelverton. Bless thy little 
 heart ! I could not remember thy face, but thou art dearly 
 welcome, child." 
 
 She gave her hand to be kissed, in a black lace mitt, 
 the finger-nails ridged and a trifle discolored with snuff, 
 if truth be told, but Catherine s reverence as she touched 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 65 
 
 it with her soft mouth was not custom. Madam could make 
 children love her with one of her smiles, and other persons, 
 occasionally, fear her with the strong look of her wonder 
 ful eyes that went with it. 
 
 " My godchild must be hungry." The same idea had 
 occurred to the black butler, who lingered for his orders, 
 smiling. " No tea, I think, to-night, my dear. A little hot 
 spiced wine will be better and a breast of chicken or a quail. 
 Are there any cold birds left, Ca3sar ? " 
 
 "And guava jelly, Caesar, and a piece of honey cake," 
 added Polly. 
 
 " And a pot of schmeer-kaase with clotted cream," put 
 in Philip joyously. 
 
 "Thou art journey-proud/ as they say," Madam re 
 marked, seeing that with all the delicious food set before 
 her on the supper-tray, with candles in tall silver candle 
 sticks on either side, lending ceremony to the feast, the child 
 was too excited to eat. She liked her silent, bright-eyed 
 little guest, and said to her nephew aside, while Polly was 
 holding her attention with caressing chatter, " I wonder 
 where she gets that type of face ? You see she does not look 
 English, and yet, she is English, root and branch." 
 
 " She is one of our choice variants. The old race-types 
 re-create themselves, transplanted on this new soil. You 
 can see it likewise in our Dutch blood." 
 
 " I see it in my nieces," said Madam. " Something in 
 this air of the West models the noses and lessens the jaw, 
 puts more light into the eyes and more nerves into our big 
 Dutch bodies. But they will not last as we have. In 
 streaks, perhaps, here and there, but they will not last." 
 
 " Other streaks will come in and strengthen them." 
 
66 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Ah, Philip, my son, thou art an American. I am an 
 old Dutchwoman." 
 
 Turning to Catherine, she said abruptly, " I am sorry 
 to hear they have made thy name into Honoree. Catherine 
 sounds much better with Yelverton. And thy mother s 
 name should not be put aside for a stranger s. We shall 
 call thee in this house Catherine. Thou wilt call me 
 Aunt, and my nephew Philip will be thy cousin Philip, 
 and this young lady " 
 
 " Aunt dear ! Must I be a young lady to her ? " Miss 
 Polly s interruption was calmly put aside. 
 
 " will be your cousin Polly. Now we shall feel at 
 home." 
 
 Catherine took a deep breath and looked at Madam 
 earnestly. 
 
 " Is Charlotte, papa s French girl, here, madam ? 
 aunt, I mean! " 
 
 " She is, but not in the house at present." 
 
 " Does Madam know what she will be, to me ? " 
 
 " Has your father given you no instructions in regard 
 to Charlotte? Dost thou understand me, my dear?" 
 
 " There was a letter from him to my cousin Adrian. 
 Part of it he did not read aloud. Perhaps the instructions 
 were in that part." 
 
 " A wise child," Mr. Philip murmured, without smiling. 
 
 " A wise cousin Adrian," said Madam. " Well, we shall 
 see. What would you wish her to be, yourself?" 
 
 Catherine begged pardon ; she did not understand the 
 question. 
 
 " Your little maidservant, or your companion and play 
 mate, or your " 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 67 
 
 "Dear aunt, do let us be careful ! " Miss Polly inter 
 jected recklessly. " I certainly would not suggest the pos 
 sibility " 
 
 Madam s small, thick hand with many heavy old 
 rings upon it patted the table. " Let the child speak 
 first. What would you make of this girl yourself, my dear, 
 if you could do exactly as you please?" 
 
 " I don t need a servant, do I, madam ? I never have 
 had a little girl, like a sister, to play with." 
 
 " Thou shalt have a big girl to play with ! One who 
 will be a sister and " 
 
 Again the warning hand on the table, and Madam s 
 soft "Polly, Polly!" 
 
 Philip Schuyler rested his dark, attentive eyes on Polly s 
 face. She colored deeply. Her lips quivered, but she re 
 mained silent, accepting the rebuke. 
 
 "My dear," Madam looked at Catherine, "it is nature 
 to choose whom we love and whom we hate, but friendship 
 we learn! That may come in time, between you and this 
 half-savage child, but not without practice and much 
 patience ; and more will be expected of Charlotte because 
 she is white. She will be compared to what she has fallen 
 from, while if she were an Indian we should measure 
 downward and not up. At present, expect no more of her 
 than you would of an intelligent dog that could speak 
 a little in broken English. All must be given on our side 
 and hoped for, but nothing expected in return. And re 
 member the Kingdom of Heaven, which is like unto a 
 grain of mustard-seed." 
 
 Was Madam speaking to her godchild ? Miss Polly, I 
 am sure, knew she was not ; but she kept her eyes steadily 
 
68 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 on Catherine s face, that she had charmed with her fine, 
 dominating smile. Her eyes glistened with moisture, as 
 old eyes do. 
 
 " Charlotte takes her meals with us for the betterment 
 of her manners except we have company. Such table- 
 manners, as she has, we can put up with," Miss Polly 
 shrugged her shoulders and glanced at her cousin Philip, 
 " but our guests would not find her an agreeable neigh 
 bor. You will if you choose help her with her book. She 
 hath far more mind than a dog, the Lord be thanked ! 
 And perhaps you will sometimes like to go up into the 
 attic chamber and help her card wool for the spinners. 
 She would stick at her tasks better, perhaps, if she had 
 young company. But whether thou work or play with her, 
 remember though younger in years, thou art older in 
 the practice of gentle ways which make it comfortable for 
 us to live together. Thou must be the leader, else t will 
 not go well that you should spend much time together. 
 
 " Is that too much for a child of thy years to remember 
 all at once, Caterina?" 
 
 Madam took every one at their highest capacity. She 
 never talked down to children or played with their under 
 standings. After she was done speaking, she regarded her 
 listeners placidly and listened to them in turn, until a 
 servant gave in a message which black Caesar delivered 
 behind her chair. 
 
 " Charlotte, they tell me, has not been seen since dinner. 
 See that she is given her supper, however late she come in, 
 Caesar." 
 
 " She gone off mad dis mo nin fo dinner," Ca3sar took 
 it on him to say. 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 69 
 
 " At some of you ? " asked Mistress Polly. 
 
 " No, missis. Nobody in de kitchen ain rile her lately 
 as I knows on." 
 
 " She may have resented what was said before her this 
 morning concerning a certain visit in the future," Philip 
 suggested, after Csesar had closed the door. " Even a dog 
 knows when he is persona non grata, on occasions that ap 
 peal to his curiosity and interest in the family." 
 
 " I think Charlotte s interest in this family is limited to 
 Charlotte herself," said Polly. 
 
 " You leave out Aunt Schuyler," Philip replied. " The 
 mustard-seed has sprouted in that quarter and I am not 
 mistaken." 
 
 " Oh, Lord ! " sighed the petulant little beauty, " are we 
 all to get down on our knees and hold our breath to watch 
 this mustard-sprout grow ? " 
 
 "Are there to be no more cakes and ale, in short?" 
 Philip supplied with a smile. 
 
 Polly frowned at him and went on : " Must everything 
 be postponed and spoiled while we settle this problem of 
 Charlotte?" 
 
 " Postponed, very likely, but not of necessity spoiled," 
 said Madam. " Haste spoils more precious things in life 
 than ever a little caution did, in my experience. Let us be 
 sure we take no false steps that cannot be recalled, while 
 we await her guardian s decision. Whatever she may or 
 may not become in the future, Charlotte at present is our 
 guest." 
 
 " I don t agree with you, Aunt Schuyler, not quite, as 
 to caution. Caution kills it wears the life out of some 
 things that ought to be precious." 
 
70 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Polly s eyes were clouded, her hands, locked in each 
 other tightly on the table, clasped her handkerchief rolled 
 into a ball. 
 
 "Now, what do you think of this? His own child 
 that I hope to make mine had never even heard my 
 name ! What does that look like ? " 
 
 " Discretion," pronounced Madam, using Polly s own 
 word but with a difference. " The wisdom of one no longer 
 a boy ; and thought for others. If you cannot think for 
 yourself, Polly my dear, be pleased to murmur less whilst 
 others are thinking for thee. Remember t is your own 
 papa who hath balked the decision, up to this time." 
 
 " I know, I know ! Every one decides but me who have 
 to live by their decisions. I am not to have a word to say, 
 when every one else is talking." 
 
 " If there be any talking here outside the family, no one 
 in New York is responsible. That I can answer for," said 
 Madam, more sternly than she had spoken yet. 
 
 She rose and stood till Philip gave her his arm, and 
 they walked out together slowly across the hall. 
 
 Polly Watts put her arm around Catherine as they fol 
 lowed. 
 
 " Does she think me a cross, cross Polly ? " The child, 
 who felt that beneath her friend s pettishness there was 
 deep and genuine pain, only hugged her waist the tighter. 
 W T hat it was Polly wanted, or who it was she seemed to 
 accuse, she could not understand. But Polly s arm clasped 
 her close, and she was whispering down into her hair, 
 " Wilt love me a little and never mind about the rest? 
 Must love me, must ! " 
 
 No one had ever talked such sweet foolishness to Cath- 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 71 
 
 erine, even in play. And she could not doubt somehow that 
 there was deeper meaning, a sort of compact, under these 
 light words, if such a thing could be conceived of between 
 herself and this exquisite darling of the world. No words 
 hitherto necessary to Catherine s vocabulary of the affec 
 tions could have eased her of her sense of Polly s enchant 
 ments. There was nothing for it but kissing and hugging 
 in silence. 
 
 In Madam s drawing-room, on the long wall opposite 
 the chimney-piece, hung a Dutch painting of Esau lament 
 ing for his stolen blessing. Often Catherine had pondered 
 the story, with indignant heartaches for Esau and burnings 
 against Jacob and his mother. She could see the group in 
 the picture from where she knelt beside Polly s chair, and 
 under the words of the bedtime psalm they were singing 
 together, she could fancy she heard the cry of the subtly 
 defrauded : 
 
 " Hast thou but one blessing, my father ? bless me, even 
 me also, O my father ! " 
 
 On Polly s knees the great yellow-leaved psalm-book 
 lay open, Catherine holding up one brass-clamped lid. 
 Madam s lips moved silently in unison with the young 
 voices ; her knitting-needles flashed in the firelight, the 
 practiced fingers of the knitter moving mechanically while 
 her eyes were often turned toward the door. Her nephew 
 had ridden home to his own singers in the new mansion by 
 the river. In showing him out, Ca3sar had been ordered 
 to leave the door into the hall wide open. A draft 
 came in, waving the candles under the picture, and Polly 
 glanced up questioningly, but Madam s command was re 
 peated. 
 
72 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Presently a cautious step came stealing, with pauses, 
 along the passageway. 
 
 Madam raised one hand. The singing ceased. "Char 
 lotte," she said, " Enter, child ! " 
 
 Stealing a look, Catherine s eyes were seized by a pair 
 of quick, dark eyes that singled her from the owner s post 
 of observation in the doorway. She had heard the velvet 
 step, reminding her of spring, when Bassy Dunbar gave 
 up shoes and trod the wood-paths in moccasins. The tall, 
 shabby child who stood there in her drabbled petticoats, 
 smelling of bruised mint and meadow-damps, hesitating, 
 poised for flight, was of course the truant, Charlotte. 
 
 " Come, take your place, my child. Here, by this little 
 girl." 
 
 Madam gave one more look and went on with her knit 
 ting. 
 
 Charlotte made a dart for the spot designated and 
 dropped on her knees beside Catherine. The psalm paused, 
 awaiting her voice. Her breath came in the short sighs 
 of a runner, but as she had been instructed in the tune, 
 she essayed a gasping note which went off at random 
 queerly. 
 
 Polly s composure forsook her ; she smothered a giggle, 
 squeezing Catherine s hand beneath the psalm-book for sym 
 pathy. Back on her heels sank the new-comer in mortified 
 silence. Madam looked down at her kindly. 
 
 " Are you tired, Charlotte ? Can you not sing to-night? " 
 
 " Not sing any night ! Can only maks squee-eel like 
 peeg. Polly Watt laugh." 
 
 Every one laughed, except Charlotte, who put scorn into 
 her way of saying the name of one it was plain she frankly 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 73 
 
 disliked. She remained grave as an Indian, squatted on her 
 heels. 
 
 " I think we are all tired," said Madam. " Best we say 
 our prayers and go to sleep. I shall sleep the better for this 
 child safe home again, and for this one whose journey is 
 safe ended under my roof, God be thanked ! " 
 
 By the pressure of her touch the two children were 
 brought nearer together, face to face. 
 
 Catherine s smile was faint and dubious ; but Charlotte, 
 wiping her moist and muddied palm hard upon her skirt, 
 seized Catherine s little hand and swayed it up and down 
 in both her own delightedly. 
 
 Oh, I like, I like ! Who she ? " 
 
 " She is the child of your best friend, Captain Yelver- 
 ton," said Madam, " and she is my godchild, like your 
 self." 
 
 " Come to stay here ? " 
 
 " For the present. Have you had any supper, child ? " 
 
 " Don t want plenty eat all day." 
 
 She turned from the question of food to something more 
 desirable. Her large, dark eyes, so wide apart under her 
 low forehead and the long bend of her eyebrows, were 
 fixed on Catherine s face with a wondering delight. Per 
 haps she had never before seen a white child of that age 
 and of such beauty, so near. She fondled her hair with 
 timid touches. 
 
 Must we say that Miss Polly Watts all this while was 
 looking on most uncomfortably, not in the least enjoying 
 what to Madam was a sad, a significant sight ? Both were 
 the children of those white mothers whose sufferings marked 
 the path of the higher races into the wilderness ; they were 
 
74 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 equally lovely to the eye, though one was washed and 
 trimmed and cosseted, and one was out of the meadow. 
 Only the grace of God through human intervention had 
 saved the one from the fate of the other or worse. And 
 the little orphan of civilization was blindly groping for 
 the tie that should pull her back and unite her with 
 what she had lost even the desire for beyond re 
 membrance. 
 
 " The father-captain ees her father ? " Charlotte pro 
 nounced the words slowly, her dark hand hovering over 
 Catherine s head. " I belong that father-captain. She be 
 long heem. I belong she. She my sister, she my sister ! 
 Where she sleep to-night ? " 
 
 That active small dark hand touched Catherine on the 
 breast ; then smote itself on its own breast passionately. 
 " I want it sleep wis me ! I take off clothes, I be good girl. 
 I want sleep wis she." 
 
 Poor little tired, excited Catherine ! Madam s eyes were 
 on her, hoping all things. Much must be given on her side, 
 much endured, nothing expected of Charlotte but just what 
 she was. But to sleep with her, the first night ! When Polly 
 had whispered they were to share the same bed in her room ! 
 Altogether, it was too much. Catherine put out her arms 
 to Polly, who received her and buried her sob of shame 
 and failure on her own dainty breast. 
 
 Charlotte gave one bitter, wounded look at the pair and 
 rushed away. 
 
 If our little girl could have held out but half a moment 
 longer, Madam would have set the sleeping question right 
 without giving Charlotte the blow of a public rejection. 
 There was time enough, however, she comforted the child, 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 75 
 
 in which all could unite to improve on relations which were 
 bound to be a little confusing at first. 
 
 And, she explained, the Indians amongst whom poor 
 Charlotte learned her use of the words father and sister do 
 not in effect claim by it all that it means to us. It was the 
 great tribal bond, and personal intimacy meant little to 
 them who put their fingers in the same pot and lie by the 
 same fire. To sleep together meant confidence that you 
 would not have a knife in your back before morning. 
 
 The tears were dried, the cloud passed, with one of these 
 two children ; but the other plunged into the dusk again, 
 and sat with her head upon her knees little heiress of 
 " the dew of heaven," thinking on the joys of the chosen 
 ones of Israel. She had never cared for anything they 
 wanted her to care for before. But the father-captain s 
 child for her play-fellow ! to lie by her side, to awaken 
 with in the morning, to run the woods with, to fish and 
 paddle dear God ! how she wanted that ! She went out 
 farther into the night, and stood with her face up to the 
 stars. Would the Great Spirit who hung his golden bow 
 in the west, and spanned the sky with his rain-bridge of 
 celestial flowers would he turn the white child s heart 
 toward her sister, in the morning? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ABOUT an hour later, when the house was still, Char 
 lotte crept out of her bed, fully dressed, with one blanket 
 wrapped around her, and stole down the attic stairs and 
 along the upper passage to the door of Polly s bedroom. 
 She listened a moment. There were soft voices talking in 
 a continuous murmur within. She sighed to think how 
 sweet it must be to be able to speak like that once more, 
 and be understood, every little word ! And so many words 
 are needed when one talks with strangers ! Then she folded 
 her blanket around her damp clothing, and lay down out 
 side the door. 
 
 Inside, in the beautiful little room, white-painted, 
 chintz-curtained, with the candles out and the spring moon 
 shining through the little square-paned sash, and the 
 whisper of a low fire, winking itself out on the hearth, 
 oh, the rest of being alone with Polly! Even Madam, 
 with her grand kindness to the little girl who was every 
 minute on tiptoe in her presence to appear at her very 
 worthiest, was something of a strain. But Polly was pure 
 joy, another child like herself, yet a beautiful young 
 woman to be worshiped; a human deity, sweet as day 
 light, an idol set off by the potency of clothes ; that worldly 
 engine whose influence Catherine had never felt before. Its 
 mysteries were revealed even in details as familiar as a 
 nightcap, when the same was bordered with magic frills 
 put together as cunningly as flowers, inclosing such a face 
 as Polly s on the pillow beside one. 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 77 
 
 Polly, for the child s sake, had pretended sleep, with 
 great generosity, for her thoughts were crushingly wide 
 awake, yearning for speech on vital things. But when her 
 little bed-fellow rose softly on one elbow, and, after a mo 
 ment s hush, slipped out on her side of the bed and went 
 from sight, Polly leaned over to see what had become of 
 her. 
 
 " What is it ? Where are you, child ? " 
 
 " I am here. I only forgot something." 
 
 That side of the room was in deep shadow. Polly at first 
 did not see the little figure kneeling on the rug by the 
 head-curtains. 
 
 " Catherine dear, what is she doing down there ? " 
 
 " I forgot to say my prayer for papa." 
 
 " Oh, my dear child, forgive me ! I heard the whisper 
 ing too. Catherine, say it out loud, will she, and let me 
 say it with her ? " 
 
 A silence. 
 
 " I don t know if you could," said an embarrassed voice 
 from beside the bed. " It is a little one I made up myself 
 for only us." 
 
 " But say it ! I too pray for thy father, strange to tell." 
 
 Catherine said her prayer over again distinctly, though 
 much distressed at the sound of her own voice. 
 
 "God bless dear papa and keep him safe and well. 
 Make me good enough that he shall be always happy 
 when he thinks of me, and let me live with him, some day, 
 in a dear home of our own. Amen ! " 
 
 " In the country," she never failed to add, but never 
 aloud, because that would be particular and troublesome ; 
 and if God knows all our thoughts, as the cousin said He 
 
78 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 did, then could He see that she wished this every night 
 of her life, and perhaps He might be able to do something 
 about it. And if Bassy could somehow be there too, 
 but that would be asking rather too much, and God might 
 have other plans, as the cousin said, for Bassy. 
 
 Polly had repeated the prayer all through, hesitating 
 only to catch the right word even to the " dear home of 
 our own ;" which might have sounded queer to Catherine 
 if she had not drifted off into thoughts of her own. 
 
 But when she was back again in bed with Polly, and 
 they lay with the shyness of the prayer between them, 
 Polly s voice broke out passionately, " Oh, thy father ! 
 And my dearest, dearest friend ! Some day his little daugh 
 ter will know what it means to have a friend like that. 
 Not like him. There never will be his equal in our time. 
 No, thou wilt have to put up with such as can be had when 
 men like him are made no more. Oh, what am I saying ! " 
 
 Polly sat up in bed, looking down at Catherine. Her 
 cheeks were flushed, her lovely eyes wide awake and 
 sparkling. 
 
 " Very tired ? Very sleepy, honeykin ? Could we talk 
 a little this first night? We ll sleep late to-morrow. Oh, 
 I want so much to have it over ! Feel my heart, how it 
 beats ! We are too far off to say things. Come close to me. 
 I must feel that thou wilt love me." 
 
 Catherine was a little startled, for she could " feel " 
 that catchy breathing and wondered what was coming ; 
 but Polly continued rapidly in the low murmur which 
 sounded so sweet to that other wakeful listener outside the 
 door. 
 
 " Thy mother ! " she gasped. " Aunt says she was very 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 79 
 
 young, almost as young as me, when she died and left 
 her little baby here in my arms. Left thee, little Cath 
 erine. Oh cruel ! And a father so young, too ! Never to 
 have a home nor a wife to love him ; all his life swept 
 away and he but twenty-four when he lost all that. And 
 some men well, we know how some men would have 
 done! But suppose another girl, who never loved a man 
 before, should see him and love him for himself, but 
 partly too for all that sorrow he had borne. And he 
 should love her. Could she make a new life and a home 
 for him, and for his little girl? Who lost her own girl- 
 mother. Would that seem strange and awful to thee, little 
 Catherine, if thy father took another wife, and she was 
 me? 
 
 " Now wait, and don t speak yet. Let us see how it 
 would go : If thou wert sick, to be thy mother ; if well, to 
 be thy sister ? To laugh and dance and kiss, and love each 
 other always, whatever. 
 
 " Ah, it is too strange ! I see. I feel thee all a-tremble. 
 Poor little Katje ! I shouldn t have told thee to-night 
 nor any time, aunt would say. T was for thy father to tell 
 thee first ; but he could not write such a thing, could he ? 
 and me a stranger ? And it is so long he is in coming ! 
 And I did want to say why it is so hard for me about 
 Charlotte ? There was no Charlotte when he spoke to me 
 first. Only he and I and thou ! 
 
 " Well, has n t she a word for poor Polly ? Am I to 
 have no little place of my own in thy heart beside that great 
 father of thine? Must have him all to thyself? Indeed, 
 indeed, I don t blame thee, for that s what I want. I 
 want him for us us two alone and that s enough for 
 
80 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 the present. I have not got a great big heart like Aunt 
 Schuyler. It may grow. Let us hope it. But just now it 
 pains very much when I try to stretch it big enough to 
 take in Charlotte, into my very life and home our 
 home ! But thy father has taken her, before God he has 
 said it. I love him for it more than for anything he ever 
 did almost but oh, God help us all when it comes to 
 pass!" 
 
 Polly must have known really that there was nothing 
 of resistance to her sweet self in Catherine s startled si 
 lence, or even in her shrinking from this great news. That 
 it meant happiness, there was not an instant s doubt in the 
 child s mind ; only at first she was unable to grasp the idea 
 of a new marriage and a girl- wife like Polly for her father, 
 who seemed almost any age. Catherine would have been 
 less surprised had the second mother in store for her been 
 Madam Schuyler herself. The wonder stayed, but the 
 happiness grew real. They lay, without speaking, in each 
 other s arms, and then Catherine raised herself and kissed 
 Polly on the lips. 
 
 " It is too good, but I hope it is true," she said. 
 
 " I hope to heaven it may be ! " Polly responded. " But 
 my father he too does not like the idea of Charlotte 
 mixed in. Still, when I am home again, once, I can man 
 age my papa ! It is only when two men talk together that 
 trouble comes. Now, sleepy bye, little heart. There goes 
 the moon down see, the window-pane is dark. It must 
 be after midnight." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 CATHERINE slept on this first night at Madam s hardly 
 half the number of hours she commonly did at home. In 
 stead of making up sleep next morning, she awoke at day 
 break from sheer hunger, excitement having taken away 
 her appetite the evening before, and lay wondering if any 
 of the good-natured black people were yet astir below- 
 stairs, of whom she could beg a cup of milk or a piece of 
 bread. The room was dusky still, Polly fast asleep, as 
 pink as a rose, in the shadow of her flowered bed-curtains, 
 and all her pretty things on the dressing-table and her 
 dainty garments laid across the chairs, to witness that the 
 wearer was not a dream. 
 
 Catherine rose and washed herself, with care to make 
 no noise, in a little paneled closet of wardrobes and mir 
 rors adjoining the bedroom. As her morning frocks had 
 been unpacked and put away where she could not find 
 them without too much opening and shutting of drawers, 
 she dressed in her better one, the lutestring Joanna had 
 made for the journey, handsome enough for a first ap 
 pearance, thin enough to offset the warmth of her winter 
 cloak. Joanna had complimented herself highly on this 
 achievement; it was the subject of Vrow Van Wagenen s 
 constant praise and solicitude on the sail up. She had cov 
 ered the little girl in large aprons of her own size, the 
 voyage being a species of occultation from which the lute 
 string emerged fresh and shining, to Vrow Van Wage 
 nen s great content. Some persons were gifted enough to 
 
82 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 make such dresses, others were pretty enough to become 
 them ; she who was neither, wisely satisfied herself with 
 preserving them to their proper use. 
 
 It was certainly stretching a point to go down to break 
 fast in one s best frock, and pearl-silk stockings, and mo 
 rocco buskins with papa s buckles that he sent for Christ 
 mas ; but what could be done, with such an ache in one s 
 frankly speaking stomach, that asked so loud for break 
 fast ? She tiptoed out of the room, and came very near 
 stumbling over Charlotte, squatted on the floor outside in 
 a blanket-covered heap, out of which popped her pretty, 
 tousled head and great dark, baby eyes. She rose and 
 shook herself like a dog ; smiled caressingly at Catherine, 
 and laid one finger on her lips. 
 
 " Must n t wake Mees Lay Abed ! Come ! The good 
 God send you to me. I take you where you be appy ! " 
 
 Before Catherine could know her own objections, her 
 hand was seized and Charlotte had her forth of the house 
 into a morning of perfect spring ; and they were scamper 
 ing through a field of young clover, wet with dew, below 
 Madam s garden-wall. Catherine had splashed into a 
 brook that hid in the grass. Her best shoes were ruined. 
 She was cold and muddy, she wanted breakfast, but there 
 was something awake in her blood that paid for all. 
 
 The first sunbeams streaked the meadow. River-fog 
 arose and stole across the purple line of woods. The blue 
 tops of the Catskills brought the sky-line near. Cow-bells 
 could be heard distantly, which they overtook : the town 
 herd finding its own way back to pasture. 
 
 They met a man limping along with a crotched stick 
 in his hand ; he had an evil, stupid face. He called to 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 83 
 
 Charlotte, pointing to a bundle she carried on her back, 
 and tilted his ragged elbow, making a sign of drinking. 
 Charlotte appeared to know this man. She made a face at 
 him. 
 
 " No got ! " she answered shortly. " No more have." 
 " What did he want ? " asked Catherine. 
 " Want me give heem drink whiskey. No have. Some 
 little thing have got for poor Injun to eat. He, not hun 
 gry. He got plenty." 
 
 " Why should he think you could give him whiskey ? " 
 " I give heem once. He give me snake-skin." 
 " What did you want with a snake-skin ? " 
 Charlotte laughed. "Nev mind, little sister. Some 
 day I tell." 
 
 Hearing of food, Catherine asked sheepishly for some 
 thing herself to eat. She had surmised, with pleasure, 
 that Charlotte was on an errand of charity, probably to 
 some of Madam s poor Indian pensioners. But a morsel 
 of bread would hardly count with them, and charity begins 
 at home. Still, she felt awkward, especially as Charlotte 
 turned and looked at her curiously. 
 
 " White man child eat very many time. Injun child 
 once ; twice go sleep. You no get supper last night ? %> 
 " A little," said Catherine, feeling pitifully babyish 
 beside her companion, whose dark cheeks glowed, whose 
 step, even with a bundle on her slender back, she could 
 only keep up with on a half -run. 
 
 Catherine was braced with fragments of cold Indian 
 bread and salt pork, and they ran on at a pace she had 
 not taken since her illness, and for more miles than she 
 could guess at. But the way seemed long. 
 
84 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 They came to a small lake or pond, encircled with white 
 birches. On its marge was a poor encampment of squaws 
 and children who were come for the fishing, or to sell 
 their brooms and small wares in the town. Every inde 
 scribable form of squalor such as these poor creatures 
 gather round them, all the refuse no savage is ashamed of 
 offended the eye of the child, who shrank from a nearer 
 acquaintance. Yet nothing at a distance could have ex 
 ceeded the picturesqueness of these bark huts, and their 
 owners busy about them. 
 
 We may pass over the welcome they gave Charlotte 
 and the meal they made, mothers and children, off the 
 contents of her pack, no morsel of which she would 
 touch, but accepted a gourd of some unpleasant preparation 
 of their own ; which they offered Catherine likewise. But 
 she literally could not stomach it, although she saw that 
 her refusal gave offense. Pleasanter it was to watch the 
 looks of affectionate delight their unspeakable countenances 
 contrived yet somehow to convey whenever they spoke to 
 Charlotte; to see the children swarm around and climb 
 over her, and her fine recklessness of such little inconven 
 iences as filthy fingers thrust into one s mouth, or babies 
 disposing of their meals without notice. 
 
 Her visits were evidently no rarity. There seemed a 
 bond of great kindness between them, based in a measure 
 probably on the contents of the sack or others similar 
 which Charlotte had lugged there, with Madam s know 
 ledge, Catherine thought, dispensing her bounty. Had she 
 known Charlotte s kind a little better, she would have 
 guessed it was pilfered. 
 
 The little girl was tired out. She would have been glad 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 85 
 
 to lie down on the warm pebbles and sleep. But she was 
 in the hands of an ardent entertainer, who wanted to pour 
 the joys she loved herself out of a full cup into that of 
 her little, ignorant white sister. 
 
 On the lake s edge rested a canoe graceful as a leaf. 
 Charlotte stepped in first, kicking off her shoes. An old 
 squaw held the stern for Catherine, showing her how and 
 where to sit. The poor little lutestring was past praying 
 for now : but what were clothes better or best weighed 
 with that giddy thrill when a stroke of the paddle sent 
 the water-cradle out across the pond with a motion soft 
 as sleep and treacherous as a dream ! 
 
 And Charlotte, as if singing to a sleeper, began her 
 
 chant : 
 
 " C dtait un vigneron, 
 C dtait un vigneron, 
 Qui avait une fille lo la ! 
 Qui avait une fille ! " 
 
 It would be impossible to copy her rendering of these 
 words ; but the rhythm was perfect. They were cross 
 ing a stretch of still water darkened by the reflection of 
 the great north woods. Young birches shot through with 
 sunlight rimmed the shore and waded out, clothed in radi 
 ance, toward some island boulders ; for the lake was flood- 
 high. Seven great pines, stark bare for thirty feet upwards, 
 an outpost of the forest, stood in the water patiently ; silly 
 little wavelets chased each other over their sunken roots. 
 The reflections, prolonging that of the main forest, re 
 minded one of the towers of a seaport city hanging in the 
 tide. 
 
 All went well as long as Charlotte held the paddle, but 
 
86 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 when the fish began to strike all about them and she 
 threw out her trolling line and tried to teach Catherine 
 to manage the canoe, an end of that voyage was not far 
 off. 
 
 How she fell into the lake and how Charlotte got her 
 ashore again, at what risk to her own life, Catherine never 
 quite knew, for Charlotte never boasted of that rescue. 
 When she came to herself, she lay wrapped in an ill-smell 
 ing blanket by a fire on the beach, under some ragged 
 bushes where her wretched little clothes hung drying. An 
 old squaw tended a pot on the fire, a number of ugly chil 
 dren stared at her, and Charlotte, pale and downcast, with 
 rillets of water trickling from her own garments, sat strok 
 ing Catherine s hand. 
 
 Something hot and strong was given her to drink, rather 
 forcibly, and she fell asleep again remembering nothing 
 more till she felt herself hoisted upon some one s back, and 
 a warm broad body shook beneath her : she was being car 
 ried home pick-a-back through the fields by an old squaw, 
 Charlotte trotting soberly beside her, giving her from time 
 to time a side pat and a melancholy smile. 
 
 How late it was, how long they had been a-gypsying, 
 she was unable to guess. A number of reflections hurt her 
 all at once. 
 
 "Whether you work together or play together," she 
 heard Madam saying, "you should be the leader; else 
 it will not go well that you should be much together." 
 Again Madam s voice : " Charlotte is older in years, but 
 thou art older in all those kindly ways which make it 
 pleasant for us to live together." 
 
 And this was the first day of the great Albany visit! * 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 No definite blame ever was laid upon Charlotte by any 
 one of the family. Servants will be servants ; and Polly 
 we have purposely omitted Polly s first excited language, 
 but Charlotte had the memory of an Indian. She was 
 never literally punished, Madam s justice forbade that, 
 but she never again was trusted alone with the father- 
 captain s child. 
 
 An illness which followed that innocent escapade made 
 it appear more serious than it was, and Madam was afraid 
 for little Catherine. Joanna had coddled her darling per 
 haps unwisely after the treacherous measles ; she had lost 
 tone for want of exercise ; healthy child that she was, this 
 time she succumbed to the multiplied strains and exposure ; 
 a bronchial inflammation set in and she lay abed for over 
 a week, not suffering much rather enjoying her own im 
 portance, and enraptured with Polly s petting, which Polly 
 knew so well how to bestow ; with Amanda for a comic and 
 devoted nurse, and Madam her physician. 
 
 A sick child does not crave the society of other children. 
 Weakness begs for repose. She did not ask for Charlotte, 
 though she knew dimly that the girl hung for hours out 
 side her door, that she battled with the servants for a 
 chance to do some smallest thing for her little white sister 
 whom she had ignorantly hurt. Many a suppressed " Go 
 long! Be off now ! Git out o my way ! " advised them 
 in the sick room of Amanda s progress up the stairs with 
 her hot water and poultices, or Caesar s, with his tray. 
 
88 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Sometimes a kick or a cuff would clear a passage for the 
 legitimate forces, and with a howl of rage the pain was 
 nothing accounted Charlotte would dash away ; her feet, 
 heel to ground, would go pounding down the lane, and she 
 would carry her heart s defeat and wounded love where 
 other half -tamed captives are taught by nature to carry 
 theirs. 
 
 No one in the house knew where she went, and only one 
 person really cared. 
 
 All things were not told Madam, who never left her 
 apartments till near noon. In a general way she knew the 
 experiment was not going well, but whether she was pre 
 occupied or feared to buckle the curb too tight, she never 
 caused the runaway to be followed, or inquired too closely 
 into the reasons of her flights. 
 
 So, although the household combination was not quite 
 a failure, it was far from succeeding. There were too many 
 servants and spoiled children involved. The wisest make 
 their mistakes. Madam herself made the first one when she 
 handed over the white captive, on the day of her arrival, 
 to a negro girl to be taught how to bathe herself properly. 
 Amanda s unnecessary vigor might have passed for good 
 will, not so her venturing to point at, as a mark of low 
 witchcraft, the sacred totem of the wolf -clan of the Abena- 
 kis tattooed on the maid s white breast the sign of tribal 
 adoption which she had been taught to revere. The slave- 
 girl s words she could not understand, but the language of 
 mockery and contempt needs no vocabulary. Naked, but 
 for a bed-blanket tossed about her, the tall, slender slip 
 of wild virginity came before Madam, showed the sign be 
 tween her proud young breasts and stamped her foot, and, 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 89 
 
 pointing to the floor, signed that Amanda belonged there 
 in apology for contempt of her person and her gods. 
 
 Madam comforted her, ignored the demand, while she 
 hung upon the round neck, upreared like a serpent s 
 about to strike, a pierced gold guinea to wear upon the 
 place of honor. But with Amanda, from that day, it was 
 fire and tow. 
 
 The guinea lay lightly on the sinister spot. It was 
 worn or not worn for Madam s sake, but the wolf- 
 mark was dyed in the grain. 
 
 If those we love could but love one another, or even un 
 derstand ! Catherine, now that she was well and less phy 
 sically fretful, had tender and often remorseful thoughts 
 of her companion. Out of doors, when they could be left 
 together, at dusk running about in the meadow, or at 
 milking-time under the big maple tree, or up in the 
 attic carding wool, they were simply happy. With Polly, 
 indoors life touched the limits of actual and potential bliss 
 at the age of beauty worship. But the two joys would not 
 combine. Polly seemed changed herself, and hard and 
 sometimes mean, when Charlotte made a third, and Char 
 lotte under Polly s freezing eye developed a maddening 
 perversity. 
 
 The two nearest of a class drew together significantly, 
 and the other was the more estranged. 
 
 They were come to the last week in June. The house 
 had much company coming and going, Madam s English 
 godchild greatly noticed and far too much admired. Her 
 small wardrobe Polly had joyfully picked to pieces and 
 transformed and added to, and sowed the seeds of a love 
 
90 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 of dress which incommoded our Catherine all her life as a 
 woman with greater concerns on her soul ; since, owing to 
 circumstances of which she had no cause to be ashamed, 
 she could seldom satisfy her growing knowledge and sense 
 of perfection in this realm of material things. 
 
 Madam never again pressed upon either of her young 
 wards the two happiest ones her solemn charge of 
 that first sweet night, when Catherine s young soul lay 
 under her hand. There were many sides to Madam s duty 
 in that complex household; and in the world outside, 
 those dreaded differences, that a few years later were to 
 divide her family, were beginning to form along the " po 
 litical horizon," the first thunder-heads before the storm. 
 She was watching her fair niece, too, with abundant anx 
 iety. 
 
 Captain Yelverton s letters came regularly now 
 many more to his lady-love than to his daughter, whereof 
 the former was exceedingly generous too generous, a 
 man might say. Polly would walk up and down the room, 
 glowing with happiness, and read aloud to her little fu 
 ture daughter passages and phrases not meant, one may 
 guess, for little daughters to hear. The captain was deeply 
 in love and Polly, at scarce sixteen, was too much of a 
 child not to long to boast of his passion to any one who 
 happened to be near. 
 
 " My faith," she would cry, " what a man he is ! Hast 
 ever measured him in thy mind with other men, Katje ? 
 Lord, what do I say ! A little pussykin like thee bred in 
 a country village what dost thou know of men who 
 change the world, and lead armies, and fight duels, and 
 quarrel about place and money ! Well, I can tell thee he 
 
THE GKEAT ALBANY VISIT 91 
 
 hath the best parts of them all and is the handsomest 
 gentleman, I think, on this continent, excepting my cousin 
 Courtlandt. He is too black and too silent for me. I 
 gave him a gold pair of garter-clasps for the New Year 
 thy father, I mean, but that is a secret ! T is so hard 
 to choose for a man, and his were stole by a rascal he had 
 for valet which my brother recommended. He is quite as 
 handsome in fatigue dress as in his most splendid uni 
 form, and oh, I do like him with no powder in his hair ! 
 
 " He has all the fine manners of the fine gentlemen of 
 the Guards regiments, yet he does none of the horrid things 
 they do and have not even the grace to hide it. He is to 
 that set as the Quakers say of themselves and the world : 
 4 in it yet not of it. 
 
 " He is as gallant and good as General Wolfe, or the 
 young Lord Howe, whom all the country wept for. 
 
 " Of all the king s knights he s the flower, 
 
 Compagnon de la Marjolaine ; 
 Of all the king s knights he s the flower, 
 To p jours gai ! 
 
 "Not always gay that is stupid but always true, 
 and always mine and thine, little sweet ! Oh, how happy 
 I am ! " 
 
 And Polly would go swaying up and down the room 
 to the tune of " Compagnon de la Marjolaine," or she would 
 catch little Catherine in her arms and force her to dance 
 too, or toss her at arm s length to a point opposite, and 
 make her a grand curtsy, to be copied exactly under her 
 critical eye, the room s width apart. 
 
 " Mistress Catherine Honoree Yelverton makes her bow 
 to the world," she would say ; and the pair would go off into 
 
92 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 shrieks of girlish laughter. Or, she would pick up the 
 child in her strong arms and run with her out of the back 
 door of the long hall, and plump her down, herself beside 
 her, in a pile of new-mown grass on the bleach ing-ground. 
 And Charlotte, from the attic where she was gazing out 
 of window instead of carding wool, would see, and a lonely 
 jealousy of so much love and mirth would crush her back 
 into speechless savagery. 
 
 On the other hand, there was the same blind pain and 
 rage in Polly s heart, whenever, in one of those letters which 
 threw her into such transports, Charlotte s name was men 
 tioned with kindness or solicitude. Charlotte was growing 
 in beauty daily. Could that have had anything to do with 
 Polly s antagonism ? One does not have to be stolen by the 
 Indians to know these brute mysteries of Nature s school. 
 Self-preservation is one law, of ladies as of squaws. Polly 
 would have been as frank in writing to her lover as in 
 speaking of him. It could not have been hid from him 
 how she felt about Charlotte as a part of their future me 
 nage. But if he ventured on a suggestion, a charge as deli 
 cate as might be, in reference to that Stumbling Block, 
 that Insoluble Problem, poor Polly would become some 
 thing of a savage herself on the instant. She would stamp 
 her little foot, and cry out incoherently in an angry de 
 spair that might have been comic, as a child s wrath is, had 
 it not held so much of disaster for the future. 
 
 Captain Yelverton thought he was doing her the great 
 est possible honor to include her in his pathetic undertak 
 ing. Indeed, for its success Polly s help was essential. He 
 did not doubt that she understood how much his past was 
 bound up in it, how, by his very happiness now, he felt 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 93 
 
 pledged to carry it through. It was not only his thank- 
 offering for his little daughter, it was his oblation for 
 Polly herself. But he did not know Polly. He looked in 
 her face and believed her an angel ; and expected of her 
 accordingly. 
 
 Had he yielded and allowed Charlotte to be trained for 
 a servant, could she have been Polly s servant ? Polly had 
 not then the patience or the discipline herself to have 
 governed such a menial as Charlotte would have made. 
 But he had never any such intention ; there were more 
 reasons against it than he could have told. Only one other 
 course remained, which Madam advised, to put the girl 
 in a plain, country family that would treat her as one of 
 themselves, sharing their simple, hardy living. 
 
 Against this the captain held out with a man s pertina 
 city in the face of advice on matters where he knows his 
 own ignorance, and in part through a romantic sentiment 
 in behalf of the girl herself, as pure as it was impractica 
 ble ; but also it would have meant to him a confession of 
 failure, which he could have reached only by acknowledg 
 ing that his betrothed was not equal to the part he had 
 honored her with. 
 
 Yet she would have been equal to so much else ! Perhaps 
 to that even, had it come later. 
 
 It takes away one s breath to think how young they were, 
 those brides of the New World on whose strength of heart 
 and brain and body the country s life depended. At what 
 pathetic ages they put on womanhood, how fast the pro 
 cession rushed along ! A child could scarce run alone 
 before she was laced into frocks, copies of her mother s. 
 Little maids of six or seven were " Mistress " So-and-So. 
 
94 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 At ten or twelve they wrote each other formal little notes 
 in the third person, met at discreet functions called "con 
 stitutions," and danced minuets in high headdresses of 
 feathers and paste jewels, and drank hot and cold punch. 
 At fourteen they were sought in marriage. "Child, be 
 mother to this child ! " was no poet s figure, in those days. 
 
 Their babies died, they died themselves, in those cold, 
 cold churches and prolific homes, or they lost their hus 
 bands and started afresh with a new mate, nothing daunted. 
 
 It is amazing in their diaries and letters to note the rapid 
 succession of vital events in family circles : the marriage- 
 feasts and " sitting-up visits " to new-made mothers alas, 
 how far too soon they " sat up " ! and the funeral sermon 
 that was so sadly apt to follow. But they had something 
 to show for their gray hairs if they lived to get them. 
 Those posthumous praises of young wives " snatched away 
 in beauty s bloom " even though their husbands did 
 promptly marry again covered the equivalent of a long 
 life of precious experience, as life counted for those women. 
 
 These were more particularly the women of New Eng 
 land. We do not claim for Miss Mary Watts any conspicu 
 ous strain of endurance or aspiration, nor was she the stuff 
 that domestic heroines are made of. She was simply a be 
 loved beauty, and, like the rest of the poor babies, she was 
 scarce sixteen. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 IT was one of Madam s days for receiving company. 
 A dinner of courtesy rather than friendship was to be 
 given for the son of Sir William Johnson, on his way to 
 England. While stopping in Albany, he lodged with the 
 officers of the garrison as their guest. Two of these gen 
 tlemen were bidden with him, and Madam made up her 
 table from Polly s young acquaintance, the most genteel 
 young belles of the city. 
 
 Mr. John Johnson was not at this time entitled to wear 
 a uniform, but we may be sure that he was handsomely 
 dressed and set up a good figure, if money could help him. 
 The officers were in splendid regimentals, and Polly s girls 
 were not more than a year behind New York in sleeves 
 and headdresses. But, for their distress of mind and 
 painful enlightenment, a missionary from London had 
 just arrived ; and if not made and dressed in Paris, Paris 
 had inspired her and she was spoken of as " mademoi 
 selle." 
 
 At the very moment the girls were arriving, she stood 
 with her arms stuck out, her feet planted on the quilted 
 satin counterpane a jointed doll dressed to exhibit the 
 extreme of the mode and on view at the mantua-maker s, 
 or sent forth, as in this case, to anxious, intending custom 
 ers at a distance from fashion s centre in the Colonies. 
 Whether that was Boston or Philadelphia or Norfolk or 
 New York, in 1765, we dare not say, but we think it was 
 not Albany. 
 
96 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 "Hath she come?" the mayor s daughter whispered. 
 (Who was the mayor of Albany in 1765 ?) 
 
 " Yes ; after dinner. Oh, girls, I can t let you see her 
 before ; you 11 never get down ! " 
 
 So said Polly, and whisked upstairs to thrust made 
 moiselle oat of sight in her wrappings of silver paper. 
 
 u No, positively I shall not give you a single peep. 
 Aunt so hates to be kept waiting. The gentlemen are be 
 low." 
 
 Catherine took her dinner with Charlotte that day, in 
 the still-room, herein achieving a sacrifice for which she 
 was thankful ever afterwards. Polly had begged a place 
 at table for her pet in the dining-room, Madam leaving 
 the child her choice and beaming on her with one of her 
 great looks when strength was given her for the unselfish 
 part. 
 
 It was one of those trifling acts that may go far. It went 
 very far with Charlotte. Up to a certain hour it was one 
 of the happiest days of her life. Then the cloud arose and 
 put out her sun. 
 
 The children were kept waiting for their meal, though 
 Madam had seen to it they should not be stinted in their 
 retirement. Portions of all the best dishes were before 
 them, and delicate puddings and a sweet wine whose sparkle 
 mounted into Charlotte s eyes. But she was persuaded by 
 Catherine to hurry through with her fleshpots, for there 
 were other joys. They took up their station on the first 
 landing of the staircase, secluded behind a tall Dutch 
 clock, to see the ladies come out, not thinking that directly 
 the dining-room door was closed, Polly would lead her flock 
 of girls straight up those very stairs. 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 97 
 
 It was a pretty crisis for the watchers on the landing. 
 
 " Come, Catherine," said Polly, enwreathing the happy 
 favorite with her arms. " Come with us into my room. 
 There s something mighty fine in there. Come and see ! 
 Charlotte, too ? Impossible ! You know, dear," in a 
 whisper, but Charlotte heard, "her hands are never 
 clean. She fingers all my things and pokes into my boxes. 
 If she finds where mademoiselle is kept, there s no safety." 
 
 So Catherine was swept in, to make one at mademoi 
 selle s reception, and Charlotte, bereaved of her comrade, 
 was left outside. 
 
 One may have a divided heart, even in Paradise, with 
 a pair of big, longing eyes outside. 
 
 " Only this once, Polly, please ! " Catherine s qualm in 
 sisted. " She is very nice to-day. I saw her wash her 
 hands." But Polly was annoyed. It did not help when 
 one of the young ladies offered, " Why, she is the pretti 
 est Indian I ever saw!" Rumor in cities no bigger than 
 Albany was then can jumble her facts ; it was reported 
 that Captain Yelverton had taken a young Indian to bring 
 up for a lady s maid to his daughter. 
 
 " Do let her come, Polly. She is as pretty as a prin 
 cess." 
 
 " Princess of fiddlesticks," said Polly ; " shut the door ! " 
 
 Some time after, perhaps half an hour, they were still 
 about the bed examining stitch by stitch the doll s ap 
 parel ; and the girls were teasing Polly about her " con 
 quest," a word Catherine, from the context, was unable to 
 understand, when a burst of male laughter came up to 
 them from the hall. 
 
 " Go, chick ! see what s a-doing down there," Polly 
 
98 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 whispered to the child. " If it s anything naughty come 
 straight back." 
 
 She meant if the young gentlemen had taken too much 
 wine and were beginning to show it. T was early for that, 
 especially for such experienced toast-drinkeps as the offi 
 cers from the Fort. Some such speech Polly may have 
 made, in the tone she would sometimes use, wherein she 
 showed more knowledge of the world than Madam cared 
 about. Though Madam took the manners and fashions 
 of her time with equanimity, she thought young girls need 
 not become hardened to them ; since, with a good hus 
 band, in the Provinces, they might escape such knowledge 
 altogether. 
 
 The three gentlemen who were her guests that day were 
 in the hall, and Charlotte, amusing herself as best she 
 could, was seated on the stairs, her face pressed against 
 the slender mahogany rails of the banister, on a level with 
 the head of a young officer who was her vis-a-vis, in the 
 hall below. He was putting sugar-plums into her mouth, 
 Madam s kitchen produced the finest variety of these 
 confections, taking one at a time from a silver dish in 
 the hand, a ridiculously unsteady hand, of another merry 
 young gentleman in scarlet, and white satin breeches. 
 About every other time, the expectant mouth would be 
 cheated of its prize, and a kiss bestowed instead. 
 
 Catherine watched them, astonished and fascinated by 
 this new game which had its pretty side, especially Char 
 lotte s side. There were very nearly as many of the kisses 
 as the plums, she noted, each kiss being greeted with 
 cheers and laughter from the plate-holder. Charlotte her 
 self was entirely serious, intent upon the plums, and took 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 99 
 
 the kisses as so much loss in trade with those slippery and 
 parsimonious English. It was a frank and aboriginal ex 
 change on her part, and hardly less so on the other, al 
 lowing for a little too much wine. 
 
 But a very fine line must be drawn by actors and spec 
 tators in a game of this sort ; and it was given to young 
 Mr. Johnson to step over it. Every one of those girls 
 meantime had stolen out to the stair-head. They saw and 
 heard all that Catherine did, with a difference of intelli 
 gence not altogether in their favor. 
 
 "Come, come," Mr. Johnson was saying, "That s 
 enough, sir ; you steal too many of the captain s French 
 cherries. Leave em till they are ripe." 
 
 " Ripe ? Try one for yourself. Damme, they re ripe 
 enough for me ! " 
 
 When Polly heard these remarks, she made a rush 
 down the top stairs, swept Charlotte to the wall, and stood 
 between her and the speakers. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said she, "the cherries you make free 
 with are under madam, my aunt s protection. Captain 
 Yelverton s adopted daughter is Madam Schuyler s guest. 
 If you wish any more of the same entertainment, you 
 would better go elsewhere. For my part, were I mistress 
 of this house, I should say, the sooner the better ! " 
 
 She placed one hand on Charlotte s neck, but the girl 
 shrank away. 
 
 " His daughter, madam, did I understand you ? " 
 
 Mr. Johnson s face was as red as Polly s, as she stood 
 there blazing at him, audaciously beautiful. But the colors 
 of rage did not so become him. 
 
 "I said his daughter, Mr. Johnson. And whoever 
 
100 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 doubts Captain Yelverton s noble faith towards this child, 
 as towards any young and helpless creature, makes an 
 enemy of me, his promised wife." 
 
 It was Madam Schuyler s habit, as we know, to close 
 her eyes in her chair for a few moments after dinner. 
 The sounds in the hall had brought her to the surface, 
 however. Her hearing was more agile than her limbs. She 
 came forth, heavily leaning on her gold-mounted stick ; 
 billows of splendid brocade eddied around her. Her deep 
 eyes spoke first to Polly, and then her deep voice with 
 the rhetorical note in it which was not avoided on proper 
 occasions, by even well-bred persons, in those richer times. 
 
 " Do I hear my niece announcing her own betrothal as 
 an after-dinner jest, or to cap a controversy ? 1 know not 
 what has incited you, Polly, but those words I heard you 
 speak just now cannot stand, my dear. I call your atten 
 tion, gentlemen, and young ladies, to my definite denial 
 of them. I speak with authority. My niece hath not her 
 parents consent to any marriage engagement. And if she 
 had, it could not be published in this fashion without 
 their knowledge and support." 
 
 Prudence of any kind was the least of Polly s virtues, 
 and John Johnson had stirred the blackest depths of her 
 passionate, loving, undisciplined nature. 
 
 " Support, madam ! I need no one s support, I hope, 
 to silence a wicked slander on the man I am to marry. 
 Published or not, you know, aunt, who is the man ! As 
 for Mr. Johnson, if t was not his own father s example 
 that has taught him to look for such in others, I pity the 
 young gentleman his imagination." 
 
 Now all the world except children knew why that forest 
 
THE GREAT AI^NiY VISIT 101 
 
 beauty, Molly Brant, was mistress afr $loims!cv& ;Hall, ;and 
 if a man had made this speech, Sir William s son might 
 have called him out. No wonder Madam stood as 
 tounded. 
 
 There was an old feud, on grounds of political prefer 
 ment in Indian affairs, between the Schuylers and the 
 Johnsons. Sir William was frankly desirous it should 
 end. His son s unfortunate attitude toward Philip Schuy- 
 ler in a recent election had been mistaken for his own. 
 Colonel Schuyler had listened to those explanations that 
 do not explain but show a coming-on disposition, and 
 Madam s invitation at this time may very likely have 
 been designed to further this wise policy. That a lady of 
 her family, on such an occasion, should bandy words with 
 Sir William s son, should drag in his father s domestic 
 arrangements to insult him publicly, even to pay back an 
 insult, was a scene in her house that she could scarcely 
 credit. 
 
 Not the least unfortunate part of it was the position it 
 left her other guests in : the audience of young ladies in 
 the passage above, the two officers caught in a silly romp 
 which had developed into melodrama. 
 
 One at least of the company was spared embarrass 
 ment, the unsteady young gentleman who had spilled 
 the rest of the bon-bons but clung to the plate. Braced 
 against the wainscoting, he waved it to emphasize his 
 comments on Polly s interesting announcement. 
 
 Pretty li l wife. Pre y li l daughter. Pretty dopted 
 daugh . Heapin it on, for younger son ! Make dashed 
 big hole in cap n s pay." 
 
 It would be curious to know Charlotte s conception of 
 
102 THE -ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 this sne and of * her; own part in its development of 
 character. Polly s championship, though it told her some 
 news, in the better way failed to carry conviction. Had it 
 come too late, or did the anomalous child by instinct feel 
 that no love that she could count on for herself inspired 
 it ? All she thought of, possibly, was Madam s formidable 
 eyes, and that she in some new way had offended against 
 the rules of that gilded prison-house. Away with it all ! 
 Even Madam now was angry ! 
 
 She ducked under Polly s arm, bounded down the 
 stairs, and fled the house. 
 
 Only one person really noticed her, the half -tipsy 
 boy who called out in the manner of a hunting chorus, 
 " Gone away ! Dopted daughter gone away ! Yoick, yo- 
 icks ! " drifting into " One cat s out o the bag, Kits, 
 cats, sacks and " 
 
 The girls at the stair-head were obliged to laugh, but 
 Polly and Madam Schuyler and John Johnson stood fixed 
 with eyes for only each other. 
 
 " Come here ! " said Madam, striking her stick on the 
 floor. 
 
 Polly came, as in a dream. Her face was pearl-white. 
 She slid her arm within Madam s, and her low bodice 
 began to heave. 
 
 "My niece is a child, Mr. Johnson. She has not 
 learned to hide her feelings. I do not ask what has moved 
 her so. I heard her words ! Such words demand an apol 
 ogy ; though apologies have not often been called for or 
 given in this house. It is a child, and something hath 
 hurt her very deep. Forgive it, Polly, and ask his pardon 
 in thy turn." 
 
THE GEEAT ALBANY VISIT 103 
 
 " Never, madam ! Mr. Johnson knows what he said. 
 For what / said, t was justly earned, and it is but the 
 truth. Nor have I heard it was ever a subject for apolo 
 gies." 
 
 "It remains then for me to apologize in my niece s 
 name for her words to a guest whom it was intended to 
 honor." 
 
 For a lady of Madam s size and years it was no trifling 
 feat to perform a curtsy such as she swept before Mr. 
 Johnson, who returned it with his lowest bow ; the soberer 
 of the two officers repeating the same, ceremoniously, and 
 saving his comrade from falling at her feet with the 
 ingenuous idea that he was producing a successful copy. 
 
 Polly curtsied also, which was the extent of her apol 
 ogy- 
 
 " Young ladies, will you be pleased to join us ? We 
 shall have our coffee directly. Mr. Johnson, will you give 
 me your arm ? " 
 
 Polly s neglected girls, who had not lacked entertain 
 ment, came demurely down the stairs and followed Madam 
 into the drawing-room. Caesar helped the incapacitated 
 guest to the dining-room couch. Little Catherine hung 
 about in the hall a while and wandered out in search 
 of Charlotte. Nowhere within Madam s inclosures could 
 she be seen. The servants were all too busy to answer 
 questions. She returned to the house. 
 
 Polly was standing near the front-hall door, facing Mr. 
 Johnson, who could be seen in profile while her face was 
 in full light. She appeared to be listening without meet 
 ing his eyes, which were fastened on her as if he never 
 expected to see her again. 
 
104 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Catherine sat down on the lowest step outside. 
 
 " It is something at least to know this news lacks con- 
 firmation." 
 
 44 What news do you speak of ? " 
 
 " Can you ask ? That Mistress Polly Watts has made 
 her choice of a husband is the news. That it has been 
 contradicted is the straw a drowning man may catch at." 
 
 * A drowning man ! " 
 
 44 I am the man, who drowns in sight of the shore he can 
 not reach ; who discovers a heavenly country only to find 
 another in possession. Is there any room for doubt in your 
 own mind, madam ? " 
 
 " You are beyond me, sir ! " 
 
 " In plain words, your own choice at least may not be 
 shaken?" 
 
 44 Mr. Johnson states a fact on the very best authority." 
 
 Polly curtsied, with her fan open against her breast, 
 and clashed it shut as she rose. She was pale, but at a 
 most perfect moment of her beauty : proud, tremulous, tired, 
 a child with deep waters threatening her. Mr. Johnson 
 looked savage and distressed. 
 
 44 My unlucky barrack jest, that you chanced to over 
 hear, I wish to say, fiery torments could not have torn from 
 me had I known I was honored with such a listener. I am 
 sorry for the offense that was taken. If twill atone to 
 say, I envy Captain Edmund Yelverton of all men on 
 earth " 
 
 44 Not in the least, sir! It adds to the offense, as I 
 think you intend it should. If I have been too free, sure 
 you have taken your revenge. Farewell, Mr. Johnson ! you 
 and I are in no mood to-day to better our acquaintance." 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 105 
 
 Catherine, on the steps, heard a satin waistcoat creak. 
 Mr. Johnson was making his final bow to Polly, who could 
 be heard rustling swiftly up the stairs. Where he went 
 Catherine did not see. She was so fearful he would come 
 out and speak to her that she stole away around the house 
 and slipped up the back stairs to the empty spinning-room. 
 There she waited until the visitors were gone. From the 
 window presently she could see Madam walking up and 
 down the garden slowly, with a grave, still face. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THERE was a little new moon at twilight, and Venus 
 was the evening star. Catherine hung over the box hedge 
 above the haha, looking at its sharp, clear reflection in 
 a ditch that crept along sluggishly below the garden wall. 
 It had been dug so many years that the meadow had 
 adopted it for its own, and lavishly trimmed it as a fond 
 mother dresses her child, with borderings of blue iris, 
 strayed from the gardens, or wild celandine and crow s 
 foot) and the spotted leaves of the dog-tooth violet. It seeped 
 through the grass in places, and blue violets followed its 
 footsteps. Where it crept under a division fence, a mass 
 of rank skunk cabbage grew. 
 
 In many respects a ditch has more personal history than 
 a running brook. It has at least its reflections, doubling 
 its own beauty, to make up for its want of a voice. The 
 silence of the ditch allowed the meadow to speak. It lay 
 there like a sounding-board, for the life of the town and 
 the life of the woods beyond. Voices of children playing in 
 distant lanes and streets, voices of birds settling their young 
 for the night, cows going back to pasture, the subtle whis 
 pers soft winds may make, with leaves of an infinite variety 
 and multitude to listen and nod and answer. Now and then 
 a shiver passed over the ditch and blurred the moon s image. 
 
 Charlotte had told her playmate once that her name in 
 the tribe she lived with meant "Moon in the Lake." And 
 Catherine was thinking that Charlotte s moon would be a 
 little one, like this sharp, clear crescent when, silent as 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 107 
 
 a ghost, Charlotte herself rose up from the grass on the 
 meadow-side. 
 
 She was wrapped in an old cloak Madam had given her, 
 which she would wear blanket-wise over her head in the rain. 
 It was thrown back from her shoulders, but drawn close 
 about her body, hiding even her hands. Her feet were con 
 cealed in the grass, she wore no cap, and the long braids 
 of her black hair hung down over her breast. The light was 
 behind her, showing the shape of her smooth head, but not 
 the expression of her face, turned upward in silence. 
 
 " Charlotte ! Oh, Charlotte, I am so glad ! " 
 
 Catherine s arms went out to her friend with honest eager 
 ness. The feeling had come at last, so often striven for 
 toward Charlotte. She wanted her. But the girl did not 
 speak or move. 
 
 Catherine ran down a path inside the hedge to a little 
 foot-bridge that crossed into the meadow, reaching it by two 
 or three steps on the other side guarded by a handrail. She 
 and Charlotte had made of these steps one of their favor 
 ite seats looking out over the meadow. Yes, they had been 
 very happy together at times, with a sort of companionship 
 that left a good taste in the mouth and a desire for more. 
 
 " Come back," said Charlotte beckoning. She had not 
 moved. As she would not come to meet her, Catherine ran, 
 back. ) 
 
 " Come over, Charlotte ; come home ! Are n t you coming 
 home to-night ? " 
 
 "Where ees home ?" 
 
 " This house is home to us now. Madam wants you." 
 
 44 No : Madam not want to keep me. Manda says that. 
 I believe, though, she tell lies." 
 
108 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " When my father has a home for us, that will be your 
 home too." 
 
 " Will it be home for Polly Watt ? " 
 
 Catherine was staggered by the question. She could not 
 honestly say no, she was forbidden to say yes, and she knew 
 somehow that yes would be disastrous to her object in this 
 interview. 
 
 But Charlotte knew everybody knew the servants 
 first of all. 
 
 " Polly going be hees woman. He her man. I will not 
 to live wiz Polly. Three English peopl I love." She 
 checked off those persons on the fingers of one hand. " Eng 
 lish father, English daughter, English madam. Father, 
 never come ! I see heem no more. Daughter go away." 
 (How had Charlotte arrived at that fact, but just known 
 to Catherine herself ?) " Madam she too old. Got too 
 many peopl now. When goes my sister away from 
 here?" 
 
 Catherine did not know. 
 
 " I go now now is best time to-night. I cannot to 
 live wiz Polly pink-face ! " 
 
 " Polly will love you after she learns how. I did n t love 
 you much, at first, Charlotte ; but now I do." 
 
 "Ugh!" said Charlotte. " My Injun mother feel her 
 pain here bad, when they take me away. She run een the 
 woods all day, all night howl, howl ! She don have to 
 learn ! She give me all thing best what she got. Injun very 
 poor. White fathers take all away. Put on me white woman 
 clothes ; I say to father-captain, send all back of mine to 
 Injun mother ; say thees her white child dead. 
 
 " Now I go in mountains. I find big ocean-river. My 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 109 
 
 Injun mother be very glad see me. She not have to learn ! 
 Good-by, white sister, I always like you" 
 
 "Don t say white sister. You are white, Charlotte." 
 
 " Mebbe, / do know. Don matter now." 
 
 " But I love you, whatever we are. It does n t matter to 
 me. Do come back ! " 
 
 " Which you love best ? Me ? Polly ? " 
 
 " I love you both." 
 f " Can t love both best. Which ? " 
 : " I love you both f Everybody loves more than one per 
 son." 
 
 " I know ! Me, you like, when it is no have Polly. When 
 it is have Polly no like me. By m by have Polly all time, 
 every day, same house. I go way ! " 
 
 f " Wait, do wait a minute ! I must tell Madam. She 
 will talk to you better than I can, Charlotte. She cares 
 for you very, very much." 
 
 " Ah, bah ! " said Charlotte. " Madam care for eve y- 
 body I don want that ! " 
 
 If she meant charity, there was indeed something in her 
 plea, at her hopeless age, when she looked back at the wild 
 heart s love she had left. 
 
 She threw off her cloak, and there she stood, a little 
 trim wood-maid, in leggings and tunic that mud and water 
 would not spoil and close embracings of the forest paths 
 that were soon to take her back, could not deface. She 
 rolled the cloak into a loose ball and shot it across the 
 ditch. It lodged on the hedge and unfolded, hanging down 
 like a dejected human body. 
 
 It cannot be described in words, the beauty of her ges 
 ture as she lifted both bare arms, hands upward, her face to 
 
110 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Our great Father, be good to fath -captain, be good to 
 little sister, be good to good, good madam ! Take care all 
 thees good folk." 
 
 " Won t you say, Be good to Polly, too ? Won t you, 
 Charlotte ! " 
 
 " Polly be dam ! " said Charlotte. " You stay there," 
 she commanded, with a sweep of her hand. " Be still. 
 Watch me. When my sister hear, over long-side meadow 
 by woods, one whip-poor-will three times call, go back, 
 then. Say good-by me to Madam. Say good-by to father- 
 captain. I always hees child. I always dy sister ! " 
 
 So she went, not without a secret sob in her throat. 
 There was a quite open one in Catherine s. She wiped her 
 tears alone by the hedge, till across the meadow, now cov 
 ered with darkness, she heard three times a whip-poor-will 
 cry. 
 
 The little moon was set ; the ditch no longer held her 
 golden gleam. And like an effigy of abortive human en 
 deavor, the suicidal cloak dragged downward toward the 
 black still water. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 WE cannot doubt that Polly owned her indiscretion as 
 soon as a letter to her parents could carry the confession ; 
 but gossip doubtless found ways to inform them just as 
 soon, or sooner. They were exceedingly angry with the in 
 cident, and their wrath fell upon Polly. 
 
 She was sent home, and the premature announcement 
 of her engagement was recalled with more decisiveness than 
 consideration for Polly s feelings or her lover s. The main 
 thing was to get it denied and stop the talking. For by 
 this time Mr. Watts had new misgivings in regard to his 
 would be son-in-law. 
 
 Mr. John Johnson had gone to New York on his way 
 to England with Sir Adam Gordon, who had conceived a 
 great friendship for Sir William during a visit to Johnson 
 Hall, and had invited his son to accompany him home ; or, 
 whether invited or no, the young man was going. But he 
 found time to follow up his " barrack-room jest " with 
 insinuations to match it, in the clubs and coffee-rooms, 
 and over the wine when the cloth was drawn. Very likely 
 he believed his own way of putting the story of Captain 
 Yelverton and his white captive. There was nothing in his 
 education or acquaintance with men to make it appear mon 
 strous or unusual. Quite unworldly persons were prepared 
 to believe almost any charge of this sort against one of 
 His Majesty s officers in America. They had given but too 
 good cause for such belief. 
 
 Mr. John Johnson went to England and was knighted 
 
112 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 for his father s sake, by the king ; but he was the same 
 John Johnson and he left a trail of scandal behind him in 
 New York which effectually poisoned the mind of worthy 
 Mr. Watts against the man whom Mr. Johnson regarded 
 secretly as his rival. 
 
 How the matter finally came out, we will leave Captain 
 Yelverton to say in his own words to his daughter s guar 
 dian and his own best friend. Of the last charge against 
 him, conveyed in an unfortunate correspondence between 
 himself and Mr. Watts, he says nothing in this or in any 
 subsequent statement. 
 
 Omitting the opening sentences on general topics, he 
 begins, 
 
 " As the matter is now public, and told on all sides, I 
 would have my dear old friend to hear from myself what 
 hath ended the prospect of marriage between me and Mis 
 tress Polly Watts. 
 
 " Mr. Watts had given his consent pending a few con 
 siderations relating to settlements ; and I may permit my 
 self here to say I had not expected that a gentleman who 
 gives his daughter no portion on her marriage (which I 
 neither asked nor looked for) should be so particular to 
 cross-examine a pretender as to his incomes and expecta 
 tions. He required of me in so many words, whether my 
 daughter was provided for in her own right or must look 
 to me only, now and hereafter. I put up with this catechis 
 ing, though little accustomed to turn out my private affairs 
 on demand. That was some months agone. But when I 
 took from the prisoners at Carlisle this girl Charlotte for 
 my share in humanity s debt to those poor creatures, all 
 was to be threshed over again. 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 113 
 
 * " You will perceive I am a trifle roused, sir. There are 
 matters underneath it would be unworthy of us both to 
 touch upon. [This no doubt was an allusion to the charges 
 he ignored.] Had it been possible to consult them, I owed 
 it to my affianced and her family to have done so before 
 charging myself with this new liability ; but t was not 
 possible, so short was the time for decision. And a man s 
 past is his own, and the dues it lays him under. 
 
 " The question now arose, how far this new responsi 
 bility might impinge on those that antedate it. I was 
 willing to risk my child s prospects in a worldly sense 
 even with this poor lost one to share our means. With 
 God and her own dear mother looking down from heaven, 
 could I dicker about bed and board ? or a few guineas 
 here and there to clothe her mind and body ? And how 
 could I think my young bride would hold back from a 
 woman s part in whatever sacrifices might be called for ? 
 nor did she, at the first. It was her father interposed 
 with his just, I own, and natural solicitude for one so ten 
 derly nurtured. 
 
 " But, sir, to demand of me a promise before I knew 
 my own mind as to the girl, that I would not give her my 
 name or the rights of a daughter in my property, was 
 asking too much. I refused to declare my testamentary 
 intentions in short to make my will at his dictation. I 
 do not know what the future may demand of me, nor 
 what property I may possess. 
 
 " Mr. Watts thereupon withdrew his consent to the 
 marriage. This was before Mistress Watts went up to 
 her aunt in Albany. She was with me then in sympathy. 
 She would have had our engagement made public, was 
 
114 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 even ready to marry me without her father s consent. But 
 I would never take that way of showing my love for a 
 woman again. 
 
 " I do not speak of this to boast, merely to spare the 
 thought that my dear girl was in the least degree mercen 
 ary, or even prudent. 
 
 " No, the difference between us began when she saw 
 Charlotte and realized her deficiencies, and doubted her own 
 ability to meet the demand of such a charge as the girl was 
 like to be, for a few years at least. I begged her to think 
 what miracles love and patience may accomplish. She 
 very frankly owned the love in this case was wanting. I 
 trusted she would be able to conquer her aversion to 
 those savage ways which undoubtedly would change. With 
 such great personal attractions Charlotte would early be 
 sought in marriage (as she hath been already, child as 
 she is) ; and when the proper husband could be found 
 for her, all would go as nature intended, and a Christian 
 family started instead of a brood of treacherous half- 
 breeds. 
 
 " Things were going thus when Charlotte must run away 
 and could not be found without measures taken involving 
 some expense. Here Mr. Watts again interfered in his 
 daughter s name, demanding that I give up the search and 
 content myself with leaving well enough alone. 
 
 " I wrote him that his ideas of well and enough were 
 not the same as mine ; and in this affair t was for me to 
 judge what my duty required of me. 
 
 " He desired me then to understand that the alternative 
 was before me : to choose between the captive maid I was 
 4 pursuing and his daughter, my affianced bride. I replied 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 115 
 
 that no such alternative could present itself, barring his 
 daughter herself so put it to me. Which I grieve to say- 
 she did. And I had no choice. 
 
 " Between one so beloved and cherished, with a home 
 and father and mother, scores of friends and powerful con 
 nections, and her choice for a husband of the best in the 
 land, and that lost child I had taken to my keeping and 
 done so ill by that she had flung herself back on savagery 
 need I say, sir, which of those two knocked on my con 
 science the hardest ? I was forced to open to her that had 
 not where to lay her head who, God knows, can never 
 requite me for one hour of the suffering she hath inno 
 cently caused. 
 
 " Do not say I forsook my love ! My word is given to 
 Miss Mary Watts : I hold myself in marriage at her dis 
 posal if ever she will take me. 
 
 " If not, I remain as I am : she to be free ; I bound, as 
 so it should be, since t was I thrust my years [the captain 
 was thirty-two] and sorrowful experience into her fresh 
 young life. A maid of her years will soon forget a man of 
 mine. 
 
 " Here endeth my second and last experiment in happi 
 ness through love of woman. 
 
 " Do I speak of my first love as an experiment ! Nay, 
 dear God, it was heaven itself while it lasted. But at what 
 price ! And t was she, my dearest, that paid the price." 
 
 Family records show that before he sold his commission 
 and settled in America, Captain Yelverton was raised to 
 a lieutenant-colonelcy ; probably at the close of Pontiac s 
 war when his chief was made brigadier-general and took 
 
116 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 such pains to praise the conduct of his officers in the Ohio 
 campaign. 
 
 Gallant Bouquet died the following autumn, at Pensa- 
 cola. And a year later we find the captain, now colonel, 
 buckling down to the management of an estate bigger 
 than his brother s in England. He would catch up with 
 that elder brother, and be a richer man than he, if his rela 
 tives, who had money to lend, could be made to see the 
 speculative value of colonial lands, as Phil Schuyler could 
 show them in his admirable estate at Schuylerville. 
 
 A fine boyish set of quarrels had sprung up on the north 
 western borders of New York (though why confine our 
 selves to the north and west, when there was Connecticut 
 east of the Hudson !). The colonel had chosen his lands 
 on the very edge of the fight, but was himself within 
 very safely within the undisputed jurisdiction of New 
 York. But he had a friend who was setting up to be an 
 English autocrat in America, and had planted himself on 
 one of the Hampshire Grants quite openly in dispute. The 
 Crown, which was very civil to loyal New York, hoping to 
 bind her allegiance to itself " while the bolts were round 
 her hurled ! " the Crown had declared the western banks 
 of the Connecticut River to be the boundary line between 
 New Hampshire and New York. New York now proceeded 
 to make the words " to be " retroactive, bringing back to 
 her all those grants bearing Governor Wentworth s signa 
 ture, covering the territory involved in this final though 
 late decision. 
 
 In many cases these had been settled and improved by 
 grantees who were supposed to be anxious for annexation. 
 There might have been, if not readiness, at least indiffer- 
 
THE GREAT ALBANY VISIT 117 
 
 ence to the change, had New York not insisted that these 
 persons should either surrender or repurchase their lands. 
 Judgments were found in the New York courts, and writs 
 of ejectment served. To enforce them was another matter. 
 
 And here the colonel s friend came in, as a landowner 
 and justice of the peace, to coerce these hardheaded moun 
 taineers and bible-read riflemen of the border, as he would 
 the tenantry of Old England. 
 
 In spite of " pipe and mug " and horse and gun and his 
 own fire of logs to sit by, our colonel was ground by 
 his thoughts in his forest solitude ; unskilled labor nagged 
 him in every department of his wide domain. A man of 
 aristocratic habits and military training, he could not 
 brook the rustic familiarities of his neighbors. While he 
 acknowledged their cleverness and many virtues as citi 
 zens and heads of families, at his own table he preferred 
 even the vices of his own class to the virtues of these 
 thorny Puritans. 
 
 He threw himself with irritable glee into his old friend s 
 quarrels, frying out his own fat, as the saying is, at an 
 other man s fire. 
 
 It was in 1767, or thereabouts, that Ethan Allen, ad 
 vised by the officials in Albany to persuade the men of 
 the Grants to make the best terms they could with New 
 York, replied in his famous use of the Scriptures, " The 
 gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills ; " and if 
 they wanted to know what he meant, let them come to 
 Bennington Hill and it would be made plain to them. 
 
 But several years more were to pass before powder and 
 bullets made it plainer still. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 CATHEKINE CHOOSES HEK COUNTRY 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 RAIN over night had freshened the air of a June morn 
 ing, leaving a glitter of puddles in hollow places of the 
 un paved street. The year was 1773, and the day, accord 
 ing to the religious forms that divided the good citizens of 
 New York, was the Sabbath, Sunday, or First Day. 
 
 Between the old Presbyterian and Quaker meeting 
 houses, Nassau Street was nearly emptied of worshipers 
 gone home to their midday dinners ; but two young women 
 of the First Day persuasion, to judge by their dress, ap 
 peared to have been detained. No other member of the 
 Friends congregation was in sight. 
 
 A young officer in full church uniform, who had amused 
 himself watching the pretty Quaker girls come out of meet 
 ing, kept step with them, far enough ahead to give his 
 saucy eyes a glimpse inside their " coal-scuttle " bonnets. 
 His dress sword plunged against the nearest gray silk 
 gown, and once the wearer stopped and faced him ; but 
 she was the loser at that game. She could only hurry on 
 again, almost in tears from rage, with cheeks pinker than 
 before. 
 
 A fourth actor now stepped into the scene from a door 
 way on the corner of King Street, quite as if he had been 
 waiting for his cue. He took that side of the walk which 
 would bring him into collision with the officer if both at 
 tempted to occupy it at the same time, and came on coolly, 
 as if no one were there. 
 
 The officer raised a slim cane he carried, and aimed a 
 
122 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 flick at his opponent s face, inviting him to get into the 
 street where he belonged, with language common to mili 
 tary and other gentlemen of the time. The girls shrank 
 back, the briefest of scuffles followed, and Lieutenant Wil- 
 ford of the Light Horse shot into the street and down on 
 hands and knees in a pool of undried mud. 
 
 The young civilian bowed to the Quaker ladies. He 
 stood aside for them to pass. The short one, who was 
 trembling, implored him, " Won t thee please to run ? 
 Please! Catherine and I will speak to him." 
 
 He showed his white teeth like a boy. The young woman 
 called Catherine she who had nearly cried with rage 
 laughed with him. A little shudder at the same time ran 
 down her spine. 
 
 " Gracious goodness ! " said her companion, " that offi 
 cer has drawn his sword ! " 
 
 " He only wants to beat him with it." Catherine pulled 
 her out of the way. " But I mistake if he gets the 
 chance." 
 
 " I am going to call the watch." 
 
 " Mercy, be still! Do you want to put him in jail? " 
 
 "Him?" 
 
 " Why, of course it will not be the officer ! " 
 
 They saw the young countryman throw off his plain coat 
 and beaver ; he guarded and caught the other s sword-arm 
 and held him locked in a wrestler s grip, both arms pin 
 ioned to his sides. 
 
 " Will you put up your sword, sir ? " the victor panted 
 lightly. "I did but hand back what you gave me. If you 
 say Enough, I shall let go. If you want best, I can throw 
 you in two seconds." 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 123 
 
 " Fellows, set me down ! " a voice from a sedan chair 
 roared to its bearers. Out of it burst another splendid uni 
 form, on a big man who ounzed and zounzed, demanding 
 by his blood what dashed devilry was this, and who dared 
 raise his hand against a King s officer. 
 
 The young men parted rather sheepishly, and both 
 bowed low to Colonel Duns table (or was it Haldimand?), 
 commandant at Fort William, on his way, obviously, to 
 fine company and a good dinner. 
 
 It was this pause which the young woman called Cath 
 erine made use of to obtrude herself. She seemed indiffer 
 ent to the surprise she caused, and equally to the contrast 
 between her meek dress and decided behavior. 
 
 To the colonel she bowed ceremoniously, and turning 
 at once held out her hand to her champion, with a blush 
 and a smile that were equal to a decoration pinned on the 
 breast of him lucky enough to win it. 
 . The young man gave her one strong, astonished stare 
 while he held her hand. Sweet faces and pure and gentle 
 ones are framed in the modest halo of a Quaker bonnet, 
 but this girl had not the indescribable Quaker look, still 
 less the Quaker bearing. 
 
 To the colonel she now turned, addressing him by 
 name. 
 
 " If this gentleman is to be held for what has passed be 
 tween him and His Majesty s subaltern, my friend and I, 
 sir, I, at least, desire to be his witness. The question 
 was asked, Who raised his hand against a King s officer : 
 I can swear, sir " 
 
 " Swear ! " the colonel interjected with a great rude 
 laugh. " When did ever a Quakeress swear ? Thy speech 
 
124 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 bewrayeth thee, madam. Put off that bonnet and show 
 us who you are, my pretty masker ! Come, come ! " 
 
 " Colonel," said the girl, blushing with anger, " the 
 dress I wear at least should save me from derision. As to 
 why I wear it, I am but just come from England, and I 
 think, sir, it is my father should hear my story first. 
 Would you by chance have remembered a little girl aboard 
 the troop-ship, going over, seven years ago, daughter of 
 Captain Yelverton of the Royal American regiment ? You 
 were major then ; you gave me a gold Jacobus to wear on 
 a ribbon ; I have it yet." 
 
 The charming face inside the bonnet lost its vexation 
 in a smile as frank as it was sweet. 
 
 " Why, good Gad ! Let me ha another look at thee, 
 child ! Can this be the little Turk that used to major 
 me, all over the ship ! Major, your hand, please ! Catch 
 me, major, I m coming now ! when the decks were tip 
 ping, and come it was, by George ! With a face as pink 
 in the wind as it is this minute, ha, ha ! Why, of 
 course I know thy father, Ned Yelverton ! I remember him 
 well enough, but damme if I knew he d turned Quaker. 
 He was far enough from it when I knew him ! " 
 
 Catherine was laughing as well as blushing, and the ten 
 sion all around gave way before the colonel s reminiscences. 
 
 " He has not turned Quaker nor I, colonel. But my 
 clothes are behind me in England, and cannot catch up 
 till next packet." 
 
 " Hast got no clothes in America, lass ? Why, my wife 
 damme, to be sure she is about thrice thy size " 
 
 " No, no ! Thanks, colonel. I am well enough for the 
 present. Some kind Quaker friends brought me over in 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 125 
 
 their party ; I am with them still, and still wearing bor 
 rowed clothes while some of my own are making. There s 
 the simple truth, sir." 
 
 "But not all the truth, I bet a guinea! Never a girl 
 yet left her fal-lals behind her, unless she went after some 
 thing she liked better. What would that be, eh? Hast 
 run away to get married ? Not to a Quaker, I hope. God 
 a mercy ! that would stagger thy father." 
 
 "No, colonel, I have run away to my father. There is 
 the worst that has happened, so far. But let me speak 
 now, for the sake of this young man to whom my friend 
 and I are much beholden. Or, perhaps you, sir," the 
 lieutenant bowed, " will be gallant enough to speak 
 yourself and say why you were incommoded, and who it 
 was struck first ? " 
 
 Thus squarely challenged by Beauty in a fair cause that 
 went against him, the young officer spoke up with what 
 grace he might, though not sparing a back-hander. 
 
 " Between myself and this young-a-drover, I own t is 
 six of one to half a dozen of t other. But as to the ladies, 
 colonel, I call your own eyes to witness, either the bon 
 nets or the faces, in charity to all men, should be left 
 at home. Taken together I swear the provocation is too 
 much ! " 
 
 Catherine turned her back on him. The young man 
 who had been dubbed " drover " grew fiery red and then 
 pale, took off his hat stiffly to the company and begged to 
 absent himself, with his service to the ladies he looked 
 at Catherine and his thanks. "And," he concluded, 
 " if Colonel Dunstable or any of his subalterns hereafter 
 should require me, I have the honor " 
 
126 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 He took a folded letter from his pocket, tore off the 
 superscription, and offered it, bowing, to the colonel, who 
 stared contemptuously. 
 
 " I want neither you nor your whereabouts, my good 
 fellow. Think yourself lucky to escape further notice." 
 
 " Will you give my father your name, sir," Catherine 
 struck in, " that we may know whom we are obliged to for 
 this morning s courtesy ? " 
 
 The young man gave her a warm look instead. The let 
 ter he tore across, thrust it into his vest and with an 
 other bow to her alone, walked down street toward the 
 Battery. 
 
 "A blasted son of Liberty, and be to him," the 
 
 colonel saluted his back. 
 
 " A son of English liberty, colonel, and of English " 
 
 "Hey-day! What s this, what s this ? Hast caught the 
 infection a ready, my little gray lady? Gad! I thought 
 thy Quaker friends were our friends. Come, we 11 make 
 up our quarrel over a dish of my wife s Bohea none 
 of your insolent herb mixtures! Say to-morrow at four, 
 and bring along t other little gray pigeon. Now I am off 
 across the ferry. If I keep the governor waiting for his 
 dinner, I shall say t was a pair of bonnets kept me, and 
 Quaker ones at that, ho, ho ! " 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 BUT Catherine took no tea with the colonel s lady. Her 
 garments of the world supplying the means of departure, 
 she spent the same day packing, and on Tuesday sailed up 
 the North River, still under the wing of a Quaker shawl 
 this time appertaining to Ann Havergal on her way home 
 after a visit at her son Edwin s house in the city. 
 
 Quaker meeting on its social side dealing liberally in 
 personal items, it was quickly known what " up-country 
 friends" might be leaving the city at the earliest date by the 
 Albany sloops. It was, in fact, while waiting for this infor 
 mation on First Day morning that Catherine and her friend 
 Mercy Titus had been detained, and had missed Friend 
 Titus after all. However, it was arranged ; Friend Titus, 
 Catherine s hostess and Mercy s mother, having spoken 
 with Friend Havergal after meeting. She would surely be 
 aboard the packet-boat, but it was her son who traveled 
 with her, not her husband. Jonathan Havergal s health 
 had failed. He no more took journeys far from home. 
 Friend Titus feared there were other anxieties of a business 
 nature contributing to his low state of mind and body. An 
 old person of the neighborhood had died, the settlement 
 of whose estate involved adjoining property of his own. 
 The heirs, from England, were in the city and Francis Hav 
 ergal, the youngest son, but said to be the most acute in 
 business matters, had come down with his mother to learn 
 what the Englishmen would do; if possible, to settle the 
 matter out of court. 
 
128 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Catherine was deeply interested. She had stepped at 
 once into the heart of the old life, and she welcomed every 
 homely detail with a rush of amusement and joy. 
 
 She had still to write to her father, explaining her un 
 expected presence in America. As it was to be the longest 
 letter she had ever written him, so also it promised to be 
 the most difficult. 
 
 She set about it that same Sunday afternoon. She was 
 restless with a sense of change and upheaval in the very 
 air. That incident of the morning showed complications 
 beneath the surface of Colonial affairs, but faintly fore 
 shadowed in the part of England she had been living in. 
 As to the depths of misunderstanding there, on the subject 
 of America and the Americans, her young intelligence 
 could not cope with it. Even the rector, who rebaptized 
 her into the church of her fathers, that kind, well-bred 
 and Christian gentleman, thought that he covered the 
 whole ground as to the rights and liberties of the Colonies 
 when he quoted Doctor Johnson s "race of convicted fel 
 ons," or Lord Hillsborough s "The Americans shall get 
 only what they may ask with a halter round their necks." 
 
 Who and what were these Americans, she would ask, 
 thinking of her guardian and Madam Schuyler. 
 
 She had begged her cousin Adrian in his letters to 
 write her of these things. He had put the question aside, 
 saying, England now must do for her all that England 
 could. Her mind must not be divided. She would have 
 enough to do to keep faith with her father s intentions in 
 sending her there ; that his views and her father s differed 
 perhaps in the future might differ still more. There was 
 right and wrong on both sides. But come what might, she 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 129 
 
 and her father were dearer to him than any two persons or 
 two governments on earth . There was a careful tenderness, 
 a seriousness, in his words that gave to them strangely 
 the accent of farewell. 
 
 So the matter paused. And now she sets foot on Ameri 
 can soil to find a loyal city divided into factions, the 
 Quakers exerting all their strength to preserve silence and 
 neutrality ; heartfelt divisions even there ; but Catherine 
 was too newly come among them to perceive this. 
 
 She had marked, in that young countryman who spoiled 
 the subaltern s beautiful breeches, his own plain dress yet 
 far from humble bearing ; his quickness to discern the occa 
 sion and the moment for interference ; the promptness to 
 oppose his person, the skill to repel attack, the masterly 
 good-humor when the day was his ; the dignity under insult. 
 
 One other thing she had recognized the man himself. 
 That was Bassy Dunbar six feet high but the same boy. 
 Well she remembered his smile when he would hold the 
 mob of little " Dutchies " at bay. She knew him in the 
 second look. He knew her in the first. She had seen her 
 face break upon him, and then, on the instant, his reso 
 lution taken, to make no sign ! not to avail himself of her 
 recognition at a moment when it might be useful. Was 
 that his only reason ? Could that account for his last au 
 dacious action ? Why had he torn up his name when she 
 asked for it abolished himself before her eyes ? 
 
 " I remember you. At need I would serve you. Fare 
 well!" 
 
 So said his bow at parting. 
 
 If little Catherine at seventeen had never been looked 
 at by a lover, very likely one other thing his eyes said 
 
130 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 might have escaped her ; but she had been. Catherine had 
 refused her first offer of marriage. 
 
 It was of this she had to write her father. Her Quaker 
 friends, the Tituses, were a family who would do anything 
 for you except leave you alone, and there were many in 
 terruptions ; but, spasmodic and at times incoherent as it 
 is, we shall give this communication in her own words. 
 
 " Dearest Papa, I am wondering ! Could you have 
 known, did you any way suspect what would happen to me 
 directly I reached Aunt Sophia s ? Did you realize it was a 
 general visit to Littledene, for it was there she received me. 
 I was staying with Cousin Gentrey, actually her guest in 
 stead of Aunt Sophia s; or I should say Stephen s guest, 
 as he is master of everybody and everything at Littledene. 
 If I had known it, papa, if I had only known it ! It gave 
 some color to Stephen s incredulity when I said he took 
 me by surprise. He declared he was showing me, all the 
 time, how he felt while we three were together at Nice 
 and in Italy. Did you see it, papa ? I of course never 
 dreamed it. 
 
 " But coquetry ! To accuse me of seeing and knowing 
 and coming down here prepared ! 
 
 " Oh, he was entirely mad ! The instant he found he 
 was not to get what he wanted, he threw off the outside 
 he has acquired. He was himself. / knew him, papa, when 
 he was a boy ! 
 
 " I don t know against what, or whom I am arguing ! 
 I cannot believe you would wish me to marry Cousin Ste 
 phen. Not because of his physical disadvantage ; I assure 
 you, papa, his misfortune was, and always has been, his 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 131 
 
 only hold on me. How could it be otherwise ? He suffered 
 dreadfully as a boy. When he tormented me about Amer 
 ica, I was little and sensitive and just come from all 
 I loved there, and his jibes hurt ! (He says he has been 
 always jealous of America because he knew I loved it and 
 was making silent comparisons.) When he bullied me out 
 of my pocket-money, that he might spend it for us, and 
 spent it on himself ; when he was abominable to me in 
 every way a big boy can be to a little hot-tempered girl, 
 with not a soul to back her up still I could forgive him, 
 seeing how he suffered and could not do even what we 
 could, we little girls, to say nothing of lads of his own age ! 
 He was far worse then in health and temper than you see 
 him now. His face was impish. Now, I consider him almost 
 handsome. He is frightfully clever, he dresses like a fairy 
 prince ; but oppose him, deny him anything he wants, and 
 he is Stephen. It was my poor little pennies he wanted 
 then to spend ; now it is me. 
 
 " I should never have a word to say for my own life or 
 anything that was mine. I don t speak of money, though 
 Aunt Sophia argues in cold blood that Stephen needs all 
 he has and all that I have, too ! that the Holte property 
 and the Gen trey belong together. It stands in the way of 
 her leaving me what she admits belongs to me it tears 
 her in two, she says, to think how little / shall need money 
 in America, living with such barbarians ! and how much 
 poor Stephen will need it in England, having nothing 
 besides ! 
 
 "Aunt Gen trey is never ashamed of anything she 
 thinks. She speaks her mind. If Stephen could hope to 
 marry any of the good matches over there, she would not 
 
132 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 consider me near good enough nor rich enough for the 
 heir of Littledene. But, poor Stephen ! His little Ameri 
 can cousin is the most he can expect, and he is foolish 
 enough to think he loves her ! 
 
 " I must suppose it is his kind of love. But cross it in 
 the least, and it comes very close to ferocity. If I married 
 him I should be beneath him, I should be beneath myself, 
 and Stephen has no mercy on anything beneath him. It 
 may be, as aunt says, 4 thwarted will-power, the madness 
 of defeat, every way he turns. Whatever t is, it is some 
 thing I dare not face as his wife. 
 
 " The great mistake was, I tried to be tender with him 
 at first. One can t be without some feeling for an old com 
 rade, however at sword s points we were ; and it was my 
 turn now. 
 
 " We were on the east terrace above the lower garden, 
 just at moonrise. Ah ! the long English twilights ! Would 
 that the two dear lands might be rolled into one, with 
 one s pick of the people ! The roses crowded over the 
 broken parapet long sprays, loaded with blossoms, trail 
 ing on the old stone floor. How many seasons, I wonder, 
 have they stormed that wall ? T is as if they had made the 
 breaches there, and exulted to crowd in. 
 
 " How I love the place the place ! But, oh, papa, how 
 unhappy a woman might be there ! 
 
 " You must have known that spot, dear papa. You may 
 have sat there with my mother in that soft light, and 
 watched the moon come up over the garden. I know you 
 blame yourself for being in such haste to take her away. 
 But do not, do not ! Had you left her there, they would 
 have made her stepmother to Stephen ! 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 133 
 
 " He pointed poor Stephen to his crippled leg. He 
 struck his cane upon the thick-soled shoe. It is this/ he 
 said, 4 this murderous clog I carry to my grave. You do 
 not care to keep step with that ? 
 
 " I took his hand ; I could have kissed it for that look 
 in his face. Never have I heard him before so much as 
 allude to that shoe ! If any ons else had dared to I 
 think he could have killed them. I covered up his wound 
 as quick as I could. I went too far, of course ! There was, 
 I suppose, something dangerous in my pity, something he 
 mistook. 
 
 " If that were no bar between us, if that could be over 
 come, what, then, was there? He defied me to prove 
 that, if I could forget that, I could not learn to love him. 
 At seventeen to presume to answer for a whole life for 
 two lives! He could have understood my casting him 
 aside for a physical defect that he would have accepted 
 as final. 
 
 " How could I tell him he was deformed within ? He 
 has a crippled heart. His 4 murderous clog is Himself. 
 He has never tried to make any one happy me least of 
 all. The power he never used he has lost. I could not say 
 to him this ; there was nothing I could say that he would 
 accept as an answer. So all that was left was to get 
 away. 
 
 " At first there was a terrible storm of talk in the fam 
 ily when t was found what I had done. Stephen clamored 
 for me shamelessly. I suppose he could not believe but 
 he should win. Aunt Sophia was cuttingly, grindingly 
 on his side, his mother not openly against him ; but I 
 soon saw that in her and the girls I had secret allies. They 
 
134 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 wished me away. It is a shameful sort of knowledge to 
 have, but it is true : they are in no hurry for Stephen to 
 marry. He would lose no time to turn them out. Cousin 
 Gentrey would not care to live with Aunt Sophia at the 
 Heronry, nor wish to lose the rent aunt pays, that scarce 
 would provide as good a house elsewhere. She and the 
 girls have very little of their own. But it does not become 
 me to gossip about Cousin Gentrey. Next to your letter, 
 that precious letter, your afterthought before you 
 sailed, t was Cousin Amelia who helped me to get here. 
 
 " That letter made me wonder if you had not half sus- 
 picioned the ordeal before me ? I can imagine you thinking 
 it out from a father s view, not quite as you did for your 
 self and mamma. But you do not know Stephen ; and 
 you love England, and you are an Englishman about 
 family estates. They wanted my mother to be mistress of 
 Littledene. You were a boy, they say, when you made her 
 mistress of your own dear heart instead. Oh, wise papa ! 
 But when it came to your child, you would have looked 
 at all that beauty and wealth of family association, and 
 thought of the wilderness where you have chosen your 
 home. You would not stand in the way of my fortune if 
 t was meant for me to bring back the noble old house 
 into the right line. 
 
 " And then, on the other hand, you thought of them all 
 prepared to gobble me up for Stephen s sake ; you did not 
 wish me to be trapped. So you gave me the clew which at a 
 pinch should lead me out of the labyrinth in case I did 
 not care to stay there, with Stephen. 
 
 " Did you think I had no pangs when you left me ? Now 
 for a secret of my own. 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 135 
 
 " I wanted with all my heart to come with you. My 
 choice, had I been honest, was to have stayed with Cousin 
 Adrian this summer while you builded your Bear s house 
 in the woods. Think, sir, what the voyage would have been, 
 and the fine times together in New York ; all the packs of 
 pretty clothes you bought me that I should have worn at 
 your side, you beautiful old dandy ! And the sail up the 
 Hudson my soul ! 
 
 " But more than all I did so wish to please you exactly, 
 to prove I had learned the grace of Compliance. You 
 may remember, sir, you mentioned there was such a virtue. 
 You placed your finger on a glaring fault in your child 
 yes, glaring, though you did not say so. I determined there 
 should be no argument between us; and you laid an ac 
 cent on my staying. You may not know it, but you did. 
 We were both of us something too gay and glad to be run 
 ning away together. You put over your own qualms on me. 
 You were almost pathetic about Aunt Sophia s invitation. 
 4 It may be, says you, 4 the last thing the poor lady will 
 ever ask of you. 
 
 " So I was a * good girl and a dishonest one. But you 
 saved me with that letter. 
 
 " I had an inspiration t was nothing less that I 
 must not show it. It came to me late but in time. By what 
 they did else, I believe they would have nullified it in some 
 way. They put the case to my other trustee in London, and 
 in such a way that despite my letter to him, assuring him 
 you had given me the right to choose whether to go or stay, 
 he sided with Aunt Gentrey. 
 
 " I then wrote to Joanna in Scotland. She never answered. 
 Is it likely she would not if the letter was ever allowed to 
 
136 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 reach her ? I asked her to come to me at once, and bring 
 what money she had ; that I needed her and ten pounds to 
 get to London, etc. Silence of the dead ! And that taught 
 me to what lengths they would go. A child of seventeen 
 could not know her own mind. They took for granted 
 your consent : I was to be kept in England till I came of 
 age. I should have broke down, of course. They would 
 have married me to Stephen. 
 
 " You charged me never to travel alone. That was the 
 great difficulty, after I gave up Joanna. 
 
 " One day company called from Dalton Priory, and with 
 them came an army lady, wife of Major Parks, soon to join 
 her husband in America. I saw but little of this person, 
 not fancying her appearance ; but Cousin Gentrey talked 
 with her, and at bedtime in my room she talked with me. 
 To her I admitted that you had placed means at my com 
 mand, once I could get up to London. She advanced me 
 five pounds (and took mama s little diamond brooch and 
 my marquisette buckles as security). So, with my boxes 
 packed in secret by her maid, leaving a letter for my poor 
 old Aunt Sophia (whom I honor and loathe), I was driven 
 over, through Cousin Gen trey s connivance, to Dalton 
 Priory, in time to go to London with Mistress Parks. An 
 adventure I should have dearly liked with a different 
 escort. 
 
 " At Portsmouth, a number of army officers came to 
 call upon us. The ship was delayed. Madam Parks amused 
 herself meantime prodigiously. I kept my room as far as 
 possible. They were generally at cards downstairs ; much 
 wine was drunk her maid putting her to bed in the 
 small hours. When our ship was to sail, t was discovered 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 137 
 
 madam had emptied her purse at play. The landlord, 
 taking alarm from tradespeople she owed in town, seized 
 her mails, and mine with them, our accounts being to 
 gether. At this she said she must go back to London for 
 more money, which would lose us our ship, unless I could 
 lend her fifty pounds which I thought best not to do. 
 As I tell this it sounds like a long as well as sickening 
 chapter. It lasted but little over a week. 
 
 44 On the Sunday morning following, Mistress Parks 
 being still in her bed, I stood at the window and saw two 
 sweet Quaker ladies go by neat as birds and stepped 
 as swift, or I should have run out and followed, for they 
 fair took my heart along with them. Straight little backs, 
 plain folds like a nun, and soft, pale faces such as one 
 yearns for after too much rouge and scarlet. I rang for 
 a servant and asked if there was a Quaker meeting-house 
 in the town. Told there was, I made up my little packet, 
 feed a boy to guide me, and he left me opposite a plain 
 brick house in a quiet old square, with a silence all about 
 it. I blundered into the wrong door and found myself in 
 the men s side of the meeting. Oh, the dear old faces, with 
 their hats on, confronting me in the saints gallery ! That 
 cannot be what they call it, but saints they looked. 
 
 " One was preaching in a queer, high warble. His eyes 
 were closed. An old man rose up from a seat near the 
 door, smiled at me gravely, led me out into the lobby, and 
 pointed to another door. This time I faced a row of saints 
 in bonnets. 
 
 " If any were curious they did not show it. The old man 
 across the low partition warbled on. I did not know what 
 they would say to me nor what they could do but felt I 
 
138 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 should come to no more harm, nor strike my foot against 
 a stone, as I had in my first forthputting. 
 
 " You will please forget the name of that major s wife, 
 papa. I made use of her. 
 
 " All that followed worked out by degrees perfectly nat 
 ural. I had gone to see Sir William Baker in London, 
 who is dead did you know that ? It is his son now that 
 has the management, but he honored your signature. He 
 was to have sent my money to the ship by some trusty 
 person who could see me off. That also convinced him I 
 was going straight to you. Still better was he pleased when 
 he found me at the house of a grand, noble-looking woman- 
 preacher, whose name he knew well, for he came himself ! 
 We were starting from Bristol this time ; he was his own 
 messenger. Don t forget that of him, papa. He was ex 
 traordinary kind and saluted me like an elder brother when 
 we parted. 
 
 " As for my Quaker friends, your letter was my creden 
 tials. They read it once and smiled. My father s arms 
 were about me in every word. His trust in me was my 
 warranty. When you wrote it, you had pangs, too, my 
 father. I know you had. You asked yourself, How can I 
 bear to lose her ? Will she be happy if she leave me ? I 
 shall never leave you till you leave me and not then! 
 Let me once get to you again ; after that no more part 
 ings ! 
 
 " Nothing could be simpler or easier than what has hap 
 pened since, yet it has been a new, rich experience ; strange, 
 utterly aside from one s real self, yet somehow steadying. 
 The very dress I was obliged to wear exerts an influence 
 I cannot describe. Only once I broke out of it, and aston- 
 
CATHEEINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 139 
 
 ished everybody, myself most of all ! Of that I shall tell 
 you hereafter. 
 
 " I gave away my last and only suit of worldly gar 
 ments to the cabin-maid on board the packet-ship. It was 
 not in keeping with the 4 Friends I traveled with ; it 
 made talk and speculation. So I put on the gray lendings 
 and was half sorry to lay them off. If your child should 
 ever be at outs with the world, she begs to become a 
 Quaker nun in a scoop bonnet. No one restrains them of 
 their liberty, but their souls are disciplined. T is their 
 favorite word, and it serves. 
 
 " I shall go straight to Cousin Adrian s and remain 
 there nested in peace till you send for me, or, better still, 
 come to fetch me. But I shall not be impatient. 
 
 " Your ever loving and hereafter dutiful daughter, 
 
 " CATHERINE." 
 
CHAPTEE XIX 
 
 IN spite of ancient history, the tale of the human 
 family as fathers and mothers must know it, how easily, 
 when their turn comes, do they believe those sweet vows 
 that sweet young daughters make ! 
 
 When Colonel Yelverton read this letter, his heart was 
 proud and his gallant eyes grew dim. So she had made 
 her choice : her daddy against the kingdoms, as young men 
 offer them to the girls they would capture for themselves. 
 He might count on five, perhaps six years with her all 
 to himself, before they need be pestered with a husband. 
 And when she came to that Bear s house he trusted to 
 surprise her! He hugged his soul in pride that he had 
 played the game in sportsman fashion, given her all the 
 chances dealt her by right of blood and circumstance. 
 The little hussy ! clever as she was, she had not fathomed 
 his sordid duplicity in urging her to be as on-coming as 
 possible to * poor Aunt Sophia. Poor Aunt Sophia ! with 
 four thousand pounds of her half-sister s money, Cather 
 ine s mother s money, at the disposal of her pen ! How 
 well for him that he could afford this bravado ! He pitied 
 them at Littledene, with their stale money and wornout 
 lands that could not buy his little Catherine. He had opened 
 wide doors to his homing pigeon, had not laid a feather s 
 weight upon her flight, and straight and sure, back she 
 finds her own way to his hungering heart. So that was 
 the end of the world and the flesh for them ! 
 
 He stroked his shapely knees, encased in tight white 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 141 
 
 buckskin riding-breeches, in front of a roaring beech-wood 
 fire. Though it was June, evenings in his northern wilder 
 ness were still cool. In the far end of the log shanty he 
 occupied while his red brick mansion was building, numer 
 ous pieces of furniture were stacked uncrated. He could 
 see through its wrappings the carved posts of a little tent- 
 bed that was to stand in the alcove of a southwest bedroom. 
 Among the bales of blankets and rugs and linen were the 
 delicate flowered chintzes for its curtains. He was a man 
 who needed a woman in his life, and he had been tanta 
 lized in his thirst for home joys. The cup had been snatched 
 from his lips, the torch put out. 
 
 His day in the wilderness had been long, his labors 
 often fruitless, his chief social excitements those quarrels 
 of his neighbors with which more and more he was becom 
 ing identified. 
 
 The community growing up around him, neighbors as 
 they called themselves, five, ten, perhaps twenty miles 
 apart, with a blacksmith s forge on each farm and a meet 
 ing-house at the cross-roads, was pretty definitely divided 
 into Church and Meeting, Tory and Whig, New York 
 supplying the Church and Tory element chiefly, in the 
 residents she encouraged to settle on her patents as an 
 offset to the New England opposition rapidly crowding in. 
 
 Many of the former were retired army officers like the 
 colonel, seeking a reward for their battles in the Colonies 
 cause, in a slice of colonial land. 
 
 The colonel had grown narrow, a trifle rougher in his 
 speech, and he ate too much and probably drank too much ; 
 but that he was not worse, and a gambler and a sot, like 
 so many of his old mislaid bachelor and widower friends, 
 
142 THE KOYAL AMEKICANS 
 
 was due to the sweetness and sanity of his nature. Perhaps 
 it was due also to the young daughter he must keep straight 
 for. 
 
 On the morning after her letter came, he rose up feel, 
 ing like a boy again. He decided on a long ride to tuj 
 outer edge of his plantation (not yet all planted by sev 
 eral thousand acres), to see about a company of "queer 
 sticks " said to have camped on a piece of his land, a sort 
 of religious revivalists, different varieties of whom were 
 springing up all over the country districts in the wake of 
 W hitefield s preaching. He decided to move on them about 
 sundown, when the men would be home to supper, that he 
 might see what sort they were, for he suspected other mat 
 ters than religion might have induced their wanderings in 
 the wilderness. His great beaver dam and village lay over 
 in that direction. To preserve his own beavers appealed 
 to every Englishman as good sport as well as good money. 
 
 He had his wood-runner with him, carrying food for two 
 and an axe for brush-cutting. He made the fellow ride 
 behind, keeping some distance between them to rid him 
 self of the sense of company that was not companionship. 
 How much of that had he not borne since coming to 
 America ! He was used to it now, but how different these 
 rides would be when he had his child ! 
 
 They had loitered the day out in the woods, going round 
 by the beaver dam, where trappers had been at work, 
 not these persons perhaps, but the mischief was begun. 
 
 Long slits and low spots of gold between the crowded 
 tree-boles showed the sun s retreat. A vesper silence set 
 tled on the paths. The close green roof of branches over 
 head turned black. 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 143 
 
 On the silence as they topped a rise broke a long wail 
 ing chorus of men s and women s voices. The wind, which 
 blew toward them, softly died, and the singing died also. 
 They rode on, and met it again as the trail turned aside 
 from the hill s descent, this time in a louder, nearer burst. 
 Smoke of a camp-fire showed through the trees. 
 
 " Then entered in these wise men three, 
 With rev-e-rence fell on their knee, 
 And offered up in his pres-ence, 
 The gifts of gold and frank-in-cense! 
 
 Chorus : O well, O well, O well, O well ! 
 Born is the King of Isra-el! " 
 
 " What manner of hymn is that, Obadiah ? " The colo 
 nel s man rode up beside him : " Presbyterian, would you 
 call it?" 
 
 " Can t say, sir. I have little to do with New York 
 Presbyterians." 
 
 " Is it Low Dutch ? " 
 
 " You have me there, sir, too. Sounds to me plaguey 
 like we had a flock o Separatists lit down amongst us. 
 Those folks don t belong to any meeting. Think they can 
 git salvation waitin at the cross-roads. As for singin 
 I don t know what they would n t sing! " 
 
 "Very likely," said the colonel. "Well, Obadiah, 
 look up our camping-spot, and beat on the frying-pan 
 when the trout are ready. I shall go forward and speak 
 with these Separatists, and move there be a little further 
 separation between us." 
 
 The colonel dismounted and strode through the nar 
 row strip of woods that curtained the encampment. He 
 
144 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 noted disgustedly that trees had been felled, more trees 
 and more, all up the slope, girdled as for future opera 
 tions on a larger scale. 
 
 Upon the first of these intruders he came in a tower 
 ing bad humor : a man seated, bent over, by the remains 
 of his fire, in a deep sleep or stupor. 
 
 " Wake up, my man ! Where is the leader of your 
 company in here? I desire to speak with him." 
 
 The sleeper, who had the eye of a pig in a large, flat, 
 discolored countenance, pointed loosely in the colonel s 
 direction while his body sagged earthwards. 
 
 " Simon Bar-jona, lovest thou me ? 
 
 Getting no more out of him than a repetition of the 
 question, Colonel Yelverton replied, " My name is not 
 Bar-jona, friend, nor do I love thee, if truth be told. 
 My errand is not of that nature. Sit up, if you can, and 
 say where is your master." 
 
 " Simon Bar-jona, " the speaker reiterated, 4 feed my 
 lambs ! " 
 
 Colonel Yelverton regarded him smiling. Do these 
 revivalists quote Scripture in their cups, he wondered, or 
 was the fellow drunk with religious emotion, or was he 
 merely shamming for reasons of his own ? 
 
 " 4 Simon Bar-jona, " he muttered, as his body sank to 
 earth and rolled over, one finger still waving toward the 
 colonel, " 4 feed-my-sheep. " 
 
 Voices were still rising and sinking in cadence beyond 
 the trees phrases from the Bible alternating blasphe 
 mously, it seemed to the listener, with such adjurations as 
 "Sister, hold my hand!" or "Brother," likewise. The 
 colonel walked on, pausing at a low bark hut the door of 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 145 
 
 which hung ajar on leather hinges, to examine the interior. 
 Turning by accident, behold the Scripture-quoter risen on 
 elbow, the pig-eye watching with a look neither drunk nor 
 pious. 
 
 From the number of horses hitched to trees, the colo 
 nel concluded that a part of the assemblage before him 
 had gathered from neighboring farms. He recognized some 
 of his own tenants, the younger ones who would be apt to 
 follow up any new spectacle ; and the one before him a 
 lover of the picture-drama would have ridden far to see. 
 
 The camp-fire, cut off from him by a semicircle of char 
 acteristic backs and heads, illumined a central figure 
 against the night greens that drank the light : a tall 
 young woman, dressed as plainly as might be in a dark 
 homespun skirt and short gown ; a decent apron, and a 
 cap hiding all but the roots of her soft, elastic hair grow 
 ing close about her forehead, completed a dress that would 
 have been mean for a servant. The effect of this plainness 
 was to throw out rather than diminish the wearer s un 
 common gifts of person. A listlessness of manner went 
 strangely with this beauty, as though another than the pos 
 sessor of it inhabited its form. 
 
 The girl stood a moment, her arms hanging at her sides, 
 looking straight before her, seeing no one; not the colo 
 nel in his conspicuous hunting dress, who kept himself in 
 shadow. 
 
 " My friends," she began, in a soft, even voice, " some 
 of you who are here to-night are strangers, asking why we 
 are come amongst you and what message we bring. For 
 myself I speak only. They call me young, but I have lived 
 long enough to suffer some things ; to want what all hearts 
 
146 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 ask for ; to be disappointed of every hope and every want 
 but such as we seek there ! " 
 
 She looked up, she did not move a finger ; silently her 
 eyes an instant sought the stars. 
 
 " My poor Charlotte ! At last ! " the colonel groaned ; 
 a shudder went over him for the place he had found her 
 in, for the girl s desolate calmness, and for the people he 
 had found her with. He listened, drawing closer in the 
 shade. 
 
 " Some of you here, who know me, know that I had a 
 Best Friend who brought me out of captivity. Much joy 
 there was before me with that great friend and one I loved 
 better still, his little daughter. I lost them both. I threw 
 them away ! Because I wanted more than a share I 
 wanted all. Evil birds sang in my ears and I heard. I ran 
 away following those evil voices. 
 
 " They said, Go back to those poor heathen who set 
 you so high in their hearts. Among the proud white peo 
 ple you are nothing. That was a false and selfish word fit 
 for cowards. But I went. The tribe I once lived with had 
 gone far away, beyond the big ocean-river of the North. I 
 followed many moons of journeys, as they say. No one 
 laid a hand on me to hurt me. I have a mark here," she 
 touched her breast, " that made me, when their women saw- 
 it, as one of their own blood. I hated the mark. No white 
 woman has it, but I used it. Always, with them that 
 helped me, I was thinking only of myself. I had no love 
 for them. Always, having seen white people, I despised my 
 old friends. Not before. And a strange thing it was that 
 in every village where I came and stayed and took what 
 they gave, some trouble came with me to that village. 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 147 
 
 " In one it was the daughter of the chief, a little girl 
 who loved me, that died of a sickness no one had seen be 
 fore. In another the food gave out in winter. In a third 
 village the river washed away the crops and covered the 
 fields with sand. So it began to run before me that I was 
 a daughter of evil. Where I went and ate and slept, trou 
 ble came with me. The last time was the worst. It was the 
 smallpox, and they drove me away with stones. 
 
 " I turned back then. At the first poor white man s 
 house, I went in and begged them to keep me. I said, 4 The 
 best friends, the best home, I threw away because I could not 
 have all. Now let me take the portion of the undeserving. 
 
 " That portion, friends, if I say it was very poor, that the 
 work was very long and hard for my strength, I do not 
 say it to complain. God is just! I trod on his best gifts. 
 I threw them away in my wicked pride and jealousy. That 
 was why there were bad links in the chain of friendship 
 between me and those I loved the white people. Also 
 the Indians who once loved me. The bad links were in my 
 own heart, and the chain always broke. 
 
 " Then came a great sickness, and the long winter 
 of my sighing. It seemed I should never be able to rise 
 again. By-and-by a woman was sent to me. I do not know 
 where from, or how she came, for I was in a long dream 
 of fever. She laid her hands on me and stroked my flesh 
 and felt my bones and said, 4 Sister, thou art not sick in 
 body but in spirit. There is one you ask always to see. 
 Is that true? 
 
 " More than one, I said, l there are two. She came to 
 that presently. She told me I had a great friend whom I 
 had lost and was wearying to see. 
 
148 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 "I asked, Is he alive? and she shook her head. Is 
 his little daughter still living in America ? I asked. She 
 seemed stopped in her mind. She waited with her eyes 
 closed. Oh, how I trembled for those next words! 
 
 " She is living, but she is far away and never can re 
 turn. In England she spends her life now that her father 
 is dead. 
 
 " I wanted then to die. My white father I called him, 
 for he was all the father I knew, my little white sister, 
 never any more! And then, dear friends, the wonder hap 
 pened. When that last hope was finished, and I wanted 
 nothing here, nor had any way left to go that was better 
 one way than another, then said He who Himself had 
 nothing, who asked, Who is my Brother ? who is my 
 Mother ? to me He said, Sister, come with me. 
 
 "That is all my message, friends. Very few are those 
 who can use it. Very few are so poor as to have nothing 
 left but God. Yet these are the Inheritors of His Kingdom. 
 
 " I count myself happy among the daughters for this, 
 that I have no father ; among the sisters that I have no 
 sister. Lover and Friend hast thou put away from me, 
 and mine acquaintance into darkness. That thy eternal 
 Light shall shine and lead me in the way. Amen ! " 
 
 Charlotte stood quiet, her hands hanging loosely clasped, 
 her large, sad eyes fixed on the wall of trees slowly sway 
 ing in the air-current drawn inward by the fire. The colo 
 nel watched her, hesitating to break her calm. A man in 
 black, with the countenance of a professional shepherd, 
 touched him on the shoulder. 
 
 " I give you good-evening, sir. You seem moved. I have 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 149 
 
 been watching you and saying to myself, Here is another 
 of them that come to scoff and remain to pray ! " 
 
 The colonel avoided this person who had laid an affec^ 
 tionate hand on his shoulder. He saw a long-jawed, sallow 
 face, and a shifty eye. The loose-jointed frame belonging 
 to it stood directly in his path, swaying slightly from side 
 to side, the eyes blinking at him. 
 
 " I seem to be a subject for texts to-night," he laughed 
 peevishly. " Be good enough to step aside, friend. I would 
 speak with that girl over yonder." 
 
 " Sir, I know not by what authority you press in amongst 
 us and demand speech with the divinely inspired, under 
 my protection. That, sir, is no ordinary 4 girl, as you ex 
 press it." 
 
 " You are exceeding right : she is no ordinary girl to 
 me. She is my adopted child, lost these eight years, as you 
 have heard her say, and found by the blessing of God. 
 As to my authority, I am the owner of this ground we 
 stand on. Will that suffice to introduce us ? " 
 
 " Yea, a man of earth ! " The shepherd closed his 
 eyes. " He that is of the earth is earthy and speaketh of 
 the earth : he that cometh from heaven 
 
 " Confine yourself to earth long enough to tell me your 
 business in here, on my share of it, cutting my trees 
 and wounding them and meddling with my beaver ?" 
 
 " Oh, my God I thank thee ! Oh, my father, my father- 
 captain ! Here is Charlotte take me home! " 
 
 Across the lighted space the girl had recognized her 
 friend. She sprang to him like a deer. She knelt and 
 clasped his knees and laid her graceful head against his 
 hand. 
 
150 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 "My father, my father, I thank God for thee! " 
 
 She who had but just thanked Him that she had no 
 father, sat at the feet of this very human substitute and 
 wept like a child. The colonel s own eyes were dim. 
 
 Forgetful of all but themselves, he raised his poor girl 
 in his arms, and stroking her shoulder while she laughed 
 and sobbed, was saying : 
 
 " You see, I am not dead nor near it. Nor is little 
 Catherine in England. She is coming to live with me soon. 
 With us it shall be now ! " 
 
 Charlotte turned, and made a feast as it were of her 
 happiness, offering the company a share in it. 
 
 " This is my father, my best friend," she said, " who 
 came with the armies and took me out of darkness. He 
 that was dead is alive again. He that I lost I have found ! " 
 
 " Are you quite certain he is the same 4 friend ? " the 
 shepherd sneered. 
 
 " I had but one to lose," Charlotte answered simply. 
 " The woman lied to me. She said she was of God, and 
 spoke words from heaven sent to me through her. It was 
 lies. I shall follow in her ways no farther. God is better 
 than she said." 
 
 " Now, sir, I must be plain with you." 
 
 The shepherd took up his side of the case, appealing to 
 the audience round the camp-fire. Colonel Yelverton, with 
 Charlotte beside him, stood at the bar of this rude court 
 of adjudicature. To snatch a beautiful girl away from a re 
 ligious mission for which she seemed so peculiarly set apart, 
 to poison the source of her inspiration, would be no light 
 matter, sprung at a moment s notice upon simple-minded 
 judges such as these. 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 151 
 
 " I am this young woman s guardian in her holy pilgrim 
 age. I have seen her save souls, and bring tough hearts to 
 the mourners seat. I am likewise responsible for her 
 friends ; and I appeal to all present, if I should be doing 
 well to hand her over to one, a gentleman of a very differ 
 ent way of life and belief, if indeed he have any belief at 
 all, however distinguished, as I acknowledge this gentle 
 man to be." A low bow to Colonel Yelverton, who stared 
 at the speaker. " However able in a worldly sense to pro 
 vide for her beyond my own poor means, as one of the 
 unpaid ministry of Christ. Would I be right, I ask you, 
 friends and fellow Christians, to abandon her ? Yield her 
 up to him on no evidence but his demand and her own ex 
 cited imagination ? Persons endowed as she is are subject 
 to illusions, are known often to deceive themselves in the 
 appearance of things. Her friend, she has just told us, is 
 dead. And lo ! another appears, and straightway he is the 
 one ! Where is the proof of this ? A man would not give 
 up his dog on such an order from a stranger." 
 
 " Dogs don t mistake their masters," said one from the 
 crowd. 
 
 " What proof do you ask ? " the captain answered. Shall 
 not a human heart be trusted as far as the memory of a dog? 
 There is no question of master here. If any present doubt 
 this girl s identity with my adopted child, that I lost eight 
 years agone, let him step up and compare this description 
 with the original who stands before us. Stay, I will read 
 it for all and sundry. Charlotte, will you permit the com 
 parison ? Stand forth and let them look at you, my girl. 
 Now, good people, check me off as I read. This was printed 
 in the " Pennsylvania Gazette," July 12, 1765, less than 
 
152 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 a fortnight after I lost this child who asks me to take her 
 home." 
 
 The captain in a loud voice read from a yellow news 
 paper cutting which he took from his notebook : 
 
 " Information wanted, or any clew to her whereabouts, 
 of a young white girl answering to the christened name of 
 Charlotte, or to a Shawanoese name which signifies Moon- 
 in-the-Lake, the same being the legally adopted daughter of 
 Captain Edmund Yelverton of the Royal American regi 
 ment, etc., etc. Age about thirteen years, height 5 feet 1 
 inch, hands of a size to match a tall woman s proportions, 
 feet small for the same, eyes large, dark hazel, eyebrows 
 placed some distance above the eyes, mouth and nose in 
 just proportion, forehead low and chin pointed, hair dark, 
 soft, and inclined to curl, neck long, a straight and comely 
 person. Speaks indifferent English, understands a little 
 French, was a captive since before her recollection to the 
 savages, who tattooed her on the breast in blue pigment 
 with the totem of the Wolf, from which clan she came in 
 the tribe that held her. This should be a conclusive proof 
 of the child s identity if found or heard from. A liberal 
 reward awaits, etc., etc. 
 
 " Now, if this be not a true description of the young 
 woman who stands before you, allowing for eight years, let 
 whoever says nay step forth and name the error." 
 
 " The mark ! " said a voice. 
 
 " For shame ! " said a second voice. 
 
 " Friends, the mark is here, if you demand to see it. But 
 I think there are none who will doubt my word when I say 
 t is the same I spoke of which I did so hate, yet it carried 
 me through the tribes unscathed." 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 153 
 
 Charlotte stood with one hand on the breast of her 
 gown, awaiting the verdict. 
 
 A man in hunter s buckskins stood up in the circle of 
 rude suffragists. " I think we are all satisfied," he said, 
 " but the girl should be asked if she clearly desires this 
 change of guardians here upon the spot, of her own free 
 will." 
 
 " She hath already spoke," said the colonel, " but ask 
 her yourselves." 
 
 " Mistress, do you go with this gentleman of your own 
 free intention, without secret or undue influence ? " 
 
 " I do," said Charlotte, adding as she looked at the 
 colonel, " Where thou goest, I will go ; thy people shall 
 be my people, and thy God my God. 
 
 " Well, thou shalt keep the same God, my girl, and my 
 little Catherine shall be thy sister. And my roof shall be 
 over you both. Mr. what is your name ? " 
 
 Here a dolorous sound was heard, a hoarse, muffled 
 roar from the near background. " Help, help ! Let me 
 out ! " 
 
 " What in perdition does this mean, Obadiah ? Who is 
 that yelling back there ? " 
 
 Obadiah, having put himself in the colonel s view, was 
 held responsible, his manner betraying an unwarranted 
 satisfaction at the sounds referred to. 
 
 " Why, sir, I was comin to tell you supper s ready, V 
 I met a man in the trees back there ; he said Abram was 
 dead, V the prophets was dead, and he asked me, Whom 
 maketh thou thyself. ? 
 
 " Well, I can quote Scripture considerable, but not s 
 straight ez thet when my head s full o liquor. I never 
 
154 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 saw a man yet puttin on he was drunk when he wa n t, 
 thout he needed watchin . Not knowin what he might 
 take a notion to do when my back was turned, I shoved 
 him like into that cow-pen, and took a turn with a rope 
 round the fastenin . Maybe he ain t been able to let him 
 self out." 
 
 "Why, so it would appear," the colonel laughed. 
 " Would you send some one to him, or do you agree with 
 Obadiah Smith he were as well saved with the rest of the 
 prophets ? I believe I did not catch your name ? " 
 
 " My surname is Wilkinson," the shepherd sighed. " I 
 was baptized Naboth, but my vineyard is in the hands of 
 the oppressor." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Naboth Wilkinson, shall we release the 
 prophet ? or shall we leave him whilst you come to supper 
 with me ? Obadiah, have you trout and coffee enough for 
 three?" 
 
 " If the trout fall short, colonel, I think likely Mr. Na 
 both here could help us out with a dish o beaver-tail 
 stew." 
 
 There was a roar of laughter at the mention of beaver 
 stew. The shepherd smiled modestly. 
 
 " Yaas," Obadiah drawled. " I been studyin some o 
 the outlyin features of this religious camp-meetin : I 
 guess t ain t quite all religion fetches em in here. Simon 
 Bar-jona in the cowshed s wintered here plain enough, 
 sendin wood down the crick n raisin Almighty with the 
 beaver. This gentleman s only just arrived with pleasant 
 weather, to set up a salvation camp. All the same job, 
 though, guess you 11 find. If you want to make any sort of 
 swap with Mr. Naboth, guess you might debit him about 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 155 
 
 a hundred or two prime beaver-skins. He s on the Albany 
 eend o the traffic. Say, ain t thet so, Naboth?" 
 
 Naboth went along meekly, to sup with the oppressor. 
 He lay by the colonel s camp-fire that night, the colo 
 nel would take no denial, and when, on the following 
 morning, the salvation camp broke up, Charlotte went 
 home with the oppressor. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 LITTLE as there was to talk about in that sparsely 
 peopled region, all personal news flew qn the wings of the 
 wind ; nor did Lady Wind lack a touch of dramatic in 
 vention to raise her above the level of a common gossip. 
 Imagination is seldom a liar. She merely expands the 
 truth. Colonel Yelverton would not have denied that he 
 bought off the shepherd ; although he assured himself that, 
 in any case, he would have let him off with his disappear 
 ance. 
 
 If Charlotte came into the transaction at all, he simply 
 had ransomed her as the quickest way to get her out of 
 unworthy hands without an ugly controversy. Ransom is 
 a perfectly good word when you deal with a wolf in sheep s 
 clothing, and there is a lamb to be torn, but hush-money 
 has a different sound. 
 
 Those who called it that, and believed in " the stack of 
 guineas the breadth of your two hands high," were persons 
 beneath notice. Still it was inconvenient, had the colonel 
 but known, that two of them should be of his own house 
 hold. 
 
 " Cookie," as he called her, and her husband, an igno 
 rant, childless couple of few wants, whom he had imported 
 as his caretakers, were the elderly serpents he warmed in 
 his bosom. Charlotte s eagerness to be of use, to show 
 she had learned to work, and was not above earning her 
 salt, had alarmed the old housekeeper, who thought the 
 end of her own job was in sight. There was a large beam 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HEK COUNTRY 157 
 
 in her old, shrewd, watery eye when she looked upon 
 Charlotte. To old Mimi she was the supplanter. 
 
 Some of the trifling but annoying results of this kintra- 
 clatter might be summed up in the following conversation 
 between the colonel and his friend Major McLean, the 
 autocrat. 
 
 It was after supper, Charlotte having left the gentlemen 
 to their pipes and tumblers of flip. McLean had changed 
 his seat to one nearer the fire. The colonel had squared 
 around in his chair to face him. The same moon that 
 lighted Catherine s voyage up the Hudson shone down 
 through the trees on Charlotte s evening range of wood- 
 paths, where she walked or ran as a bird from the snare. 
 Her youth had come back, and peace like a foretaste of 
 heaven was in the present of this new, free, innocent home ; 
 and in the future was Catherine. 
 
 She was in the forest alone once more, in the silence 
 no wood-lover can forget, with that immeasurable joy, 
 awake and pulsating, that comes with a night of perfect 
 spring. 
 
 " How does 4 cookie get along with Charlotte, eh? " the 
 major asked. 
 
 " That s of no consequence," said the colonel airily. 
 " Cookie can leave if she can t get along with Charlotte." 
 
 "Then she doesn t get along?" McLean promptly 
 inferred. 
 
 " How should I know ? I never asked her." 
 
 " Tell you what, cookie must n t leave ! Cookie must n t 
 leave till the little daughter comes." 
 
 We have said the major was an autocrat. Also he was 
 a gossip, and the best-hearted busybody in the world, and 
 
158 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 there was no muzzling him when he was in the mood for 
 advice. 
 
 " What are you aiming at ? " the colonel inquired. 
 
 " It wouldn t be fair to Charlotte. You can see that, 
 Ned, can t you ? You want to treat the girl, you say, as 
 you would a lady." 
 
 " I want to treat her as I would a daughter. Have I got 
 to have my daughter duennaed in my own house ?" 
 
 " She is not your daughter, and she is a devilish hand 
 some young woman. That is what I mean, if you will have 
 it, and that s what others mean who say a vast deal more 
 than any friend of yours cares to listen to." 
 
 "Then why do you listen, hang it! This world s no 
 place for a decent man to live in. Before I d have thought, 
 McLean, you d bring such stuff to me, I d God, what a 
 world it is ! " 
 
 The colonel banged his fist upon the table. He jumped 
 up and poked the fire, and tramped about the room, blow 
 ing off his indignation in tobacco smoke. 
 
 " Tut, tut ! Come and sit down ! Don t go raging around 
 like that. Not a bit o use in it. The world s well enough," 
 said the major, " only you re a braver man than most of 
 us, Ned. We want to prick your bubble reputation for 
 chivalry of the sort that s gone out." 
 
 " What makes you think it s gone out, if you call it 
 4 chivalry not to throw your word and your honor to the 
 dogs ? If you are fooling, this is no subject for it. I wish 
 you d let my domestic affairs alone, or get some of your 
 own to fuss about." 
 
 " See, there you go ! Mad as a turkey-cock, and if any 
 but an old friend heard you and saw you, he d say you 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 159 
 
 showed plain enough where the shoe pinches. Is n t it bet 
 ter to stand a word from an old crony and be done with it, 
 than have some that are not your friends hackin at your 
 back whenever it s turned! " 
 
 " My back s always turned to that breed. Let them 
 make the most of it." 
 
 " You re wrong, you re wrong ! It s back to back in this 
 fight. We ve got enemies enough around us here, on 
 grounds enough, good Lord ! But don t let them lay a finger 
 on our private lives. The first woman to come into this house 
 ought to be your daughter or your wife. Why don t you 
 make her your wife and ha done with it ? " 
 
 " Charlotte my wife ? The woman does n t live on this 
 earth that I shall ever marry." 
 
 " Why ? " As the colonel did not answer, McLean asked 
 more gently, " Is it because of some one in this world, 
 or ?" 
 
 " Both," said the colonel. " For God s sake, I wish you 
 would n t talk to me ! " 
 
 For a brief space the major refrained. Then silence drew 
 his thoughts out of him. His intentions were of the best. 
 
 " I heard a story in New York about you and John 
 Johnson at a dinner-table pretty soon after his engage 
 ment came out. I want to know if it is true ? " 
 
 " I dare say," said the colonel. 
 
 "The whole of it?" 
 
 " I don t know what you heard." 
 
 " Hold your horses, then, and I 11 tell you. I heard that 
 Sir John called a toast to the lovely, the most amiable " 
 
 " No names, please ! " 
 
 " Well, he named a name of the lady he is to marry, 
 
160 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 and Colonel Yelverton sets his glass down half-full and 
 looks Sir John in the eye, who says, Colonel Yelverton 
 declines the toast ? 
 
 " Colonel Yelverton owns that he cannot swallow the 
 whole of it. 4 Which half, says Sir John, does Colonel 
 Yelverton reject? 
 
 " This, says Colonel Yelverton, and flings the remains 
 of his wine in Sir John s " 
 
 " No," the colonel shouted. " I spared his face, d n 
 him! I dyed his shirt-frill, where I hoped to stick my 
 rapier. But it was not to be." 
 
 " When I heard that," sighed the major, " I said to 
 myself, 4 Could Ned Yelverton have been as drunk as that, 
 or has he gone clean mad ? Has he gone mad, I said, 4 or 
 was he eh? " 
 
 " He was and is, off and on Now say no more to me ! 
 I did it, not because I was drunk or mad, nor to pay him 
 for his lies about me, nor because I wanted the same lady 
 once, but to save that hound from breaking her heart." 
 
 " He 11 not break it, my boy. He 11 cover it with jewels." 
 
 " By George and the Garter ! You can t say that to me, 
 McLean" 
 
 " Be you easy. I know them all I heard the sequel of 
 the meeting, too. How papa Watts, good man, got the 
 constables in time to save his titled son-in-law, he, he ! " 
 
 " What s come over you to-night, you old scandal 
 monger ? Any man will bring constables if the matter 
 leaks out. I don t say Sir John let it out ; but if you will 
 carry tales, that s a better one than stuff about Mr. Watts. 
 Of course Sir John let it out," the colonel added mo 
 rosely. " He did n t want the stain on his ruffles to sink in." 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 161 
 
 " Aye, why should he ? Why should the expectant 
 bridegroom be covetous of death ? Now, what will you say 
 to each other if you should chance to meet again ? " 
 
 " I see no chance of such a meeting." 
 
 "There s every chance of it. He has interests up here. 
 Promise me you 11 not be the aggressor." 
 
 " I have no wish to slay my old sweetheart s husband. 
 Now she has married him, let her keep him. Why should 
 I court a common brawl for the sake of another man s 
 wife, when I ve a child of my own to live for ! " 
 
 " Good, sensible old lad ! Better than I dared build on 
 thee, Ned! And now, if you would but marry and settle 
 down to your old age with a half-score of kitlings round 
 your knees, I d be the happier man myself." 
 
 " That can never be, Jack." 
 
 " Well, when is the daughter coming? " 
 
 " When I have a house fit for her." 
 
 " That s a trumpery notion. No house ! What do you 
 want of a house better than this ? " 
 
 " There s no room in it. I m in the only bedroom. The 
 old folks are in the garret. I ve had a partition in to 
 make a corner for poor Charlotte, who d be happier in 
 a tree." 
 
 " Build on an ell." 
 
 " Why waste money when the house itself will be ready 
 in October ? The hang of it is to get her here ! I seem 
 never able to lift a foot out of this hole, now I m planted 
 in it." 
 i " Plant some one else in your place." 
 
 " Can you produce the man ? " 
 
 " I have thought I could ; whiles I ve thought so. Know 
 
162 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 who you ve got on your left elbow here over the sugar- 
 maple tract and the duck swamp? No house yet." 
 
 " It s a pretty bit of land. Not so big but a man might 
 buy it in, if he knew who owns it and could get his relations 
 to lend him the money." 
 
 " I 11 tell you, then. It s a young fellow Phil Schuyler 
 has planted in his hole. He s a dabster at anything; can 
 choose your timber and sled it out, and set up your saw 
 mill and saw your stuff and raft it down the river and sell 
 it and load you a ship for the Indies " 
 
 " Gammon ! If there is such a man I don t want 
 him ! " 
 
 " Gammon all you like. He s Phil s right hand ! And 
 a fine up-standing chap to boot. I don t believe Phil 
 needs him winters. Why don t you fetch him here to look 
 after your affairs, and cut loose ? Go to New York or to 
 London. Introduce your daughter. Make yourself gay. 
 Purple and fine linen. No use burying yourself before you 
 are dead." 
 
 " What is his name ? " 
 
 " Dunbar is his name." 
 
 " Dunbar ? My little Catherine used to play with a boy 
 of that name Barry Barry Dunbar, was it ? " 
 
 "Bassy Dunbar! " 
 . " That s the name. But I don t know what Bassy is for." 
 
 " Bassett, perhaps, or Bassinger." 
 
 " Can t be Bassinger. There s only one branch left of 
 them ; monstrous swells they are." 
 
 " There have been swells a few amongst the Dunbar s." 
 
 " There are thousands of Dunbars." 
 
 " Well, this one s no swell, but the name has no cause 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 163 
 
 to be ashamed of him. You 11 give me right when you see 
 him." 
 
 " I saw him when he was a boy, and got a bit jealous of 
 him for an only companion to my little girl. I flung away 
 a twenty-pounder on a pony to buy her back to her daddy." 
 
 " What a fool you are, Ned ! " 
 
 " I am not such a fool as to bring that young sprig up 
 here to fall in love with my girl, and mayhap win her. 
 You never can tell in a place like this." 
 
 " Why should n t it be Charlotte ? If you bring him up 
 here now, he 11 see her first." 
 
 " I ve no doubt you 11 fix it up all your own way. I 
 thought I was to have him here winters." 
 
 " Winter s too far off. It s a good idea, Ned. I wish 
 you d write to Schuyler say I told you about the chap. 
 You can get him for less than Phil pays him. You d have 
 less to do, and he d get a chance to improve his own land. 
 There s a vast amount to do in winter on a new tract." 
 
 " Then I can t shoot his ducks any more. And if he 
 won t sell " 
 
 " You can t tell what he 11 do. I wish you d have him 
 up here." 
 
 " I shall not do so, thanks, old man. My household is 
 all I can manage as it is." 
 
 " So you won t do anything I want you to ? " 
 
 " I won t marry Charlotte ; that s certain." 
 
 "And you won t fetch up your daughter nor get Dunbar 
 away from Phil Schuyler, who s a magician, sir ? He 
 could make a good tool of any man, for he s the grind 
 stone." 
 
 " Phil Schuyler is as generous as any man that lives ! " 
 
164 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Who said he was n t ? I say he can bring out a man s 
 metal when another will hack him to pieces or leave him 
 to rust ; and so he can, and this chap shows it." 
 
 "Then let him use his own tools. Why should I fish 
 them away from him ? " 
 
 " At least you 11 keep cookie till the daughter comes ? " 
 
 Yelverton roared at his friend s persistence, but there 
 was irritation in his mirth. He and the major invariably 
 quarreled over something when they met ; their friendship 
 could bear it. 
 
 44 And put a shroud over that girl s good looks ! " 
 7 "A shroud?" 
 
 " I don t mean a winding-sheet," said the major. "Any 
 thing that will hide it. She outfaces the day. Not Mistress 
 Watts nor any woman I know can hold a candle to her." 
 
 44 My little Catherine can ! Not for beauty out and out, 
 but a sort of wonderful intelligence that meets your every 
 thought, and a sweetness that warms the cold spot, if 
 you ve got one, and takes the poison out of the black 
 spot not yours, you old villain ! You re all black to 
 the core ! You and your world, that you fetch here like an 
 old stinking bone, and fling in my face ! " 
 
 44 Well, well. I 11 be off and take my bone with me," 
 growled McLean. 
 
 Both knew the other s style of joking. They settled 
 down comfortably to another pipe. 
 
 Meddling is a species of human mischief as incalculable 
 in the direction it may take as in its meandering results. 
 
 The major thought he had only a man s feelings to con 
 sider in this onslaught, and one hardened as the nicest may 
 become in years of camp and mess-room life and the idle 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 165 
 
 talk of cities. The colonel had romped about like a thin- 
 skinned horse with a fly on its ear, and his friend had 
 laughed at him. He would not have laughed could he have 
 seen who was standing outside the window. 
 
 Charlotte had come swinging down a long slope toward 
 the house, its lights meeting her through the trees, hands 
 on hips that swayed with her rhythmic step, head thrown 
 back, chanting great verses from the Prophets. She was 
 thinking of her own wanderings, of the deep waters she had 
 passed through, and of a hand stretched out, the hand of 
 her captain, her lord and deliverer. The prophets can say 
 these things so much better ! 
 
 " Again he measured a thousand and brought me 
 through the waters ; the waters were to the knees. Again 
 he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the 
 waters were to the loins. 
 
 " Afterwards he measured a thousand ; and it was a 
 river that I could not pass over, for the waters were risen 
 a river that could not be passed over. 
 
 She was now close to the house ; a window on that side 
 had been raised to mitigate the heat of the gradually in 
 creasing fire. She stood without, in one of the listening 
 silences of the night, and heard her own name spoken, 
 heard the colonel shout in a voice that reached her 
 where she stood : 
 
 " I won t marry Charlotte ; that is certain ! " 
 
CHAPTEK XXI 
 
 CATHERINE S letter to her father went by mail-coach as 
 far as Albany, thence more slowly, by wilder, uncertain 
 routes, to the edge of the Hampshire Grants. But before 
 it reached him there were six June days and six June 
 nights of moonlight sailing past the shores of the Hudson 
 for two young persons whose united ages did not reach 
 forty years. 
 
 Six miraculous days according to Genesis sufficed for 
 the creation of the world. It was at the Book of Genesis 
 life opened for these two. As they leaned side by side on 
 the sloop s rail in the magical sunsets, lying at anchor 
 waiting for the tide in the shadow of the Highlands, or 
 slowly going about to catch a wind that filled the sails 
 absently like a force encountered in a dream they looked 
 into each other s eyes and read there the first command, 
 and almost without words obeyed potentially ; and what 
 potency is there like youth ! 
 
 Had Bassy Dunbar stood there at Catherine s side, in 
 stead of the Quaker boy, we dare not say her answer 
 would not have been the same. Yet Francis Havergal had 
 strong aids in his wooing. Its very diffidence, its suppres 
 sion of all that could startle a young girl at the beginning 
 of her woman s experience, prepared the way silently for 
 the moment when it took inevitable hold of them both. 
 Never at any time had he been aware that he was wooing 
 her : he was as unprepared as the child herself, when he 
 realized she was won. 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 167 
 
 Let us consider what Francis was at twenty-two. There 
 are Quakers who are born men of the world, who at least 
 are born with a fear of the world with an outer sense 
 that drills them into line, teaches them what to avoid and 
 how to conform. How, for instance, did Francis know that, 
 bareheaded on the sloop s deck, he was one of the classic 
 types of youth, and, wearing his broad-brimmed hat, a 
 Quaker ? His first instinctive tribute to the girl of the 
 " world s people," when she came on board, was to abolish 
 the differences between them ; to get rid of, on any ex 
 cuse or without any, the hall-marks of the sect that set 
 him apart from other men. 
 
 He had already rid himself of one. On his first visit to 
 the city at sixteen, he abandoned the use of " thee " and 
 " thou" to persons who said "you " to him. The promis 
 cuous " thee " of the Friends, he saw at once, conveyed to 
 those not accustomed an effect of condescension or of in 
 timacy not to be endured. Used as among them commonly, 
 it belied their average education. It was a non-essential. 
 He dwelt on this point for his parents sake ; to him it 
 made no particle of difference. Having explained his 
 reasons, he maintained a cool silence but took his own 
 way. 
 
 His height was five feet ten, with symmetry in every 
 line. The straight military cut of the Quaker coat and 
 waistcoat, the absence of color, the plain white neck-cloth, 
 suited his delicate, olive face and Florentine type of fea 
 tures. His expression, with such features, could not fail 
 of sensitiveness ; but the force of his face lay in the eye, 
 long, black, turgid at times, watchful and unyielding as if 
 he had lived and kept his own counsel in the world for 
 
168 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 fifty years. It was an eye of power ; also it seemed capable 
 of cruelty, of the unconscious sort, which some natures 
 are destined to give out as a flower releases its character 
 istic odor, baneful or sustaining. To watch him speak or 
 smile was to take one s fill of beauty. And no one had 
 ever told him of it. Women looked at him in the street. 
 He believed it was his coat and hat that marked him. 
 The thought filled him with rage. 
 
 He was in no respect a Quaker in his convictions, yet 
 cared for none of the evangelical forms of worship. Re 
 ligion was of no importance to him compared to being 
 made conspicuous. The visitations, the wrestlings and ex 
 ordiums of the elders of the meeting would have been 
 a price too heavy to pay for even sincerity. His apostasy 
 showed in a lack of enthusiasm, a sense of the ridiculous 
 connected with certain of the old Quaker forms, to most 
 young members of his age hallowed by kindly usage and 
 tradition. His conscience was largely made up of fastidi 
 ousness. He was intensely secretive without knowing it 
 for a fault, and took himself to task for certain things, but 
 not the right ones. He avoided young women because he 
 felt their influence too much. His life was as pure as his 
 brother David s, but his thoughts were different ; and be 
 cause of these thoughts, through which Nature sought to 
 unite him with his kind, he fell on darkest suspicion of 
 Nature herself in her dealings with unwary youth, and 
 watched himself closer than before. 
 
 He never had witnessed a dramatic representation of 
 human passion, never had read of love except in Milton 
 and the Bible, never touched a card, or a girl s hand 
 in the dance. The only woman he ever had kissed was his 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 169 
 
 mother ; her not since he was fourteen. She loved him best 
 of all her children. 
 
 Francis had seen the young stranger first, who was 
 going up the river with them, as she was coming out of 
 meeting. Faces there were inside those sheath-like bon 
 nets that any one might pause to gaze at ; none with the 
 message that face had for him. Others were talking 
 around her. He could watch her, himself unseen. 
 
 He went home disturbed and dreamed all day of the 
 voyage. He could not sleep that night for seeing her face 
 against the dark. All young hearts surcharged with passion 
 are prophetic. He believed that the days before him, 
 whether for bliss or torment, would be for ever memorable. 
 
 The first use he made of his propinquity to this perilous 
 being was to investigate her every movement when he 
 could do so openly; at all other times in swift eye-flashes 
 as opportunity left him free. Her garments, of a fashion 
 he never before had seen so intimately, affected him like 
 enchantment ; the colors she wore bathed his senses in 
 subtle joys. She sang to herself in the moonlight, and 
 her voice sent shivers through his pulses. The simplest of 
 girls, she was to the Quaker boy a siren. His life had been 
 unnatural, and Nature was taking one of her reckless 
 revenges. 
 
 With woven paces and with waving hands, or means as 
 mysteriously insignificant, the spell of spells drew in about 
 him. 
 
 To look at Catherine openly in the moonlight, after fur 
 tively watching her all day, was something akin to de 
 lirium. What but madness could it lead to ? Considering 
 the rules of Quaker discipline relating to marriages " out 
 
170 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 of Meeting," and considering the fathers, on her side and 
 his, madness it was. 
 
 But at twenty-two, to feel the power love gives is to use 
 it. Catherine had no more coquetry than a new-blown 
 rose. She did not seek even delay ; for what did life mean 
 but this ! Why had fate put them on this boat together, 
 but to sail on and find the Enchanted Isles? 
 
 His first use of his bewildering power over her was to 
 lose his control of himself to kiss her till the stars 
 reeled. She, with that premonition of mother-love, which 
 in pure girls antedates the connubial, felt for the first 
 time the satisfying power of being able to confer in her 
 own person this great bliss. The effect of it she witnessed 
 wondering, half afraid, yet trusting this great miracle 
 wrought through her simple self nor had she the least 
 doubt but this was what she was made for. 
 
 And then came the reaction. All forms of intoxication 
 have their price. 
 
 On the second night of their great revelation, he asked 
 for her secrecy. It was not a shock exactly, but it set her 
 thinking. 
 
 She spoke hurriedly, missing the nice connection between 
 his thought and her own. If they had drifted into any 
 thing that either repented of, they could stop now. If not, 
 why not speak to the fathers? In her simple code any 
 course of action on which her father could not be consulted 
 must be wrong. Francis was wounded. He stuck to his 
 idea of secrecy, and she was wounded. 
 
 It was not that he wanted to give her up, but to keep 
 her to himself and not be held responsible. In this perfectly 
 innocent boy, the sophistry of irremediable evil had begun. 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 171 
 
 They were both unhappy, but knew not why. They 
 passed a wretched day trying to reach each other through 
 the cloud, each aware of the longing the other felt, yet 
 helpless to bring back that state of mind which makes 
 complete surrender possible. Catherine would acknow 
 ledge no tie between them if it involved concealment from 
 their parents. 
 
 " That which is unfinished is nothing." Francis of 
 course saw the next step required, knew that he would lose 
 her if he persisted, yet persistence in avoiding exposure 
 that might lead to failure, perhaps ridicule, was with him 
 ingrained, an essential of his nature. 
 
 He did not urge her further, but a change came over 
 him. He looked physically ill ; the delicacy of his type lent 
 itself to wanness. Catherine suffered when she looked at 
 him, and loved him more deeply than before. 
 
 At sunset of their last day, the sloop tied up at Ron- 
 dout Landing at the foot of the hill. They were to sup 
 and sleep at the stage-coach inn at Kingston, a mile above, 
 and here David Havergal met them. Catherine held back 
 while Ann Havergal, a sweet, impulsive woman, ran for 
 ward, laughing childishly, with both hands out to her tall 
 son. Catherine noted his silent, tender look as he stooped 
 to kiss his mother. 
 
 Francis, dropping behind, had stolen her hand and 
 clasped it hard. 
 
 " Do you give me up, then ? " 
 
 " I should think it was the other way," said Catherine. 
 "I see nothing wrong in what we have done ; and if there 
 were, to whom should we go for advice but our parents? 1 
 
 " You do not know the difficulties on my side." 
 
172 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " I know them on mine. Will time or secrecy make them 
 less?" 
 
 "My father, you know, is a sick man." 
 
 " I ask only to speak to my own father. To you I dictate 
 nothing: but this is my right." 
 
 Persons in the room ran forward with faces of concern. 
 David called his brother to him by name. There were no 
 more greetings. The sweet mother lay back in David s arms 
 insensible. Catherine heard him say to Francis quietly : 
 
 "Father died last night. We thought it best I should 
 prepare her, but she knew all as soon as I spoke his name." 
 
 Perceiving Catherine, who had been expected, and know 
 ing who she was, he said : " This is a sad welcome for 
 thee." 
 
 Francis seemed dazed, frozen, almost stolid. David s eyes 
 were weary, his face drawn in lines of grief and watching. 
 He had strong, rugged Gothic features, with an expression 
 singularly like his mother s, whose face was small and flower- 
 like. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 PASSENGERS by sloop from New York would be looked 
 for at points above the Highlands any time, vaguely speak 
 ing, within certain days, according to wind and tide. Hours 
 and moments were not counted. They were provided with 
 patience, and in other ways fortified against delays ; and if 
 their own friends did not meet them as they stepped on 
 shore, neighborly assistance was ready on every hand : kindly 
 curiosity for a new-comer, and for a native, returned after 
 so long a voyage, a square mile or so of welcome extending 
 from his home, which included a lively conversational in 
 terest in all he had heard and seen and done in the city. 
 
 So, although Catherine had written to her cousin, he 
 understood that she could not fix the day of her arrival, and 
 knowing her traveling companions, no uneasiness mingled 
 with his anticipation. 
 
 Word of Jonathan Havergal s death was brought by 
 David, on his way to meet his mother, if providentially she 
 had reached Kingston. If not, he was to leave a note for 
 Francis, to prepare her. He drove in a two-wheeled chaise ; 
 a led-horse was hitched behind for Francis. Part of David s 
 errand was to inquire if Catherine could make the journey 
 on horseback also. They discussed details of hiring a pad 
 for her at Kingston, and how to fetch the travelers trunks, 
 in the few moments of David s halt, and the dominie pressed 
 his hand warmly at parting. 
 
 The riders set out an hour or so before the chaise started : 
 for about three o clock that morning, after a sleepless night, 
 
174 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Ann Havergal had dropped into a doze from which Cath 
 erine had no heart to wake her. The pale, sweet face in 
 the early light seemed quiet enough for one who need never 
 be awakened again. 
 
 In silence, in the drowsy house, the three who were up 
 breakfasted while she slept. David watched the younger 
 pair ride off together out of the village. 
 
 Soon they had the beauty of the morning woods around 
 them. Francis did not speak of his father ; he answered 
 questions. If Catherine made a remark that called for no 
 answer, he kept silence. In his grief there was a gloom, 
 almost a hardness, for which she held herself responsible, 
 and so took back the step by which she had recoiled from 
 him. She advanced even farther to comfort and soften him 
 and to make him speak. 
 
 " When I refused what you asked of me," she said, " I 
 thought of my father. But this comes before anything 
 If I can be nothing to you now, then I am nothing ! Ask 
 what you will. I will be silent till you say I may speak. * 
 
 " It is because I had no right to speak to you that I 
 dread its being known. I am ashamed that I had not 
 strength to wait." 
 
 " I should have misunderstood your silence. We are 
 going far away from each other soon. There is everything 
 in the world, as you say, to part us. Nothing but knowing 
 how we felt toward each other could keep us together." 
 
 " For that reason I need to be more in myself. I have 
 not even a home of my own to offer you. I do not know 
 what may happen now. The house, I suppose, will be 
 mother s. Very likely nothing will be divided till after she 
 is through with it." 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 175 
 
 Such a course of speculation could but pain Catherine ; 
 yet she was too overwhelmingly on Francis s side now to 
 entertain the least thought that might rebuke him. 
 
 " There is something that comes before houses," she 
 said. " We have that." 
 
 " But " he paused, and on a quick breath added, "I 
 want you, Catherine. I want you very soon ! " 
 
 He reached across the space between them for her hand. 
 r She made her pony go a little faster. She could promise 
 him her love and she could show it by fulfilling his wishes, 
 but she could not yield to his love-making and think of 
 that stark silence awaiting them. She knew nothing of 
 death. It had touched her life before her recollection ; she 
 was ignorant of love, but she was more ignorant of Francis 
 than of either. It might have helped if he had understood 
 himself. 
 
 " You will come and see my mother soon ? " 
 
 As he looked at her after some moments abstinence, his 
 face flushed all over, a dark rose. Her own blood re 
 sponded, but she hated the blush that mingled its tingling 
 tremor with the thought of that poor mother in her patient 
 grief. 
 
 She turned and looked at him again, long and steadily, 
 with her soul, and thought that she saw his. Perhaps she 
 did. She saw at all events a beautiful, hard, despondent 
 young face, destined to haunt her thoughts for years to 
 come. 
 
 " Do you know yet the day of the funeral ? " she asked. 
 
 " It will be Thursday," he said, with an effort at the 
 pagan name which probably no one of his family for two 
 generations had ever used. " Could you come to-morrow ? " 
 
176 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " No ; if I am to keep our secret. My cousin would not 
 understand my going the first day nor would your 
 mother. She will need to be alone with her children." 
 
 " I could almost ask you not to come to the burial ! Our 
 customs are very meagre. There is no service ; I think it 
 would shock you." 
 
 " Then there would be something very poor in me ! I 
 shall not come though, because my cousin will not expect 
 me to. But I shall be in the burying-ground early in the 
 morning, to dress the grave." 
 
 " To dress the grave ! " 
 
 " Would your mother mind if I lined it with oak-leaves ? 
 Young oak-leaves and roses ? To cover the raw earth ? " 
 
 " Not perhaps roses. My father has never lain on a bed 
 of roses." 
 
 " I will take them to your mother then. She will under 
 stand." 
 
 " Do you know quite well the way to come? " 
 
 " I shall inquire ; but I think I remember. There is a 
 great chestnut tree that sends out one long arm towards 
 the west. The greatest tree in the township, cousin says. 
 Bassy Dunbar and I tried, touching hands, how far we 
 could reach around it : we could not reach half-way ! " 
 
 " Bassy Dunbar ! Isaac s son ? Did you know him ? " 
 
 " Does it surprise you ? " 
 
 " I should not have placed him in the same class with 
 your people." 
 
 " We went to the same school, one year. Did you not go 
 to any school, Francis ? " 
 
 " We did nothing like other people not even like the 
 Friends. However, we were taught somehow. My mother s 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 177 
 
 sister was our first teacher, before I can remember. She 
 married and Cousin Emmeline came to live with us, who 
 married Edwin. David and I were taught by another cousin, 
 Justus, from Long Island, a wheelwright. He lived with 
 us four years or so, and helped father build the mill. He 
 had ability in many ways. I think he knew more of books 
 than most schoolmasters." 
 
 " You speak so very well, both you and David. I thought 
 great pains must have been taken with your school- 
 ing." 
 
 " We speak, I suppose, as we heard those about us. We 
 are not, as a family, illiterate." 
 
 "When was it you knew that boy?" he recurred pre 
 sently to Bassy. " You would have been quite a child ? " 
 
 " About the age I was when I first saw you." 
 
 " And he ? Much older, was he not ? " 
 
 " I dare say he may have been not over fourteen. To me 
 he seemed quite grown up. He was tall of his age, I be 
 lieve." 
 
 " Have you ever happened on each other since ? I sup 
 pose not." 
 
 Catherine did not contradict him. Then she said, " I 
 may have seen him since ; I am not quite sure." 
 
 Francis looked at her uneasily. 
 
 " I saw a young man in the city on the street that 
 Sunday you say you saw me in meeting. Mercy and I were 
 late going home. I told your mother about it, don t you 
 remember ? Perhaps you were n t listening." 
 
 " I ? you never spoke that I did not listen." 
 
 "You sat off against the rail. I thought you were 
 reading." 
 
178 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " I heard every word. And that person you think was 
 Basset Dunbar?" 
 
 " I am not sure. Yes, I am sure. I don t know why I 
 said that, as if I were on the witness-stand ! " 
 
 " Did he recognize you ? " 
 
 " Ye-yes, I almost think he did. Well, I may say I am 
 sure he did." 
 
 " And did not speak to you ? " 
 
 " Would you have spoken to me then, in his place 
 after eight years ? And Colonel Dunstable had just insulted 
 him before me ! " 
 
 " That was not his reason, however," said Francis. " If 
 I am to put myself in his place, I should give a quite dif 
 ferent reason." 
 
 " What would you say it was, then ? " 
 
 Here the riders in single file splashed through a piece 
 of water. The horses, frisking after a long drink, chased 
 each other up a smart rise leading out of the hollow. 
 
 As Catherine s pony came alongside, she smiled at 
 Francis. 
 
 " You were going to say ? " after a pause adding, " about 
 Bassy Dunbar and his reasons for not knowing me before 
 folk." 
 
 " Oh," said Francis coldly, " I know nothing of the sort 
 of person he is, hence nothing of his reasons." 
 
 " But we were putting you in his place." 
 
 " Or him in mine ? If I were to see you again after eight 
 years, I should not waste the first moment of our actual 
 meeting with outsiders looking on." 
 
 " Bassy does not feel that way about me. I was a little 
 bit of a nuisance tagging him around the playground, run- 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 179 
 
 ning after him through the woods. I obeyed him like a 
 little dog." 
 
 " I remember you," said Francis briefly. 
 
 "You remember me ! You ! /remember you were par 
 ticularly nasty to me about Melissa : you wanted anything 
 rather than I should have her." 
 
 " Very likely : I was nasty whenever there was a chance 
 to be, at that age. But I remembered you all the same. 
 And when I *aw you I was not surprised." 
 
 "At what?" 
 
 " At what I saw," said Francis, with a shy, glowing look. 
 In a little while he said pleadingly : " Catherine, are you 
 mine still ? You have not taken yourself back from me 
 since night before last ? " 
 
 " I never took myself back. Only, when you asked for 
 secrecy, 1 thought " 
 
 " But you do not think so now ! " 
 
 " Yes I do. My thought is unchanged. But I do not know 
 any better than to feel like this : If those we love are in 
 trouble, we must go all the way to help them at once ! We 
 must not stop and say for this reason or that, I am unable 
 to be kind to-day. To-morrow, perhaps, I may be. " 
 
 " Then be kind ! Do be kind to me," he whispered. " You 
 have not let me kiss you once since " 
 
 " Francis, I will not let you kiss me while your father 
 Oh, but I will kiss you, my dear, my poor, poor boy ! " 
 
 The glistening, flickering woods swept by them. The 
 trees met over their heads, leaned, and stroked them lightly, 
 with young leaf-touches. This was Nature s hour, and they 
 were Nature s lovers. 
 
 " But to-morrow, when I come to see your mother," 
 
180 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 said Catherine. " Do not make me seem double to myself. 
 Be Francis Havergal to Catherine Yelverton who comes to 
 kiss your mother s hand and lay her roses at the feet of a 
 sorrow more sacred than any happiness, for you and me. 
 You will promise me this ? You will be this to me, for 
 her sake ! Why do I say it ! Oh, forgive me ! " 
 
 " You are the soul of my life ; the soul of my soul ! " said 
 Francis. "You are doubled and twisted through and through 
 every part of me. I can think of nothing else. I don t know 
 whether it is happiness ; it is you ! One reason I would not 
 have you at my father s burial If I saw you beside his 
 grave, I might forget " 
 
 " Oh, hush, hush ! " said Catherine. " But I love you." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THERE were two gates entering the acre known as the 
 Friends burying-ground : one, a small gate on the public 
 road, seldom used ; the second, a double gate to admit 
 wagons, opening into the lane or pent-road that led from 
 Jonathan Havergal s homestead up through the heart of 
 his land. 
 
 Only one grave, at the time we write of, sanctified this 
 spot. Ann Havergal, though called delicate and never able 
 to "do her own work," had borne healthy children, and 
 raised them all but one, the little girl taken from her in 
 infancy. 
 
 According to the grim humility of the early Friends, no 
 stone marked this little seed of mortality, but the parents 
 knew the place. Their own graves would come next : sons 
 and sons wives and children would follow, till the spot they 
 had set apart in their young days of married happiness 
 should contain the generations of their dead. 
 
 The sterile loneliness of years was now broken by a 
 second, a mighty grave, with its accompanying mound of 
 fresh earth beside it, looking at a distance like the grave 
 itself. Close to this deceptive pile, and half hid by it, a 
 wooden stake was driven into the ground. Near its top a 
 space had been planed for the incision of certain letters ; 
 these marks appeared to be quite fresh. 
 
 Francis, coming early to the place of meeting and ex 
 pecting Catherine by the road-gate, had gone around to 
 meet her there. He glanced across the wall and saw she 
 
182 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 was not inside, but a man stood by his father s open grave 
 on the rise of ground it occupied, conspicuous from the 
 road. Still higher was the double gate, amidst trees that 
 led into the lane. 
 
 Francis watched the stranger with keen annoyance and 
 distrust. There was reason enough for the sense of intru 
 sion, this being strictly private ground. The distrust came 
 from a vague connection of ideas with the heirs of the 
 Greathead property, who, David had told him, were already 
 causing surveys to be made on the basis of their claims, 
 which extended over parts of his father s land. Could they 
 have come in here without a word to the family ? 
 
 Francis walked on past a row of trees, losing sight of 
 the stranger across the wall. It took him violently by sur 
 prise, therefore, as he reached the gate, to see Catherine 
 walking down the slope with him, as if he had gone to meet 
 her. She had come by the upper gate of the lane. 
 
 She was talking with this man as if she knew him ; if 
 not, no time, it was evident, had been lost between them 
 in making acquaintance. He had taken from her a basket 
 covered with a white cloth which she removed as they 
 reached the shade. 
 
 Francis knew what the basket contained, but he had been 
 far from expecting a stranger would carry it for her, he 
 looking on, to his father s grave. It could not be one of 
 the heirs ; she had never seen those men. This person she 
 must have known and known well, before. Of that he was 
 convinced by the fatal insight of jealousy. With a little 
 more confidence in his own manner and in Catherine as a 
 dissembler, he might have gone forward and greeted her, 
 and settled the question of her companion and his business 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 183 
 
 there. But he was not himself in any respect that morning. 
 As for Catherine, her face was an open book. The stranger 
 would know by the first look between them that their meet 
 ing was a tryst. He himself could not meet her eyes after 
 absence, however brief, and retain composure. The thirst he 
 had come to satisfy must be borne a little longer. It had 
 burned in him through the night, but he must wait and see 
 a stranger drink her looks, and gather these short moments 
 that were his. 
 
 He walked back by the road to where the lane struck 
 off from it through the fields. Here the perspective com 
 manded both gates : when he could see by which one the 
 stranger left the yard, his plan was to enter by the other. 
 
 In the burying-ground, Catherine and Bassy Dunbar 
 stood beside the open trench, six feet four in length, to 
 hold a man of majestic stature. 
 
 " I do not see the little grave, do you ? " she said. " It 
 should be here quite close : I mean the grave of the little 
 child they lost. I wonder if it could be this ? " 
 
 Catherine stooped and put away the wild-onion stalks 
 and ground-ivy from a short low mound of blue violets, 
 still in blossom in this cool, protected spot. 
 
 " These are not wild violets," she said. " Smell the per 
 fume ! I think this must be it." 
 
 " Yes, the mother has marked it," said Bassy. 
 
 " But how very close together they are ! There is no 
 room for another grave between." 
 
 "Should there be?" 
 
 " Why, yes. That dear Ann Havergal has set her heart, 
 I know, on lying between them the baby on her right 
 hand." 
 
184 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " There is room on the other side." 
 
 " That would part her from her husband. I am sure 
 there has been a mistake, for I heard her speaking to 
 David about it. Who do you suppose dug the grave ? " 
 
 " One of the hired men, very likely. There is no regular 
 Meeting here, so I suppose there can be no gravedigger. 
 They do all things amongst themselves." 
 
 " Oh, what a pity! I am sure it will break her heart." 
 
 " When will the burial be, do you know ? " 
 
 " At two o clock this afternoon. I had thought Francis 
 Havergal would be here this morning. I was looking for 
 him. He knew I was coming," said Catherine simply, 
 meeting Bassy s eyes, " to fetch these for the grave, and 
 to see his mother. You know I came up with them from 
 New York." 
 
 This was duplicity, but she was rather proud of it as a 
 first effort for Francis s sake. She knelt on the brink of 
 the grave and let her green sprays fall lightly on the earth 
 floor, dark and fresh, showing glistening marks of the 
 spade. 
 
 " I would not do that yet, would you ? " Bassy objected 
 gently. He crouched down beside her. " If such a mistake 
 has been made, it can be set right. There is plenty of 
 time." 
 
 Catherine seated herself on the ground and pushed back 
 her hat to look at him. He did not look at her, but went 
 on speaking gravely, breaking lumps of earth with his 
 fingers, and watching it fall as he sifted it between them. 
 
 "All this pile could be put back again and a fresh 
 grave dug where it lies now." 
 
 " Would not that be distressing to them. I don t know 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 185 
 
 what there is about a grave, once it is dug, but it seems 
 already his ; as if he lay there, and " 
 
 " They need not know it," Bassy returned as her ex 
 planation died away feebly, " some trampling and loose 
 earth scattered, there would be naturally. I do not feel 
 the desecration you speak of. If I did if I were one of 
 the sons, even, I should put aside a fancy such as that, 
 rather than rob the mother of her wish. I should think it 
 a very innocent deception." 
 
 "But who could do it without their knowing?" 
 
 Bassy did not answer. 
 
 " I can see," he said at length, " how the mistake came 
 to be made. The man was sent here with his directions. 
 But he found this stake planted where the grave should 
 have been, and did not venture to move it. You see, it is 
 a surveyor s corner-post. He thought a few feet this way 
 would make no difference." 
 
 . " But what is it for ? Why a surveyor s post in 
 here?" 
 
 " The heirs presumptive of the Greathead estate insist, 
 I believe, through their lawyers, that one of their corners 
 belongs, I suppose, just here. For my part I venture to 
 pull it up." 
 
 He did so and tossed it aside. On second thoughts, 
 apparently, he picked it up and laid it in the grave. Cath 
 erine noticed he did not toss it in. The " fancy," as he 
 called it, apparently had some weight with him too. Or 
 did his action refer to her feeling in the matter ? 
 
 With a new acquaintance, still more an old friend just 
 recovered, one speculates on such trifles, at Catherine s age. 
 Every new person and new incident counts for so much in 
 
186 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 an experience that is all future. Catherine was measuring 
 the young man beside her, word by word and look by 
 look ; a much more subtle examination than he stood at 
 their first violent meeting. A hundred young men might 
 have played his part in that scene ; this was the searching 
 analysis. What she did not attempt to measure was her 
 own satisfaction, as the nature of the friend she had lost 
 and remembered so loyally responded as of old : strong, 
 and though decided yet tender to those who hesitate; 
 straightforward, yet not ruthless. 
 
 What she could not fathom was his business there at all ; 
 and a certain intensity of interest, which he did not con 
 ceal, in the location of Jonathan Havergal s last resting- 
 place. She could not be mistaken : he was more than sym 
 pathetic in the matter of the change ; he was singularly 
 determined. 
 
 " There, let the law find it and take care of it ! " He 
 looked down at the stake as it lay in the grave. " It marks 
 a claim that is not established yet by a long shot ! It is an 
 outrage to run their lines in here, with Jonathan Havergal 
 on his deathbed, and rob him of his grave. It would be 
 strange if those two persons, the salt of the earth, who 
 made a home here with their own hands, if they may not 
 choose on this land where they shall lie ! Let the law be 
 an abomination if it chooses. There is no law of any 
 Christian neighborhood that would defend such an outrage 
 as this ! " 
 
 Catherine took a deep breath, but she did not interrupt 
 him. 
 
 " Are you quite sure of the spot? Will you point it out 
 exactly? Where she wished him to lie?" 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 1ST 
 
 She looked at him in surprise. " Would you not speak 
 of it to the sons first?" 
 
 " I am not acquainted with the sons. And time goes by. 
 When the family gather here, the mother shall see her 
 wish fulfilled. Is not that the main thing? To be honest, 
 I intend to do the work myself." 
 
 Bassy s face had gathered color. He felt, it was evident, 
 the shock of this amazing climax, but he left it with the 
 bare statement, passing on to say, " Will you be here this 
 afternoon ? " 
 
 " No, but my cousin will I suppose," Catherine an 
 swered absently. 
 
 " There will be a thunderstorm some time this after 
 noon. I hope it won t strike them in the yard here." 
 
 Catherine did not ask how he knew there would be a 
 storm ; she listened to him with fixed attention, as she used 
 to when they were children, glad of his initiative, yet a 
 trifle alarmed. 
 
 " Do you not intend the sons to know of this kind 
 act?" 
 
 " I am not doing it for the sons," said Bassy, " and if I 
 know how a man feels about such things, they will not care 
 to thank a stranger for doing it. My reasons they will learn 
 in time. Your cousin, you are quite sure, will be at the 
 burial? You can tell him there will be a storm." 
 
 " I think it would not keep him from coming. Shall I 
 say that Bassy Dunbar " she smiled though she was puz 
 zled. 
 
 He turned on her the full force of his strong regard. 
 " I shall see you this afternoon," he interrupted, " and then 
 I ll tell you what to say. Meantime, I beg you to say 
 
188 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 nothing. I ain unable to explain just now why it is impor 
 tant, but it is, that what I propose to do here be not known. 
 It shortly will be, and the responsibility I shall take, of 
 course, on myself. Thank you." 
 
 "Why thank me!" 
 
 " Because I know you will do as I ask. You always did 
 when you were a little girl. I know much better what I 
 am about than I did then ! I was horribly in the dark, 
 about many things." 
 
 " There seems to be a great deal to be in the dark about," 
 said Catherine, helplessly. " What shall I do with my 
 leaves?" 
 
 " Could you come back, in about well " 
 
 " No," she said, " I fear I could not." 
 
 " Then will you trust me to lay them in ? They will 
 keep fresh here in the shade. I don t fancy that any ques 
 tions will be asked for a few days." They were separating 
 the roses from the oak-sprays, Catherine passing the latter 
 to Bassy to lay in a careful pile. " But the man who dug 
 this grave will see, of course, it has been moved. By that 
 time I shall well, at least, I shall ask no longer for 
 your silence. I hate a secret, don t you ? This is not a 
 secret, it is a precaution a necessary precaution, for the 
 sake of doing something that that must be done ! There 
 is no other way." 
 
 They did not speak again. He appeared to be thinking ; 
 and Catherine had a difficult morning before her, and had 
 just unfitted herself for the part of frankness that to her 
 was second nature, by discussing this intimate family matter 
 with one who was a stranger to the family, and conspiring 
 with him to keep it a secret. Yet she had the same trust 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 189 
 
 in his action, strange as it appeared, and felt the same con 
 fidence in the outcome as when she was a child, and Bassy 
 walked before her and she had followed on some untried 
 way. 
 
 They must have been talking together there for half an 
 hour ; longer than that it seemed to Francis, before he saw 
 Catherine emerge by the upper gate and her companion 
 put her on her pony and tie her pannier of roses on the 
 saddle. Apparently she had made some other proposition 
 about the roses, perhaps to hold the basket with one hand. 
 But he had smiled in silence and carried his point. 
 
 It was the smallest of incidents. Francis could not have 
 witnessed it understandingly if he had not come up the lane 
 to meet Catherine ; but it was one of those little tableaux, 
 enacted by the girl one loves in conjunction with another 
 man, to drive a lovesick boy half mad. 
 
 It undoubtedly upset Francis to that degree that from 
 the first moment he hardly knew what he was saying. 
 And the kiss he had dreamed of all night, he was too sick 
 and shaken to ask for. 
 
 Catherine thought it strange he did not explain his 
 failure to keep their tryst. She had not thought of re 
 senting it, but surely it was strange he appeared to have 
 forgotten there was one. In such grief one might forget 
 almost anything save to be kind to those we still have 
 left to love. Francis was not even kind. She bore with 
 him, and he walked on in silence at Melissa s side. 
 
 " Is there any reason why you should not say who was 
 with you in the burying-ground ? " 
 
 The question was a shock, implying that he had seen 
 her and kept away. 
 
190 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Why," she said, " it was Bassy Dunbar, of course ! " 
 
 " Why of course ? " 
 
 "I don t know why I don t know in the least why 
 I said of course " 
 
 " Neither do I." 
 
 except that you confused me. If you saw me there, 
 why did n t you come in ? I was expecting you ! " 
 
 " I did not come to this place to talk to strangers." 
 
 " Nor I, Francis. But you were not there." 
 
 " I was there before you came. I saw you come." 
 
 " Then why did you stay outside to watch me ! Bassy 
 Dunbar is not a stranger to me. It was he who met me. 
 What would you have had me do ? " 
 
 " You knew him this time, it seems." 
 
 " Of course I knew him, and he spoke to me. Should I 
 have passed him by in silence ? " 
 
 " You did not pass him by. I do not know what is nat 
 ural in a woman." Poor little Catherine ! yet Francis was 
 but twenty-two. " In a man it would be natural to have 
 spoken of this meeting. One might even go so far with a 
 friend as to say what held you there in talk this hour 
 past ! " 
 
 " If this were not the day of your father s funeral, my 
 poor Francis, I would turn Melissa s head and go straight 
 home. I believe I must go ! Here are the roses. Will you 
 take them to " 
 
 She could not finish. The words "your mother" were 
 too much. In a moment she was sobbing on his neck, with 
 his arms around her. They were saved, for that time! Na 
 ture s lovers are not always happy lovers. 
 
 It would have taken the wisdom of a mother to explain 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 191 
 
 even to Catherine herself how far back amidst the sources 
 of tears at seventeen that burst of weeping had begun to 
 head up. The girl had been on a keen strain for many 
 weeks. Back of that, for years, lay the long exhaustion of 
 a child trying to " get on " with duty caretakers after the 
 simple freedom of living with those she loved. Since the 
 " unhappy differences " between the motherland and her 
 colonies in America began, the little American in England, 
 bewildered by her family s past and confused by jarring 
 obligations past and present, had seen her friends insulted 
 and her idols thrown down. 
 
 Her faithful Joanna she heard spoken of as a meddle 
 some Scotch person, and saw her sent away into Perthshire 
 to her relatives (and glad they were to get her and the 
 help of her savings and the pension Catherine s father 
 thrust upon her ; for her sister s " man," a sergeant in the 
 42d, had been killed at Bushy Run, and the widow had 
 seven children to fend for). Her guardian and best friend, 
 that broad and sensitive mind, was " the dissenting par 
 son." Madam Schuyler herself, and all her distinguished 
 connection, empire-makers, statesmen, lovely girls, and 
 notable women, were " those Dutch people in Albany." 
 
 So it went, the slighting word, the chilling stare when 
 ever America was the topic. The little heart so wounded, 
 not to be broken utterly must steel itself ; but it is an un 
 natural strength in childhood that resists the influences of 
 home. Three years of boarding-school eased the strain, 
 brought health, and the delight of travel and change and 
 family visits during vacation with her father s people, a 
 worldly, careless, but sweeter-hearted gens. Beauty came 
 and laid its golden key in her hand, and whispered, " There 
 
192 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 are many doors " ; but the little heart, so tired and so early- 
 wise, said, " There is bat one ! " 
 
 Then came Stephen s violent wooing, a veritable lion in 
 her path, and in her longing to escape she had involved 
 herself in plans and intrigues foreign to her nature. She 
 had put herself in the power of strangers ; and never in 
 her life was she able to describe the horror of those days 
 at Portsmouth. 
 
 Breaking out of the brief peace of the home-voyage, and 
 her visit with the dear, quaint Friends, blooms this sud 
 den, transcendent flower of love. Is not this the right door? 
 Yet here too is the awakening to what such bliss must cost. 
 Could she afford the price ? A motherless daughter to keep 
 this, of all secrets, from a father who was mother and 
 father in one ! How had she managed to wind herself into 
 such a snare ! She had not the shadow of a doubt that 
 she had found the right door ! only there should have been 
 some other way to enter and possess her happiness. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE dominie cast his weather-eye up at the clouds. If 
 he did not see Bassy s thunderstorm, he gathered premoni 
 tions of his own, acting on which he rolled up his old blue 
 Camelot cloak and stowed it under the seat of the chaise. 
 
 Catherine sat between the rose-bushes that flanked the 
 front steps, and watched him drive down the lane. She 
 had observed on her first return that her old miseries, the 
 round-cobbles, had been replaced by handsome flagging- 
 stones of Ulster slate, and regretted the change as so 
 much taken from the sum of each separate joy of recollec 
 tion. She would have welcomed the sensation of feeling 
 them slip under the hollows of her feet once more. 
 
 Job came with his pail from the stable to scrub the 
 stones. She warned him they would soon be washed with 
 rain ; but he went on with his task according to routine. 
 
 Already the wind was breathing hard in long sighs of 
 the coming gale. The cherry trees caught the first motion 
 of it, and began to throw themselves heavily about. The 
 rose-bushes quivered and a storm of petals flew, scattered 
 by a sharp, rattling screech of wind that burst round the 
 corner of the house. A column of dust rolled up the lane, 
 blown ahead of a galloping horse. Catherine saw horse and 
 rider dash past in the direction of the barn. Within the 
 house Gulie and a young mulatto girl she had added to 
 herself as assistant scurried from room to room, pulling 
 shutters to that resisted and slammed back against the 
 house. Sashes stuck and were forced down with a clatter. 
 
194 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Catherine bethought her of the cousin s study and ran 
 in, but, wise man, his papers were secure, the desk closed, 
 the window sash let down to within the width of a wooden 
 ruler inserted to admit the air. She looked out anxiously, 
 thinking of the good man in the storm. He would be meet 
 ing it now at the outset of a long drive straight in the 
 teeth of it, unless the wind changed. He would reach the 
 Havergals wet and chilled, on an occasion when his own 
 comfort would be the last thought he had. She feared for 
 him the consequences of this tribute, which nothing could 
 have induced him to forego, in memory of the old neighbor 
 and the friend of many differences. 
 
 Rain was beginning to pelt the window-panes in slanting 
 drops. The sweeping sheets let down from the sky would 
 darken soon the room. She ran up to the foot of the gar 
 ret stairs, and stood holding the door and listening for 
 the first tramp of the legions on the roof. That splendid 
 uproar! she remembered it since childhood, standing so to 
 hear it come. 
 
 The garret for one instant was illumined with a green, 
 a corpse-like glare. Bang ! the opening gun. A shattering 
 volley of thunder rolled off down the horizon. 
 
 " 4 Multitudes, multitudes in the Valley of Decision. " 
 Who were they, the echoes, voices muttering in dispute? 
 Some excitement in her blood made her shiver. It meant 
 more to her somehow than thunder and lightning and rain. 
 A hush still those muttering thousands. What were 
 they saying over there in the valley? 
 
 " Oh, come on ! Come, louder ! Let it begin ! " 
 
 The garret blinked as if in fear. Bang ! once more. And 
 then long sighings and wailings down the wind. Flocks 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 195 
 
 of leaves torn from the smitten trees drove before the 
 gale like a frightened little people scattered from their 
 homes. 
 
 Who was that knocking at the front door? The old 
 Dutch hammer, with its realistic fist in a brazen gauntlet, 
 fell upon the shield with one loud clap. The door was 
 thrown open. Whoever asked admittance came in haste, 
 and took for granted his reception. Rain and wind entered 
 with him, sweeping him before them. They made mirth 
 with him, blew his hat from his head, and puffed it along 
 the hall. 
 
 Catherine, looking over the banister, saw this boisterous 
 entrance, and ran down laughing. It was Bassy, drenched 
 to the skin ; he and his storm arrived together. 
 
 She stepped before him into the study, while he paused 
 on the threshold and dripped. 
 
 " I wish you had brought back my cousin. I suppose you 
 didn t meet him?" 
 
 " No ; when did he start ? " 
 
 " Not half an hour ago." 
 
 " It has come sooner than I expected. I am afraid he 11 
 get a drenching." 
 
 " Just the same, he would have gone. Do come in ! 
 or will you step into cousin s room and change ? This is 
 the door." 
 
 " I will go outside and shake myself." 
 
 As he came back, she called to him from the window 
 exultingly : 
 
 " There is nothing like this in England ! " 
 
 He did not answer till he stood at her side, when he 
 said, raising his voice in the tumult : 
 
196 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " The question is, if we make noise enough over here, 
 will England ever listen and take warning ! " 
 
 " Warning ! " thunder drums repeated, the long roll 
 rattling down the valley. It was like a call to arms. 
 
 The girl shuddered. " I hear you but I do not listen, 
 Bassy. I am deaf in that ear." 
 
 " There are none so deaf, truly, as those who won t hear. 
 I understand you, though. That good lady, Madam Schuy- 
 ler, has the same difficulty, multiplied by the numbers she 
 has to listen to on both sides. Have you talked with your 
 father about American affairs ? " 
 
 " I have not seen him, even ! But if I find we are like 
 to differ, I shall not talk. I will not strive over politics 
 with those I love." 
 
 "Well, naturally, if it means to you no more than poli 
 tics. " 
 
 He turned to the hearth-place, and as he did so, took 
 something resembling a roll of leather from inside his wet 
 coat. The fire-board had not been put up for summer, but 
 the hearth was clean of ashes. 
 
 " Could we have a bit of fire? Not that I am cold," 
 he was glowing, " but I have something here I should 
 like to dry out before I take the road again." 
 
 " In one moment. I will call Jane." 
 
 " Be good enough to allow me to make it. The wood is 
 in here, if I remember ? " He raised the lid of an oaken 
 locker fitted as a seat beside the chimney. " It is seven years 
 and a trifle over since I saw the dominie lift this lid, to 
 mend his fire for a boy " Bassy knelt, artfully laying 
 his foundation " who was starting on a cold journey. 
 He allowed me to put on the sticks, but he showed me 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 197 
 
 exactly how ; and I was joyful to do his bidding. I would 
 have asked no better than to stay and serve him all my 
 life." 
 
 " And I was upstairs sick with the measles," said Cath 
 erine. " But I knew who it was came in." 
 
 " Yes : you were very apt at knowing things. I remem 
 ber the woman s letting me in and flying up to shut your 
 door. A boy can take a hint." 
 
 " Joanna did not count in such things." 
 
 " Aye, but everything counted with me that night. I 
 knew my little friend was sick, and I should not see her 
 again. I had brought a little farewell token, an anchor 
 and chain whittled out of wood. I must have carved six 
 teen of those links before I could finish six that held to 
 gether. I may say for years I heard that door shut in 
 my face ! " 
 
 "Where is that chain? " said Catherine. " I want it ! " 
 
 " Huh ! I smashed it and burnt it with fire ! " 
 
 " It was a stupid thing to do ; and all because poor Jo 
 anna did n t wish me to catch cold ! " 
 
 " So much for the past. Now we begin over again," 
 said Bassy. " I have a good deal to say to the dominie 
 this afternoon. It seems I shall miss him altogether. 
 Could I burden you with it?" 
 
 He laid his fire economically, as one who has fetched 
 his own wood and kindlings. When the last stick was deftly 
 added, leading the flame upward and spreading it for its 
 work, he answered Catherine s remonstrance against tak 
 ing the road so soon. 
 
 " I have with me," he said coolly, " the will of my grand 
 father, Jeremy Greathead a great scoundrel he was. I 
 
198 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 must get it in the surrogate s hands as quick as may be. If 
 it be a valid document, it may put the legatee in a posi 
 tion to block some of these heirs-in-a-hurry who plant their 
 corner-stakes in people s graveyards. Meantime, the less 
 said and known about it the better." 
 
 " Who is the legatee ? May that be asked ? " 
 
 " I," said Bassy, " am my father s heir, to whom the 
 will leaves everything." 
 
 Bassy had the concentrated speech of one who gives 
 orders, but he assumed this time too much previous know 
 ledge in his auditor. His coat was hung on a chair to dry. 
 In shirt-sleeves he knelt on one knee and held to the fire 
 a case of shagreen leather, turning it as it began to steam. 
 On the dominie s table a parchment roll, which the limp 
 leather had protected, lay stiffly curled. He indicated it 
 with a look ; Catherine noted its mouldy, unpleasant ap 
 pearance. 
 
 " Your cousin wrote me of what was happening here 
 since the goody s death. He asked me to come and have 
 a talk with him. I knew what about ! I expected to have 
 had this whole afternoon with him, not knowing till I rode 
 into the village how much I should have to do, and at 
 once. You will tell your cousin, please, that his letter ad 
 dressed to Schuyler s Mills was delayed, being forwarded 
 to New York. I did not know till I reached here that 
 Jonathan Havergal was no more." 
 
 " Bassy, you are beyond anything mysterious ! Am I 
 to say these things like a parrot? For if there is any 
 thing you intend me to understand, you will need to be 
 plainer ! " 
 
 " I wish you to understand. But there is little time to 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 199 
 
 repeat. Do you happen to know any of the wormy old 
 secrets connected with that thing ? " 
 
 " That ? The will of your grandfather whom you are 
 so impolite to ? " 
 
 " I am very sorry I have to have a grandfather, if it 
 must be one like him. So, you don t know " Of course 
 she did not! Who would have told her? but it came 
 rather hard to have to tell it all himself "you don t 
 know that my father was Goody Greathead s half-brother, 
 and that he was not entitled to his father s name ? " 
 
 In a few sentences he had got through with the story we 
 have heard before of Greathead s second marriage that 
 was no marriage, and the flight of Rose Dunbar with her son. 
 
 " Now we 11 skip some years and begin again at the 
 autumn when I did n t come back to school, and when I 
 did, chucked it and left the place within a week." 
 
 Catherine s eyes lighted up. " I know about that at least ! 
 And how you did something to the master which made it 
 awkward for you both, as you were the stronger." 
 
 " Slapped his face for not blaming me because my father 
 was a thief ! You knew that ? Then you know what I came 
 to tell your cousin that night when I sat here in this room 
 by his fire ? " 
 
 " Yes : he called it all the work of Madam Wind, who 
 blew you away with her breath of lies." 
 
 " And blew me back again to-day, to tell you they were 
 not lies! Your good cousin believed that those stories 
 wronged my father. Without a word of proof, he com 
 forted the boy and sent him away built up in his self- 
 respect ; for what is a boy who doubts his own father ! I 
 had begun to have doubts of mine. I wrote your cousin 
 
200 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 of my father s death, after what happened at Sidling 
 Hill." 
 
 " He did not speak of it to me till months afterward," 
 said Catherine. " I think he never liked telling painful 
 news." 
 
 " He would not have spoken of that letter. It was a con 
 fidence. I owed your cousin the truth. He believed in my 
 father, and yet my father was the thief." 
 
 " Bassy ! " 
 
 " Yes : I might put it different, being his son. There 
 are excuses but we speak now of facts. He was ferret 
 ing out this very will which he did not know existed 
 when he dug beneath the dame s safe-cellar and frightened 
 her by his noises. She had her own reasons, I suppose, for 
 thinking her father s ghost might hang around that place." 
 
 " Now stop and tell me why did n t she burn the will ? " 
 
 " For the same reason ghosts. Her mind was all gone 
 to pulp like her limbs, for want of use. She had no cour 
 age even to see who was there when she heard noises in 
 her cellar. I am afraid my father knew all that before he 
 ventured on the job. If he had been willing only to wait. 
 But t was the l peace mission overcame him. He wanted 
 what he took the dame s hard money to buy his goods, 
 that killed him. Literally ! A worm s death, he called it ; 
 and said he had been made to crawl all his life through 
 the fault of others." 
 
 " How long have you known this, Bassy ? " 
 
 " Since my father told it me the day before he died 
 with great pride, poor man, in what he was leaving his son. 
 And put in my hand the papers to prove identity and gave 
 the names of the witnesses to his mother s dying words. 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HEK COUNTRY 201 
 
 These I kept as a boy because they proved something 
 else. That my father s mother was a good woman, and the 
 more deceived." 
 
 " And all this you wrote my cousin that winter, from 
 James Smith s?" 
 
 " I did not want him to be deceived, even in my father." 
 
 Catherine nodded. 
 
 " But one thing I kept back : where he hid the will. That 
 has been my secret, because I meant it should never be 
 unearthed. I should have had to carry on a chain of lies to 
 prove I had come on it by accident, you see buried by 
 common robbers who had no use for it, except perhaps for 
 blackmail. That was his plan. It could n t be mine. I 
 should have had to come out with the truth, as I must now 
 that my father was the man they said he was; who 
 schemed against an old, sick woman, who robbed her by 
 using a brother s knowledge of her past. And yet, he took 
 no shame for what he did saying he had been robbed 
 all his life, robbed before he was born, and what he had 
 grasped was mere justice, too late for him but not for his 
 son. He was dying. I did not tell him what his son thought 
 about it. He acknowledged no shame ; yet hiding the will 
 showed he knew there might be a different way of looking 
 at it which he had provided for." 
 
 " I can hardly wait ! " sighed Catherine, who began to 
 see how all this was coming out. 
 
 " Yes ; the will was buried, and here he showed the 
 strange, crooked working of his mind. If he had put the 
 time and thought he wasted nosing round this old carrion 
 grant and other schemes, scores of them, into straightaway 
 hard work for a living, he d have been a rich as well as a 
 
202 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 blameless man. Think how he worked it out ! He ran the 
 north and west boundary lines of the property (he could 
 survey among other things), and where they intersected 
 in the Friends burying-ground, a good place for secrecy, 
 he buried the will. On two trees, north and south, he 
 left his points, explaining all to me: how when the 
 old woman died and the estate came to settlement, I must 
 get the job of running those boundary lines and come 
 upon the will by * accident. That accident, of course, was 
 to make me a rich man. This morning I looked up my 
 points ; the lines met where you saw me standing, trying 
 to make up my mind. If I had n t met you there, Cath 
 erine, I believe I should have gone away and left that stone 
 unturned ; but you told me in your first words about the 
 mother s wish. So, if Jonathan had to be laid beneath 
 that stake, why the will would have to come up. I hope 
 the good man s bones may sweeten the ground that cov 
 ered it." 
 
 " I can see how you would have felt about it as a boy ; 
 but do you not see it a little different now ? " 
 
 " It is a feeling you don t outgrow. I have always been 
 shy on the point of family. You can get used to having 
 none even when you live with grandees like the Schuy- 
 lers ; but to come into your own and have to publish it, 
 that your great-grandfather was a traitor and your grand 
 father a seducer and your father a liar and a " 
 
 " Bassy, you will burn that leather ! Give it to me." 
 
 Catherine took from him the shagreen case and smoothed 
 and stretched it on her knee, passing her white hands over 
 it, the beautiful hands that English ladies had and English 
 painters painted, the firelight flashing in her rings. 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 203 
 
 Bassy watched the hands in silence. 
 
 " Now I know, of course, why you were sent for when 
 this trouble came upon the neighbors ; why my cousin said, 
 * Come and have a talk with me. 
 
 " This is the talk," said Bassy. 
 
 " But you acted first." 
 
 " I suppose you may call it acting. At least you know 
 why I was so keen for the job of gravedigger. If a hired 
 man had jumped in there with his pick, he might have 
 finished my title, if it be a title." 
 
 " Your title to good deeds ! " 
 
 " How do you know what I shall do ? " 
 
 " How knew my cousin when he sent for you ? " 
 
 "Your good cousin has great faith in his fellow-men." 
 
 " My good cousin knows his Bassy ! " 
 
 " And you knew him once. Was there in the boy you 
 knew anything to persuade you the man would covet this 
 property at the price ? Skin for skin all that he hath, 
 will a man give for his life, but not for a parcel of land in 
 a country as big as this. I have said in the pride of a boy, 
 if there s not land enough for me to get some of my own, 
 I will take to the sea, or squat on some poor Indian s and 
 drive him off it, as some of the men I used to admire have 
 done ; and dearly will pay for it, some day ! " 
 
 " What do you mean," said Catherine. " Who are those 
 men?" 
 
 " Some of them were at Sidling Hill, and some were 
 at Lancaster Jail when the Conestoga Indians were mur 
 dered. Brave as bulldogs, they are ; and true to their 
 breed, and were my heroes once. For I was sick of lies, 
 and men of brains eaten out with money schemes. I said 
 
204 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 4 Give me a horse and a gun and I will see the end of the 
 world before I 11 turn back to put my hand in any such a 
 rotten fleshpot. 
 
 Catherine shuddered at this upheaval of a boy s heart, 
 so embittered after keeping its secret trouble all these 
 years. 
 
 " Yes ; I would have gone with them out on the Wyoming 
 lands, which no white man has a right to settle on, 
 but your cousin held me back ; and got me a better start 
 under a very different hero. If ever any man had the 
 right to advise, nay, command another s action, your 
 cousin has that right in me. Yet all he said was 4 Come 
 and let us reason together. Such is the tenderness of his 
 touch when he lays it on another s responsibility. All I 
 ask of you, Catherine, is remember when I begin to stir 
 in this matter, it is not for the land, yet some of it will 
 like enough stick to my fingers." 
 
 " I think I am able to measure your sacrifice. But in your 
 place I should count it as nothing compared to the honor 
 of that summons from a man like my cousin. When he 
 asked you to lay aside your pride and take up your respon 
 sibility, without a question as to how you would use it 
 for a man of your age, Bassy, I call that a laurel crown ! " 
 
 " Then crown me," said Bassy quietly. He took her two 
 hands and kissed them and laid them on his forehead, bend 
 ing his height to receive the benediction. 
 
 She stepped back with a face as hot as fire. 
 
 His look was grand, but as she gave him back her full, 
 frank gaze, there were tears in her eyes for the pain she 
 knew one day she must make him suffer. She saw that he 
 would not speak now, but equally she saw that he had not 
 
CATHERINE CHOOSES HER COUNTRY 205 
 
 understood her tears. A great scruple stirred within her for 
 this wrong to their friendship, this breach of his trust in 
 her truth ; but her promise to Francis bound her. 
 
 They had not observed while talking that a break was 
 come in the storm. Bassy had no more time to stay. He 
 added to his other messages that Catherine was to tell her 
 cousin that he would be heard from soon ; and would ask 
 Mr. Philip Schuyler s advice about a lawyer. 
 
 Catherine followed him to the gate. " I want to see your 
 rainbow," she said. " I think you are going to have one to 
 ride away under." 
 
 " I need one," said Bassy. 
 
 " Well, there it is ! What did I say ! " 
 
 There it was, one end of it, mounting in delicate 
 splendor from the shining, steaming meadow. It brightened 
 against the dark woods, glowing with jewel-depths of color 
 the marvel of the sky ! It reached the zenith and was 
 lost. 
 
 " It s a broken one," said Bassy. 
 
 " No ; it s not finished. There are no broken rainbows! " 
 
 " There are some that stop in the sky." 
 
 " Well, is n t that a good place to stop ? " 
 
 " Not for a promise that applies to something you need 
 here," said Bassy. 
 
 He said good-by and went down the lane to the stable 
 for his horse. In a moment he came spattering past the 
 gate and waved his hat to Catherine. His face was so full 
 of light and joy that she ran out to meet him, looking up 
 the lane toward the woods. 
 
 " Where is it ? Do you see it ? " 
 
 " See it ? " He slacked rein, his eyes seeing her only. 
 
206 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " I thought you saw your rainbow finished." 
 
 " Oh, not yet," he answered. 
 
 " Well, that was a great talk ! " said Catherine as he 
 rode away, " and now I know my dear old Bassy. But he 
 does not know me, alas ! He does not know me." 
 
BOOK IV 
 
 THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 WE are to suppose it is Sunday, or rather First Day, 
 morning. Ann Havergal and her children and grandchil 
 dren are assembled for the silent meeting of the Friends. 
 This is the sitting-room ; in the bedroom back of it, on the 
 blue and white homespun counterpane of the bed where 
 Jonathan " passed away," lies a plain silk bonnet and a 
 white shoulder shawl which Simeon s wife has worn cross 
 ing the fields from her own house, because it is First Day 
 and a sunbonnet were unseemly. The caps of her two little 
 girls are on the bed, for the grandmother even now is say 
 ing she likes to see their hair uncovered and is putting it 
 neatly behind their ears with her dry, large-jointed fingers ; 
 and Simeon s wife, though she sees it is not becoming to 
 their high foreheads, smiles and says nothing. Her little 
 Jonathan s hat is beside his father s broad-brim in the hall. 
 
 Simeon, a man of whom nothing need be said except that 
 he is good, sits in his father s black oak saddle-seated chair, 
 his son beside him in a green painted Windsor, the worn 
 front rungs of which show where two generations of youth 
 ful heels have restlessly supported their owners, or kicked 
 at ease, as little Jonathan s are doing now, until his father 
 lays a heavy hand on his son s knee. 
 
 On the same side of the room sits Francis his profile to 
 the window. He looks like a poet in prison. David, near 
 him, a powerful figure, his head sunk on his breast, waits 
 for the Spirit to give him speech ; for his heart yearneth 
 over his brother, this same listless Francis with his side 
 
210 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 face against the light, its beauty of outline the more evident 
 for that strong effect of shadow. 
 
 Simeon s wife, thin, plain like her little girls, the type 
 of a Holbein Madonna, sits at Ann Havergal s right hand 
 with her six-year-old daughter on a hassock close to her 
 knee. The child has thrown one arm across the mother s 
 lap, and stares out of window wishing herself free. The 
 youngest, two and a half years, is falling asleep in her 
 grandmother s arms. 
 
 Ann Havergal is a beautiful figure, too sacred for a 
 passing description. She is no painter s model, though a 
 painter might paint her on his knees. It is better to leave 
 her to the imagination as she sits there thinking of her 
 dead husband, reviewing their long life together, the drowsy 
 grandchild nestling against her breast. Her hands cradle it 
 easily, accustomed to the work ; hands too large and toil- 
 worn for the delicate sensitive face of the purest eight 
 eenth-century type of English motherhood and ladyhood ; 
 yet the hands tell the best of the story. 
 
 This is a family of which it could be said, up to this time, 
 that no member of it has had a secret from the other. 
 Now, there are two. One which the children in common 
 are keeping from the mother, the secret of that corner mon 
 ument in the burying-ground and another like it in the 
 heart of her children s inheritance. The second is Francis s 
 secret altogether peculiar to him and his nature. 
 
 It is very near betraying itself this moment, for he has 
 heard the road-gate creak, and looking out sees Catherine 
 shutting it, her pony s bridle over her arm. She has her 
 linen riding-skirt caught up under one elbow, and a wreath 
 of pink is on her hat. 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 211 
 
 A long, sick sigh escapes him. He leans back in his 
 chair and does not look again. 
 
 The silence is so complete that a bumble-bee boring 
 under the bench on the front porch is heard to fall with a 
 sizz to the floor. Little Jonathan chuckles and looks at 
 his father, who is immovable, and then at his little sis 
 ter, who sparkles and laughs out loud. It is a saving inci 
 dent for the children. They sigh together when it is 
 over. 
 
 Comes a light, quick knock on the front door the 
 upper half standing open. No one answers, while each 
 waits for the other. Catherine, who thinks she under 
 stands the reason of this silence, does not knock again 
 but lifts the iron latch and lets it down softly. The lower 
 half-door opens with a jar. The first floors of the house 
 have settled permanently since it was built in haste to 
 cover the family, that rainy autumn forty years ago. 
 
 Francis breathes deeply and carefully as he waits for 
 that light step to pause. He raises his long eyelids. The 
 past few days have set them back in his head a trifle, 
 giving the look of recent illness. Catherine sees him first, 
 and is touched by his wanness and overcome at the meet 
 ing of their eyes. She stands in the doorway all one blush, 
 a feast of color. No one there could say how she is 
 dressed, only it is white and blue ; she has taken off her 
 riding-skirt and the linen sleeves that protected her arms, 
 now bare to the elbow. They are but a fainter pink than 
 her cheeks the deep rose-color that stops at the white 
 ness around her scarlet mouth. 
 
 David is in a dream. Simeon is not quick enough. 
 Francis, finding himself the only man on his feet, sits 
 
212 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 down feeling a weakness through him, the weakness of 
 strong wine in the veins of one who has fasted. 
 
 Simeon s wife brings forward a chair and shakes hands 
 with Catherine matter-of-factly. Ann Havergal, support 
 ing the little sleeper with one arm, smiles and quietly 
 holds out her free hand to Catherine, who sinks low and 
 kisses it. Her own hand is held and gathered in and the 
 widow draws her close, laying her soft cheek against 
 Catherine s, the suppressed grief of the aged stirring the 
 folds of her breast handkerchief. Catherine wipes away 
 a tear or two, but is exquisitely happy. Only when she 
 looks at Francis, she wonders can he have been ill? 
 
 Her cousin has been ill in bed since the funeral. This 
 is the first day she could have left him, even to pay her 
 respects to the bereaved household. And Francis in that 
 week s time has not written. But in that first look he 
 gave her there was all the assurance a girl could ask that 
 silence does not always mean forgetting. She sits still 
 with her head down and dreams. 
 
 The little six-year-old on her hassock hitches forward 
 to get a better look across her mother s skirts at the lovely 
 stranger, and the little boy s gaze is solemnly fastened on 
 her. Catherine ventures a glance at Francis to communi 
 cate her delight in these little ones. It turns out to be an 
 expensive form of sympathy, leading to another blush, an 
 overwhelming one that goes on from blush to blush till 
 she can see no more. No one perceives her state but 
 Francis. His heart almost stops as he looks at her. He 
 too resolves to look no more till he can have her all to 
 himself. 
 
 David had arisen and stood silent, swaying his great 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 213 
 
 body on the large pedestal of his feet. A tall man with a 
 high, square-cornered head covered with straight fair hair ; 
 harsh features and a glorious blue eye, the eye of a sailor, 
 a discoverer, who searches far horizons. 
 
 When he spoke at last, the words followed each other 
 continuously in a voice of tender resonance. Its volume 
 filled the room yet it was far from loud, especially at 
 the beginning of each paragraph or division. He opened 
 quietly, in the manner of prose, and mounted, soaring 
 into a form of recitative peculiarly objectionable to Fran 
 cis, who never lost sight of his brother s delivery through 
 absorption in his message. 
 
 He could have borne with it himself, being used to it ; 
 but he heard it now with Catherine s ears, fancying how 
 ludicrous it must seem to her. But Catherine sat com 
 pletely lost, wrapped in the words of the speaker. 
 
 " A little thing, Beloveds, will destroy the work of God 
 in the heart. A little reasoning of the earthly spirit (though 
 about ever so small a matter) drives back the soul upon 
 doubting, and disobedience to the call. 
 
 " Do not go yet, saith the Enemy. Thy way is not 
 yet plain before thee. Thy light is not yet clear enough. 
 The reason or consideration which is objected is not fully 
 answered. Thus many pure drawings of the Father have 
 been lost, and the soul thereby hath missed of the hand 
 which was put forth to show the way. 
 
 " It is the unbeliever hangs back and cries, 4 Where shall 
 I have the power ? Which way shall I ever be able to 
 pass through this intricate wilderness ? How shall I, single- 
 handed, overcome those many lurking enemies which are 
 already in possession of the land ? 
 
214 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " This is not the right seed. This is not the true Israel 
 for whom the everlasting inheritance is prepared. 
 
 " What did the true church carry with her into the 
 wilderness ? When the true worshipers went, did not the 
 temple and the altar go along with them ? The virtue, the 
 life, and the power ? And what did God regard the out 
 ward ? 4 Leave it out of my measure, saith the Lord ; 4 and 
 give it to the Gentiles. 
 
 " What is the cup, the golden cup, which the false 
 church hath in her hand wherein are sorceries and witch 
 crafts wherewith she bewitcheth people and maketh them 
 drunk? Is it not the glorious appearance of things with 
 out the true life and power? Yea, the life, the power, 
 and the spirit that was in the apostle s days ? What re 
 mains of these are to be found with the true church in the 
 wilderness ? 
 
 " There is no man perisheth for want of power, for there 
 is power in the free gift which comes upon all. The seed 
 of the Kingdom is sown, man knows not how, even by the 
 sound of the eternal spirit. He looks for the Spirit in a way 
 that is answerable to his thoughts and the expectations of 
 his heart. But thus it never comes. It springs in the heart 
 of many, and they overlook the thing and turn from it 
 daily, not knowing its proper appearance but expecting it 
 some other way. 
 
 " A little thing, in the beginning, a little turning of 
 the way, will destroy the work of God in the heart ; in 
 the faith, in obedience to God s spirit. Those who have 
 traveled longer than I in the path of life, I know can wit 
 ness this ! 
 
 " Oh, how small a thing brings a veil over the life ! What 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 215 
 
 a little giving way to the reasonings of the earthly spirit 
 drives back the work of God in the heart, and prepares 
 the way for endless regrets, Beloveds, endless regrets ! " 
 
 As suddenly as he had begun to speak, David ceased, 
 and sat down and remained very still a moment, while 
 Simeon changed his feet on the sanded floor and the little 
 girl on the hassock, accustomed to her uncle s voice in 
 preaching, forgot it instantly as an interruption and whis 
 pered, "Who is she ? Who is she, mother? " 
 
 " Hush-sh ! " said the mother, smiling at Catherine, who 
 roused herself with a quick sigh. 
 
 David leaned forward and reached his hand to his elder 
 brother. Simeon shook it up and down heartily as if they 
 had not met for some time ; and then David turned to 
 Francis. 
 
 Catherine looked hastily away. 
 
 " Let me carry her in, mother ! She is too heavy for 
 thee." 
 
 The two slender women strove together for the rosy 
 little burden in the grandmother s arms ; who prevailed by 
 right of possession. As she bore off the prize of sleep, her 
 stiff steps half supported by the mother s arm, she said, 
 " If we had no heavier loads than these to carry ! " 
 
 Catherine followed them. She had been presented to 
 Simeon s wife as soon as David, extending his hand to his 
 brother, dissolved the meeting. This prompt descent to every 
 day intercourse from the heights of spiritual communion 
 bewildered the young girl, but she accepted it as part of 
 the Friends simplicity and their want of humor. 
 
 " Stay and talk to mother. I must run and see about 
 dinner. Thee will stay and sit down with us ? " 
 
216 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " To dinner ? Oh, I cannot stay to dinner," said Cath 
 erine, alarmed. 
 
 "Well, dinner will be late: I have to fry the chickens. 
 Mother has no one to help her to-day. So, if thee does not 
 wish to stay, there is time for quite a little talk." 
 
 Simeon s wife left them, and Catherine, obeying Friend 
 Havergal s motion, came and sat beside her in the window. 
 They spoke in the soft tones natural to them, lowered a 
 trifle on account of the little sleeper on the bed. 
 
 " David bore on rather hard this morning; it might 
 seem so to a stranger. He is greatly exercised about 
 Francis. The father s will was no surprise to me. I tried 
 to dissuade him, when we talked it over, from choosing 
 Francis. But Edwin has his business in New York : he is 
 settled on his lees. Simeon s wife is delicate, and Simeon 
 would not have been the one for the work father had in 
 mind. No ; he saw that. David has a gift for the ministry. 
 Father left him the mill property ; that is not so confining 
 as land. He can employ a miller or rent the mill, and be 
 free when he has a concern to travel. There was only our 
 Francis ; and father had set his heart, he believed it a 
 duty for every family rooted in peace to send out one son 
 into the wilderness, where homes of unjust men do mul 
 tiply as we know, by violence, often, and fraud ; where the 
 true seed is not planted. That was why David laid such 
 stress on the faith that brings the power ; for Francis thinks 
 he has not the power. He does not know what he has till 
 he tries ! But it is a very sudden call. He does not seem to 
 be quite ready. I think David expects rather too much of 
 him, considering. We have had a trying week ; or I should 
 have sent to inquire after thy cousin. We heard he was 
 sick abed." 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 217 
 
 After a few words to Catherine as to her own home mat 
 ters, Friend Havergal s sweet, weary monotone went on 
 again. Her sentences broke off as if her breath gave out, 
 wasted by some inward load it carried. 
 
 " I hope it was not awkward for thee sitting through our 
 meeting ? " 
 
 " It was partly what I came for," said Catherine. " At 
 least it was why I chose this time." 
 
 " I wish David had considered a little who was present 
 before he said so much about the false church. Thy 
 family will be Church of England, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes." Catherine owned they had been so for several 
 generations. But there were many ways of reading Reve 
 lation. She had taken David s words to apply to the spirit 
 of worldliness in general : worship of the outward every 
 church must contend against after the days of its martyrs 
 are over. 
 
 " Yes, probably ; yet he is pretty severe sometimes with 
 the Puritans and Presbyterians. We suffered grievous 
 things at their hands, both in the mother country and in 
 New England. In Cromwell s time, as Robert Barclay 
 said, there was hardly a prison that was not filled with our 
 people, nor a judge in England before whom they were not 
 haled. David s father took great pride in those testimonies. 
 No one could say of us then that we testified in corners 
 and safe places ! My husband labored sorely over some 
 words of thy cousin s, spoke when they both were somewhat 
 heated by controversy. He understood him to accuse the 
 Friends of backwardness in their own persons to encounter 
 the stripes. That they kept within the settled districts, 
 sending out sermons and missionaries, but took no risks 
 
218 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 with their own property and wives and children, as the 
 Presbyterians did on the border, who bore the brunt of the 
 savage raids, and provoked them, my husband felt. And 
 to answer the first charge, so far as one man might, he re 
 solved to give at least one son to planting the true church, 
 the church of righteous deeds in the wilderness, and defend 
 ing it through the power of faith and pure living, rather 
 than force of arms. If every man did this who had raised 
 up sons he could trust to live by the law of Christ where no 
 law of man can reach, thee sees, my dear, how it might 
 advance the friendship between our race and the savages. 
 For every white man who comes in contact with them, 
 where white men are so few, stands to them for the whole 
 race. 
 
 " Wild tares of violence and injustice are scattered broad 
 cast, said my husband, 4 and many are the hands that sow. 
 Shall hands that are pure of bloodshed be wanting to sow 
 the good seed? Shall our great frontier, where all the 
 trouble breeds, be held by violence only, and perfidy and 
 greed ? 
 
 " I speak a great deal of our own affairs," the tired 
 voice sank, " but it is a serious question. I feel my son s 
 whole life is at stake. My husband asked of me the sacrifice 
 to part with him before he laid on him this, his last com 
 mand. I was able to make it, but I may say, barely able ! 
 It came pretty hard. Perhaps I am to be punished now by 
 keeping my son, at the cost of seeing him draw back from 
 his own share in the sacrifice. 
 
 " But my dear, I am forgetting ! Do lay off thy hat and 
 stay with us to dinner ? Thee must go ! Well, it has been 
 a pleasure to see thy face. I love all young people, but I 
 
THE POVEETY OF FKANCIS 219 
 
 seem drawn to thee in a very particular manner. Give my 
 kind regards to thy cousin; and I do hope his cold will soon 
 be better. We appreciated his coming. My husband had 
 a great wish to see him oftener ; he valued his conversa 
 tion, as a precious opportunity. Come again, will thee not ? 
 I shall dearly love to see thee." 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 CATHERINE had told herself that her visit was solely to 
 Francis s mother ; and to sit out the hour of worship with 
 the family of the man she loved. But, climbing the hill, 
 Melissa showed her thirteen years when it came to hills, 
 a sense of something wanting reminded her that she 
 had not been honest with herself ; for, except that she had 
 not spoken to Francis or seen him again, in every other 
 respect she had had a wonderful morning. 
 
 And then, waiting for her at the watering-trough 
 which Melissa knew too well to pass stood Francis him 
 self. He took the pony s bridle and led her through the 
 gate, Catherine submitting without question. 
 
 They were in a wheat-field covering a slope of many 
 acres that fell away into a deep valley. There had been 
 hills in sight before the wheat was grown. It was now 
 breast-high, and the view completely lost. 
 
 On a ridge where the last furrow overgrown with grass 
 mounded up against the fence, they seated themselves. 
 Three cedars close together on the road cast a blue dark 
 ness over them, but the shadow at midday reached not 
 beyond their feet. There was nothing beyond save color 
 and motion, waves of deeper green made by the wind 
 tumbling and gliding over the glistening billowy wheat, 
 and soft spots of gloom where a cloud shadow crossed it. 
 Overhead, the ineffable sky of June. 
 
 " Why have I never seen a wheat-field before ? " said 
 Catherine, half closing her dazzled eyes. " The world must 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 221 
 
 be full of wheat-fields, but I never saw anything like 
 this." 
 
 " Are there no wheat-fields in England ? " 
 
 " There is everything in England ! but somehow nothing 
 for me. I never could have dreamed of riding into a man s 
 field and sitting down in his wheat ! There would have 
 been no one to sit down with ! " she laughed to herself. 
 
 "I am glad you are more at home with me, Cather 
 ine dear sweet ! You were so shy and frightened of 
 me at first." 
 
 " But was I shy ? Sometimes I have thought I was not 
 shy enough. It was so easy to love you, Francis." 
 
 Francis without speaking showed how easy it was to 
 love her. 
 
 " There is my hand. Now ! we are in meeting. Take 
 away your arm, dear Francis Beloved. I want to preach 
 
 I mean I want David to preach to us both. Can 
 you not hear his words still ? " 
 
 " Are you thinking of the true church and the false 
 church and the cup wherewith she bewitcheth people 
 and maketh them drunk ? " 
 
 Catherine turned and looked at him in amazement. He 
 was even imitating delicately, Francis did nothing gross 
 
 his brother s peculiar, slightly nasal cadence. 
 
 " Of course," she observed dryly, " there is nothing in 
 this world to say nothing of Revelation that cannot 
 be turned into ridicule if one has no other way of seeing 
 things." 
 
 She forcibly took away her hand. The wind rocked the 
 wheat with long soothings, hushings of the eternal lullaby. 
 
 A miserable silence followed ; then Catherine, relenting, 
 
222 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 said, " Preach was not the right word ! I always go too 
 fast ! What I should have said," she gave him back 
 her hand ; he took it simply like a child, and passionately 
 kissed it, " what I meant was this : if I am the make 
 weight, the hindrance ; if what you have said to me inter 
 feres with your keeping your father s last command, then 
 am /the outward. Leave me out of your measure ! " 
 
 "And give you to the Gentiles ? " smiled Francis. 
 
 " Leave me out ! so long as I hinder. But I would say 
 too if a woman may say it to a man who has not asked 
 her I will go with you to-morrow to the world s end, on 
 such a call. I ask no prouder invitation. I would be the 
 wife of the poorest man that lives, if I loved him, and he 
 were bound to such an undertaking. Think, think what it 
 would bring to pass ! Suppose that we had cut this field 
 out of the immensity of the forest, and planted this won 
 derful beauty for a sign of the work of the husbandman ; 
 his care of his family and the poor, and his forethought for 
 the winter. Farming is creation ! Are you not proud to be 
 a farmer, Francis ? " 
 
 " I never should be a farmer because I was proud 
 of it." 
 
 " What better could a man of our time be ? To plant 
 the land our fathers conquered in those frightful old 
 wars " 
 
 " My fathers did not get their land that way," Francis 
 reminded her. 
 
 " But we would plant in the spirit of your fathers ; 
 such a home would be a mission. Oh, Francis, what a 
 proud girl I should be to c helpmeet, with my hands, as 
 your mother helped your father I " 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 223 
 
 " My angel, my child ! you do not understand. My 
 mother has been talking to you, and neither does she un 
 derstand." 
 
 " But what is it ? How else can you look at it ? " 
 
 " It is not such a dazzling thing as you see it ; still, it 
 were enough if it were possible. Difficulties have arisen 
 that my father knew not of, or if he did, he trusted too 
 much " 
 
 " Perhaps he trusted, as David said, that the power 
 springs up in the heart if we do not give way to the rea 
 sonings of the earthly spirit. 
 
 44 David should be the last to gird at me for delay when 
 the very means father left me to carry out his command 
 which thrusts me out must go to save David s own in 
 heritance. The Greathead estate claims our mill-site, which 
 is David s share of the property. David has no money nor 
 will he consent to a lawsuit. There is no other way but 
 to purchase the title over again. It will take the hundred 
 and fifty pounds father left me, to settle this claim and 
 others they put forward. David is like many of the spirit 
 ually-minded : quite ready to accept worldly assistance and 
 call it a debt to providence. Though, I ought to mention, 
 he would give me a mortgage on the mill property ; not 
 that it can pay interest on a mortgage of that size, as 
 David will run it and support him and his family." 
 
 " But David has no family. Is he going to be married ?" 
 
 " I think it will end that way ; as soon as he can settle 
 with himself whether his concern to preach before the 
 New York meeting be a true call of the Spirit or mixed 
 with a personal inclination to lay his state of mind before 
 Mercy Titus." 
 
224 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Oh, Francis ! how funny you are ! " 
 
 u Yes, the Friends are quaint, when they are dead in 
 earnest as David is." 
 
 " But he is wonderful ! Mercy Titus may thank her 
 stars if she gets David." 
 
 " Oh ! she has him ; she winds him round her little 
 finger. I doubt not she is advising with him now by letter 
 on this point, which he thinks he hath darkly clothed from 
 her in the language of religious metaphor. But Mercy un 
 derstands. He will decide it is the Spirit calls ; but Friend 
 Titus will ask him to stay with them while he is in the 
 city, and all will be well." 
 
 " They will make a perfect pair. Mercy is as clever 
 and practical " 
 
 "As David s wife would need to be," said Francis. 
 " David has a mind superior to details. When he picks 
 out a road, he sees only some great city of his dreams 
 shining at the end. He does not measure the distance, nor 
 count the steps." 
 
 " But is n t that the way to get to those cities ? " 
 
 " Also the way to be lost, as thousands are, and those 
 they take with them on the unknown roads. I will risk 
 nothing so precious as this," said Francis, and caught 
 the girl to his breast, " on a road I cannot see. We 
 cannot even start, you know, without money," he added 
 on a drier key. " We cannot walk, thou and I, to the 
 Genesee valley." 
 
 " Is that where it is ? " 
 
 " Yes : but it might as well be Canaan. There is the 
 Jordan, my darling, and I will not lose thee in the cross 
 ing!" 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 225 
 
 Catherine s blood chilled as she thought of a certain 
 river-crossing on a night of defeat and surrender, and of 
 one who crossed alone a darker stream. She was not sorry 
 for her mother. 
 
 " That is not the way life is lost," said the girl of 
 seventeen ; " or if it is, I give tJiee mine to lose." 
 
 " We will talk of that life one of these days," said 
 Francis when he could speak again. " But first there is the 
 obstacle. It completely bars the way, in this direction. But 
 there are others." 
 
 " Other ways to start in life, you mean ? Aside from 
 this your father laid upon you ? " 
 
 " Are you such a stickler on the point of literal obedi 
 ence to fathers? " 
 
 " It would depend upon the father. When a father does 
 his son the honor to call him to a great attempt, for no 
 selfish or tyrannical reason ; gives him to his country s 
 future, to humanity itself, I should spring if I were that 
 son ! " 
 
 Catherine rose and Francis stood up confronting her. 
 She placed her hands on his arms to keep him away that 
 she might look at him without confusion. 
 
 " I suppose you will laugh at me if I say I believe that 
 before we talk of this again the great obstacle will have 
 melted away. That is my prophecy." 
 
 " I should not feel like laughing if I thought I should 
 not speak to you again before that happened ! will you not 
 come again soon to see my mother ? " 
 
 " Not till you have come to see my cousin." 
 
 Catherine rode home uneasy in her mind. She thought 
 of Bassy, her great old Bassy, whose words were like 
 
226 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 blocks you could pile one upon another, and his deeds as 
 square as his words ; but though she praised Bassy in her 
 soul, a subtle consciousness of Francis stole through her 
 veins, making her weak with memory of the sight of him. 
 Was this the cup, the golden cup, wherein are sorceries 
 and witchcrafts wherewith the glorious appearance of things 
 bewitcheth people and maketh them drunk? Catherine 
 lived in an age when young girls religiously brought up 
 asked themselves such questions and acted upon the an 
 swers conscience gave. 
 
 " Hist, hist ! Mr. David, sor ! Cud I whishper a word 
 to ye?" 
 
 " Come in, Michael. Come into the house." 
 " Sor, cud I ask ye come out ? I m spakin what I have 
 to say to ye in a whishper." Michael suited his voice to 
 the word. " It s the quare thing on me entirely ! I m wish 
 ful to have ye know it, sor." 
 
 David went out to the horse-block to humor Michael, 
 the hired man, without much interest in his mystery. He 
 was wondering if Francis had been hurt by his words, 
 since he had gone off by himself, not joining the family at 
 dinner. 
 
 " Sor," said Michael hoarsely, laying his hand aside his 
 mouth to guard the sound of his voice. 
 
 " Thee may omit the prefix when thee speaks to me, 
 Michael. I think I have said so before." 
 
 " The which, sor ? " 
 
 " Thee need not call me * Mister or * Sir. I am 
 David, or Friend Havergal, to all and sundry : one man 
 being the same as another to the Lord who made us all." 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 227 
 
 " Sure the Lord is not ould Michael ! Not that I wud 
 be snatchin the words out o your mouth, sor." 
 
 " Well, well," said David hastily as he saw Michael tak 
 ing breath for one of those pauseless Irish monologues ; 
 " what is this private business thee has with me ? " 
 
 " Sor I mane well^ sor ! I had me directions from 
 the missus where I was to dig the ould man s grave, on a 
 piece o paper all dhrawed out that Misther Simeon gev 
 me, an whin I come to the spot and marked off me ground, 
 what do I see but a big, murdherin stake in the very 
 middle o the grave where I was to dig it, sor ! An how 
 it come there, an who planted it, divil a wan o me cud 
 tell. An I says to meself , wid all the room there was in 
 it and not one of the family laid there, why would n t there 
 be space the widt of a man s body alongside to the west, 
 sor ? An there I dug it, and wint away for the new ropes 
 to lower the coffin, which it kep me thrampin on me feet 
 an I was n t in for me dinner till time to start for the 
 buryin -ground to lay the ropes ready, an a big storrum 
 comin up. I says 4 Hannah, says I, give me my tay 
 and give it me strong, for I have broke me ordhers an I 
 don t know fwhat I am doin , says I. An she says 4 fwhat 
 have ye done, an I tould her. 
 
 " Mercy of God, says she, 4 but you have broke her 
 heart this day ! Ye have put the ould man in the very spot 
 herself was to lay in whin her time come, betwixt him 
 and the babe she has waited these thirty year to lay be 
 side it. Musha, what 11 it do to her whin she sees it ! 
 
 44 My knees was as wake as wather whin I stud back 
 behind the threes and seen the Missus at the head o the 
 grave an her sons bearin her up and the little childer 
 
228 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 and the ould Dutch dominie wid his head uncovered in 
 the dhrips ; for iviry tree was weepin long af ther the rain 
 stopped. An whin ye was gone an I come to fill up the 
 grave, Mr. David, sor, if ye 11 belave me, t was in the 
 verra spot she laid it out to me, for I measured it meself 
 from the big pine. An I looked to see where was the 
 stake and it was vanished away ! 
 
 " Now tell me, sor, the prayers of the saints on earth 
 don t be answered ! As long as there s a saint in heaven 
 the Missus shall not go wanting the wish of her heart ; 
 for she 11 nivir ask for a thing in this wide world but 
 Saint Pether himself might be proud to give it her. And 
 no inconvaynience neither. For what wud it be to him, 
 tin feet this way or that, whin it made all that differ to 
 her? Now let them say that mericles is dead an done 
 wid ! Answer up to that ! " 
 
 David never repeated nor alluded to this conversation, 
 which was all the sign he ever gave of the deep impres 
 sion it made on his mind ; and as Michael was the only 
 one who could have testified that the grave had been 
 moved, his belief in miracles silenced further queries on 
 his part. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 ENGLISH manners of Colonel Yelverton s time were 
 more nearly related to that robust age when " t were 
 unmannerly to take thee out and not to kiss thee." He 
 would have deemed it unmannerly not only, but unkind, 
 to have omitted the cheerful morning salute at breakfast 
 when Charlotte greeted him, or his hearty " give us a 
 kiss, my girl," for good-night. 
 
 But the omission of a kiss may have more food for 
 reflection in it than the kiss itself. So, when Charlotte 
 spent her evenings alone more and more on one pretext 
 or another, and slipped up to her attic without the cere 
 mony of bidding good-night, and often had breakfasted 
 and gone her ways before him, the colonel took note of 
 the change and found it disturbing chiefly because it was 
 a change. If they had begun on a different key but 
 Charlotte s impulsive demonstrativeness had been very 
 sweet to the lonely man ; no pure-hearted man could have 
 rebuked it. He saw though, with content, these first ex 
 travagances of a perfervid gratitude subsiding into or 
 derly habits of household affection expressed at proper 
 times and seasons, as one winds the clock or says one s 
 prayers. 
 
 The colonel had not taken up the custom of reading 
 prayers, but decided he should do so as soon as Catherine 
 came, who would miss it ; but he prayed on his knees in 
 his own room every night for his child, and never forgot 
 the other child whom the Lord had committed to his care. 
 
230 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Ignorant shepherd though he was, and unsure, he meant 
 to do his best. 
 
 It would have been to him incredible that any man who 
 could shake him by the hand and take wine with him 
 would go aside and wag his head and say, "If a man 
 wants to keep one of the hussies let him keep her and be 
 ! but don t let him call her his daughter." 
 
 But this, no less, was what John McLean had in mind 
 when he advised the colonel to send for his real daugh 
 ter. 
 
 To a certain extent to the extent of calling him a 
 meddlesome old fool the colonel, as we have seen, took 
 his friend s advice seriously ; but he was not equal to 
 imagining anything quite as bad as the words just quoted, 
 proceeding from the very men who were supposed to know 
 him best : the Tory squires on their new American es 
 tates with whom almost daily he drank and hunted and 
 played cards. And while they commented without caring, 
 and lightly condoned, the Puritans next door heard the 
 story and believed it with head-shakings and groanings, 
 and a certain triumph in the state of Tory morals, and 
 what we were coming to if these British ex-army officers 
 and squirelings set up their old-world standards on clean 
 American soil. 
 
 So, when the colonel decided to take McLean s advice, 
 it was not for the same reason it was given ; he simply 
 felt that Charlotte s state of mind was getting beyond 
 him ; she needed another young woman in the house, and 
 he needed his daughter. The very sight of Charlotte day 
 by day a girl yet not the girl kept him in mind of 
 his own. 
 
THE POVERTY OF FEANCIS 231 
 
 He was perfectly aware of Charlotte s outward attrac 
 tions. Not in any sense was he immune to woman s beauty 
 and woman s charm : a natural lover, a natural husband 
 and father, it is a pleasure to record the inner history of a 
 man so simple and straight-minded as the colonel, so 
 reverent, healthy, and sane ; and to show how little diffi 
 culty he had though few of his neighbors would believe 
 it in guarding the thoughts of his heart. 
 
 To resolve was to act. He set his men at work building 
 the annex to his log cabin (although it did delay the 
 progress of the grand mansion on the hill). He would not 
 wait a week longer ; he would go for Catherine at once, 
 and the new room should be finished in his absence. He 
 and Charlotte spent a merry day unpacking furniture and 
 rugs and bedding to make his old room into a lady s 
 bower, where his two girls should sleep together. Char 
 lotte begged stoutly to stay in her cockloft, that Catherine 
 might not be intruded on " not till she knows me a 
 little," she demurred wistfully. Well did she remember 
 how Catherine as a child had shrunk away and wept that 
 first night, when her little wild sister claimed her for a 
 bed-fellow ! The proud sacrifice was not understood, nor 
 was it acceptable to the colonel. He knew his child. 
 Catherine would never rest in her cool, airy chamber down 
 stairs with Charlotte in a poke-hole under the eaves. 
 
 Charlotte was convinced in spite of herself by the fa 
 ther s fresh and confident knowledge of the well-beloved. 
 Her nature was reflected in his eyes, his smile, whenever 
 he talked of her. 
 
 " If thou dost not love my Catherine when you come to 
 live together, thou wilt be the first one ! " 
 
232 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 He clanked about in his riding-boots, stepping from one 
 floor-beam to another of his new quarters, and pointed out 
 to Charlotte smiling from the door-frame where his old 
 soldier s equipment should be stowed, where his swords 
 were to be hung and his bearskins spread. 
 
 He made up his little party and his packs for the jour 
 ney, and rode away, calling back to the group who watched 
 him : 
 
 " Be ready for us this day three weeks ; I shall not come 
 back alone." 
 
 A week to go, a week to return, and one more in the 
 middle for Catherine s preparations. They were the happi 
 est three weeks of Charlotte s life. She had at first a great 
 sense of rest in being alone ; she wanted to do nothing 
 but sit and think. Much as she loved the colonel, his pre 
 sence had cruelly oppressed her ever since she overheard 
 those fatal words. Hardly for one moment now was she at 
 ease with him, nor could feel the least faith or pride in his 
 show of affection for her. " I am well enough in my wa} r , 
 but not in his way." 
 
 How was it going to be with Catherine ? In this direc 
 tion a new hope had sprung up ; a curious belief founded 
 on trifles light as air that Catherine this time would not 
 reject her nor put her in another class. How well she re 
 membered the wonderful white child, her eyes full of light 
 with dark lashes ; her lengths of soft English hair rolled 
 down upon her shoulders, nestling in her neck ; her little 
 mouth too tenderly made almost to be even kissed ; the 
 " soft complexion of her face." That they should lie as 
 two sisters side by side in that stately bed as beautiful as 
 Mistress Polly s (in that other room full of the stings and 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 233 
 
 wounds of long ago), could it be possible? Charlotte 
 had sewed all the long seams of the flowered curtains and 
 dressed the canopy. The bed was made, the curtains draped, 
 the room was sweet with flowers ; rough as its framework 
 was, it looked a shrine. 
 
 It was sunset of the day and one day over ; three weeks 
 ago the colonel rode away. She stood in the door looking 
 eastward toward the wall of forest, breezeless, clothed in 
 level radiance from the great valley open to the west ; and 
 again her prophets helped her to unburden her soul of its 
 great hope, its fear, and its rejoicing. 
 
 " 4 The gate of the inner court that looketh toward the 
 east shall be shut the six working days ; but on the seventh 
 it shall be opened, and in the day of the new moon it shall 
 be opened. 
 
 " And the prince shall enter by the way of the porch 
 of that gate " 
 
 She stepped out to see if there were a new moon actually 
 in the west ; and behold it was there, sinking in a sky that 
 blushed a pure rose and faded upward in the zenith s blue. 
 
 Turning back she saw the colonel ride out of the woods, 
 and he was not alone. But Catherine was not with him. 
 It was only a man who rode at his right hand. Neither 
 smiled ; the colonel forced himself to, on seeing her, but 
 there was nothing comforting in his smile. He looked very 
 tired and rather old. The other man was young ; he jumped 
 off first and offered some help to his companion, who pushed 
 him away laughing. 
 
 " Charlotte, this is Mr. Dunbar. No, Catherine has not 
 come ; not this time, my girl. Hast been well ? thou art 
 pale. Been working too hard, I m afraid." 
 
234 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 The colonel passed the door of Catherine s room hastily, 
 and led Bassy into his own big, echoing barrack. 
 
 " Let us have something to eat, my lass, and be quick 
 about it! " 
 
 The colonel had not offered to kiss her this time ; for 
 so much at least she was thankful. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 WHEN Bassy came to think it over, he could see no good 
 reason for intruding the details of how his grandfather s will 
 was recovered upon the sensitiveness of the Quaker family. 
 He himself was sensitive on the subject of his errand that 
 morning in the graveyard. It would make a gruesome bit 
 of gossip, both for the family and for him, if it should get 
 about. In short, as no questions were asked, he volunteered 
 no explanations. 
 
 But it was common property by now that he was the 
 acknowledged heir of the Greathead estate ; that he had 
 compromised a threatened lawsuit with claimants of the 
 legitimate line, the terms of the compromise giving him 
 all lands in dispute for thrice the number of acres in 
 forest; and he was known to be settling all conflicting 
 claims on the singular basis of doing as he would be 
 done by. 
 
 It was boyish ; it was not law nor business ; it puzzled 
 and worried some of the old neighbors who had looked 
 forward to a fine upsetting. There were a even few who 
 suspected that all was not yet known ! but on the whole 
 could any fault be found with that way of interpreting jus 
 tice? 
 
 The resident parson of New Paltz church preached a 
 sermon on the text Ezekiel xlvi, 18 : " Moreover the 
 prince shall not take of the people s inheritance by oppres 
 sion to thrust them out." 
 
 The literally-minded saw not how the word prince could 
 
236 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 apply to the son of Isaac Dunbar (and by reading on a 
 little farther in the same verse one could see it did not fit) ; 
 still there was as much interest and enthusiasm aroused 
 by young Dunbar s action as could be expected in haying- 
 time. 
 
 Yet while the village buzzed, the Havergals, whom it 
 profited more than any, were proudly silent. Ann Haver- 
 gal to be sure had written her thanks and her son s thanks 
 to Bassy, on receipt, through his lawyers, of a deed of gift 
 to a part of her husband s estate. That it was not easy to 
 thank a stranger for the right to live rent-free in the home 
 of a lifetime she could not conceal. It was a delicate let 
 ter, shrinkingly just ; it served to increase Bassy s reluc 
 tance to open any phase of the subject again. 
 
 Days passed and Francis did not come. It was too late 
 for him to come now as Catherine had looked for him 
 the first to tell her the way was open before them, since 
 David s inheritance was free. 
 
 The sterner virtues had been hard worked in many gen 
 erations of Havergals. In the children of Jonathan, the 
 blood of saints and martyrs showed fitful tendencies, as a 
 stream far from its fountains spreads and checks and 
 gathers volume again for an occasional burst of its original 
 impetus : In Edwin, a prosperous worldling, it took on 
 flesh and made money ; in Simeon, who was virtuous, it 
 failed for want of imagination ; in David it found wings 
 of poetry rather than power, but it rose from the earth ; in 
 Francis, most highly endowed of them all, it grew suddenly 
 tired. His clear and critical mind grasped every possibility 
 of failure in any proposed line of action, and his despond 
 ency argued for ninety-nine chances of it as against one of 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 237 
 
 success. Intense pride and over-sensitiveness robbed him 
 of courage, which always must imply the power to stop 
 thinking when the time for action comes. Francis could 
 not stop inquiring: and "the man who waits to know 
 everything before he decides, never decides ! " 
 
 He wished to understand all the problems of life before 
 he would trust himself to live ; regarding himself as the 
 greatest and most hopeless of them, he thought very con 
 stantly and desperately about himself, and the more he 
 thought the less he knew. 
 
 Here in this peaceful Quaker farmhouse in the heart 
 of the haying season was one of youth s tragedies. The 
 mother saw it and lost her strength in thinking of it. 
 David could not understand what it was gave Francis 
 pause, but preached no more sermons at his brother. Sim 
 eon saw that he grew white and thin, and did double work 
 in the fields himself to spare the youngest to think out his 
 path alone. 
 
 The dominie had brought his chair out from the study 
 into the hall for the sake of a draft. Front and back 
 doors stood open. Catherine seated on the lowest step of 
 the stairs picked over gooseberries, " top-and-tailing " them 
 and rubbing off the mildew a task she did not like. It 
 was too early for the dominie to water his garden this hot 
 day. He thought of his young lettuces, sympathizing in his 
 own condition with their eagerness for the coming shade. 
 
 " Listen to this ! " He had been reading the " Pennsyl 
 vania Gazette," but laid it down. " Why, surely that is 
 Francis Havergal ! " his smile of welcome brightening as 
 the young man came up the steps. 
 
238 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Catherine fled with her gooseberries for the sake of 
 slipping up the back way to recover her neckerchief, 
 which she had flung on the bed in the feverish heat of 
 noon. She tucked it in, looking at herself in the swing- 
 glass, at her pale face and parted lips. 
 
 " I can t go down. What will become of me ! " 
 
 She was quite sure her cousin would read her secret 
 with his first look. 
 
 The dominie did not look at her at all. He was con 
 sidering the face of the young man seated opposite: as a 
 son of Jonathan Havergal it was an amazing departure 
 from the breed of long upper-lips, jutting brows, and hol 
 low temples from the square to the linear curve. 
 
 " How very good of you to come this frightful hot day ! " 
 said Catherine breathlessly, covering up in words the 
 dangerous meeting of their eyes. " I hope your mother is 
 well?" 
 
 Francis gave her his chair in ailence, and directed by 
 the dominie fetched himself another from the study; a 
 fortunate diversion of chair-legs rapping on bare boards 
 ensued; Catherine, in the midst, overtaken by a fit of 
 weak laughter that sent her away to the stairs to recover. 
 Francis remained perfectly grave and pale. 
 
 The dominie suggested tea, which helped out still more 
 the flight of the guilty innocent on the stairs. She ran to 
 order it and stayed to escort it back, brought by Gulie, 
 very cross, in an apron none too clean (Jane having gone 
 to pick gooseberries and taking an unwarrantable time 
 about it). 
 
 It was " Labrador tea," the cousin saying mischievously 
 as she gave him his cup that Catherine pretended she did 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 239 
 
 not like it but would have to drink that or none in his 
 house. 
 
 Francis observed, without interest in the subject, that 
 he had never tasted Labrador tea nor any of the new substi 
 tutes drunk by the patriots. His brother Edwin supplied 
 them from New York. 
 
 The topic was dropped as likely to bring out differences. 
 
 " I was about to read to Catherine," said the dominie, 
 adjusting his spectacles, " a thing reported from the Ohio 
 frontier ; a grievous matter. It shows how the old wars 
 began, as the Quakers have always claimed," he nodded 
 at Francis ; " and how new wars may yet crop up if we 
 forget what is due from every Christian nation to a people 
 it hath conquered by the sword. This is the peacemakers 
 opportunity ; no greater, I think, can ever occur in our 
 history. As the wars have been long and their causes deep- 
 laid for generations, so deep should the furrow be set for 
 the seed of friendship to be sown, and wise must be the 
 hands that sow ; not only in mercy to these doomed tribes, 
 but for the safety of our own generations to come. And 
 now listen to this ! " 
 
 He read a contemporaneous account of the murder of 
 an old chief, Bald Eagle, or Corn Cutter, perhaps. There 
 were too many such " unfortunate incidents " on the fron 
 tier for names to be conspicuous. 
 
 "An old man sitting in his canoe paddling home after 
 a friendly visit to the settlement, shot in the back, and 
 scalped ! The incredible madness of it ! A chief s body 
 floating down the river, scalped. It is the signal for war. 
 The white man s excuse? Some Indians in a drunken 
 quarrel had murdered a relative. He murders therefor 
 
240 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 the first Indian he meets who has no chance for his life. 
 Does not even claim this man to have been the one who 
 injured him. Now, for another decade in that region, a 
 vengeance is prepared by day and night that shall fall 
 upon the innocent. And yet we leave the white occupation 
 of this most critical part of our great possessions to the 
 land-agent, the skin-peddler, and the rumseller! Where 
 are the young men from our godly homes? The cities 
 take them, and the old homes keep them back to grow rich 
 faster than a man can on his own wild acres. The young 
 men in these days expect to begin where their fathers left 
 off. Prudence, conservation, is the order, of the day. 
 Catherine, my dear, this tea is very hot," 
 
 Catherine sprang up ; she left her distant seat and took 
 one on the floor beside her cousin and kissed the back of 
 his hand that lay on the large purple handkerchief spread 
 upon his knee. 
 
 " T is not the tea, my cousin ! it is thy own dear blessed 
 heart that is hot." 
 
 " Do you speak of the young men with families, sir ? 
 Where vengeance is prepared in the memories of the sav 
 ages, would that be a place for women and children ? " 
 
 " Such risks, considering the vast extent of our border, 
 are not great in proportion, and they must be taken. Yes, 
 I say, the spinning-wheel and the Bible should go along 
 with the axe and the plough. Women do not forget their 
 Bible ; its teachings are easier followed in a home than 
 in camps and forts. We are getting rid of the forts; 
 still, they regulated trade. Now I fear there will be great 
 abuses : wrongs of the kind an Indian never forgets. Our 
 good men should go; they must be represented on the 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 241 
 
 frontier. If the old fighters are too old, let each one spare 
 a son. At every hearth where the fire shines broad and 
 clear, there should one arise and light his torch and run 
 with that message into the dark outside, to light a fresh 
 hearth in the wilderness, an altar for the Spirit of Christ 
 to abide with. It is not the great grantees we need ; capi 
 tal does not spread these homes I am thinking of, that 
 shall be the hope of our future. It is hands and hearts and 
 brains fed on the principles our forefathers came here to 
 implant. I say it who am old and have no son. If I had 
 one, I should give him a wife, an axe, and a gun to shoot 
 wolves, not men and send him forth to make his own 
 home and defend its purity as the ark of God s covenant. 
 
 " Well, well ! " said the preacher, in the silence that 
 followed, " that sermon might have waited ! Catherine, 
 take a look out and see if the shadow is over the garden, 
 my dear. I left my watch with my waistcoat. I trust none 
 will be offended that I sit without one, this exceeding 
 warm day ? " 
 
 The shadow being right for watering, the good man 
 went forth on his garden rounds, having somewhat del 
 uged the young plants beside him with the plenteous out 
 pourings of his spirit. One of them arose and sparkled 
 and shook her leaves as it were ; but one was too far gone 
 to revive. Francis was quenched, flattened, driven into 
 the ground by this latest message to the Laodiceans. 
 
 " That would have hurt you very much, a little while 
 ago," Catherine ventured after a long silence in which 
 nothing expected transpired ; Francis remaining seated, his 
 hands driven into his pockets, his gaze on the trees outside. 
 
 " I have not forgotten how you feel about it," said Fran- 
 
242 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 cis. "Also a prophecy that you made " He paused 
 again. " Did you know was it a prophecy, or " 
 
 " Did I know ? " she repeated, impatient of the sense 
 less talk between them ; " of course I have known for 
 some days that the great obstacle was removed. That 
 your money is your own now oh, how one good deed 
 helps another ! " 
 
 " How his deed opens the way for my great mission to 
 the Border ? " said Francis, avoiding Bassy s name. 
 
 " It is so simple to do right, yet it leads so far ! How 
 different all would be, if Bassy had taken the word inher 
 itance to mean possession only." 
 
 But Francis was struggling in one of those insignificant 
 webs of circumstance in which a jealous mind enwinds 
 itself to the destruction of a better insight. There was 
 nothing to pin to, but everything to entangle and obscure. 
 
 " How long have you known you spoke of some 
 days ; did you know when you prophesied of the obstacle 
 that it would melt away before we spoke of it again did 
 you know at that time that to all intents and purposes 
 even then it was removed ? " 
 
 Catherine recoiled indignant at the question, so care 
 fully worded as to leave no escape for one disposed to 
 quibble. She became hot and answered recklessly, having 
 nothing of her own to hide : 
 
 " I should not have said i some days. I did know, of 
 course, when I prophesied your freedom. I suppose I 
 should not have hinted at a thing I was not then at lib 
 erty to speak of." 
 
 " Is it a matter of course " Francis fell upon the un 
 lucky word for the second time " that you should be in 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 243 
 
 advance of every one else in knowledge of Dunbar s inten 
 tions? Possibly it was you who persuaded him to let the 
 Havergals off?" 
 
 " Francis ! I have no answer to such a speech as that. 
 If it were worthy of you or me, it is unworthy of Bassy 
 Dunbar, who is quite able to make up his mind. My cousin 
 is his confidant in this affair. He came to see him about 
 it that day of the funeral, when cousin was gone. 
 He had a message to leave which he that far confided 
 in me, and yes ; I should not say that far. He did tell 
 me the whole story to explain, I think, why he was 
 obliged to keep back Am I to tell you all this, Francis ? 
 What is it you wish to know?" 
 
 " I don t know how much there is to keep back/ It 
 has seemed a little strange, I confess, that you have never 
 alluded in any way to that long colloquy beside my father s 
 grave." 
 
 " Because we quarreled the first time we spoke of 
 
 " Is that the only reason ? " 
 
 " No," said Catherine desperately. " If you will have 
 it ! but I shall hurt you very much. I shall have to go 
 back to that night at Kingston when your mother could 
 not sleep. She could not keep from talking all about 
 the little sister you lost. It came all back. This was how 
 I knew where to look for the little grave. I looked that 
 morning the first thing, to put some of my roses. And it 
 was so close ! " 
 
 " So close ! " repeated Francis gently. He had taken her 
 hands and held them, watching her look of distress and her 
 increasing color. 
 
244 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Yes ; there was no room. Between the little grave and 
 Ais, your father s. She had said that she wanted to lie be 
 tween them, and there was no room." Catherine swallowed 
 hard and went on. " I said so, out loud, and Bassy heard 
 me ; he saw what a mistake had been made." 
 
 " I don t understand a word you are saying, Catherine. 
 I have been there since. There is plenty of room." 
 
 " But surely, you know that the grave had to be 
 moved ! " 
 
 " My father s grave ! By whom ? " 
 
 Catherine looked at him in consternation. "Why, I 
 thought," she said dazedly, "I was sure I understood 
 Bassy to say he would speak of it himself, he would 
 explain to the sons. " 
 
 She quoted unconsciously, trying to recall Bassy s words. 
 
 " Pray excuse me if I have stumbled on another of 
 your mutual confidences. You should come to a better un 
 derstanding what to explain and what to keep from 4 the 
 sons ; and which is to do it." 
 
 " I had nothing to do with his speaking or not speak 
 ing. What we are talking about is a pure fatality. Per 
 haps I should not have spoke before him of your mother s 
 wish ; but it came before I thought and he heard, and felt 
 it just as I did. Nor could I help hearing him say the 
 change could be made, and that he would do it himself. 
 It happened that was all ! " 
 
 " You mean that Dunbar, happened to go into a pri 
 vate burial-place and change the location of a new-made 
 grave, without consulting the family and with no one s 
 knowledge of the affair but yours ? Is that your idea of a 
 fatality? And you have known this ever since ? " 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 245 
 
 " You would make a good lawyer, Francis, but I am 
 not a good witness on my own side." 
 
 " Is your side the side of Basset Dunbar, in this case ? " 
 
 " When you speak to me like that, I think I must be 
 going mad ! Pray let me pass ! " 
 
 Catherine had spoken the last words very low. She was 
 utterly ashamed of this ignoble quarrel, and every word 
 connected with it was a form of desecration, stepping as 
 they were on the resting-places of the dead and misjudging 
 the living with a baseness of inference shocking to her as 
 coming from Francis. Yet even stupid little Catherine, 
 though the symptoms were new to her, recognized the bane 
 of love, love s jealousy peculiar to that unsure stage of 
 the experience where Francis halted now. She saw who 
 the real sufferer was, and she could not leave him to his 
 torment without one relenting word. 
 
 " Oh, why must I hurt you so ? " she looked back to say. 
 " Yet if I stay I might hurt you more. I don t know what 
 has come over us! " 
 
 From her window she saw him go down the path. There 
 seemed some unusual stoppage at the gate. Francis stepped 
 to one side, meeting a new arrival, passed on, and there 
 was her father ! 
 
 Francis had not removed his hat, which might have at 
 tracted the colonel s notice, or it might well have been the 
 wearer s person. He turned for a second look at the young 
 man s back. Catherine hesitated no longer. 
 
 There was nothing wanting to the first few moments of 
 their meeting; and then the colonel shot his bolt. 
 
 " Dost think I shall wait till fall, eh ? How long will 
 
246 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 it take thee to pack thy saddle-bags and be ready to ride 
 with me ? " 
 
 She did not leap upon him and strangle him around 
 the neck, or otherwise maltreat him. She did not laugh 
 aloud and sparkle at him with her lovely eyes in his : no 
 such thing at all. She forced a sort of smile, turned red 
 and then pale, and gave a little gasp meant to be merry ; 
 and what she said does not matter, for he did not hear it, 
 he was so confounded by her face. 
 
 Having thus blurted it out, he fought shy of his errand 
 for the remainder of the evening, watching his child and 
 asking himself, " Is she changed or am I grown foolish? " 
 was she glad in him as of old ? was she glad about any 
 thing as she used to be when they two were together in 
 England planning a runaway ? 
 
 The dominie told the story of Bassy s inheritance and 
 what he was doing with it (and that did not touch her, 
 for he watched and was satisfied). The colonel declared 
 that Bassy was a monstrous swell, a prince, and behaved 
 as such. The finest thing he had ever heard. Quite care 
 less of his own rank inconsistency ; for had he not backed 
 up McLean and his friends just because it was McLean 
 who were doing the very opposite ! 
 
 He followed with his own tale of how he had rescued 
 Charlotte from the wolf in sheep s clothing : not much of 
 a wolf, to be sure, only a thieving jackal ; and how hard 
 her life had been, and how unspoiled it had left her. He 
 tried to describe Charlotte s looks, urged by Catherine, 
 and did not succeed ; but Catherine hardly listened. She 
 was being pulled two ways. There was danger of losing 
 Francis forever if she turned her back on him now 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 247 
 
 whereas a father can wait. Fathers can be hurt, but they 
 forgive and they are not jealous. This was Catherine s 
 theory of fathers under provocation, for which the cap 
 tain was responsible; so why should he complain? But 
 never in her life had she deceived him. 
 
 They were left to themselves next morning, and without 
 preamble he took her by the hands, looked down into her 
 eyes and said, " My girl is not glad to go with me. I 
 have n t asked, but I know. Now, what is it ? Is it a 
 lover?" 
 
 And Catherine could no more have said " no " than she 
 could have struck him in the face. 
 
 " Is it the lad I met, coming down the walk ? " 
 
 She faintly said it was. He took a chair and drew her 
 down on his knee. " What is that hat he wears, and 
 does n t take off to a man of my make ? " 
 
 " He is a Quaker. That is " 
 
 "A Quaker? A Quaker! God-a-mercy! Where did 
 you pick him up ? " 
 
 " Pray for us, daddy dear, but do not think to part me 
 from him, for I love him. Though we have quarreled 
 hideously this day, and I tortured him and drove him half 
 mad, and he did me." 
 
 " A Quaker ! and so you can quarrel ? That s some 
 thing. There is life in that. But what s to come of it ? 
 Nobody marries a Quaker a Quaker manf" 
 
 " I shall marry Francis if he will marry me." 
 
 " If ! Gracious Powers ! Is it for him to say whether 
 he will or no ? " 
 
 " I don t know what is to happen next, I really don t. 
 I only know he loves me and is miserable this moment. If 
 
248 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 he comes back to me I must be here to hold out my hand. 
 I cannot go with my old dearest now, unless he would have 
 me lose the happiness of my life." 
 
 " But what s to come of it ? Who is he ? What is his 
 rearing ? " 
 
 " He is a son of Jonathan Havergal, who was a farmer 
 down the valley " 
 
 " What ! the old Quaker I bought Melissa from 
 who would n t pay his war-tax ? And so thou It go and 
 stick thy head in a haystack, and that s all it comes to 
 having a daughter ! I won t say what kind of a daugh 
 ter ; but I d have sworn the best man in the Colonies, or 
 England either, would have the deuce of a time to get 
 thee, and here a Quaker boy has but to twinkle his finger I 
 And t is done." 
 
 Catherine drew a long, tremulous sigh. " That does n t 
 explain it, father. Nothing does. I understand it no more 
 myself. But, as you say, it is done. Would you wish me 
 to be untrue to him ? " 
 
 " Well, well ! Fix up your quarrel against I come back 
 from the city, and then we 11 away to the mountains and 
 think it over ; and we shall see." 
 
 " But it is done, father. We have to think ahead, not 
 back. And behind this silly quarrel is an impasse I 
 cannot very well speak of it it is a family matter ; but 
 much is at stake, and if I can help him in this decision, 
 or support him in it, I must be here. He is not one you 
 can help much if you are away from him." 
 
 " It has gone deep into thee, my lambkin ! Thou hast 
 had sleepless nights." 
 
 " No, but sleepless days," laughed Catherine tremulously, 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 249 
 
 " and long ones. There may be more to come ; but I have 
 chosen my own way of being wretched, like the rest of us 
 who are really alive." 
 
 " There s truth in that. But seventeen s too young to 
 have learnt it. And thou, who refused the heir of Little- 
 dene!" 
 
 " Don t be paltry, colonel : the heir of Littledene is a 
 boor, a brute, to my Francis. He comes of as good blood 
 as any in England, and shows it. Did my father look at 
 him?" 
 
 Her father put her down. 
 
 " Thou art bewitched ; but we all go the same way, 
 our own way to disappointment. I cannot think this is the 
 right road for any of us. There, there, I will not tease 
 thee more," for Catherine was beginning to break down. 
 " What is thy father good for but to look on and pay for 
 thy whim-whams ! " 
 
 " Once by death," thought the colonel, " and twice by " 
 what he called " the faithlessness of a woman s mind," 
 his plans were in ruins, his cup dashed to the ground. 
 What was it all but illusion anyway? "Let her marry 
 her Quaker farmer ; and I will go finish my part in this 
 mockery called life by some makeshift of my own." 
 
 They had not thought of mentioning Charlotte as a 
 companion and comforter in lieu of an own child. Cather 
 ine did think of her after a while, but failed to make her 
 seem real. The colonel remembered her as a lonely young 
 thing in a lonesome place, and spent more money in New 
 York than he could afford on a foolish fine-lady wardrobe, 
 a Tompion watch, and a four-wheeled chaise, to make up for 
 not bringing her back a sister ; also to atone in outward 
 
250 THE EOYAL AMEKICANS 
 
 things for the poor imitation of a father he found himself 
 to be. No, he could not love the girl. He had done his best. 
 Even less he loved the thought of living on with her alone 
 in the big mansion on the hill, with all its joys that might 
 have been, thrown back in his face. Life was a mockery, 
 to be sure ! 
 
 Catherine had no need to entreat for his silence. He 
 was not so vain of his future son-in-law that he would 
 be likely to brag of him. It had best be hushed up, the 
 closer the better ; God grant it might die out ! But he 
 did not think it. 
 
 At the last post-house before taking into the woods he 
 came upon Dunbar, also going in to look after that little 
 bunch of land next door which the colonel thought of 
 buying. Bassy did not care to sell ; but before they slept 
 that night a bargain was made between them, for Bassy 
 to manage the Yelverton estate and make a third at the 
 colonel s table. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 STEPNEY MOUNT and Red Oaks were the Tory estates 
 within visiting distance of Yelverton. But if Yelverton 
 supped at Red Oaks or the Mount, Yelverton stayed over 
 night. The colonel had seen little of the ladies at these 
 houses (the homes of Colonel Stepney and Mr. Guy Has 
 tings), though he had sat at their well-spread tables, and 
 slept in their new guest-chambers and met gay company 
 from Albany and New York. He did not think it strange 
 that Red Oaks and the Mount did not call upon Charlotte 
 or include her in their invitations to himself, simply because 
 he had not got so far as to think of the subject at all. 
 
 The weeks slipped by. He was anxious and preoccupied 
 with matters farther off, but closer to his heart. His little 
 Catherine s strange bolt into the arms of the Quakers ! It 
 looked to him worse and worse ; and the harder it grew to 
 bear, the more he realized that the girl was in earnest and 
 no longer a child. 
 
 Squire McLean s family were in England, himself in 
 hot water with his neighbors of the Hampshire Grants ; 
 but the major s quarrels do not come into this story ex 
 cept as they influenced public opinion on the Whig side 
 against every man who was his friend. This included Yel 
 verton, whose manners were haughty, and who kept himself 
 aloof. 
 
 Charlotte never mentioned what happened on a day 
 when she drove to Bennington village in the four-wheeled 
 chaise (by the colonel s command; indeed in her new 
 
252 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 finery she looked not very fit for walking). She had left 
 the chaise while she did errands which took her into the 
 store. Coming out she found herself in a group of the 
 border farmers, clear-eyed, hard-featured men, who had 
 ridden up and dismounted while she was within. They 
 made way for her in silence, not offering to move one of 
 their horses that had swung round in front of the steps. To 
 avoid the beast she crossed a puddle, lifting her skirts and 
 showing perhaps a few inches of ankle in a maroon silk 
 stocking with silver clocks. The wind filled her green 
 paduasoy coat and puffed it about her, making its lustre 
 conspicuous in the sunlight. With her hands in lilac 
 gloves, she ordered her plumage as best she could, being 
 unused to it. 
 
 " French wanton ! " she heard a deep voice say. 
 
 Looking back as a startled child would, her eyes met the 
 stern blue eyes of one of those farmers who held her gaze 
 while he added : 
 
 " The French wanton rides in her painted coach while 
 honest women walk." 
 
 " Coaches from London for " another began to say. 
 
 She had still a few steps before her. (Shy of her new 
 splendor she had stopped the chaise a little distance off.) 
 As she hurried forward a small boy packed a mud ball 
 which hit her in the back of her neck ; a second threw a 
 stone that struck a wet spot and spattered her silk coats. 
 
 Colonel Yelverton s new groom, acting as coachman, 
 grinned. This she saw, too, glancing up at him for help, 
 though he straightened his face before leaning to open the 
 door. 
 
 He closed it and sat still, awaiting her order. The little 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 253 
 
 boys climbed up behind and jiggled the springs. The horses 
 began to caper. 
 
 " Home, madam ? " the man turned to ask, touching 
 his hat. 
 
 Charlotte did not answer. He smiled to himself, being 
 but a lackey, and drove on. 
 
 " I do not want to stay here," she said that evening to 
 the colonel. 
 
 The colonel s big room, with its bearskin couch at the 
 far end, was the sitting-room. Bassy Dunbar used his desk, 
 and they ate their meals there, all three. Bassy, having en 
 tered on his double duties, had set up a tent on the wood- 
 slope by the cabin that slope down which Charlotte had 
 danced in the moonlight, chanting from the prophets. 
 
 " I do not want to stay here doing nothing. I can spin, 
 both wool and flax. I can sew a little, too, and I have cooked. 
 Will you write to Madam Schuyler and ask if she knows 
 any family that would take me to live with them for what 
 I can do about the house ? " 
 
 " You cannot go out to work, my girl ! You are my 
 daughter, legally adopted. Your name is in my will, equal 
 with my Catherine, but that I have left your money in trust. 
 Dominie Deyo will advise you; and by the time he is gone 
 I hope you will have a good husband " 
 
 " I do not want all that ; not any of it. Though I know 
 you are good," sighed Charlotte. " I am not Catherine s 
 sister. If I were, I should not want her money. I have taken 
 her bedroom ! " 
 
 " She will have a handsomer one, and you one beside 
 her in the new house." 
 
 " I do not want to go there. I want to go away. Some 
 
254 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 one said," she added softly, moving her hand across her lap 
 and not looking at the colonel, " that she does not come 
 because I am here." 
 
 "What! Who said that?" 
 
 " Nobody, much." 
 
 But who ? " 
 
 44 Only Mimi : what she says, some others think, perhaps. 
 That is all. " 
 
 " What in the world could Catherine have against you ? " 
 
 " What did Polly have against me ? Did I ever do her 
 any harm? I called her names sometimes, not very bad ones. 
 But I don t want to see Catherine now. It is too late. 
 I want to go away." 
 
 " We 11 see about it, we 11 see about it," said the 
 colonel with a quick, hard sigh. 
 
 " This world is a beastly place," he fumed after Char 
 lotte was gone. But it was n t the world. The world has 
 its own business to attend to and does it in its own way, 
 which can only be a worldly way. There was something 
 fundamentally wrong, and the colonel was beginning at last 
 to acknowledge it to himself. 
 
 Since Catherine would not help him out, perhaps Bassy 
 would. 
 
 The next day he found a chance to observe with fine 
 carelessness, 
 
 " Where are you going to build your house ? " 
 
 " I thought you were to leave me this house when you 
 move into the mansion ? " 
 
 " This is well enough for a bachelor, but you 11 be marry 
 ing one of these days. Going to build up here beside me, 
 or down on your Wallkill lands ? " 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 255 
 
 Bassy smiled. " I think I 11 wait till I am married and 
 ask my wife." 
 
 " That s pat enough," the colonel answered, pleased at 
 Bassy s approachability. " But when will that be ? " 
 
 " That s for the lady to say, when I have asked her." 
 
 " If I were your age I d not sit long at this table where 
 you do, without making up my mind to ask her." They were 
 still at the supper board, Charlotte having left her place 
 opposite Bassy and gone into her own room. The colonel 
 lowered his voice, glancing at her empty chair. " What 
 you see sitting there every day would help most men, I say, 
 to make up their minds." 
 
 Bassy rose, knocked the ashes from his pipe and turned 
 to face the colonel ; if he spoke on a subject at all, he was 
 usually so definite as not to be misunderstood. 
 
 " I have no more idea of marrying Charlotte than you 
 have, sir. If I were to sit opposite her forty years, I 
 should never think of her in that way ; no more than you 
 would." 
 
 " Why, man, I am forty myself. I have loved before 
 and I have my Catherine." 
 
 " And I have my wishes," said Bassy. " A man who is 
 untrue to his great wish would be untrue to the thing, if it 
 came to pass." 
 
 " I had wishes of my own once," said the colonel mus 
 ing, " but somebody was mistaken, it seems." 
 
 44 Why does not your daughter come ? She is what Char 
 lotte needs." 
 
 " Aye, my daughter ! Well, she is tangled up in a 
 mistake of her own ; and so it goes." 
 
 " I don t think this is a good place for Charlotte not 
 
256 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 as we are now," said Bassy. " It does n t seem a natural 
 life for her." 
 
 " That s why I hoped some good man would want her for 
 his wife." 
 
 " There would be no hurry about that if she had some 
 thing to do, where she could be with other women." 
 
 " It s not my fault that we are two men without a girl 
 for her to play with. This is all the home I have. She has 
 no other father. I took her years ago, and vowed never to 
 forsake her. She was lost and found again, and she asked 
 me to take her home. I wanted a wife, but the fates said 
 otherwise. I have a daughter, and there too I must forego" 
 The colonel checked himself. "Don t think it is my 
 Catherine s fault." 
 
 Bassy was one of those who ask no questions, to whom 
 things are revealed without. He could not be sure, yet he 
 had no right to ask ! But as he looked at the colonel the 
 blood went out of his brown face completely and then came 
 back and dyed it crimson, with the imaginary blow. If it 
 had been the real one, how then ? We have more strength 
 to meet the real, often, than the thing which warns us with 
 its pang of foreboding. 
 
 " I shall make one more trial," said the colonel. " I shall 
 make one final test of the situation here, and then we shall 
 see ! " 
 
 The colonel s final test took shape in his mind as what 
 he called a house-warming ; an entertainment to his friends 
 of the neighboring estates, to open his new house and intro 
 duce the new daughter whom fate had assigned him as its 
 mistress. 
 
 If Jack McLean had got hold of this idea in time, 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 257 
 
 there would have been very little left of it when he got 
 through. 
 
 Bassy was helpful but not sympathetic. It certainly bored 
 him to buy a new ash-colored velvet suit with accessories, 
 which stood him in twenty pounds, to meet these fine folk 
 who had never craved his company in homespun. 
 
 Unfortunately the colonel, embarrassed by his failure 
 to bring the daughter he had set out to fetch with such 
 eclat, had said, " She will be coming when the house is 
 ready." 
 
 She had half promised, and he had half believed she 
 might. Her letters since had not encouraged him. 
 
 The neighbors noted his way of shifting the subject when 
 ever they inquired about Catherine. 
 
 "When the mansion opens its doors," they were saying, 
 " either Miss Catherine Yelverton will join her father at 
 last, or she will not. In the latter event t will show pretty 
 conclusively that some of us were right ! " 
 
 Therefore, when formal invitations in the name of Colo 
 nel and Miss Yelverton were received at Stepney Mount 
 and at Red Oaks, there was relief and pleasure in the pros 
 pect of having the lovely girl from England whom all were 
 praising added to their small circle. 
 
 The cards were sent a week ahead of the date. On the 
 day following, men servants from both estates rode over 
 with the acceptances. Madam Stepney s contained a bomb. 
 
 " Sir John and Lady Johnson will be with us on the fif 
 teenth. Will Colonel Yelverton be kind enough to extend 
 the honor of his invitation to our guests? " 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 FEW women as young as Catherine know how to be silent, 
 though misunderstood by those they love. As Francis did 
 nothing and said nothing, she wrote herself, and said all 
 that could be said to show how inevitable her share had 
 been in Bassy s (also inevitable) offense against the sanc 
 tities of family burial. 
 
 She quite covered the ground, even including Bassy s 
 little deception at first, forced upon him by the peculiar 
 nature of his business at the grave, compelling the expla 
 nation afterward which any honest nature would crave. 
 
 Francis replied in a letter that to her seemed stony; 
 not that he was stony when he wrote it far from it ! 
 but having said that he understood and had nothing to 
 forgive, there remained the worm of jealousy. 
 
 The worm devoured him in secret. It was not an active, 
 aggressive worm. It slept a good deal of the time ; at 
 others it simply wormed. Bassy had done a thing, placing 
 the Quaker family thereby under a life obligation (and 
 Quakers do not like to be in debt), which Catherine 
 would be sure to admire beyond measure, while he was 
 compelled to do that which he knew she would fail to 
 comprehend. The plan lay deep in his secretive mind, as 
 sluggish as the worm. To go to her would be to have it 
 dragged out of him by the spell of her irresistible power 
 over his moods, and to be despised for the nature of the 
 thing he had been hiding. 
 
 It was now about the last of September and there had 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 259 
 
 been a great rain. Half the leaves of the cherry trees 
 were on the ground ; windrows of them, " yellow and 
 brown and hectic red," covered the frosted violet beds 
 along the garden fence. 
 
 Melissa trod sedately on a carpet of Eastern dyes, car 
 rying her rider down the lane. She was allowed to choose 
 her own direction, and after a short gallop she turned of 
 her own accord into a piece of woodland oaks of the 
 second growth and young birches where the same soft 
 carpet rustled under foot. 
 
 Beyond the wood a few miles of common road stretched 
 away in open sunlight ; then came the long ridge sloping 
 toward the east, on which Catherine sat with Francis that 
 day in the wheat-field. 
 
 " No farther than the wood," she said, and drew rein to 
 make the leafy path last longer. 
 
 Melissa s ears pricked forward; she nickered, and a 
 horse that stood waiting for his rider backed around to 
 greet her. On the roadside bank just beyond sat Francis 
 Havergal. 
 
 As Catherine placed her hands on his shoulders and 
 leaned down to him, the sweet languor in her eyes told 
 him it was not the help of his arms she needed. For a 
 moment she gave herself to him, then the long silence of 
 choking hearts ; but speech, terrible, definite words were 
 still to come. 
 
 " Shall we go back to the house, now ? " said Cather 
 ine. 
 
 " No, stay here with me as long as you can. It must 
 be got over with," he said, after another silence. " I am 
 come to say farewell." 
 
260 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Francis ! Francis ! without me ! That you know is 
 what I cannot bear." 
 
 " But Catherine, I cannot take you to the city." 
 
 " To the I don t understand." 
 
 " You did not think I should be starting for the Gene- 
 see valley in September ! It would take a month to get 
 there. The winters are harder than our own." 
 
 " Then what then where do you go ? " 
 
 " I have been doing a deal of thinking this summer." 
 
 " Have been ! " 
 
 The words startled her. So, the summer was gone ! The 
 first summer of his ordeal and of their love, gone in think 
 ing ! Nothing done, only she had broken her promise to 
 Francis and not told him of it. She hesitated, proudly, to 
 let him know that she had committed him to her father ; 
 announced herself his before he had claimed her of that 
 bewildered man whose ideas of love and marriage were as 
 simple as her own. 
 
 " I have been making lists and estimates ; talking to 
 Simeon about the outfit I should need "he did not say 
 " shall need " or " we," Catherine noticed. " As to prices, 
 everything is, you know, far higher than in father s time. 
 I have consulted Edwin ; so I am satisfied my figures are 
 pretty near correct. I shall leave the paper with you, 
 Catherine, that you may see I have put down only necessa 
 ries, and of course food to last till the first crops can be 
 harvested. " It comes to this, as Edwin says : one 
 hundred and fifty pounds is not near enough. When all is 
 reckoned up, our margin would be hardly twenty pounds 
 all we should have to fall back upon." 
 
 " We should have ourselves." 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 261 
 
 " There it is again ! Edwin thinks it would be arrant 
 selfishness to take you with me if I went in this way." 
 
 i" Has Edwin asked his wife what she thinks ? You heard 
 what my cousin said?" Catherine flushed as she remem 
 bered. 
 
 44 But that is martyrdom ! You have no conception, dear 
 est, what the life is of a settler s wife. I have seen my own 
 mother in our house doing what I hope never to see my 
 wife do in mine." 
 
 " Your mother ! " said Catherine. " As I looked at her 
 that Sunday morning, sitting there with her little grand 
 child in her arms, oh ! I said to myself, 4 blessed art 
 thou among women ! The woman who would shrink from 
 being that, cannot be worthy of the name. And how did 
 she come to be that? By taking care of herself all her 
 life ? By waiting till things were easy ? I may be a poor 
 creature, but I know I can learn ; so can we both. The 
 thing is to begin, to put ourselves in the way of learning. 
 If a father says to a son, whom he has chosen for the post 
 of honor, if he says, Go ! and God be with thee ! can 
 the son refuse ? It is not your father and his son. It is the 
 call to the sons of our generation from the fathers and 
 mothers who broke the way before us." 
 
 " And marked it with their graves," said Francis. 
 " Who goes to the front must go prepared. He is not sent 
 to fall by the wayside, or lie down and die at his post." 
 
 " We can lie down and die anywhere," said Catherine. 
 " And we can fall by the way without going far. I would 
 not stop here at any rate." 
 
 14 It is difficult to make you understand. You walk on 
 the hilltops, you fly ! and I walk on the roads. Angels of 
 
262 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 course with wings do not need them. If we are to keep 
 together " 
 
 " One must come down or the other come up ? Ah, do 
 not mock me ! I have no wings not even clipped ones," 
 said Catherine. " Tell me about your roads." 
 
 " My winged girl ! My angel ! If I wanted a battle-song 
 or a sermon, I should come to thee or go to David. But 
 when it s how I shall take care of thee, for better, for 
 worse, and what I can do it on, I don t go to David, 
 and it s not fair to go to thee. I am the beast of burden ; 
 still my hide is not so thick but I can feel the sting of 
 such words as I have listened to. If love alone could settle 
 the question, or frantic longing, would it be possible 
 for me to have thee too soon ? " 
 
 " That is not the point," said Catherine faintly. 
 
 But she had blown her trumpet on the hilltops. Her 
 heart very strongly inclined her to listen to her lover s 
 tale of the valley and the common road ; surely he spoke 
 well, arguing from so unpopular a side as that of prudence. 
 
 " I shall not shirk the post, but I must take my own 
 time and go in my own way. Father himself was a man 
 near forty before he put forth and I am but two-and- 
 twenty. In four years or five, I shall be " 
 
 " Four years ! " gasped Catherine. " Is that what you 
 call " She checked herself. " Well ! " she sighed. 
 
 He resumed, but with more hesitation. 
 
 " If I go into business with Edwin as he advises, my 
 hundred and fifty pounds will very likely be thrice that 
 in four years or five. By that time " 
 
 "The Genessee valley will be a settled neighborhood 
 and the post of honor a thousand miles farther on." 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 263 
 
 "By that time," Francis deliberated; there was tick 
 lish ground ahead but his conscience was clear ; " you will 
 then have come into your legacy in England. I should have 
 the comfort of knowing you had that to fall back on. Surely 
 you can realize how a man must feel who takes a girl s 
 life in his hands ! Suppose he turns out a failure, or should 
 die and leave her " 
 
 " I see," said Catherine with a sick little smile. "You are 
 afraid to marry me without I have a fortune ; one of my 
 own or one you have made for me. Do we need money so 
 much ? or is it safety ? Well, it is a pity I did not know 
 what was in your mind. All I told my father was that we 
 loved each other." 
 
 " Have you told your father ? " 
 
 " Yes, he put his finger on the truth, first thing. I could 
 not lie to him ; so I broke my promise to you. I never 
 tried before, but it seems I am unable to keep things from 
 my father." 
 
 " It can make no difference," said Francis. " If it had 
 been an engagement, of course You see why I was 
 afraid to ask it?" 
 
 " You mean it has been no engagement thus far, and 
 now you give me up ? " Catherine was fearfully lucid. 
 
 " It was an engagement between ourselves, but if I can 
 not do my part I must give you up. I could not hold you, 
 for so long that would be unfair to you. I suppose your 
 father will not speak of it ? " 
 
 " Oh, he will not speak of it. He is not proud of 
 it ! " 
 
 She paused and repented of this, but went on, reckless 
 with the shock of this unimaginable pain, and the sense of 
 
264 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 her own strange position urging her lover on the way 
 men lead and young girls follow. 
 
 " You say you do not mean to hold me. Pray how do 
 you intend to set me free? Shall I forget you to-morrow 
 or the next day ? Shall you be free next week, say, or 
 when you get to the city ? " 
 
 "It would be worse than useless," Francis persisted, 
 faithful to his testimony under the lash of her words, " it 
 would be dishonest for me to profess the part in life you 
 would have me take. I am not cut out for a hero, or a torch- 
 bearer, or a pioneer, in your sense of the word." 
 
 " Do I ask so much of you ? " The girl s pride would 
 have released him from herself, but she could not spare 
 him from his post of duty. " Your father asked as much : 
 he knew you better than I ; he must have put great thought 
 into that last command. May he not have seen you were 
 inclined to hang back from responsibility, and given you 
 this spur to help you decide and to show his own faith 
 in you ? It sickens me to have you refuse it." 
 
 " I am not refusing it. All my own plans point that way, 
 as I explained only more slowly in order to be more 
 sure." 
 
 " But no one can be sure of succeeding. We can do no 
 more than make the start. Suppose you put a horse at a 
 ditch and he swerves and trots down the bank to where he 
 can walk across would that be taking the ditch or 
 refusing it ? " 
 
 " You bring me to the very point I stick at, although I 
 hate to say so. Is it a father s right to use the power of 
 the dead over the living to goad his son into a step contrary 
 to his nature and capacity ? " 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 265 
 
 " Ah ! if your father s great hope and trust in you mean 
 no more than a goad Francis ! then indeed you may as 
 well fail in one way as another. I would not go with you 
 myself in that grudging way, even had you asked me, which 
 you are so careful not to do ! Four years ! Is it likely I shall 
 sit here waiting with my love in my hand which you 
 asked and took and now give me back to keep for you ! 
 Love does not keep like gold. It makes cowards of those 
 who hoard, for those who are afraid to spend ! " 
 
 " You do not love me, then, as I am. You consider me a 
 coward?" 
 
 "No, a miser of yourself. You withhold yourself from 
 life. Are we put here to save our lives or live them ? 
 No : my hand shall not lie in yours unless my soul can 
 rest in your soul and be proud ! If our minds fly apart, 
 of what use to join the hands ? " 
 
 Francis did not remind her that he had already relin 
 quished hers. 
 
 " This problem has been sprung upon us. It was not so 
 at the first," he pleaded. 
 
 "Yes, from the very first. From the moment you 
 asked me not to tell my father. I did not know what 
 it was cut me so ; I see now it was your doubt, even 
 then." 
 
 " Of myself, for your sake. To spare you what I have 
 seen women suffer in my own home my own mother, if 
 it must be said." 
 
 " What do you think a woman is ? Does nothing hurt 
 us but to be sick and tired ? Would you put me up on 
 the shelf till you have time to play with me ? And what 
 am I to do, meanwhile? You refuse me the right to earn 
 
266 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 my happiness as you must earn yours. Such love as ours 
 must not be made too easy." 
 
 "Easy!" said the bewildered boy, so racked in his 
 senses as to be unable to follow her words. " Do you think 
 this is easy for me ? easy to renounce you ? " 
 
 "You need not. But you must be more to me or 
 nothing." 
 
 " I cannot be more than I am." 
 
 " More than you are! Does any one stop there? If you 
 do, then stop alone. I am ashamed of my love for a man 
 who gives me nothing but his fear." 
 
 These young persons had brains ; they used the lan 
 guage of a time when even well-bred persons did not con 
 ceal their feelings. They seem to have gone over all the 
 ground of the spiritual differences between them ; there 
 was no road which their separate souls could take together. 
 Yet how do Nature s lovers part? The same blind long 
 ing taught them to seek in each other s arms a cure for 
 the pain each must cause the other. As well may the east 
 bank of the Hudson say to the west bank, 4 Let there be 
 dry land between us ! What shall become of all the 
 sweet mountain-rivers and the deep-sea tides ! 
 
 " This terrible throbbing, here ! " Catherine s head was 
 on her lover s breast; she could feel the checked tides 
 pounding where he held her strained against his heart. 
 
 Very terrible is the force of the Quaker negative when 
 it meets the affirmative of youth and womanhood in the 
 veins of a girl like Catherine, whose fathers wore the scar 
 let and the blue. The shock may be likened to when the 
 North River freshets in spring meet the ice-jam in the 
 narrow hills ; only in that case the ice goes out and the 
 
THE POVERTY OF FRANCIS 267 
 
 great river flows clear, mingling its fresh floods and its 
 salt tides, to the sea. 
 
 There were letters back and forth, a few. There was 
 heaving and shuddering of the ice, but the tides sobbed 
 back again. There was no give in the nature of Francis. 
 
BOOK V 
 
 THE WINE IS DRUNK 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 FROM September winds in the valley of the Wallkill, 
 we go north to October gales in the Green Mountains. A 
 boisterous night filled with elemental mirth ; a night to 
 believe in trolls. The wind, tumbling up along the slopes 
 of the mountains, came against a wayfarer in great lumps, 
 like fists of silly giants pommeling him in fun. The stars 
 above the cleared spaces of woodland fairly jumped and 
 rollicked in the sky. They shared in the universal, mon 
 strous laughter that convulsed the night. 
 
 Over those great hills the petty homes of men lighted 
 their candles and went on with their own mockeries and 
 laughter of fools at their own destruction. There was 
 mockery in the soul of that sane but stricken boy, Bassy 
 Dunbar ; for since morning he had lost more than the 
 woman he loved ; he had parted with his dream, that set 
 her so high above him that to endeavor each day to live 
 as the man should live who might one day win her had 
 been his religion. 
 
 The colonel had been watching him since that evening 
 when he said, " I have my wishes." 
 
 " Bassy ought to know. He 11 never speak of it but he 
 ought to know ! It s unfair not to tell him," the captain 
 decided. 
 
 So, on the morning of the great entertainment, as they 
 were walking over the house and its approaches inspect 
 ing torches and garlands, how they were secured against 
 the promise of a big wind, Colonel Yelverton said: 
 
272 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " We shall be hanging up wreaths for my daughter s 
 wedding, one of these days, I m afraid, [this was his way 
 of preparing a man for a blow !] if the Quaker bride 
 groom do not set his face against anything so worldly. We 
 can t have any dancing, of course." 
 
 The hit was too palpable to hide, even had Bassy cared 
 to attempt it ; he walked away to the window and looked 
 out ; they were in the entrance hall where the staircase 
 went up, dividing into a corridor round three sides above, 
 in front of the bedrooms. The colonel took a chair by the 
 fire and sat rubbing his knees. 
 
 " Shut the door, can t you ! " he shouted. " Ashes all 
 over the place! " 
 
 The door was shut. Bassy went back to his window. 
 
 " Best get it over," thought the colonel. His idea was 
 that he had not told anything yet. 
 
 " Yes ; " he mourned aloud, " she and that Quaker boy 
 have been in love with each other since ever they came 
 up the river on a sloop, last June. Fate, fate ! If I d 
 brought her over with me, instead of fooling with Sophia 
 Gentrey and her invitations, devil a Quaker of em all 
 would have had a chance at her. But she 11 never give 
 him up. That s Catherine ! She s as tender with him as 
 a new-made mother. This is his secret we re keeping, and 
 you ve got to help me. He has n t even asked me for her 
 yet. Shilly-shallying ! Making up his Quaker mind on 
 some nonsensical point or other. I m madder and madder, 
 the more I think of it. We shall have her in a Quaker 
 bonnet preaching in meeting next. We don t do things by 
 halves our breed ! the worse for us, the worse for us ! " 
 
 " How long did you say? " 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 273 
 
 "How long what?" 
 
 " Since she gave him her promise? " Bassy got it out, 
 and as usual definitely. 
 
 " Don t know if it is a promise. He has n t asked for her 
 yet, I say. But she has loved him since ever she set eyes 
 on him. June moonlight, June madness ! And she sticks 
 to it the thing is real. Whatever she has said to him, my 
 girl will never be untrue." 
 
 Last June ! So, when she looked him in the eyes that 
 morning in the graveyard and said, as simple as a child, 
 " I expected Francis Havergal here I came up on the 
 sloop with them, you know," it was her first lover she spoke 
 of in that even voice, and her love was scarce a week old ! 
 She was there to meet him, in secret. His father s new- 
 made grave was their trysting-place. She had lived all 
 summer in the same house with her guardian that guile 
 less man and kept it from him too. He was somehow 
 very sure the dominie would have told him had he known 
 it himself. 
 
 But that was not the core of the wound. He was prob 
 ing it as fast and as deep as he could bear. That same day, 
 he had laid his life open to her, his whole past and personal 
 history, sparing not his own father in her eyes (this boy 
 did not tell his soul to every one); and she had taken it all 
 and reserved herself for Francis Havergal ! Bassy, who 
 never had touched a girl s hand in his life, shuddered when 
 he remembered those hands he took in his that day and laid 
 his face between them ; and when he had said, " Crown 
 me ! " it was as much an offering of his life to the girl as 
 if he had vowed it at the altar. And that she understood 
 him he must remember, too, till he could forget her startled 
 
274 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 eyes and her swift, hot blush, and her tears as she drew her 
 hands away. 
 
 What were these women created for, in the likeness of 
 God s angels ? To make cynics and wise men of ignorant 
 boys ? He must learn his lesson like another as the 
 colonel, another boy, learned his of Polly Watts. And 
 the worst was, whenever he saw those eyes and he saw 
 them night and day he still could not convince himself 
 they were not true ! To think of her, as herself, as he 
 knew she must be, and to think how she had dealt with 
 him, was to play with madness. 
 
 He played with it all that day, and by evening he was 
 mad as far as a perfectly sane, well-dressed young man 
 can be who goes about with a sob in his throat and speaks 
 to no one. 
 
 The little village of Bennington named for Governor 
 Benning Wentworth (who had been having a beautiful time 
 granting grants across the Connecticut River, out of each 
 one keeping a slice for himself) was situate by the king s 
 decree in New York province at that time, and was under 
 her jurisdiction, subject to all those quarrels which made 
 the history of the Hampshire Grants. 
 
 That night a coach and pair drove up to the Green Moun 
 tain tavern (where the stuffed catamount hoisted on a pole 
 looked across the New York line with a grin of defiance). 
 Two gentlemen got down, one from the box beside the 
 driver, one from inside, where his seat facing two ladies 
 had perhaps incommoded their voluminous silks and bro 
 cades. 
 
 He limped, or pretended to, and swore lightly as he 
 sprang out, saying to the gentleman from off the box, " It s 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 275 
 
 like jumping into a tub of d d ice-water, this night air 
 in silk stockings." 
 
 The other was coated to the ears and carried a great 
 muff. 
 
 They stepped into the tavern, remaining there longer 
 than the ladies thought necessary. Still they did not re 
 sume their places when they came out, but stood talking 
 at the coach door. Questions and answers flew back and 
 forth. The female voices betokened excitement. 
 
 " Zounds, I can t stand this ! I m cold. Let me in, girls. 
 You with your muff stand out there and hail the Red Oaks 
 coach, will you, Johnson ? I m the shorn lamb." 
 
 " His best suit s too thin," Mrs. Stepney explained, with 
 wifely participation. " He put it on for Catherine Yelver- 
 ton." 
 
 "And now I m sold, pox on it! What s Yelverton 
 mean by such tomfool nonsense ? " 
 
 " But I want to see the colonel s house," wailed Mrs. 
 Stepney. " What difference does it make to us ? " 
 
 " I m sorry you must turn back on my account," Lady 
 Johnson stiffly put in. 
 
 " Sir John is quite right. It won t do, this won t ! 
 Yelverton ought to have shown more respect for his own 
 daughter, at least." Colonel Stepney supported her. 
 
 They sat still in the carriage while Sir John watched 
 from the tavern-porch for the Red Oaks coach. 
 
 It came, with two gentlemen riding ahead. 
 
 " What s wrong here ? Broke a whiffletree ? " they 
 asked, reining up. 
 
 Sir John stepped off the stoop and greeted the ladies in 
 the coach, Mrs. Hastings, her sister, and a young friend 
 
276 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 of the latter from New York. Afterward the men stood 
 and talked together aside. 
 
 " If your ladies won t go on, ours shan t," said Guy 
 Hastings. " Deuce of a long drive back for em without 
 dinner. What could they get at the Catamount Tav 
 ern?" 
 
 " Catamounts, with the claws on," said Sir John. " It s 
 the principle of the thing I look at. Let a man call things 
 by their right names." 
 
 "Yelverton was a trifle mad about that girl from the 
 first. I was down on the Muskingum with Bouquet when 
 he took her from the Indians." It was Captain Considine 
 who spoke, one of the so-styled " mercenaries" ; a good offi 
 cer but a pretty roaring sort of blade. " He d have fought 
 any one of us who looked at her. Swore she was the same 
 to him as his own child. He s bound not to eat his words 
 in public." 
 
 " He 11 eat them to-night," said Sir John. 
 
 But no one present knew what he was plotting, in pay 
 ment for that after-dinner scene not two years old in his 
 burning memory of it. 
 
 " The deuce of it is we have no horses, if our ladies go 
 back," said Will Stepney. 
 
 " Have em sent over in the morning," said Hastings. 
 
 "D d awkward to drive up to a man s house with 
 your ladies, and send em away again," Considine observed, 
 with an amused laugh at the predicament. 
 
 " It s his own awkwardness. He trapped us into it. It s 
 our ladies, I think, who are the victims. Lady Johnson 
 will be nigh exhausted, but she agrees with me there s a 
 principle at stake." 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 277 
 
 " Your father, now, calls things by their names," the 
 captain opened broadly. 
 
 He could never forget that Sir John Johnson, Bart., was 
 merely a provincial knight, son of a low-born German wo 
 man and a man risen from the people. A singular race 
 these Colonials, to study on their own soil. 
 
 Sir John replied calmly, " Miss Molly Brant is a chief 
 tain s sister, and quite as much my father s wife according 
 to her ideas of marriage as any white lady she meets ; and 
 I never knew one refuse to meet her, in my father s house. 
 In law, of course, tis quite different." 
 
 " Extremely convenient for his heir it is that ! " laughed 
 Considine. 
 
 So the Red Oaks coach went back with its ladies, all 
 sympathizing with the principle but vastly disappointed of 
 their evening. Life in the mountains was dull and curios 
 ity as strong there as anywhere ; and Colonel Yelverton 
 was a charming host. 
 
 In the drawing-room with the London furniture, Char 
 lotte stood by one of the columns there was a pair of 
 them supporting a square-beamed arch that framed the 
 high, carved chimney-piece in white and gold. A mirror 
 in the lower panel reflected her profile, the beautiful set of 
 her dark eye, those corners where dark lashes emphasize 
 the painter s line. She was excessively nervous, but did 
 not show it ; also she was dazed by her own splendor as last 
 she had beheld herself, between the candles of her dress 
 ing-mirror. Fifty years after, the gown she wore that night 
 and never wore again was taken out of its wrappings and 
 exclaimed over by three young girls who thought what a 
 night of triumph "she" must have had who wore it 
 
278 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 long ago ! They did not know " her " story as it really 
 happened. Its knots of bluettes and rose-buds floating on 
 the lustrous cream-white ground, the blue satin petticoat 
 shot with silver, were much better preserved than the 
 memory of the wearer. 
 
 The gentlemen had entered all at once, their host 
 surprised that they did not wait for the ladies, and were 
 presented to Charlotte ceremoniously. 
 
 "Are the ladies in need of anything upstairs?" asked 
 the colonel, still in the dark. 
 
 " My wife and Lady Johnson are not with us to-night, 
 colonel, I regret to say." Will Stepney flushed, for he was 
 a kind man. " And still more that I should have to say it 
 so late in the day." 
 
 "It s never too late to add to a table," said the colonel 
 gallantly, " but it s poor work at any hour to make it 
 smaller. I hope there s no illness or trouble at the 
 Mount?" 
 
 " Not a bit, not a bit ! Fact is the roads are in beastly 
 condition. The ladies undertook rather more than they felt 
 able to go through with." 
 
 " Well, Madam Hastings and her young ladies will join 
 us presently, I trust." 
 
 "Most unfortunate," Hastings replied. "Hope you ll 
 excuse em, colonel. My wife and her sister gave out when 
 they heard Lady Johnson was indisposed." 
 
 "To come?" the colonel added. "The indisposition 
 appears to have been sadly contagious. Dunbar, will you 
 tell that rascal in the hall to have the table cut down six 
 covers and be quick about it ? Charlotte, my dear, as we 
 are to be a company of bachelors this evening, I fear we must 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 279 
 
 give you up too. Miss Yelverton bids you good-night, 
 gentlemen." 
 
 Charlotte took the colonel s arm, grave with sympathy 
 for that in his face and manner which she saw plain enough, 
 but did not understand. 
 
 Bassy opened the door for her. She turned to the room 
 and made her curtsy nobly, in silence, and he closed it, 
 bowing to the ground. Some resolve which in that moment 
 he had taken made his check as pale as her own. 
 
 The wine was on the table ; the servants had withdrawn. 
 They drank to the King, to the Duke, to the army in 
 America, to a better disposition in the Colonies and a 
 peaceful solution of our unhappy differences. "Not too 
 peaceful," Captain Considine threw in, with a twinkle in 
 his eye. They drank to the wives and babies " present 
 and to come," he added, bowing to Sir John; and then 
 the host looked round the table, glass in hand. 
 
 " We will drink the next toast, gentlemen, standing if 
 you please to a member of my own family consigned to 
 me by providence and the fortunes of war Mistress 
 Charlotte Sophia Yelverton, my adopted daughter, my 
 god-daughter, and," the colonel added with earnest em- 
 phasis, "my daughter in God!" 
 
 If it was a challenge, it was also as he said it very much 
 a plea for the girl, for himself, for a touch of Christian, 
 of manly comprehension. But they were gentlemen of a 
 certain make and they were at the mercy of the customs 
 and thoughts of their time. 
 
 The company was seated again. 
 
 " Sir John refuses the toast ? " Sir John had taken one 
 sip from his glass, and looked the colonel in the eye. 
 
280 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 "I have drunk to the beautiful Mistress Charlotte 
 Sophia, and to her happy recovery who was lost and is 
 found ; but, I confess, Colonel Yelverton asks too much 
 when it comes to the whole of that amiable toast." 
 
 " Which portion of it does Sir John reject ? " 
 
 " Colonel Yelverton must be aware that so stiff an ad 
 mixture of the word * daughter, under the circumstances, 
 would be difficult for any gentleman to swallow." 
 
 Colonel Yelverton drove his chair back from the table. 
 " Enough ! " he shouted ; but an arm shot across the ma 
 hogany. Bassy Dunbar, empty glass in hand, struck his 
 fist on the board directly in front of Sir John, almost 
 under his nose, and said, so low that a silence created itself 
 for his words to be heard : 
 
 " Sir John will finish his glass to my promised wife, or 
 answer to me for the reason." 
 
 Sir John rose and stepped back from the table. He 
 smiled very haughtily at Mr. Bassy Dunbar. 
 
 "Promised wives, like adopted daughters, may be 
 matters for conjecture. A bold imagination like Mr. 
 Dunbar s can doubtless produce them as occasion may 
 demand." 
 
 Bassy also had risen. 
 
 " Sir John will finish that glass of wine " he indicated 
 which " this night, before midnight, to Mistress Char 
 lotte Yelverton as my wife, or answer for the insult, and 
 for the liberty Sir John permits himself with Mr. Dun- 
 bar s imagination ! " 
 
 " Agreed, gentlemen ! " said Sir John. " If Mr. Dunbar 
 presents me before midnight to Miss Charlotte Sophia as 
 Mistress Dunbar, I will finish that glass in honor of the 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 281 
 
 bride, and drink another to the force of imagination 
 without mentioning whose." 
 
 Bassy went round the table, took Sir John s unfinished 
 glass, and, bowing as he passed him, set it on the high 
 mantel ; filled his own and placed it beside Sir John s. 
 
 Colonel Yelverton straightway filled a third glass for 
 himself and set it up to balance Bassy s ; and facing the 
 room he said : 
 
 " If Mr. Dunbar for any reason should not be able to 
 fulfill his part of the bargain, gentlemen, bear me witness : 
 Sir John shall be given one chance more to finish the toast 
 he has slighted, and if he refuse again, you will measure 
 the ground for us in the morning. There is abundance of 
 room outside us here, Sir John, with no danger of inter 
 ference from the law." 
 
 The allusion was lost on the company. 
 
 Captain Considine took up his position on the rug op 
 posite the three wine-glasses, charged and half charged, 
 that stood on the mantel-shelf waiting to be drunk at the 
 point of death. He performed ceremonious capers before 
 them, laying his hand on his embroidered satin heart. 
 
 "The finest thing I ve seen since I came to America ! " 
 he said almost tearfully. " Where do you raise these sons 
 of guns, Yelverton ? I 11 wager my aunt s money that 
 young un never thought of a wife till five minutes ago by 
 the clock." 
 
 " There you are wrong, Captain Considine," said Bassy 
 from the hall ; he came and stood in the door for the pur 
 pose of adding, " and if you say that again, sir, I shall 
 have to fight you too." 
 
 " Exactly, my beautiful bully ! I thought you would ! I 
 
282 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 shall not say it again ; have it your own way. I salute your 
 sword or your pistol. But if this be an American wooing, 
 give me more of em. Oh, give me more ! " 
 
 Bassy returned to the room ; he had forgotten some 
 thing. Ignoring the others, he went up to Colonel Yelver- 
 ton, holding out his hand. 
 
 " I have not asked your consent, sir, this night, but as 
 we spoke of the matter some time ago you remember? 
 I took it for granted in my haste. I hope you can trust 
 me with her?" 
 
 Colonel Yelverton clasped the boy by the hand and laid 
 his left arm over his shoulder. 
 
 " I dare not say you are crazy, Bassy," he spoke low, 
 " for it s what I hope I should do myself in your place. 
 God bless you and God help you both ! " 
 
 Bassy stepped along the gallery, past one room await 
 ing its guest to another. He came to the state bed-cham 
 ber where the ladies were to have laid off their wraps. 
 The door stood ajar ; candles, half burned to their sockets, 
 flared on the dressing-table ; there was a fire smoldering 
 out on the hearth. He knocked and entered, getting no 
 answer. On the bed between the curtains he saw a heap 
 of silks, and on the pillow a dark, unpowdered head. 
 
 He spoke several times before he could waken the 
 sleeper. 
 
 " Charlotte, will you get up, please, and come over 
 here? I want to speak to you." 
 
 She came, and sat in a chilly, drowsy heap in the great 
 chair by the hearth, while he made the logs blaze and 
 shut the door. 
 
 " A strange thing has happened downstairs," he began. 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 283 
 
 " Are they not gone to bed yet ? I must have been 
 sleeping a long time." 
 
 " Much better if they had been, too ! A deal of mischief 
 has been done. And now, to pay the reckoning. There s 
 only you, poor girl ! it all comes back on you to save a 
 duel between Sir John Johnson and our colonel. A deadly 
 affront was passed by Sir John: he refused a toast the 
 colonel called to the daughter of the house, and so I made 
 it mine. I said, if you won t drink it to the dregs to the 
 colonel s daughter you 11 drink it to my promised wife. 
 That s the way you have to play up to those idiots, if you 
 get into the game at all, and I had to get in before the 
 colonel. It s all mummery ! but it s the way they do." 
 
 There was something infinitely comforting to Charlotte 
 in his use of the word " they." She rested upon those 
 words while he made himself clearer. 
 
 " In one second, Colonel Yelverton would have chal 
 lenged Sir John, and been first. I took it over him as your 
 future husband. And when I did so, Sir John, before 
 them all, sneered at my claim to challenge him by that 
 title." 
 
 " Wait a minute what title ? " 
 
 " Your future husband ; future, you understand only 
 future, so far. But he scoffed at it. So I had to make 
 it stronger or back down ; something he could believe on 
 evidence. I said he should drink it to my wife before 
 midnight or fight me in the morning. Now, listen : the 
 colonel then set up his glass and said, If Mr. Dunbar 
 cannot prove his right, mine stands good. We 11 return 
 to that toast, and if Sir John refuse it again, he will fight 
 me or words that mean the same. You don t want 
 
284 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 our colonel to kill Sir John ! He s got a sweet young 
 wife, and she loves him, and she is going to be a mother. 
 And if he should kill the colonel, or disable him, are you 
 any better off ? They won t believe he is your true pro 
 tector ; they accuse him of hypocrisy, of taking advantage 
 of your gratitude and your helplessness." 
 
 " I understand," said Charlotte. " I must not stay 
 here ; and yet he will not let me go away and take care 
 of myself." 
 
 " No ; that s another of their notions. No woman be 
 longing to them must work for her living. So you must 
 have a husband, Charlotte. And it s only a question of 
 how I was to say it, or when I made up my mind, to 
 night as you left the room, to ask you as soon as I could 
 decently ; and now I have done it not decently, but they 
 forced it on me ; d n them ! Take time to think of it. 
 I ve sent for the parson, but he won t be here for an 
 hour and a half yet." 
 
 " You sent for the " 
 
 " To have him here in time. Now we ve all that hour 
 and a half to get used to the idea ; not me, but you." 
 
 " May I ask you a few questions ? " 
 
 "As many as you choose." 
 
 " Do you love me at all ? " 
 
 " Not as much as I hope to when you are my wife." 
 
 " Do you love any one else ? " 
 
 Bassy shivered. " No one whom I can ever marry." 
 
 " Then you do love Catherine ! Something happened 
 to you this morning. I saw her father talking to you ; you 
 were speaking of her. I have watched you all day. I am 
 very sorry for you ! " 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 285 
 
 " We d better not go any farther into that." 
 
 " No," she said. " You have been honest, and so shall I 
 be. I too love some one whom I can never marry." 
 
 " I supposed that," said Bassy. " It will make me care 
 for you more, for I shall not feel that I am wronging you 
 so much by what / can t help ! I shall be too busy to run 
 around looking for temptations. I shall hold fast to what 
 I say when I take you for my wife. As long as you are 
 true to me, I can be, and I will be, true to you ! But, as 
 far as I know myself, I may say this : no one who has 
 deceived me will ever do it twice." 
 
 " There is something, now, I shall have to say." Char 
 lotte fixed her eyes on the fire; she spoke wearily, with 
 no life in her tones. " At Bennington one day, some men 
 looked at me and one called me, French wanton. It was 
 Mr. Ethan Allen. He is a respectable man. I shall always 
 know he is here. The children threw mud at me, when he 
 said it. And Mimi says the reason Catherine did not come 
 is because she does not want to live here with me." 
 
 " That I know is a horrible falsehood, worthy only of a 
 Mimi ! As for the other ? You have some respect for 
 me, I hope ? " 
 
 " I have the most ! " 
 
 " Well : do you ask me, after what I have said to you, 
 if I believe that?" 
 
 " No ; I ask you if it s because you know Colonel 
 Yelverton, you don t believe it, or because you know 
 me?" 
 
 " Both," said Bassy, " or I should not be in this house ! 
 I knew it all before, except about Mimi, but you 
 were brave to tell me yourself. I care for you that much 
 
286 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 more because you were straight with me down to the 
 ground ; ground it is too vile for us to tread on ! Yet, 
 you are right Ethan Allen is a respectable man. He is 
 more than that ; but he does n t know as much about every 
 thing as he thinks he does. So you 11 go through with it 
 to save bloodshed and to silence the slurs on our colo 
 nel? one of the best men, I believe, that lives. Thank 
 you, my good girl. May you never repent it ! There s one 
 other thing : I shall have to kiss you before them all down 
 there, after we are married. Can you bear with that?" 
 
 " Yes," said Charlotte. " Shall I have to kiss any of 
 them?" 
 
 Bassy stroked her hand as he would a child s. " Rest 
 now and think of it no more. You will be safe with me, 
 poor girl, if I can make you. Your life among us has been 
 hard." 
 
 To herself, when he was gone, she said, " Never first to 
 any one ! Not even to my husband. I always thought I 
 would be that or never have one ! " 
 
 She sat and dreamed, while a man was posting over the 
 hills for the parson ; it could not be called thinking. She 
 sees a far-away deep forest glade, in sunshine that filters 
 in myriad patterns through leaves upon leaves ; and an 
 Indian woman holds a white child in her arms, rocking 
 herself and bewailing the parting that is near, for a 
 squaw has not a chieftain s pride in hiding her grief. She 
 sees a file of Indians pass silent through the trees lead 
 ing the child, gaudily dressed, by the hand : this child 
 is to be offered up to civilization. A woman s wails ring 
 through the forest. The child hides her face in a dark 
 hand that many a time has been dyed with the blood of 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 287 
 
 her race, even with that of her own father and mother 
 perhaps. A right and necessary thing is being done ; yet 
 many must rebel and suffer : because it was begun by 
 war, and seldom are the mercies of war above reproach. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 ONE stops before describing that marriage ceremony. 
 Even the night had ceased to roar with laughter. Captain 
 Considine contributed his best to the occasion by falling 
 asleep in his chair, and his pleasantries were agreeably 
 wanting. 
 
 Sir John developed a manner of respect mingled with 
 surprise toward Bassy, and did not offer to kiss the bride. 
 The colonel denied that Sir John behaved better than he 
 had expected. He would see no good in that gentleman 
 if he could help it : a thing not difficult to avoid if one 
 sets about it, seeing the good side of our enemies. 
 
 When all were gone upstairs with their bedroom can- 
 dies, more or less assisted in the ascent, Colonel Yelverton 
 and Bassy had the house to themselves. 
 
 The parson had brought a fresh mail from Bennington. 
 There was a letter in Catherine s hand. Something caused 
 her father to shrink from opening it, he had had enough 
 for one night ; but one does not postpone the letter of a 
 daughter about whom one s thoughts revolve in constant 
 anxiety. 
 
 Bassy, walking up and down in the back of the room, 
 was not observing him ; he cleared his throat hoarsely, 
 but did not speak ; one leg he thrust out and rocked the 
 foot upon the floor and groaned to himself. Bassy stopped 
 his pacing. 
 
 " I can t bear this. You 11 have to take your share of 
 it. Why in God s name did I say that to you this morn- 
 
THE WINE IS DRUNK 289 
 
 ing ? It s not true ! It was n t true while I was saying 
 it." 
 
 Bassy came and stood by the mantel. 
 
 " Do you mean it is broken ? " 
 
 " Not even that ! The fool lets her drop out of his hand 
 for want of nerve to hold her. He had her and he let her 
 slip. _ That boy ! That Quaker ! " 
 
 " I am glad she was not false to him." 
 
 " False ! She tries to excuse him ! She pleads for him 
 like a mother. She has it all writ out here, but I can t 
 read it. I am not able to grasp the words. The thing it 
 self it stuns me ! It s taking all her strength to bear it. 
 She wants to come to me now, but she can t sit in a saddle. 
 She asks for time to strangle it. To get over loving him ; 
 says she is ashamed ashamed of being true ! God a 
 mercy ! what is a man to do when his child is hurt like 
 that ? I can t kill him. He s only a boy. But she s a 
 woman." 
 
 " Don t kill him," said Bassy, mechanically in a hard 
 voice, " if you want him to suffer." 
 
 The colonel had been a boy once, though he did not do 
 as this boy ; he grasped all the chances Francis resigned, 
 and lost most of them. Result: Catherine, and a sad, 
 unnatural, disjointed life for himself. But if ever he had 
 repented the way he took with the mother, it was not that 
 night when he thought of her child. 
 
 We resent prudence in the young more perhaps because 
 middle age comes by it so naturally. That proud and un 
 quenchable initiative which older people love while they 
 shake their heads was denied poor Francis, who was old and 
 suspicious and wise before he was born. Meantime, leaving 
 
290 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 out the individuals, here are two ways for boys and girls 
 to love in an age complicated by fathers. 
 
 In a few days the colonel packed up and went to his 
 child. He implored her to come away with him to London 
 
 though it was too late for the voyage, or to New York, 
 or Philadelphia, or Albany to Madam Schuyler, whom he 
 still turned to in his troubles. 
 
 She begged to stay quiet as she was, for the present. 
 The cousin s house was a good place for broken wings, and 
 she loved him better than ever and was better able to love 
 him ; and many things were clear to her that she never 
 saw before. Others were purposely hid from her. Bassy s 
 marriage, such as it was, must be justified. Her father 
 could not touch upon the truth concerning that sad busi 
 ness, for which he held himself to blame. Confession might 
 have eased his own mind, but it would not have been fair 
 to Charlotte. And who knows : the union might not turn 
 out so ill after all. 
 
 It sickened Catherine of men who talked of promises 
 in the sky and were satisfied with the colors, the mere 
 pinks and blues of the earthly symbol. Francis, who 
 thought he could not afford the price of her love, at least 
 had not taken up with a cheaper kind ; but Bassy, who 
 loved her in June, had married Charlotte in October. 
 
 All that she knew of Charlotte personally she had from 
 her father. Affectionate and generous, but ignorant, of 
 course. Not a lady, how could she be, but a fine girl. 
 Difficult to talk to, but perhaps Bassy could manage it, 
 
 and extraordinary handsome. 
 
 Poor Francis ! Poor Bassy ! But of the two Bassy was 
 the one she pitied, or, shall we say, looked down upon most. 
 
BOOK VI 
 
 MEN OF THE GRANTS 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 APRIL snow-banks were shrinking in the first May 
 winds. It was the great battle spring of the Revolution 
 when that shot was fired, " heard round the world " ! The 
 news had just reached the Hampshire Grants. 
 
 Riding through his own woods toward the manor-house 
 of Yelverton, Bassy Dunbar, with this news in his veins, 
 met Catherine, also alone, except for her dogs, a brace of 
 Scotch greyhounds who ran before her, lifting serious eye 
 brows at him as they sped past. 
 
 She had celebrated the feel of spring in the air by some 
 corresponding change of dress that made her more start- 
 lingly welcome to the eye, like the first discovered flowers. 
 
 Bassy though not for this reason looked at her in 
 so marked a way that she drew rein, thinking he wished 
 to speak. 
 
 "What have you heard? " she asked, trying to read his 
 expression. 
 
 He did not answer till her horse was quiet ; then, with 
 a quick, deep breath, turning his glance from her, he 
 said, 
 
 " The struggle is begun. There has been fighting around 
 Boston." 
 
 " Serious fighting ? not a riot ? " 
 
 " Citizens under arms against the King s troops under 
 orders. Massachusetts stood her ground, thanks to God ! 
 We shall see now how many are with her." 
 
 "You will be, for one!" 
 
294 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " If that were a question, it would show you do not 
 know me ! " 
 
 " It was not a question, Bassy : I have not forgot our 
 talk in the thunderstorm, two years ago. Do you know 
 which side gave the order that meant bloodshed? Not 
 that it matters." 
 
 " No ; enough has been done on both sides to make war 
 inevitable, at last." 
 
 " You breathe freer now it has come ? " 
 
 " Deeper, perhaps. And are you still deaf in that ear, 
 Catherine?" 
 
 " No, but I am dumb, I am dumb ! " she answered con 
 vulsively. "You can speak! Go on." 
 
 " I shall distress you, if I understand your position." 
 
 " I have no position. I want the news." 
 
 " It will come hard to say we, and feel that it ex 
 cludes " 
 
 " 4 Us ? I fear it will. Nevertheless, go on." 
 
 " The news, then, is very wonderful for * us. It puts us 
 where we may no longer count the cost of what we do. 
 There has been no victory, but an astonishing resistance ; 
 and England has suffered a humiliation she will never 
 put up with. We are convicted felons now, with ropes 
 around our necks, or a nation." 
 
 Bassy described what took place on the 19th of April 
 at Lexington and Concord, according to such details as had 
 come ; and a great deal had come almost too much for 
 belief. 
 
 " All they tried to do except kill a few Colonials, they 
 failed in, and they were glad, what was left of them, to get 
 "back under the guns of the fleet." 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 295 
 
 " You don t mean they retreated the British army ! " 
 Catherine was stunned. 
 
 " They ran," said Bassy. " They came through Charles- 
 town on the dead run, and lucky to get off as they did." 
 
 She made him go back over every known incident of 
 that extraordinary day ; and when she had heard how Lord 
 Percy marched out with a thousand laureled veterans, to 
 the support of Colonel Smith, and both fell back in dis 
 tress and confusion, pursued by the farmers just out of 
 their beds and their fields the flower of the British army 
 dropping by scores on the country roads she was silent, 
 looking beyond him into a chaos of old faiths torn up and 
 vows of proud disloyalty. 
 
 " The men who can do this," she said, " will never stop 
 at resistance to a tax. The world is turned upside-down." 
 
 " No ; only some of its fashions. It is time such kings 
 as George the Third went out of fashion in England." 
 
 " It is not King George, it is George the King ! and 
 what he stands for." 
 
 " Then let him stand, in God s name, for what a king 
 ought to stand for ! England will go back a hundred years 
 she will go into the ditch if she follow him. And 
 what she permits him to do over here, t will recoil 
 upon herself, when t is done. But it will never be. Not 
 now ! " 
 
 " This comes," said Catherine " of not being dumb ! 
 Help me if you can to shut my mouth. You do not realize, 
 you men of the day, what victory for either side will 
 cost the men of yesterday, who made this country and de 
 fended it, together. Think of the old friends who must part, 
 the old comrades who must now be enemies ! Think of the 
 
296 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 good swords like my father s that must rust in sheath 
 because the blood on both sides is too dear ! It is a crime 
 a crime ! Be thankful for every hour of patience you have 
 shown. When do you go ? " 
 
 " Immediately. I am on my way now to speak to your 
 father about replacing me." 
 
 " Is that all you have to speak to him about ? " She held 
 out her hand. " Let me tell you, then : no one shall be put 
 in your place at Yelverton, neither outside nor in. Rebel 
 that you are with a rope around your neck, I say it 
 who am dumb." 
 
 " I thank you ; when so much must be left unsaid be 
 tween us. But kindness, friendship, cannot do the work." 
 
 The work ? " 
 
 "At Yelverton. I trust some one may be needed, else 
 my post will have been a sinecure." 
 
 "Who wiU there be left? This call wiU empty the 
 Grants of men who could take your place." 
 
 " There will be some good Tories left," smiled Bassy. 
 
 " My father is a good Tory." 
 
 Catherine had turned her horse s head and was now rid 
 ing toward home at Bassy s side, her puzzled dogs looking 
 back at her from the last turn in sight, marveling at 
 human frivolity. 
 
 " He has plenty of time to look after his own land. You 
 have made him lazy. And if he is bothered about the 
 books / write a fair hand, I will keep the accounts my 
 self. I can follow in your tracks as I used to in the Wall- 
 kill woods, and so 1 shall not go astray." 
 
 Catherine was ungrudging or unsparing in her allusions 
 to the past ; her withers she considered were unwrung. 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 297 
 
 " I have no doubt you could do it all. My place has been 
 too easy." 
 
 " It will not be easy after you are gone. How do you 
 leave Charlotte, may I ask ? Do any of your men go with 
 you?" 
 
 " Two only ; and your father will lose Obadiah Smith." 
 
 " Naturally," smiled Catherine. " I dare say we may be 
 able to spare Obadiah." 
 
 " I shall leave neighbor Simpson in charge of my place 
 the outside ; and Charlotte has good friends." 
 
 " We shall try to be," said Catherine ; adding thought 
 fully, " she used to be fond of us once, and Charlotte does 
 not change." 
 
 " No," said Bassy, " she does not change." 
 
 The words, said quietly, carried an effect of sadness not 
 intentional; but here a secret of Bassy s marriage crept 
 out. Whatever his hopes at first may have been, he knew 
 now the extent of the sacrifice he had made, and he realized 
 that in making it another had been sacrificed as ignorant as 
 himself. The price was slow, it would be paid by inches as 
 life went on quite a different thing from the sacrifice of 
 life itself. 
 
 Charlotte possessed certain innate deficiencies peculiarly 
 trying to a man inclined toward justice, who was endeavor 
 ing to meet the local situation in a spirit of fair-mindedness. 
 She could not reason nor be reasoned with where her pride 
 or affection had once been wounded, and in prudential ways 
 she was incapable of self-training. Country housewives 
 watch each other close, and a woman stands or falls in their 
 eyes by her domestic management. 
 
 A loving, unselfish mother, Charlotte could be neither 
 
298 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 patient nor vigilant nor just. A picturesque, inventive 
 housewife, she could not be a conscientious one ; monotony 
 tired her. Filled with zeal at first, working hard yet inef 
 fectively, her house was attractive and neat by fits and 
 starts ; never systematic, never tidy all over at one time, 
 nor restful to a man at evening with burdens on his mind. 
 These were details. Her life exhibited fine and generous 
 traits outside of all that was incidental, yet little to be de 
 pended on as to character. Her wastefulness, though almost 
 always excusable for one reason or another, was discourag 
 ing to the bread-winner ; it left him the sordid, ungracious 
 part of scrutinizing expenditures where confidence in the 
 good wife s management was lacking. Thus in leaving home 
 and property in her care, Bassy could have no sense of 
 security, nor hopeful pride in his wife s future adminis 
 tration. 
 
 His judgment yielded instantly to Catherine s assertion 
 that with her help her father would need no steward. Char 
 lotte had claimed the same when he spoke of leaving the 
 farm in charge of Simpson, who stood willing to cultivate his 
 neighbor s fields 011 shares ; but he placed no reliance on her 
 estimate of her own powers, and was forced to irritate her 
 by going on with his arrangements despite her promises 
 and protests. 
 
 For Bassy had long been making ready in his own mind 
 for this summons. 
 
 " I don t wish to pry into your plans," said Catherine, 
 " but when it comes to good-by, I hope you will let us know, 
 brother Bassy. Men are too fond of shirking that little 
 ceremony." 
 
 Having shown what Catherine s attitude was toward 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 299 
 
 Bassy s marriage, as she understood it, needless to add, she 
 had not been able to conceal its indulgent scorn from Bassy 
 himself, if she even tried. It was he who never brought up 
 the past by any allusion between them, while she, as has 
 been said, did so constantly, almost as if to remind him of 
 a time when they talked of rainbows instead of fast dyes 
 for wool homespun, and compared shades of conduct instead 
 of the relative merits of hunting dogs. 
 
 In simple ways she was infuriatingly kind ; took his 
 side in all his little contests with her father, deprecating the 
 colonel s man-to-man roughness, which Bassy loved. 
 
 As long as it was possible, he had kept the safeguard for 
 himself of believing she had not been quite straight with 
 him to ward oft admissions he was afraid of ; but in the 
 end found a nobler safety in the truth itself ; in facing it 
 with the knowledge that, to be worthy of his best dream in 
 her he had lost, he must be true to the death to Charlotte 
 without a shadow of turning, nor even yield to the corrupt 
 ing weakness of self-pity. 
 
 But, hardest trial of all the daily trials of his strength 
 it was to know that Catherine never could know the truth ; 
 to show himself content with what must lower him in her 
 eyes ; to see her efforts to understand his choice and sup 
 port him in it break up in sudden fits of scorn. If Charlotte 
 had not been such a prize to the eye ; if her outside were 
 not always the first thing about her spoken of I If he could 
 be free from the dread of its effect upon himself, lest his 
 morning star of love die out in a flush of passion ; instead 
 of the soul of his dream, a dull intoxication of sense. 
 
 The intensity with which he looked forward to merging 
 all this in the transports of battle cannot be described. 
 
300 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 None could mistake the change in him. Men who love their 
 homes do not prepare to leave them with such stifling, not 
 of grief but of a dreadful joy. He wished to live and fight 
 to the end, and then, before the end, to die. 
 
 How Charlotte knew this, who can tell ! the unhappy 
 know many things. The main cause of her general unrest 
 went too deep to be tampered with ; she eased it through 
 surface irritants. There was a quarrel begun quite openly 
 in the first year of their marriage, by reason of Bassy s at 
 tendance at certain meetings in the Council Chamber of the 
 Green Mountain Tavern, which now threatened to involve 
 the whole area of unsoundness between them. 
 
 Though fully alive to the claims of his own province on 
 the boundary question, and accepting the tutelage of men 
 older than himself on technical points of history and law, 
 Bassy s personal sympathies were strongly with the New 
 Englanders, required to pay twice the government dues 
 on lands they had every reason to consider their own . Though 
 narrow and turbulent, these men of the Hampshire Grants 
 were clean, straight-minded, and bold, and on the great issue 
 they were hand to hand with Bassy, who held aloof with 
 little difficulty from the red-hot Tory landowners on his 
 own side of the line. 
 
 If Charlotte suspected where he went and whom he met 
 on these occasions, she passed it over until one evening, not 
 long before her little son was born, when she had sat some 
 hours awaiting him, with no better company than herself. 
 
 She questioned him, and he told her where he had spent 
 the evening, naming a few of the company. 
 
 To his amazement she rose up pale with anger, her dark 
 eyes blazing. 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 301 
 
 " Ethan Allen ! Have you forgot then, so soon, who put 
 that naughty name on me before a streetful of men? 
 Are they all your friends? " 
 
 " Not one of them is my friend." 
 
 " They are his friends ; they heard him say it. You go 
 there and sit with them. And still you remember! " 
 
 " As I remember the barking of a dog ! Not that I call 
 Ethan Allen a dog, but he knew not what he was saying 
 that day, more than his dog would know why he barked, 
 if you had passed his master s house. Both did as their 
 training teaches. Twas a mistaken sense of duty." 
 
 " I should have thought," Charlotte pursued, " that for 
 you to meet that man would have been to shoot him 
 dead." 
 
 " You are crazy, girl ! Remember what men say of each 
 other in these times. We are a deal better than our preju 
 dices, or most of us would not be fit to live. You said 
 yourself when you told me of that and it was nobly done ! 
 you said, quite serious, Ethan Allen is a good man. " 
 
 " A respectable man ! I did not call him good ! Nor do 
 I know that he is respectable, only he is looked up to 
 which makes it all the meaner to cast stones at me ! " 
 
 "They are old stones and very dirty ones. Leave em 
 where they lie. You suffer in good company. If you could 
 hear them talk of General Schuyler, and even his wife, 
 good God ! Yet I do not shoot them. They are men the 
 country needs. General Schuyler himself will need them. 
 I tell them they don t know him ; and they say * you re 
 a Yorker and you know him too well : you have eaten his 
 bread. And I call them hide-bound Yankees all, that can 
 see no good in anything south of Wentworth s line. But 
 
302 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 when it comes to fighting and we shall have plenty soon 
 those are the men I fight beside." 
 
 " I congratulate you," she said, with cool fury in her 
 eyes. " It was not so men used to fight ; to choose for com 
 rades them that lie about their friends and insult their 
 wives." 
 
 " I will not say you are unjust, my girl. God knows 
 you have abundant right to be! But I would not have 
 you suffer for a thing that cannot touch you. How can 
 Allen insult my wife ? he does not know her. He has 
 long forgot what he said. T was only said of something 
 that had the appearance men of his breed cannot bear " 
 
 " Hush ! " she cried, " Is there nothing that / can t 
 bear!" 
 
 Just so coolly, she remembered, had Bassy put aside that 
 word when courage was given her to speak it out honestly 
 on the night he asked her to marry him. The flame had 
 never been lit in him, or it would have blazed up in fury 
 at the touch upon her name. She knew it she had al 
 ways known it ; but it had not always hurt as it was begin 
 ning to hurt now. 
 
 " That you can sit in the same room, consorting with 
 them ! " she persisted maddeningly ; " men were not made 
 to be so ! Even if you care nothing for your wife, would 
 you have every one know it ? To be so callous before them 
 all ! They must know that you know what they think of me." 
 
 " D n what they think ! " Bassy shouted. 
 
 He got up violently, went over to the other side of the 
 room and sat down working his hands together ; and then 
 he came back ashamed, and once more tried to draw her 
 thoughts into a saner channel. 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 303 
 
 " Do I go to these men s houses, or ask them to mine ? 
 do I consort with them in any way, shape, or manner, 
 so far as our private lives are concerned? Ethan Allen 
 and Ira his brother and Seth Warner, the best of the 
 three, hold the same principles on certain issues that I 
 hold. A time may come and soon when our resolves 
 shall be put into action. Such action must be in concert. A 
 man can t concert with men a hundred miles away. These 
 are my neighbors ; they will resist when it comes to re 
 sistance, and so shall I ; and whoever strikes the first 
 alarm, I am with him. General Schuyler knows what these 
 men say of him, yet he would lead them in battle ; and I 
 will fight in their ranks if they are first to go out ; and if 
 we must quarrel about it, so be it then ! I have no reason 
 to think I shall change. But my personal friends they 
 never could be : their attitude towards the noble Schuyler 
 alone would forbid it." 
 
 Had he but spared that final clause. But his touch was 
 unsure in dealing with Charlotte s moods. The balance be 
 tween their minds hung too delicately poised ; the least 
 weight on either side sent them to extremes. He had come 
 to dread the shock of their conflicting temperaments, and 
 could see her own shrinking anticipation of trouble when 
 ever they approached a critical issue. Each had upset the 
 other s power of judicious statement before the argument 
 began. 
 
 Charlotte s thoughts, moreover, were at this time wretch 
 edly unpresentable. To almost any sane woman the dis 
 covery, a year after marriage, that she loved her husband 
 better than before would mean happiness ; but Charlotte 
 was not any woman. She had met Bassy s sacrifice of his 
 
304 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 own personal choice by proudly asserting a choice of her 
 own. If true then, that she loved the colonel best, it was 
 only so because she had no knowledge of love or of her 
 self ; she knew now that her husband would have been 
 her choice before any. He had won her love without try 
 ing ; she had tried and had not won his. Her " evil birds " 
 were haunting her again, and she listened : her mind was 
 giving way to an insidious jealousy, the most self -destroy 
 ing for her jealousy of Catherine was without grounds 
 yet not without reason. 
 
 This would explain the coldness, which hurt him, of her 
 farewell, and her passionate, wearing grief which he did 
 not see when he was gone. 
 
 " Am I not to have thy blessing, my good girl ? " he 
 had said when the time came for leaving her. 
 
 His " my girl " had a peculiarly tormenting effect upon 
 her. The tones of his voice suggested love, which she knew 
 he could not give ; and the word she wanted never came. 
 Bassy never said " my wife." He had put that title away, 
 with a name he never spoke even in thought alone. 
 
 " There are others who will bless you," she retorted 
 insanely ; he had added that she might stretch the truth 
 a little for this once. " Have you asked their blessing at 
 Yelverton ? Catherine would not have to stretch the 
 truth ; she is on your side in this as in everything. Per 
 haps you have been there already ? Or do you save them 
 for the last?" 
 
 The serpents that had found the way to her defenseless 
 breast were sticking out their ugly heads. Bassy was dumb 
 at the spectacle. It could not have shocked more than it 
 surprised him. 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 305 
 
 " I ask nothing at Yelverton but their silence," he re 
 plied, " which they give me, in mercy." 
 
 " When you go there, ask Catherine from me, if she be 
 on your side to be so honestly, as I am honestly against 
 you." 
 
 " Are you still against me? " 
 
 " My prayer is that your life may be spared and that 
 your cause may be lost. And that Ethan Allen may never 
 come back from Ticonderoga." 
 
 " Ticonderoga ? Why Ticonderoga ? " Bassy repeated 
 speciously. 
 
 " I know where you are bound, though you do not trust 
 me to tell me." 
 
 " That is not the reason why I do not tell you plans that 
 I have no right to disclose. I do trust you. I know you 
 will not betray my errand, though you cannot pray for its 
 success." 
 
 " Trust nothing but my helplessness ! What can a wo 
 man do but break her heart, and her husband s ? " she 
 added, always generous at a pinch. 
 
 " Be at peace ! If God is good, He will find a way to 
 part us without further strife between ourselves." 
 
 He was not angry with her ; he did not love her enough 
 for that sort of anger (and this also she knew). She could 
 only reach his depths by reminding him of some things he 
 had put himself out of the way of thinking on. The possi 
 bility of goiL. without a word of farewell to Catherine 
 and her father had never crossed his mind ; but after the 
 shame of this unnatural leave-taking, he could not bear 
 the search of t*iose faithful eyes in the last gaze of fare 
 well. The colonel might be misled, but Catherine, no I 
 
306 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 There was no part of him left unshaken that could with 
 hold his secret from Catherine. 
 
 He rode over past the entrance. The gate was open, 
 and Catherine stood half-way up to the house between the 
 noble groups of forest trees left as Nature planted them, 
 with openings made by the axe for sunlight to stream 
 through. In one of those golden spaces framed in shadow 
 she stood, dressed in white, playing with her dogs. Sud 
 denly they made off toward the gate in a chorus of joyful 
 yelps. She turned and saw Bassy, knew what he was come 
 for, and started to meet him, smiling. He lifted his hat, 
 gazed at her in a pale way, fixedly, and rode by. 
 
 She was furious with the affront. But recalling his face, 
 his stricken look, she knew that whatever it meant, it 
 could not be indifference. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 THE fighting men of Rutland, Pittsford, Middlebury, 
 and Brandon had been given their warning. In little bands 
 of twos and threes, from fields of spring ploughing, from 
 wood-choppers camps or potash-burners clearings, they 
 were gathering to the meeting-places, joining numbers as 
 they struck into Amherst s road. Bassy and his comrades 
 from Bennington, trusting to their wood-craft, took a 
 shorter, wilder way ; but all came in at last to the rendez 
 vous, on the evening of May ninth, in a little cove on the 
 Lake two miles north of Ticonderoga. 
 
 Here that extraordinary set of men gathered about their 
 brave but eccentric leader. Here Allen and Arnold quar 
 reled, and compromised by entering the walls of the for 
 tress when it was taken, side by side, like two schoolboys, 
 that neither should miss his share of the glory ; but Allen 
 had the luck to furnish the historic speech for the occasion, 
 if luck it could be called in one whose tongue was even 
 readier than his rifle, though not always so sure of its aim. 
 Before long Allen s supremacy passed into safer hands. 
 
 There was one soldier s wife, of the many who were 
 waiting and watching through the summer (while a nation 
 was born, and a little mountain-walled community set up 
 a lively and troublesome independence of its own), there 
 was one woman who heard with exultant satisfaction of 
 Allen s defeat at the election of officers to command the 
 newly enrolled " Green Mountain Regiment." Still greater 
 triumph was hers when she heard he was a prisoner, after 
 
308 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 his surrender at Montreal, and on his way to England in 
 irons. 
 
 If Ethan Allen ever thought of Charlotte, it was kindly 
 enough, as a handsome young creature wronged by a selfish 
 brute of a Tory, and righted out of the simplicity and pas 
 sion of youth by a young Whig who had lived too much 
 with Tories. 
 
 When the Vermont militia returned to their homes in 
 November, after the capitulation of St. John s, Bassy came 
 back Lieutenant Dunbar in Colonel Seth Warner s regi 
 ment of Green Mountain Boys, pledged to no leadership 
 but of their own choosing. Thus he was parted from a 
 broader service with the Continental Army under a friend 
 and commander to whom he was deeply attached ; thus did 
 he find himself, as the differences grew wider, classed and 
 committed to serve with that great man s personal ene 
 mies. In part it was the fault of his unhappy impatience, 
 but environment had as much to do with it : they were his 
 neighbors, as he said, in a nearer sense than the Tory circle 
 ever could be, which the colonel had gathered around him. 
 
 As a husband, the summer s separation had brought its 
 lessons home to him, and the next few weeks of rest before 
 he was called out again were sweet with a happiness he 
 could feel was not undeserved. For his thoughts of the 
 lonely woman he had left with his child in her arms had 
 been tender and faithful and chastened by manly self -blame ; 
 his world was a bigger world, his outlook had been raised ; 
 his private disagreements with fate looked small to him in 
 a general survey of human trials and human disappoint 
 ments. Pain had come to have a nobler meaning: something 
 every life must lack. 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 309 
 
 " Happiness is like the blessed bread at high mass. We 
 have only a very little piece, only on Sunday, and all the 
 faithful do not have it." 
 
 With many a silent, strong resolve he took his " good 
 girl" to his arms once more. Charlotte too had been gener 
 ous in her thoughts of him. They were not cut out for mean 
 ness or small dealing, these two. The small every-day shocks 
 of conflicting habits and ill-matched minds for the present 
 were set aside ; the peace of God, truly, it was, that abode 
 with them for those few weeks ; and then came the second 
 parting this time a long one, full of suffering and trial 
 to them both. 
 
 The hardships will never be told of that midwinter 
 march of the northern militia to the aid of the ill-fated 
 Canadian expedition. Before May, the American army, 
 suffering from disease, wounds, hunger, and despair, was 
 scattering in any direction that led toward home. To Colo 
 nel Warner and his Green Mountain Boys fell the honor 
 of covering that retreat. Never very far from the pursuing 
 enemy, we find him gathering up the sick and wounded, 
 pausing at Isle aux Noir to collect the broken bands, em 
 barking on the Lake in leaky bateaux and voyaging to 
 Crown Point, where the miserable fragments of an army 
 rested ; " more than three hundred graves " marking their 
 brief tarry at that spot. 
 
 So did the disasters of 1776 in the north reverse the 
 previous summer s victories. Yet the men were the same, 
 and their individual records showed greater fighting quali 
 ties than in the brilliant exploits of Ticonderoga and Crown 
 Point, where their leader s plans were better laid and the 
 strength of the Provincials not hopelessly overmatched. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 ONE afternoon of that summer, Charlotte had left the 
 house empty but for her little son asleep in his trundle- 
 bed, and with a word to the chore-boy in the shed to call 
 her if the child awakened, she climbed a hill behind the 
 house for one of those rambling hours out of doors alone, 
 that still were an occasional necessity with her. Once or 
 twice she circled the crown of the hill, which was covered 
 with trees ; on a third round she paused to look out over 
 the eastern valley opposed to the home-fields that sloped 
 towards the west. Here she lingered longer than she may 
 have been aware. Returning, her first look showed the 
 house in flames, no one in sight but the little chore-boy who 
 ran screaming from the door. His arms were burdened 
 with something was it alive ? 
 
 Running as never in her life she had run before, she 
 seemed never to have reached the bottom of that hill, be 
 cause she fainted at the foot. Her little son was unscathed, 
 saved by a clod of a boy too stupid to know aught about 
 the fire except that he had plunged into it for the child. 
 
 Before night they had taken away her seven months 
 hope of motherhood, the lifeless babe she never saw. It 
 was some time before she knew what roof covered her, or 
 who nursed her and cared for little " Batty " : Catherine, 
 always Catherine ! 
 
 She grew better physically, but her thoughts remained 
 the same. Daily she watched the noble loveliness and house 
 hold charm of her who was the menace, the mockery of 
 
MEN OF THE GKANTS 311 
 
 her life. And now she threatened to supplant her with her 
 child. The colonel s home was hers, he told her often 
 enough, but his affectionate bluffing could not change her 
 decision. Something she must accept she made it as 
 little as possible. With such bits of furniture as she would 
 consent to borrow, she moved into the old construction 
 cabin where she met her husband first. It was semi-de 
 pendence still, but at least she was alone with her humili 
 ation. All she had been left in charge of, gone I And ready 
 money so scarce to begin again ; and every man s patriotism 
 urging him to pinch and spare for the country s need ! 
 
 Bassy did not return with the disbanding militia ; his 
 regiment formed part of the garrison that wintered at Ti- 
 conderoga. In his letters he bore the loss of their home 
 without a word that Charlotte could have twisted into a re 
 proach. Possibly he was too careful. She fancied she could 
 read between the lines an exasperated acceptance of the 
 misfortune, as who should say : " What else was there to 
 expect ! " 
 
 Of the babe that never breathed, the little girl he had 
 wanted so much, he never spoke. Bassy had hoped for girl- 
 babies, hardly admitting to himself that he feared the 
 mother s blood in male children (as well he might some of 
 his own), and her uncertain hand in training up a son. 
 Problems of this sort do not occur to young men when they 
 choose their brides. Bassy of course had not chosen. He 
 had met his fate, as he deemed it : " Better love than 
 this hath no man, that he giveth his life for his friends." 
 Put faith in place of " life," and the meaning is not quite 
 the same. 
 
 That same winter Catherine by accident came to know 
 
312 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 the story of Bassy s marriage. It was a shock, but also a 
 strange relief. Something lost out of her life she had found 
 again the jewel of a friend s character. She was re 
 minded that " in this world there are no long injustices." 
 But there are some that can never be acknowledged to those 
 who suffer by them. She did what penance she might in her 
 thoughts, since reparation in words could never be. 
 
 Captain Considine had not talked in New York of the 
 challenge that ended in a wedding. He went straight 
 through to London and talked there, enlivening many 
 dinner-tables with his favorite tale of the Wooing of the 
 White Captive. In due course the story reached the ears 
 of Miss Sophia Gentrey, who was writing frequently to 
 Catherine that winter on family, which is to say money, 
 matters. Catherine had come into her mother s property, 
 and Miss Sophia was profoundly interested in the business 
 details. She had altered her own will, in her niece s favor, 
 and desired Catherine should know why. Stephen, her idol, 
 had " gone mad," run a wild course in London, and ended 
 by marrying an improper person and bringing her down 
 to Littledene. Miss Sophia had crossed him off her books 
 and taken in his mother and sisters to live with her at the 
 Heronry, where they made each other excessively uncom 
 fortable. 
 
 Her letters were tiresome reading, but they broke the 
 monotony of trials nearer home. 
 
 Colonel Yelverton had been visited more than once by 
 the Committee of Safety from the Hampshire side of the 
 line. The men of the Grants now claimed all of New York 
 between them and the Hudson, as part of the new " four 
 teenth colony " which Congress thus far had refused to 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 313 
 
 recognize. He was publicly growling, but paying for the 
 privilege of remaining on his own land under oath of non- 
 participation in the crisis. Every patriot paid, out of his 
 poor means, why not this high-fed aristocrat ? to sup 
 port the militia in the field. 
 
 There was now some prospect of the tables being turned. 
 The army of invasion was on the Lakes. Burgoyne s splen 
 did divisions had embarked from St. John s. By the mid 
 dle of June his Indians were burning settlers homes at 
 Otter Creek and other places ; and Colonel Warner was 
 calling out volunteers in the quiet, telling phrases of a 
 farmer talking to his neighbors on his own doorstep. 
 
 " I shall be glad if a few hills of corn unhoed should 
 not be a motive sufficient to detain men at home." 
 
 When Bassy was brought home wounded after the 
 fight at Hubbardton, the Tory house that had sheltered 
 his family poured out aid and comfort to welcome him, 
 which went begging at the cabin door. The hearts were 
 too sore within. Charlotte s pride made it bitter for her 
 to own how much the help was needed ; but Bassy was 
 insensible to everything but pain. Again his wife was 
 fated to encounter the New England temperament in dis 
 charge of its duty, which never failed in her case to leave 
 a wound. 
 
 She had resolved to put in practice for her husband s 
 cure certain herb-remedies the use of which she remem 
 bered from her life among the Indians ; but the pressure 
 of feeling at Yelverton forced her to call in a physician, 
 and the blunt, old-school Yankee practitioner, after smell 
 ing her concoction, bluntly demanded, " Woman, do you 
 want to poison him ? " and pitched the heathen mess, as he 
 
314 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 called it, out of doors ; after which he bled the depleted 
 man, physicked him valorously and left him a skeleton, 
 saved by his constitution, but reduced to childhood in 
 mind and spirits, for the time. 
 
 Matters which in action he had been able to put aside, 
 now sat heavy on his weakness. 
 
 He was a first lieutenant, enrolled in the regiment that 
 had just refused to obey General Schuyler s order to join 
 him at Stillwater. Colonel Stark had a plan of his own 
 which he preferred to General Schuyler s. The Green 
 Mountain Boys, "captains all," were standing out for 
 recognition as a separate body of militia independent of 
 New York. 
 
 Bassy was proud of the fighting record he shared with 
 these men. If he did not love them, he held them in re 
 spect. Colonel Warner, for his age and experience, was a 
 leader who might bear the palm. But through fealty to 
 older ties, Bassy suffered keenly in these days of idleness. 
 
 General Schuyler was now commanding in the northern 
 department, at enormous personal cost and annoyance. He 
 knew not where to turn for men, or how to enforce their 
 obedience when he had them. They fought a while and 
 went home to hoe corn. They said home needed them, 
 which was sadly true. In the state of irritation between 
 the Hampshire men, hugging their quarrel with New 
 York, and the Dutch "patroon" (and member of the 
 boundary commission), the most incredible calumnies 
 against the latter were circulated and believed. 
 
 Sir John Johnson had given his parole to General 
 Schuyler, and broken it, and warned by Tory friends 
 in Albany had escaped arrest and fled to Canada, where, 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 315 
 
 at the head of his Mohawks and his Royal Greens, he 
 hovered a constant menace to his old neighbors of the 
 Mohawk valley. Schuyler was accused of conniving at the 
 escape of this dangerous enemy, because he had married 
 his cousin ! He was said to have taken money for the 
 evacuation of the northern forts. Bassy heard these accu 
 sations repeated now, at a time when they threatened to 
 break down the country s defense, and was shamed by 
 them through the men with whom he was appointed to 
 serve. 
 
 It was too late to join other organizations. The enemy 
 was at their doors. 
 
 General Schuyler himself was setting the finest exam 
 ple of forbearance on personal and local issues, for the 
 sake of union in the common cause. Often, though, his 
 manner in doing it bordered on that condescension which 
 drove the New Englanders back upon their taunts and 
 stupid slanders. He did not always recognize a haughti 
 ness in hob-nails equal to his own. " We must forgive," 
 he wrote, " the ignorance, envy, and prejudice of our mis 
 guided friends." Nobly he did forgive, chivalrously he 
 acted up to his own ideals. 
 
 With such an example, what could Bassy do but hold 
 fast where he had put his hand to the plough ? Yet for a 
 young man unaccustomed to divide his allegiance, it was 
 a bitter fight. 
 
 As Charlotte had expressed herself so clearly opposed 
 to his views of public duty, he did not seek her sympathy. 
 She, poor girl, failing to extend her imagination beyond 
 her own private concerns, believed him to be brooding 
 over the calamity she had brought upon him, and credited 
 
316 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 him with a silence of recrimination of which he was in 
 capable. 
 
 On the day he first sat up, free from fever, she said, 
 after waiting long for him to speak, "You never ask me 
 how it came to happen ? " 
 
 " How what came to happen ? " 
 
 " The fire. You never ask who was to blame." 
 
 " How can it matter ? Fires do not start themselves. 
 Somebody was careless, I suppose." 
 
 " I was. It was my own fault. I had been ironing 
 some little frocks. They hung by the fire to air. I left the 
 door open that Benny outside should hear the boy if he 
 cried. The wind did the rest ; but I hung them too close. 
 They were the little dresses I had washed to put away 
 for It was a very pretty baby, they said, for seven 
 months. I wish I could have died ! " 
 
 When a woman opens her wounds in such wise to the 
 man she loves, there is but one way to comfort her. If 
 Bassy had loved his wife with a frank and open fondness, 
 or even if he had been in health capable of lending his 
 health to her, his arms would have opened and gathered 
 her into the only place of consolation. But he merely 
 uttered a sort of groan, and sat with head bowed, not look 
 ing at her. When he did look, she was gone from his side. 
 
 That evening he made her some reparation though 
 it bred mischief he little dreamed of. She had helped him 
 from his chair to the bed, and went back and seated her 
 self by the fire. Her little son was asleep. The evening 
 tasks were done. 
 
 " Charlotte, come and sit by me. I am not going to 
 sleep. Come and tell me what you are thinking about." 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 317 
 
 She came and sat beside him, allowing him to take her 
 hand and pass his own gently up and down her arm 
 where it was bare. 
 
 " Well ? " he asked, presently. 
 
 " Well," she answered, " what is it you want to know ? " 
 
 " What it is that you want to know ? There is something 
 on your mind. Be open with me if you can." 
 
 " The question is, can you be open with me ? Can we 
 talk about the war ? " 
 
 " Assuredly. Ask me whatever you wish." 
 
 " Well, then, how is it to end? When is it to end? " 
 
 " It has barely begun. It will end when we have tired 
 them out, or they have worn us out and then there will 
 still be a few of us left to carry the struggle on into the 
 next generation. We shall all be Americans then ! " 
 
 " You never will, then, give up ? " 
 
 " Never ! If we are conquered in New York and in New 
 England and in Virginia and in the South, there is room 
 enough to the westward. If I am alive, and the cause be 
 lost to the Colonies here, I will take you and the boy and 
 march across the mountains beyond the Alleghanies, and 
 make a beginning there. You slept on the ground in the 
 forest when you were a child, and so did I. We will take 
 our little son and sleep on the ground with him ; but we 
 will be free. That is one way for it to end for me. 
 Would that part us, I wonder? " 
 
 A shudder passed over her. " For the sake of that I 
 would give up any cause the world has ever known ! " 
 She flung herself on her knees beside the bed, and opened 
 her grand womanly arms in a passionate gesture of invi 
 tation. " Oh, let it be now ! You are sick ; you are not fit 
 
318 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 to fight. Come now and be free with me ! Once I was free. 
 My God, let me be free once more with those I love ! " 
 
 There was no response, such as she had wildly hoped 
 for. Abashed and feeling himself false to the core, Bassy 
 answered as he could. 
 
 " I said if we were beaten. But we are a long way from 
 that, Charlotte, do not misunderstand me ! " 
 
 She would hear no more. She sprang away from his side, 
 out of the house into the open starlight and the soft, strong 
 mountain wind. It was after midnight when she came in 
 again and threw herself down on the settle and slept or 
 watched till dawn. 
 
 So far as one human being totally separated from an 
 other may show kindness, she was kind to him, but never 
 approached him again with the least sign of personal inter 
 est or affection. He might have been her lodger, or she his 
 servant paid to attend to his material wants. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 BY the first week in August, General Stark, commanding 
 three battalions of New Hampshire and the (now called) 
 ** Vermont " militia, had moved forward to Bennington. 
 The following week found the enemy so near and threaten 
 ing in such force, that Colonel Warner s regiment at Man 
 chester and all militia of the adjacent counties were ordered 
 to march to the support of Stark in the pitched battle now 
 impending. 
 
 Hereupon Lieutenant Dunbar joined his company, in 
 advance of his fitness for service, as the women warned 
 him. A rain set in. He had gone off hastily equipped. 
 His wife borrowed a horse at Yelverton, made up a bundle 
 of warmer clothing, and on a dark, wet afternoon rode 
 over to leave it for him at the camp. 
 
 General Stark s little army lay at a farm near Sancoick, 
 while Colonel Baum with his veterans, Indians, and Cana 
 dians had intrenched himself and planted a fieldpiece or 
 two north of the bridge by which one of the country roads 
 crossed the Walloomsac. Thus the armies were not more 
 than two miles apart, invisible to each other by reason of 
 a hill between, both waiting for the rain to cease. 
 
 As she turned into a pent-road leading to the camp, 
 Charlotte met a farmer driving stock, who stared, seeing 
 a woman on such a day riding alone, and asked if she was 
 a refugee. Told she was not, he pointed to her bundle. 
 " You re liable to git that wet if you are goin far with it. 
 Aiming for anywheres up nigh our folk s camp, be ye ? " 
 
320 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " I am on that road," Charlotte assented coldly. 
 
 " T wun t hurt ye, will it, to say yes or no ? There s a 
 message Gineral Stark had ought to git this evenin . I d 
 take it myself if I wan t cumbered with these fool creeturs. 
 Hi ! git back there, consarn ye ! Where ye bound for 
 now ? " He drove his horse in front of Charlotte s in pur 
 suit of a stray steer. " Who ve you got up there belong 
 ing to ye? Lieutenant Dunbar? He your husband? I 
 know the man well ! " Her questioner looked critically 
 at the stormy roses that burned in Charlotte s cheeks. 
 So, you re his wife, are ye ? " 
 
 " I am out on business and I want to get home, please." 
 
 " Waal, so do I. There s more business afoot to-night 
 than yours or mine, young madam. This here s the mes 
 sage : you give it to your husband and tell him to give 
 it to the gineral right straight. There s a bunch o militia 
 Stark 11 know who that s liable to git into a tumble 
 mix-up if they hit the cross-roads after dark. Nigh a hun 
 dred head o stock s been drove across the ford since las 
 Sabbath. There s no road left. If the Massachusetts boys 
 stumble onto the bridge road Stark may whistle for em. 
 He knows about the Cajians camped below the bridge. 
 What he wants to know is those boys are hustlin in 
 to-night, and somebody ought to meet em or the Hes 
 sians 11 gobble em up fore ye can say Jack Robinson ! 
 Before eight o clock, mind ye. Waal, good-evenin , sister. 
 Glad I met ye." 
 
 For a moment Charlotte did not stir, but seeing the 
 man look back and watch her, she started her horse and 
 cantered on. 
 
 The lane turned in toward the farm ; branching from 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 321 
 
 it a blinder track met one of the main roads intersecting 
 the Massachusetts line. 
 
 She stopped her horse again, considering. Her thoughts 
 were in a tumult. Cumulative causes little by little had 
 come to a final head, and her breath, striving hard, shook 
 her body. 
 
 "Voice of a fish-horn! If they beat, all my English 
 will be driven out. There will be only Yankees ! I shall 
 live with them all my life ! The colonel will be ruined. 
 They will drive him away and take his house ; and Cath 
 erine will be left as Lady Johnson is, for her friends to 
 take care of. Bassy will say : It is our turn now ! He 
 will take care of my sister ! Sooner will I die ! Better 
 that we all die honest, while we can ! " 
 
 Her horse splashed into running water. A ditch in the 
 next field had forced its way under the rails of a broken 
 fence and channeled the road. 
 
 She turned in close to the fence, loosed her bundle 
 and tossed it over into a deep pool on the other side. The 
 water checked and swirled with a quivering motion. She 
 watched the familiar garments unroll one by one and 
 spread on the shaken pool. With her arm across her face, 
 sobbing, she rode away but not toward the farm. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 THE general s amateur scouts had kept him advised of 
 the Berkshire boys rapid progress, and the need of pre 
 caution had impressed the military as well as the bucolic 
 mind. Lieutenant Dunbar was the volunteer chosen to 
 guide the Massachusetts colonel into camp. 
 
 He declined the two privates offered him as support. 
 Taking the cockade off his hat, with a covered lantern 
 and a plain homespun cloak wrapping him to his knees, 
 he galloped away, looking like any other respectable young 
 farmer hurrying home to supper. 
 
 With a practiced eye he picked up the fresh hoof-prints 
 on the road where his wife had passed. He knew them as 
 he knew his own hand. They were the tracks of Catherine s 
 Narragansett pacer, a colt of Melissa s that he had bred 
 himself. He recognized the peculiarity of shoeing to cor 
 rect a tendency in the hind-feet to interfere. 
 
 Though in haste, he stopped to examine that slough by 
 the broken fence where the hoof-prints halted and moved 
 about uncertainly. They led him close to the rails. Look 
 ing over, he recognized his own garments twisting and 
 knotting themselves around the cross-stakes ; the sleeves 
 of his coat had caught around them like feeble arms in a 
 clutch of despair. It would be difficult to describe the 
 sensation it gave him to watch the gyrations of this de 
 risive self, the part of him which a man steps out of and 
 leaves behind him in the privacy of his home, his bedroom, 
 in the custody of his wife. He was resolved that nothing 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 323 
 
 short of his orders should part him from those tracks 
 which pointed to this sodden mystery. 
 
 Mockingly they led on through the dusk and the thicken 
 ing storm, straight on, the way he was going. At the forks 
 he lost them in a wide sea of mud that puddled all roads 
 into one. 
 
 Here he was alarmed to discover that the men he was 
 there to warn had arrived before him, and taken the wrong 
 road. He leaped a fence and struck across fields, saving a 
 wide loop and coming up with the sound, ahead of him, of 
 three hundred slopping, squshing boots, the squeaking of 
 shoulder-belts, the grunt of tired chests and the smothered 
 rattle of arms. 
 
 Returning to the road he caught up with the rear files. 
 His person was held and his name passed up. In a mo 
 ment he was delivering his message to Colonel Simonds, 
 under the light of a cloaked lantern and the scrutiny of a 
 remarkably keen pair of eyes. 
 
 " Lieutenant Dunbar is your name ? I received your 
 message half an hour ago, lieutenant. It contradicts the 
 one you bring me now. What do you make of that, sir?" 
 
 " No other person has had orders to meet you, colonel. 
 I fear you have been deceived, and I implore you at once 
 to get back on the right road. Every step you take in this 
 direction is into the enemy s lines. Whoever gave you that 
 message in my name has seen to it that Baum is ready for 
 you." 
 
 " H m ! " said Simonds. " You bring no letter, you say, 
 nothing from Stark s own hand ? " 
 
 "We are almost within hailing distance of the enemy. 
 T was thought safer to omit the written word." 
 
324 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " So said my first messenger. Fetch me that woman 
 who calls herself Mistress Dunbar ! Either she or you, 
 lieutenant, is my prisoner. Both, I guess, till we have 
 searched this matter." 
 
 " There is no Mistress Dunbar known about here except 
 my wife, colonel." 
 
 " Why, so the lady claims to be." 
 
 " She s give us the slip, colonel. Neatest thing you ever 
 see. Who halts this column ? some one asks. She heard 
 em say * Lieutenant Dunbar from General Stark ; an* 
 off she shoots like lightnin . She lep that fence like a fox 
 and took across the field " 
 
 " Show me the field," said Bassy. " I will go under 
 guard, colonel, but give me five minutes in that field. And 
 for God s sake get back as fast as you can wheel your men. 
 I will meet you at the cross-roads." 
 
 The flight of his supposed wife gave force to Dunbar s 
 warning. Nor could one accustomed to reading faces doubt 
 there was deep disturbance, not of guilt, under the pallor 
 of this young man who surrendered himself unarmed to 
 the colonel s precautions, asking only to see the backs of 
 the Berkshire men before following up the treachery he 
 scented. 
 
 But Colonel Simon ds thought best to keep him with the 
 column, with a musket at his back, till Stark s camp came 
 in sight, twinkling silent in the rainy fields. 
 
 " Now, between ourselves, lieutenant, for your own sake 
 would you mind telling me what for a looking woman 
 your wife is ? Has she " 
 
 " Colonel," said Bassy, " if we are both alive when the 
 fight is over I trust you will do Mistress Dunbar and my- 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 325 
 
 self the honor to take dinner with us. The rider of that 
 horse shall be in Stark s camp by daybreak, if he have 
 not fled the country." 
 
 "He?" 
 
 " How do you know it was a woman ? " 
 
 " What have I got eyes in my head for ? The Lord 
 does n t waste a face like that, splicing it onto a man-body. 
 I don t say she s your wife, Dunbar, but if she be not a 
 woman and a plaguy handsome one, then am I not a man 
 with a wife of my own to pray for us boys to-morrow ! " 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 DURING that night the storm increased in violence, nor 
 abated with the light of day. Rain fell in torrents, through 
 which Colonel Baum kept a force of spaders at work 
 strengthening his intrenchments, while Stark, in confer 
 ence with the Council of Safety, planned the next day s 
 attack. 
 
 The household at Yelverton rose late that dark, midsum 
 mer morning. Catherine s first words to her father, after 
 she kissed him, were of the little family in the cabin at 
 their gates. 
 
 " I heard poor little Batty-boy crying so long and so 
 hard in the night or perhaps it was n t night, but I 
 was in bed with my window open to listen to the rain. 
 I wonder if anything was wrong with him? Have you 
 heard from Charlotte this morning ? " 
 
 " I know she brought Bobolink in, but the stable-men 
 were in bed. They thought she had stayed in camp on 
 account of the rain. She must have come in after ten 
 o clock and put him up herself. Dare say the boy was 
 awake and felt lonesome." 
 
 " Why could n t she have left him with me ? " Cath 
 erine sighed. " We don t get on together not one bit, 
 daddy. I ve lost my touch with Charlotte. T is as if an 
 acid turned everything sour in her mind, whenever she 
 comes near me." 
 
 " It s all nonsensical, all of it ! she alone in that 
 log shanty, we with more room up here than we know 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 327 
 
 what to do with. This house was built for children and 
 children s children." 
 
 " You made her your child, papa, but I came too late 
 to make her my sister. Now the door is closed. That s 
 the whole secret of it." 
 
 " Bosh ! stop thy nonsense and come kiss me, girl. It 
 was all John Johnson s fault." 
 
 " I shall not kiss you if you say that, for that s silly. 
 Who is John Johnson that he should be responsible for 
 our lives ? Let him keep his place." 
 
 " He has found his place," said the colonel, promptly 
 losing his temper. " He s the very man for them in Can 
 ada. Takes a cad and a brute combined to carry out Ger- 
 maine s policy in this infernal war. T is a new style of 
 fighting for the British army leading savages to your 
 old neighbor s doors to murder them in their beds." 
 
 Catherine listened with impatience. " The war and 
 John Johnson," she thought, " will turn my father s 
 brain." 
 
 " Let me ask you one question, papa ? Are you not able 
 to help Charlotte with money ? " 
 
 " Only by being mighty sly about it. Charlotte s no 
 woman of business, but I have to be careful for other 
 reasons." 
 
 Catherine s question had not helped the colonel s tem 
 per any. 
 
 " There are such things as marriage portions ? " she 
 ventured. 
 
 " It was n t a marriage. They were married. Nothing 
 done as it should have been. If that was n t Johnson s 
 fault, whose was it ? They were married to save something 
 
328 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 worse, if there is anything worse. Afterward, Bassy 
 would n t hear to any settlements. Said he d nothing to 
 settle on a wife but the work of his hands. My money 
 shouldn t come into the transaction. He preferred the 
 American way. Now they have it in full force." 
 
 " There are happy wives in America," said Catherine, 
 flushing up. " There were happy wives, and there are 
 proud ones to-day, doing double work at home for the sake 
 of what their husbands are doing." 
 
 " Charlotte s not proud of what her husband is doing. 
 That is my opinion." 
 
 " No ; and for that reason poverty and loneliness must 
 come hard. Do help her, papa anyway. Never mind 
 the reasons " 
 
 The colonel jumped up testily and went to the window. 
 " I should like to know why I am honored with a man 
 with a musket, parading in front of my house this rainy 
 day ! Do they want to keep me from wetting my feet ? or 
 are they protecting us from the Army of Invasion ! " 
 
 Catherine rose up from the table. She had lost her 
 color. 
 
 " I thought I need not call your attention to it before 
 breakfast, father, but I started to go down to the cabin 
 to see Charlotte, and" the girl giggled nervously 
 " and one of those men with a musket placed it so 
 right in front of me. He said he objected to my leaving 
 the house ! " 
 
 " Who said ? " the colonel repeated, loud enough for the 
 man outside to hear. " Who gave the fellow that order?" 
 
 "That I did not ask. He said " 
 
 A loud tap with the butt of his weapon on the window- 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 329 
 
 pane called her attention to the man, looking in. He ges 
 tured to show there was some one at the front door and 
 started around the house on a run in that direction. 
 
 "Stop," said the colonel, "I ll go myself. Tell that 
 fellow to keep back." 
 
 He referred to his own servant hurrying to answer the 
 knock that immediately followed. 
 
 Catherine, listening at the dining-room door, was re 
 lieved to the point of laughter, almost of tears, to recognize 
 Bassy s voice. He entered, her father preceding him. 
 
 Oddly, the man with the musket seemed determined to 
 follow, but was induced by Bassy to retire and stay outside. 
 
 " Well," said she, " I did not think to see you again till 
 after we had begun killing each other in earnest ! " 
 
 Bassy did not smile in response to her affected spright- 
 liness, which she let drop suddenly on looking in his face. 
 She was indeed shocked at his devastated appearance. 
 Even her father, less observing, was evidently struck with 
 it. He placed one hand on the young man s shoulder af 
 fectionately, as often he had done before. Bassy moved 
 away from the caress. "Catherine," he said, almost im 
 ploringly, " will you permit me to ask you I would speak 
 with your father one moment by ourselves." 
 
 " Most certainly," cried Catherine. 
 
 " Stay," her father interfered. " Whatever you have for 
 me, Bassy, must come to us both in the end. You are here 
 on no pleasant errand, I am able to gather." 
 
 " You are right, sir. It is my duty to inform you that 
 by order of General Stark and the Council of Safety your 
 household for the present will be detained within doors, 
 and, colonel, you are under arrest." 
 
330 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " On what charge ? " 
 
 " Sir, of breaking your oath of a non-participant, 
 neither aiding nor communicating with the enemy, actively 
 or in secret, conformable to the terms of the agreement 
 signed by you and sworn to, last November, before the 
 Council of Safety holding jurisdiction in this county. 
 
 Bassy read the above aloud from a paper in his hand. 
 The hand shook and his face was deathly white. 
 
 " It would be interesting to learn who does hold juris 
 diction in this county, but the charge I deny in toto ! And 
 I consider that man insults me who permits himself outside 
 his sworn duty to insinuate such a thing. Do you express 
 your own conviction, Lieutenant Dunbar, in this business?" 
 
 " Far from it, sir, thank God ! Yet these are my orders. 
 I might have refused them and taken the consequences, 
 and another would have done the work with a better will. 
 Yet I asked the privilege of being the man. I think you 
 must know why, sir ? " 
 
 " We shall not quarrel with an old friend in these times 
 because of his orders, shall we, Catherine? But what do 
 they mean by all this rigmarole? Either I have done some 
 thing or I have not ? " 
 
 " The charge is the same which hath come home to my 
 own door, to my own wife," said Bassy, with a broken 
 look at Catherine. 
 
 She went away and seated herself where she could not 
 see his face. 
 
 "And the evidence?" said the colonel, pale and sick. 
 He thought of the horse out of his own stable brought 
 back at night, and the child in the empty house crying for 
 its mother. 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 331 
 
 " The evidence I have the misfortune to have furnished 
 myself. I am my wife s accuser and the means of her ar 
 rest. I come from her but now. She is truthful and brave 
 to meet her punishment, charging no one with any share 
 in what she has done, though the chance has been held out 
 to her." 
 
 " You mean they encourage her to throw it on me and 
 she won t ? She is right and I would n t take it. Not to 
 save the wife I gave you, Bassy, out of my own house, will 
 I charge myself with breaking my word of honor. What 
 has she done, in God s name ? " 
 
 " It was not, she says, deliberate. Accident gave her the 
 opportunity." 
 
 Bassy described the events of the evening before, his 
 search in the field for the hoof-prints, the easy tracking 
 home, and what he found there. 
 
 " She is in a state of mind in which I fear to leave her 
 long alone. Yet I am unable to help her now," he concluded 
 wearily. " I did say, I own it, some grievous things when 
 this treachery met me at my very door, and I saw how it 
 would drag in others. To any who know Colonel Yelver- 
 ton, her denial were needless, yet they believe are anxious 
 to believe, I think that my wife is but a tool. Riding a 
 horse out of your stable, borrowed, as your grooms say, 
 with your knowledge. They claim she is but lying now 
 in her benefactor s defense. When I saw how it looked all 
 around, I spoke as I need not have done. It will break up 
 our home. But that s the least of it. Death might do that." 
 
 Bassy stared with bloodshot eyes at the rain-washed 
 window-panes. The man in the wet outside watched him 
 curiously. No one in the room was aware of him. 
 
332 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " I do not blame you one iota," said the colonel. " A 
 man will give a woman his money or his life, but his honor 
 if he lets her touch that, he s the same as she is." 
 
 " She must be mad," Catherine half whispered, awe 
 struck at the completeness of this calamity that embraced 
 them all. 
 
 " She is not mad," Bassy explained with a man s ten 
 dency to call things by their names. " But she sees only one 
 thing at once. For the time, that to her is the whole." 
 
 " Why, that is being mad ! " Catherine insisted. " Per 
 sons with a mind like that are the same as children or mad 
 folk." 
 
 " In that case, restraint may be called for." Bassy spoke 
 with dry deliberation. " It has become a part of my duty 
 to place her, since I cannot answer for what she may do, 
 under surveillance, at least for the present. We have a 
 battle before us. May I ask of you, colonel, this last gen 
 erosity, to give Charlotte the shelter of your house 
 which I have entered this morning with armed men ! " 
 
 " Why, good God ! my house is hers, if I have a house ! 
 You married her out of it I don t forget how ! I always 
 said, however the girl turned out, I d see her through to 
 the end. I ought perhaps to lie for her. But I stop 
 there. Now, what do your friends propose to do with 
 me, Bassy, my lad ! Never be ashamed of your work ! 
 Out with it ! " 
 
 The cheery kindness in the colonel s voice, his smile of 
 old covering the unaccustomed paleness of distress, broke 
 down the young man s self-control. Not strong from re 
 cent wounds and illness, hearing in memory the words 
 of his last cruel interview with his wife and the prattle 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 333 
 
 of his little boy, with whom he must part in parting from 
 her what wonder he gave way ? 
 
 A hard, male sob tore out of him ; he hurried blindly 
 from the room. 
 
 At once the rural guard ran to the front entrance and 
 burst open the door. Bassy met and stopped him there. 
 
 " I want to know, Lieutenant Dunbar ! Be you a-trying 
 to arrest your friend here the way they took up Sir John 
 Johnson ? If you be, us fellers outside here kin help you 
 some. The shay s hitched up. Time we was on the rud 
 (road). Better make short work of your leave-takin s. It s 
 gettin some monotonous, trampin gravel in the rain." 
 
 " Then come inside," said Bassy. 
 
 He stepped to the dining-room door. Catherine was 
 kneeling between her father s knees, their arms locked 
 about each other. They were facing the facts now : this 
 was their real farewell. 
 
 " I have taken the liberty, colonel, to ask my friends 
 to step in out of the rain." Bassy spoke distinctly, turn 
 ing his eyes away. " They are waiting to escort you to 
 Manchester jail. I have kept you too long talking of my 
 own affairs, when you might have been preparing for your 
 journey." 
 
 Catherine sprang up, her face aflame. He took her hands 
 and kept them forcibly in his. 
 
 " Let me say to you : you will only add to his anxieties if 
 you insist on going with him." Bassy thought he saw some 
 such determination in her smile. " There is no way for you 
 to go at present. It is not a fit place for women." 
 
 " She shall not go ! " said the colonel in a voice of wrath 
 that might have broken else in a weakness like to Bassy s. 
 
334 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " I had not thought of it," Catherine protested, " know 
 ing my father ! There is some one else who needs me here. 
 She called me sister once, Bassy. Whatever we call it now, 
 sisters we are in misfortune and disgrace. You will let me 
 keep her here under surveillance and the boy ? " 
 
 " God bless you ! " he said, " to-morrow will decide, 
 only this I know : we intend to win the fight. If we do 
 the country must be cleared of enemies at our hearthstones. 
 She will be sent into Burgoyne s lines, to the friends she has 
 chosen, as General Stark reminds me. Can I blame him ? " 
 
 " 1 will go with her then. Father, do you consent? " 
 
 " You may have to go, my dear ! General Burgoyne is a 
 gentleman, General Fraser is an old comrade. You will be 
 among friends, too, remember." 
 
 " Friends of the family, " Catherine smiled to herself. 
 
 Bassy tried to lighten her fears for the colonel s im 
 prisonment. But her thoughts turned to the packing which 
 must be hurried she went to give it her superintendence. 
 Her father s comfort in Manchester jail depended on the 
 use she made of this short time. 
 
 The colonel had stepped into the hall, hearing footsteps 
 in cowhide boots. He ordered butter-biscuits and rum for 
 his fretful guards and drank with them to the event of 
 battle on the morrow, each to his own side, nodding at the 
 other pleasantly. He had a great fire made in the hall 
 chimney and bade them put their backs to it, and laughed 
 as loud as any at the joke when one said, he was not used 
 to turning his back to the British fire. 
 
 " Friends will be raised up to him," Bassy was saying. 
 
 He and Catherine listened to the laughter with com 
 mingled smiles. 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 335 
 
 " Dear daddy ! He can t help being good to people." 
 
 She could hear him ordering a monstrous luncheon for 
 the journey, after inquiring, " how many of you fellows are 
 going with me?" and had they any "tuck" along. He 
 talked of the day ahead of him, in his big field voice, as if 
 it were a hunting-trip. Thinking also of his fellow-prisoners 
 at Manchester jail who might welcome a change of diet, he 
 kept adding to the proportions of the luncheon till it threat 
 ened to exclude the most of his personal effects. 
 
 " Once they get near him," said Bassy, " and get rid of 
 their British aristocrat bugbear, they will do him justice. 
 They have put him in a class. Man to man, they will see 
 him as he is. These men are hard fighters, they are preju 
 diced through private wrongs, but they are not implacable 
 nor are they fools." 
 
 " And now," said Catherine, " will you let me say one 
 word to you ? I believe this awful thing will make of Char 
 lotte a nobler woman. This is not herself ! It is some mad 
 ness she will outlive. Great trials are for great souls, my 
 brother. Take it as it comes from God ! We know that 
 we are none of us quite bad enough to have deserved this 
 thing. Take it as it comes, and God be with you ! May He 
 keep you in the battle. May you live to forgive your 
 wife!" 
 
 She laid her hands in his one instant and then, " Good- 
 by," she said. " Do not come here again. We shall be safe 
 with your friends. With our friends, Bassy ; with our 
 friends ! Do you understand, at last ? " 
 
 " Generous ! " said Bassy. " I understand in silence." 
 
 "That is all I ask." 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 Two women, wakeful, with a little child asleep between 
 them on some thinly scattered hay in the loft of a barn. 
 The men who should have piled it to the eaves with the 
 summer s harvest were fighting with Hackett and Warner. 
 
 One of the sons would come home to his father s fields 
 no more : he died a boy of nineteen, of smallpox, in a rain- 
 soaked hut by the Lake at Crown Point, and the mother 
 in the farmhouse close by, a hollow-eyed woman of fifty, 
 never knew his fate. The other women in the house were 
 an older son s young wife (with three little children, soon 
 to be again a mother), and two fine girls, bold, bright- 
 eyed, hardly grown, yet working like men in the fields. 
 The only sitting-room required was the kitchen, where 
 work went on from earliest dawn till dark, and no one sat 
 except to meals ; they went to bed as soon as the evening 
 chores were done. 
 
 To this house of sorrow, privation, and unceasing toil 
 had come two handsome young females, exceeding well 
 and comfortably dressed, a cherished little boy of two or 
 three their only incumbrance ; driven in a four-wheeled 
 chaise, the very acme of luxury in those times ; a man 
 servant on the box and an armed patriot seated beside him, 
 as if these persons were of national importance. A wagon 
 loaded with baggage and food for the journey, an armed 
 native guarding that also, brought up the rear. 
 
 These men, and even the servants, were kindly wel 
 comed by the women of the house. The other women, the 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 337 
 
 strangers, for whom all this circumstance and parade were 
 made, were not welcome : why should they be ? 
 
 In their fine feathers, these fine birds were flying south 
 to meet their friends the invaders. They were " protee- 
 tioners," more unpopular than the enemy himself, nay, than 
 his Indians or his foreign allies. One of them had done a 
 thing for which a man would have been shot. The other 
 was the dainty, white-fingered child of a British ex-officer, 
 friend of the notorious Major McLean who had fled for 
 his life, which he had forfeited, his neighbors of the Grants 
 thought, in many an ugly fray, serving writs of the courts 
 of New York to drive them from their homes. Any friend 
 of McLean s would be pretty sure to be hated ; but this 
 girl s father was in jail for acts of his own, or on suspicion 
 of such, incriminated with the other girl, the dark one 
 (who some say was more to him than she should have 
 been before she was married). Yes, her own husband, the 
 father of that pretty little boy, poor little fellow, had 
 tracked her down and put her to the door for turning 
 traitor in his name. So the story was told by the patriot 
 guard to the patriot women. 
 
 " Our folks sent us along to see she did n t cut up any 
 more of her didos on the road." 
 
 " No, they shan t sleep inside," the women said. " The 
 barn s plenty good enough for Tory trollops." 
 
 At bedtime the good wife and her daughters overhauled 
 the stuff in the travelers wagon. They helped themselves 
 to what would go else to feast the invader. It would be 
 difficult to exaggerate the bitterness in those northern 
 homes toward that advancing army with a British general 
 at its head, bringing down their old enemies the French 
 
338 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 and Indians upon them. The murder of lovely young 
 Jennie McCrea was a fresh horror at their firesides. If 
 there had been any wavering, or weakening toward the 
 mother country, all hearts were hardened now in the face 
 of this significant outrage. A new vial of the old wrath, 
 the old satanic peril, was opened, and England herself 
 had broke the seal. 
 
 So the wagon was lightened of its capons and hams 
 and candied fruits and cordials, presents to the red-coat 
 generals from that ex-red-coat, Colonel Yelverton. Away 
 went the rich cheeses and minced meats and game and 
 jellies and fresh butter, into the housewife s clean but 
 empty larder : all that could be spared from those shelves 
 had been sent to the sick and wounded in the ranks of 
 the militia. 
 
 The fat of the land these Tories lived on, with their fine 
 servants in their fine mansions, where they were too fine 
 themselves to open their own doors. 
 
 The wagon was not so well stocked as when it started : 
 This was explained by the guard, half in apology, half as a 
 good joke, other houses having taken toll on the road. 
 They winked at this spoiling of the Egyptians. The Coun 
 cil of Safety had detailed them for the duty of seeing 
 these protectioners into the protecting lines ; and Colonel 
 Yelverton had subsidized them handsomely, trusting to 
 purchase a little extra consideration for his tender host 
 ages. They pocketed his money with their tongues in 
 their cheeks. Everything was grist that came to the patriot 
 mill; and the mills must keep busy. "Poor an poorer 
 we maun be." 
 
 The protectioners had little care for these pluckings 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 339 
 
 by the way. They were like the survivors after an earth 
 quake : what is called personal property had lost its sig 
 nificance in the general debacle. They marveled rather to 
 find themselves with good appetites, able to smile at the 
 happiness of the little boy to whom this pilgrimage, which 
 meant ruin, was a continual feast of wonder and delight. 
 
 Catherine was supported by good health and her sense 
 of the exceeding naturalness of things as they befell ; given 
 of course the earthquake. These women, who it could be 
 seen frankly hated her, were they not saving and toiling 
 for those they loved in support of a principle which might 
 never benefit themselves? The appalling nature of the 
 struggle, its hopelessness as she saw it, lent a touch of 
 tragedy to the meanest of their acts and some of them 
 were mean enough. 
 
 As this might be the last house they would pass with 
 women in it, the guard took the occasion to discharge one, 
 the most obnoxious, part of its duty. Charlotte and Cath 
 erine, in the bedroom of the mother, were personally 
 searched lest they be the bearers of contraband informa 
 tion. The ordeal was put through by the old dame and 
 her eldest daughter, not without propriety and a grim 
 Puritan modesty ; but as between women it was a thorough 
 piece of work. 
 
 Wrathful and astonished yet in some ways amused, 
 Catherine submitted, thinking " What is this to one s 
 father in jail for breaking his parole ! Think of Lady 
 Johnson, safe and caressed among her friends in Albany 
 (where I shall be soon), but knowing that her husband 
 did break his to her own cousin Philip, who trusted 
 him as one gentleman trusts another ! " Alas, the happy 
 
340 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 days when Madam s house rang with songs and laughter 
 of that beauteous band of cousins, scattered now ! 
 
 Charlotte took the human incidents of the journey as 
 she took the roads and the weather. She had been struck 
 too hard a blow to feel pin-pricks. 
 
 And so they were laid side by side, each wrapped in 
 her own thoughts, with the unconscious child between 
 them. Sleep as deep as health and open air can give fas 
 tened his long lashes down. His mother rose noiselessly on 
 elbow to look at him. She looked across at Catherine, who 
 feigned sleep long she gazed at the two faces in the soft 
 glimmer that now began to steal into the shadowy loft. 
 At the sound of a sigh Catherine opened her eyes. Char 
 lotte lay down and flung out one arm to give room to the 
 heart s load within. 
 
 "I think he is sleeping very sound," said Catherine 
 quietly. " I m coming around to you, Charlotte, if I may. 
 We cannot sleep. I want to talk ; it may be our last 
 chance. Where, if you will let me ask, do you think you 
 will be going, if you do not care to go with me to Aunt 
 Schuyler s? Where do you want to go ? " 
 
 " Out of this world ; but I have a child." 
 
 " It is a good thing to remember." 
 
 " One doesn t remember it always." 
 
 " Is there anything, I wonder, that we can remember 
 always, except to eat and drink ! " 
 
 " Do not pretend to be cynical, Catherine. You are not 
 really. Neither am I ! I know that in my life I have 
 thrown away, broken, smashed what many would have 
 been thankful for, because it was not something else or 
 something more. There is nothing left now to throw away 
 except myself." 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 341 
 
 " 4 Our sorrows are not eternal ; sooner or later they 
 must stop because our hearts have stopped. My cousin 
 used to quote that. He knew about sorrow." 
 
 " You call it sorrow, because you are determined to be 
 kind to the sinner. Let me tell you, since you wish me to 
 talk, that I hate your kindness." 
 
 "If it were kindness ! Is it not possible for you to im 
 agine that I might be able to love you as you are ? You 
 can remember a time when you loved me more than I loved 
 you. I pretended then because it was expected of me. I 
 tried hard ; t was of no use. Now I don t try, and the feel 
 ing has come. And you don t care for me ! Often when 
 you were with us after the fire, I hungered to talk with 
 you as women talk to women only. Men never quite under 
 stand us as we understand each other. There is nothing 
 inexplicable to me," she ventured, encouraged by Char 
 lotte s stillness, " in what you did." 
 
 " Why are you so mealy-mouthed ? I betrayed him, 
 that s what I 4 did. And I would do it again as often as 
 the chance were given, if it would bring those hateful Yan 
 kees to their knees. What right has he to be fighting 
 with them ? " 
 
 " He fights as they fight, for something they love better 
 than they do war or each other ; yet it is the same thing. 
 They were free men when they came here first, and God 
 unveiled to them these great hills and waters and forests. 
 There is no mystery in the word that is breathed upon 
 them. The awful mystery is that England cannot under 
 stand that word any longer in the hearts of Englishmen. 
 Freedom or the abyss ! " 
 
 " English Catherine ! Why do you talk of freedom to 
 
342 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 me ? Talk of the abyss if you like, /shall never be free ! 
 A captive always : to the Indians, to the whites, to a family 
 that was not my family, to a worship that was lies ! And 
 now to a marriage that is another lie ! If there be this 
 great word somewhere for each of us, where is it for 
 me ? Let me go hence and find it ! " 
 
 " We are all seeking it, dear Charlotte : it is the fever 
 we call life. When the fever runs high, when we are young, 
 it breeds madness in strange ways. When it is low, as in 
 some of us who are old before our time, it takes the form 
 of a strange, unnatural despair that sees an abyss at every 
 step of the way. That I have never seen but once, thank 
 God! but the fever, the madness, I have seen one time or 
 another in all whom I love who had a spark of youth left 
 in their souls. My own dear father was particularly mad 
 when he thought, once, to save a girl he loved from an 
 unworthy marriage by killing the bridegroom according to 
 the code. He made a lifelong enemy, and deserved to, and 
 Polly Watts has found the husband who seems to have 
 been her fate. The just God is never in a hurry. Our na 
 tures take their course. Sir John is following his, to an end 
 more suitable than dying by my poor father s sword. And 
 Polly will be learning her lessons as they come God be 
 ing in no hurry. I know much if not all that took place in 
 our new house the night they married you to Bassy. My 
 father owes to you his life, or that he has not a dreadful stain 
 upon his good old sword ! We owe that to you and Bassy, 
 both, who gave us your two lives. Talk of my being kind 
 to you! Is it for those to apologize for you who led you 
 into that ambush of fate ? Forgive us, forgive me, who was 
 not there to stand by your side, my sister! Of all the 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 343 
 
 women I know, you, Charlotte, were made for truth in love 
 and loyalty in marriage. And here you are with your 
 great true heart, cast out for treachery to your husband 
 and your home ! Is n t that madness to make the angels 
 weep?" 
 
 44 You are the angel, Catherine ! I do not wonder he 
 was mad to have lost you. He never would have done 
 that thing not to save a hundred fathers but he 
 thought his chance was over." 
 
 Catherine was silent. 
 
 44 Your father told him something about you I dared 
 not ask him what but I could name the hour when he 
 learned it ; when his hope was gone. Oh, I was sorry for 
 him ! He was pale as that moon out there. He wore a 
 beautiful ash-gray velvet. I never saw it again. Know 
 you not what that meant ? I could have wept for him ! I 
 did think I could comfort him. He said, when I asked if 
 he loved any one else, 4 No one I can ever marry ; but he 
 thought he should be able to love me a little after a while. 
 We both had hopes at first ; we were not misled ; we 
 acted with our eyes open. It could not be. Men like him, 
 they go about their business when their great dream is 
 over, but they do not dream again. Hush ! Let me finish 
 I know ! You know but the half. Once I thought he 
 was beginning to love me ; it was only kindness and absence 
 and remorse. By degrees I grew frantic. A woman who 
 has seen in her husband s eyes when he looks at her the 
 great distaste, she kills herself. She murders something. 
 One hope I had left. He gave it me himself, and then he 
 took it away. If his side was beaten we might go, he said, 
 far beyond the western mountains and begin again. My 
 
344 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 heart gave one great bound ; since then it is dead. I 
 asked him to go now with me. I offered him myself, 
 forgetting which was woman and which man. He looked 
 at me as if he was woman. So, I have said it ! There is 
 for me no humiliation left. He may forgive as you say 
 he ought ; he does what is just. T is all one to me. Now, 
 you, that never had to offer yourself to man, woman, or 
 child, who never loved but to be craved and caressed in 
 return ; you, to whom everything comes before you ask it 
 
 you say you can understand me, my lot ! Angels may 
 pity us down here, but they do not understand." 
 
 The old, big moon, rising late, now sailed in clear splen 
 dor across an opening in the gable of the barn. Her light 
 struck upon Charlotte s face ; she turned it into shadow. 
 Catherine sat up unheeding the full illumination. With 
 her hands locked about her knees, her head thrown back, 
 she sat thinking. So, in a long silence the two remained. 
 
 At length Catherine spoke in a soft, measured voice, 
 hardly above a whisper. 
 
 " I, you say, who have had everything I wanted ; who 
 never loved but to be craved in return ! Ah, you little 
 know, you little know ! Could I have dared approach you 
 
 put my finger on your wound, had I never had one 
 of my own to hide ? " 
 
 Word by word, then, touch by touch, fearful of injus 
 tice yet sparing nothing of the truth, Catherine laid bare 
 the waste places of her own young life, laid her own hu 
 miliation as a crowning shame at the feet of her who had 
 known a greater. 
 
 It was a complex passion that wrought within her, 
 bringing tears, when the tale had reached her parting with 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 345 
 
 Francis ; that inconceivable end to a beginning so natural 
 and sweet. It went back to many partings, many losses 
 and failures, not all of them her own, in the short years 
 of her girlhood that had seemed so long in the living: 
 Charlotte s maiden figure in the summer-scented meadow, 
 lifting slender arms in blessings on those she loved and 
 cast away ; Bassy flinging his hope into the breach, for 
 nothing but the world s silliness ; Francis flinging away his, 
 pursued by the world s cares. 
 
 Most of all, it was for him she wept : her Joseph in his 
 bondage, emptied of his dreams, buying and selling and 
 hoarding wisely for the evil days. 
 
 Wisdom is for the ancients, prophets are for the people, 
 and kings they for the most part are for themselves and 
 their thrones ; but boys are for girls, the world over, and 
 ever shall be as long as the world goes right. 
 
 So that was done! And Charlotte, with a deep, sweet 
 groan, turned to the shivering speaker and gathered her 
 into her arms. 
 
 " My little sister, my little sister ! My little hurt and 
 wounded sister ! Did I trample on thee ? so silent, so 
 laughing, so brave ! my heart to thy heart now, forever. 
 I thank God ! If I die now t will not be of utter loneliness." 
 
 " Oh, we shall not die!" Catherine chuckled softly. 
 " You have your little son, I have my best old father. If 
 the young men don t need us, they do. We ve learned on 
 the young men to do our loving better. I ve only just begun 
 to love my father. You ve only just begun, this moment, 
 to love me," she added shyly. 
 
 "Long ago I loved thee, my perfect little sister but 
 the evil birds ! " She shuddered and covered her face. 
 
346 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " I am black inside. I am poisoned, all through, with my 
 self ! " 
 
 " Nothing of the sort ! you are red inside like me. We 
 have got blood in our veins. Clean blood will take care of 
 its own poison. * 
 
 On the whole, thinking over her words and especially 
 her tears Catherine accused herself of unwillf ul exagger 
 ation in a good cause. She was no " stricken deer " as she 
 had given Charlotte to suppose. Her keenness for experi 
 ence was unquenched. She had " staked her life upon the 
 red," and lost, but her coin was not all spent. It was other 
 wise with Charlotte. It were inhuman to remind her of the 
 difference. 
 
 As for Joseph down in Egypt we know that he came 
 to great honor in the marts of men. If he had ceased to 
 dream himself, he became an expounder of the dreams of 
 others ; and a sure if somewhat subtle provider against the 
 emptiness to come. 
 
 To be more literal : Francis, in thinking out things for 
 himself (and often wrongly) still had acquired the useful 
 habit of thinking. He was the one member of his family 
 who bestowed any mental exercise on that familiar phrase, 
 " the mother country." It was his nature to pierce the 
 weakness that resides in the spells and catch-words of 
 idealists and such as live by sentiment. He saw the fal 
 lacy in that ancient, beloved phrase. 
 
 Not as a mother precisely had England urged her chil 
 dren forth on strange adventures across the lonely seas. 
 The early Quakers, his ancestors, came as from one whip 
 ping-post, one pillory, to another. Criminals, broken men 
 
MEN OF THE GKANTS 347 
 
 of all classes, the wreckage of her social system and her 
 wars, her Britannic Mothership flung out to get rid of them. 
 Bound men and women she sold into slavery. The Puritans 
 she encouraged to leave her side, as she did the Quakers, 
 through methods even in that age not to be called maternal. 
 When she parted with money, it was to get more ; when 
 she sent ships, they were lost unless good men went with 
 them, and these she remembered only when they no longer 
 needed it, and forgot if they failed. 
 
 Individual English mothers and fathers there were, 
 and of these, we their children shall reverently speak, seek 
 ing vainly for words to do them justice ; but there was no 
 Mother England for young America in the time of the 
 Georges, nor for long before. No more than there was a 
 Mother France, that spewed the best blood of her breeding 
 out of her mouth or massacred it in spots, depopulated 
 through her caresses. 
 
 If America had anything resembling a mother in these 
 times, it was that brave, astute little foster-mother Hol 
 land, who gave the fugitives rest from their real mothers 
 of one nation or another, before they struck out for them 
 selves. 
 
 With these and similar arguments Francis combated 
 the loyal sentiments of his family ; not moving them in 
 the least, but fixing his own convictions. They led to 
 nothing in the nature of fighting, for himself. He was fas 
 tidious about shedding blood. To be a soldier, moreover, 
 one must have the " afflatus " ; but with the sure fore 
 sight of despondency, he marked out the roads to failure : 
 how the commissariat would break down, especially since 
 Congress had begun to tinker with it. 
 
348 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 Between 1773 and the winter at Valley Forge, Edwin 
 and Francis had made a great deal of money for those 
 times. Edwin was already rich, and Francis s great mo 
 ment came when he convinced his narrower partner that 
 in this struggle those who could not fight must pay. For 
 the fight must be won, and the future would make it 
 worth their while. Edwin believed that something of the 
 Spirit which he reverenced, though he had it not, must be 
 with his younger brother, or he never could have brought 
 him over to a course so beyond the bounds of common 
 sense. There was no public honor and certainly no profit 
 connected with those quiet loans that went out of that 
 Quaker counting-house into the treasuries of the war; 
 yet timely was the help thus given ; and another and a 
 greater Quaker gentleman was to win glory enough for 
 the whole sect through his patriotic financiering. 
 
 For the rest, Francis s life was passed honorably and 
 prosperously but somewhat sadly. Prophets of Lamentation 
 are apt to be lonely men. He resisted, to be metaphorical 
 again, Potiphar s wife (if he ever met her), he was not 
 seduced by the gay daughters of the land. He married, 
 somewhat late in life, an admirable lady whose virtues as 
 wife and mistress of a mansion one successful marriage 
 could attest, and who was not averse to making a second 
 husband as happy as her first. She made Francis as happy 
 as he could be. They had one beautiful daughter who 
 died of a disease not at that time understood. When, later, 
 cures became common, when he knew that his exquisite 
 child had been sacrificed to ignorance, then there en 
 tered into his cool discernment, his philosophical pessim 
 ism, a deep incurable passion of human grief with which 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 349 
 
 he lived alone, as he had lived in secret with his one great 
 love. 
 
 So nothing of Francis was left to pass on but his 
 money. He cared little for money himself, being distant 
 and temperate in his use of it as in his use of life : he 
 wanted it at his back, instead of the fear that he was born 
 with, of his obligations and decisions, of himself. He 
 had no fear, being a philosopher, of his Maker; he did 
 not indeed presume to have definitely made his acquaint 
 ance. 
 
CHAPTEK XL 
 
 BY October eighth, Catherine s " friends of the family " 
 were no longer in a state themselves to render assistance to 
 wandering ladies, even loyalists in distress. 
 
 Of the two letters her father had provided, one was ad 
 dressed to General Eraser, who but the day before had 
 received his death-wound at the battle of Bemis Heights. 
 He lay stretched for burial in the house where he had been 
 expected that evening as a guest of Madame de Riedesel, 
 wife of the Brunswick general in command of the German 
 auxiliaries. 
 
 To madame s door the young women were sent, since 
 their second letter, to General Burgoyne, could not then 
 be delivered. The fortunes of the expedition had taken a 
 critical turn. 
 
 A German maidservant pointed out to them hysterically 
 the state of the house, assuring them of the impossibility 
 of her mistress receiving strangers. They were able to see 
 and hear for themselves : the entry was filled with wounded 
 men, and the house resounded with groans. 
 
 Shocked and mournful, they turned away. Seated in their 
 chaise, they watched that evening the generals and their 
 retinues ascend the hill of the great redoubt, where under 
 fire from the American marksmen they buried General 
 Eraser, in fulfillment of his dying wish. 
 
 From the door of the Smith house Madame de Riedesel 
 could distinguish her husband in the group of officers who 
 stood unmoved at the grave while cannon-balls tore up the 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 351 
 
 earth around them. The Americans expressed regret when 
 they learned they had been firing on a burial-party. 
 
 Immediately after this duty was performed (which some 
 of the German officers considered overstrained under the 
 stern necessities of the .case), the army was put in motion 
 with every effort at secrecy. Refugees and camp-followers 
 straggled along the line of retreat on the road to Saratoga. 
 
 Our two young protectioners, less the supply-wagon, with 
 no guard and no servant now to drive their team, found a 
 place in this mixed multitude. All night Catherine lashed 
 on her tired horses, suffering more than they, for they 
 too were friends of the family, while Charlotte supported 
 her sleeping boy and hushed him when he roused. 
 
 At six o clock there was a halt ; the little fellow awoke 
 cold and hungry and was not to be pacified. His crying 
 caught the notice of a young officer riding by, who saw the 
 pale sweet face of a tired girl urging on a span of over 
 driven horses, and the worried eyes of the still handsomer 
 mother inside. 
 
 Catherine looking back at him flung out an appealing 
 hand. Her impulses seldom failed to accomplish something, 
 not always, though, what she had intended. That officer s 
 face, surely, she had known somewhere at some time in 
 her life ? In a moment, as he rode up beside the wheel, 
 she remembered him and could have blushed had the cir 
 cumstances been of a rosier complexion. He was the young 
 garrison fop who had stared inside her bonnet coming 
 home from Quaker meeting. He had not recognized her, 
 for which she was thankful ; but she would have given him 
 her trust just the same. 
 " We are loyalists," she said, " Our servants have de- 
 
352 THE EOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 serted us, and our escort took the last of our supplies. We 
 can only beg, and this baby is hungry." 
 
 The baby had ceased crying to gaze at the officer s 
 charger backing and fretting against the bit. His rider 
 wore the busby and blue uniform of one of the hussar 
 regiments, setting off his Canadian tan. 
 
 " Monstrous ! " he exclaimed. " This country is inhabited 
 by a race of brutes." 
 
 "Your cousins," said Catherine, "and my brothers: you 
 speak to a native-born. Most of these people around us have 
 heard what your our Indians did at Fort Edward ! " 
 
 " Great God, ma am ! That was a horrid affair ! That 
 will stick to us longer than our Indian allies. But our gen 
 eral is maligned. He did his best to hold the savage pack 
 in leash." 
 
 " I fear the general does not know Indians. These peo 
 ple do. They are leaving and driving their cattle before 
 them. I have offered this team and carriage to any one 
 who would go with us to Albany, and feed us on the road. 
 There *s no one left to take me up." 
 
 " You are not going to Albany now, you know : we are 
 headed the other way ; and our commissariat has van 
 ished like a dream. We are waiting now for the bateaux 
 to catch up. Let me introduce you to Madame de Riedesel, 
 however. She has a rascal of a cook who is the king of 
 foragers. Trust a German woman to look after her hus 
 band s larder ! " 
 
 " Oh, but I should not wish to go to her again. We were 
 sent to her house yesterday. Such a scene of misery ! Ma 
 dame was quite unable to do anything for persons like us." 
 
 " But did you see her ? Only a servant? That s quite 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 353 
 
 another how-dy-do ! Come with me now, before we move 
 on." 
 
 Captain Wilford had quickly placed the two pretty wo 
 men each in her own class, and addressed Catherine as the 
 leader. 
 
 " Can the mother hold your horses ? We 11 take this 
 little man with us. He shall beg his own breakfast. Lord, 
 how madame would like to have one of her own like him ! 
 hers are all girls. She has them here with her ! on the 
 march." 
 
 He put Catherine upon his horse, tossed up the boy hi 
 front of her, and marching alongside, with a bright look 
 back at Charlotte, he poured out his heart to his fasci 
 nating companion, thrilled with her maiden eyes and her 
 voice of lyric laughter bordering tears. It was war-time 
 love-making every step of the way on his part. But why 
 should Catherine care ! as compared with that girl in the 
 Quaker bonnet, she felt old enough to be his mother. The 
 young officer evidently had not grown an inch; but now 
 the kindness of his heart was stirred. 
 
 " The baroness fed nigh upon thirty of us yesterday, with 
 her houseful of sick and wounded, as you saw and poor 
 Eraser laid out in the next room. Took off the wine-glasses 
 and flowers and silver from her dining-table to lay him 
 there. She s the best German auxiliary / know. Lady 
 Harriet Ackland s just got word the major s wounded and 
 a prisoner. Madame has her to advise and comfort, expect 
 ing her own husband any moment to be fetched in." 
 
 They came to a stop where a covered calash was drawn 
 to one side, a man in the dress of a jager standing by the 
 team. Two little girls were skipping about talking to him. 
 
354 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 A maid in a cap with Jlebbe heated coffee over a brazier on 
 the ground, while a second woman seated on a pile of camp- 
 luggage cuddled a small child on her lap ; tears running 
 down her face, which was swollen and red with much pre 
 vious weeping. 
 
 The legs of a man, booted and spurred and covered with 
 mud, projected helpless from the hooded seat of the calash. 
 
 " Good God, is the general wounded? " 
 
 "St! pardon, Herr Captain! He sleeps on madame s 
 shoulder. Has not the clothes had off two nights and two 
 days already ! " the jager explained respectfully, drawing 
 near. 
 
 To some question asked in German by a sweet voice 
 from the carriage, " Rockel," as the voice addressed him, 
 went up close to the wheel. 
 
 " Madame desires her compliments. Will the Herr Cap 
 tain come and speak with her ? But soft, soft, sir, if you 
 please!" 
 
 Standing at the captain s side, Rockel holding her 
 horse, Catherine also drew near and saw a pale little blue- 
 eyed woman looking down at her earnestly. A tall man, 
 haggard, unshaven, dressed in a soiled but splendid uniform 
 of the Brunswickers, leaned against her shoulder, insen 
 sible with sleep. 
 
 She smiled brightly. " Good morning, captain ! How 
 is poor Major Harnage this morning ? Thank God ! " she 
 replied, on being told the major would live. " My husband 
 you see forgets his troubles ! No, we shall not disturb 
 he sleeps as a ploughman ! Aye, a sad harvest was yester 
 day. Who is that pretty child you have there ? Ach, little 
 man ! hungry ? No supper last evening ? Ach Gott ! speak 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS S55 
 
 to the women, Rockel ; they have not one head between 
 them this morning. Are you the mother, madame ? No : he 
 has not the look of an English child. But do not be em 
 barrassed to take what little I am able to offer. I would I 
 possessed the widow s how do you say in English ? 
 Such needs, and brave hearts so many, and empty stomachs ! 
 Have you yourselves eaten at all since yesterday ? Yester 
 day morning ! " 
 
 " And driving a pair of dragged-out horses all last night 
 with the rear," the captain interjected. 
 
 " There are many others who have eaten as little and 
 walked," said Catherine. 
 
 " Ach, what women are the English ! " 
 
 " From what we hear, madaine, permit me, there are 
 some German ladies I think could give us lessons in cam 
 paigning ! " 
 
 "You are too kind, mademoiselle! That will be my 
 friend Captain Wilford says such things." Madame smiled 
 at Catherine s companion. " One night a leetle bowl of 
 soup I gave him: I shall be for that bowl of soup for 
 ever canonized ? Is that how you say made a saint ? " 
 
 " Canon-ized. it is, dear madame a saintship under 
 fire ! " said the gallant aid-de-camp. 
 
 " Have you no servant you could send for these things, 
 mademoiselle," Rockel had brought a great store in a 
 basket of Indian make, " or will you let Rockel attend 
 you?" 
 
 " I am quite able to carry or we are, may I say, cap 
 tain ? all we shall need for the present, baroness. We 
 must not accept more, for who knows what claims you 
 still may have to meet ? " 
 
356 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Children first, then wounded men and women. But this 
 cannot last ; either we shall retreat or be taken. For what 
 do we stop now, captain ? " 
 
 The aid explained. Madame shrugged her shoulders. 
 Some movement of her sleeper closed her part in the col 
 loquy. She smiled her farewells, holding out a pretty hand. 
 
 Catherine put her lips to it in silence. The little boy, 
 held up against the captain s breast, had been watching 
 the lady fixedly. Of a sudden he leaned toward her, smacked 
 his own cold, rosy little palm, and held it out. 
 
 There was a cheer from the hungry soldiers looking on. 
 Many of the weary night-marchers who stepped out of rank 
 to let them pass smiled at the singular group : the aid-de 
 camp leading his charger that carried a girl with a sweet 
 home face, an alien-looking, beauteous child held before 
 her on her knee. They might have been Virgin America 
 when England and America were one, protecting the blood 
 of a new race, the hope of many nations, the heir of a 
 nation yet to be. 
 
 " I shall keep an eye on you through madame," said the 
 captain in parting. " She will not forget you ; nor shall I ! " 
 
 His duties would not permit him to stay and share the 
 feast he had helped provide. He tore himself away from 
 these charming provincials, and they never saw each other 
 again. 
 
 The army moved on, but was soon halted, a reconnoi 
 tring party of Americans being within sight and near 
 enough, the German officers thought, to have been captured, 
 Burgoyne not being of their opinion. 
 
 Rain began to fall ; the long rain that continued over 
 the 9th. Toward evening Saratoga was reached, but half 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 357 
 
 an hour s march from the place where a whole day had 
 been spent in the chilling storm. 
 
 The shelter of the carriage was now shared by a wounded 
 foot-soldier whom the girls could not pass by. Two others 
 had climbed on the traveling cases behind. No tents were 
 set up ; the greatest misery and disorder prevailed. By the 
 roadside Charlotte made supper in the rain. Stragglers 
 stood around and watched her patiently. To one, a Cana 
 dian rifleman who spoke no English, Catherine offered 
 supper if he would go out and forage for her team ; which 
 he did with great success, helping himself in common with 
 many others from General Schuyler s well-filled barns. 
 She tried her hand at a little domestic surgery in aid of 
 her wounded. They were cheerful lads, asking questions 
 indiscriminately and bringing out answers according to the 
 point of view answers that sometimes ignored the pre 
 sence of ladies. 
 
 Of a wet and slouching camp-follower, one inquired 
 whose big house it was lighted up as for a banquet. 
 
 General Schuyler s country-seat, he was told and a 
 banquet, sure enough! General Burgoyne was sitting 
 there at supper, with his friends and his lass beside him, 
 the pretty wife of a commissary, as fond of champagne as 
 himself. 
 
 " And what a hang would e care where is sick an 
 wounded are a layin out to-night? E s appy. And a 
 horder comin to em if he makes connections with Lord 
 Owe. This ain t a retreat, this ain t. It s puss in the 
 
 corner, by G ! Puss-puss-puss ! E 11 keep on a 
 
 hollerin to Owe, but the Yankees 11 answer im." 
 
 Catherine had been considering if this were not a per- 
 
358 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 missible time to send in her father s letter to the com 
 manding general; but such speeches, though probably 
 untrue, she thought, were discouraging. Her own eyes 
 were able to contrast the spirit of that scene in General 
 Schuyler s dining-room with the mud and gloom and wretch 
 edness outside. 
 
 Early on the following morning they were in motion 
 again, and again were halted; this time it was said for 
 the distribution of rations, sorely needed ; but with one 
 delay and another and much Puss, puss ! the Americans 
 gained time to answer ; and about two o clock that after 
 noon the answer came. 
 
 Non-combatants were seen in every direction looking for 
 shelter as a terrific cannonading began three thousand 
 New York and Vermont militia across the narrow Hudson, 
 Morgan s Virginian riflemen in the rear, New Englanders 
 guarding all the fords : Burgoyne was surrounded. 
 
 Catherine s horses bore the firing well. Her father had 
 delivered many a charge of buckshot from the saddle over 
 their heads ; but, excited as they, she let them gallop across 
 the deadly field. There was a large house on a hill toward 
 which many persons were running. The American gunners, 
 mistaking it for a general s headquarters, opened fire 
 upon it. 
 
 As Catherine tore across to gain its shelter, Madame de 
 Riedesel was holding the door of the cellar a few steps 
 below the ground against a mob of the able-bodied that 
 threatened to break in. Her own children were crouched 
 beneath the stairs. The floor was covered with sick and 
 wounded men. 
 
 Cannon-balls struck the house and rolled through the 
 
MEN OF THE GRANTS 359 
 
 empty rooms above, and women shrieked in the cellar. 
 The skulkers who beseiged that poor refuge had mostly 
 been frightened away before Catherine reached it. Her 
 horses were now unmanageable with the reins. She jumped 
 out and stood at their heads while the wounded climbed 
 down and the mother, kneeling in the bottom of the chaise, 
 covered her child s body with her own : that four-wheeler 
 with its conspicuous gray team was become a shining 
 mark. 
 
 If it was courage to stand there quieting her bonny 
 grays, Catherine did not know it. She was watching one of 
 her wounded, who had reached the cellar-entrance, and 
 then she hid her face. He staggered toward it, his good 
 arm shot off at the shoulder, and fell in a pool of blood as 
 the open door received him. 
 
 With shaking hands she unhooked traces, knotted reins, 
 and bade her friends farewell. The last bit of her home 
 was gone. She stood and watched her gallant grays a 
 moment her excitement was too great, her participation 
 too intense to leave room for fear. Then some one pulled 
 her into the cellar and shut the door. 
 
BOOK VII 
 
 "THE LIGHT LIES ON THE FARTHER 
 HILLS " 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 
 WE spare ourselves more than a passing allusion to 
 the air of that cellar. Madame de Riedesel who spent six 
 days in it did not escape so easily, even in memory. With 
 German exactness and hardihood she tells of what its 
 offenses were composed, and how, combined with the odor 
 from carious wounds, they affected the atmosphere those 
 herded prisoners breathed. 
 
 But there was nothing " that extraordinary German 
 woman " could not cope with. No sentimentalist was 
 she : as masterful as she was gracious, as intelligent as 
 she was kind and good ; and a thoroughgoing housewife 
 under all. 
 
 On a day when the firing turned off in another di 
 rection, she emptied the cellar of its frightened folk, and 
 commanding such workers as she could muster, caused 
 the floors to be swept and the awful place to be fumigated 
 with vinegar sprinkled on hot coals ; and spoke of it re 
 spectfully and with gratitude, when her work was done, 
 as " spacious and well-vaulted." 
 
 She classified and divided up the company, having the 
 dangerously wounded and the dying carried into the end 
 cellar, where two narrow windows near the roof let in a little 
 fresh air. Soldiers wives and miscellaneous persons were 
 in the middle compartment, while the two ladies who be 
 sides herself were still with the army, her children, and a 
 few of the least injured officers, were in the outer cellar 
 
364 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 next the door. Of this assemblage she took command, 
 passing from room to room doing deeds of mercy. 
 
 Lady Ackland had been sent with a flag into the Amer 
 ican lines to nurse her husband, a gentle incident made 
 much of at the time, to offset some others that have been 
 but too well preserved. The little company in the outer 
 cellar was confined to persons of a certain rank who had 
 shared the campaign and were friends now, if strangers 
 when it began. Into this intimate circle, saddened by the 
 approaching death of Captain Reynal (whose wife was one 
 of the two army ladies), Catherine preferred not to enter: 
 certainly not without Charlotte, who was more at home in 
 the middle cellar, with reason, Catherine owned, seeing 
 the difference that was made by these ladies and gentlemen 
 between herself and her sister companion. To introduce 
 another child at the " troublesome age " into small quarters 
 where there were three already was another reason for 
 resisting the baroness s invitation, urged upon Catherine, 
 but somewhat casually including Charlotte. 
 
 Catherine remained with her sister, when not caring 
 for the wounded under madame s direction. 
 
 A scarcity of water began to be felt almost immedi 
 ately, yet no soldier could be asked to go for it with those 
 Yankee outposts across the river defended by marksmen, 
 watching the western shore. 
 
 " They won t fire on a woman," said Charlotte. She 
 put on a long, full cloak of blue homespun, coifed her 
 head with a white handkerchief, and went forth, carrying 
 her pails. 
 
 No one offered much remonstrance. It was true, 
 " they " would not shoot a woman ; at least, they never 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 365 
 
 had, except a squaw. Neither did any one praise her for 
 taking the risk: an apathy follows intense experiences 
 over-sensationalized. 
 
 Catherine was with madam e in the inner cellar, where 
 one of the wounded had just died in agony. Captain Rey- 
 nal s wife, a new-made widow, recalled her own bitter 
 hour in a burst of wild weeping. The water was eagerly 
 welcomed, and Charlotte had her reward when she took 
 her little son in her lap and watched him drink his fill 
 and look up at her and throw himself back upon her 
 breast, kicking with satisfaction. 
 
 Catherine stood and looked on, smiling, with shining 
 eyes. She had just heard where the water came from. 
 
 " What a woman you are ! " She put her arms about 
 Charlotte and kissed her. " Let me go this time, mother 
 of a boy!" 
 
 " Don t ask me ! Everything else you can do. I have 
 the strong arms." 
 
 " But I hunger for the air," Catherine said, with subtlety. 
 " If I could go to the river and look at the hills once more ! " 
 Charlotte saw through her. 
 
 There came a summons for Mistress Yelverton, wanted 
 by madame. 
 
 "That is your call, sister, and this is mine. It com 
 forts me ! Did you see my baby drinking ? " They kissed 
 each other again by way of explanation, and Charlotte 
 went forth a second time with her pails. 
 
 " Another reason why she could n t go," she continued 
 the argument with herself, " is, they would n t allow it. 
 Ladies can t bear to see other ladies doing menial work. 
 She might give them her life, but not carry pails of water." 
 
366 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 She smiled at her own penetration, yet not bitterly. Her 
 strength was equal to the call; and there was one lady, 
 the loveliest who loved her ! 
 
 On her way back she came upon one of the " casual 
 ties " of the day : a boy who looked not over twenty in the 
 scarlet and facings of the Grenadiers, Major Ackland s 
 brave fellows who carried General Fraser s body up the hill, 
 under fire, at a funeral step. His beardless face was chalk 
 white. He crawled on hands and knees, hidden by the 
 bushes from the marksmen ; but as his wound was in the 
 neck, it was a bad position for him. The bloody cloth he 
 wore was soaked ; blood trickled from it into his breast 
 and dripped upon his hands. He asked for water, and 
 Charlotte set one pail down, resting the other on her knee 
 while he drank. 
 
 "You ought to have that wound dressed very soon, 
 brother," she said gently. " You are losing too much 
 blood. Could you stand up and walk as far as that house 
 with a bend in the roof, the big house on the hill ? See it?" 
 
 " Ho, walk ! No walkin for me. Look you over there, 
 my lass ! See they trenches ? There s none may walk across 
 this ell of a hill i the face o they. Every man-jack be 
 hind em ath an eye like an awk." 
 
 " Where do you come from ? " asked Charlotte, for the 
 lad s hair was as black as a Spaniard s and he had eyes to 
 match, with lashes like a woman s. 
 
 " Cornwall s my country, parish of Redruth. Heard 
 you ever o that place, missus ? Might ha coom fro theer 
 yourself by the look o thee." 
 
 " I have walked across the hill and down to the river, 
 you see." 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 367 
 
 " Ho ! but you re a wumman." 
 
 " I can make a woman of you, so far as they can see. 
 Take off your coat." She helped him with the sleeves ; he 
 flushed and grunted as the swollen muscles of his neck 
 felt the strain. 
 
 " Now, what be goin to do, eh ? " 
 
 Charlotte had taken off her own cloak and laid it about 
 his shoulders. " Sit up a little and let me fix it. It will 
 not hook over the bandage. Now you shall be me, the 
 woman in a blue cloak and kerchief. Shall I lighten the 
 pail ? You can carry only one ; you must hold your cloak 
 together." 
 
 "What! a handkycher round me face like a maid? 
 B ain t I a rosebud, eh ? Wisht I d ad a shave this 
 marnin ! Gi s a kiss, then, now I be a wumman same as 
 thee." 
 
 " No, you don t need that. But I hope you 11 get 
 through." 
 
 "What about thyself?" 
 
 " After a while I shall come ; not now. They must see 
 only one. I can go back at any time. You see, I still look 
 like a woman." 
 
 " That ye do, an a fine one ! Happy s the man that 
 owns thee. So, I don t get the kiss, pretty as I be ? " 
 
 " Make haste, now, while your strength lasts." She 
 helped him to rise and kneeling drew his arm over her 
 shoulder, supporting him as he swayed dizzily. " It will 
 pass," she said. " Perhaps I d better lighten the pail ? " 
 
 " Yes, better," came the answer faintly. 
 
 " But you must lean a little do you hear me ? and 
 stick out one arm as if the pail were heavy." 
 
368 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " Oh, I can lean ! I can lean clear over if I must ! Don t 
 think it 11 be a go." 
 
 " It surely won t be if you give up before you try. 
 Come, I will kiss you ! " 
 
 He stooped toward her, his eyes closing, and she slapped 
 him in the face. It hurt her to do it and it hurt his 
 wound. But he straightened up in a fury, his color rush 
 ing back. 
 
 " Poor boy ! A cruel kiss, but go while it lasts." 
 
 She supported him. He shook her off and started. 
 
 A long time she waited, watching his progress, and 
 doubtless it seemed longer to him ; but he reached the 
 house. The blue spot vanished. So ; he was safe. And 
 what would he do with his life ? not much, perhaps, but he 
 loved it. Others there might be who loved it, too. 
 
 Rain began to patter down on the hard little leaves of 
 the huckleberry-bushes. She put on her soldier s coat and 
 buttoned it tight and warm. A little way off on the bloody 
 grass where he fell was the bearskin he had worn. Mon 
 strous headgear for a man to march and fight under, 
 through the heat of an American summer. How cruel were 
 the Lords of War to the cheap varieties of human flesh 
 that served their purpose ! 
 
 She moved down the hill to examine for the first time 
 close this famous headpiece. She tried it on. It covered 
 her eyebrows. However, one had only to arrange one s 
 hair a little different and tighten the chin-chain, and it 
 stays; now she could see out beneath the strange, hot, 
 heavy thing. 
 
 The rain fell faster, shutting shore from shore. She 
 seated herself and waited. 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 369 
 
 " I thank thee, God, for these last few days," she whis 
 pered meekly, as though drawing near to rest. All the 
 storm and hate and passion were gone out of her soul. 
 
 Suddenly the sun shone forth as he sank below a cloud- 
 curtain lifting in the west. A glory filled the landscape. 
 All the eastern hills stood with their fixed summits crowned 
 in light. Shadows shrank, and a world of color and glitter 
 sprang to life from tree and wold and river ; and where, 
 an hour before, the rain-draped shore had faded opposite, 
 back it came, a near neighbor with a face of smiles. 
 
 Turning toward that momentary burst of glory and 
 stepping higher, a little higher, Charlotte left her shelter. 
 Now the bushes hid her only to the knees : her head rose 
 clear against the cold blue northern hills. 
 
 All the light of those concentrated beams enkindled in 
 the west, struck back upon her head and face in strong 
 revealment : a woman s face, a woman s pallor, and a wo 
 man s smile when her soul goes out in banishment of self. 
 
 But all that could be seen across the river behind those 
 deadly trenches was the spot a red coat makes, and the 
 unmistakable hat of a grenadier. 
 
 " There s a fellow now ! Can you get him ? " 
 
 A young farmer rose on one elbow to reload. The other 
 hitched his piece to his shoulder. 
 
 " Got him." 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 
 BATTY con Id not go to sleep that night without his 
 mother. His sobs and cries disturbed the wounded. Little 
 Frederika awoke on her side of the partition, and cried 
 her best for sympathy. Finally Madame de Riedesel s 
 voice was heard at the door : " Can anything be done to 
 stop that baby?" 
 
 " A good spank is what e need," said a soldier s wife, 
 conscious of a will to administer it. 
 
 " Try one o the mother s songs on him," said another. 
 
 Batty listened, long enough to be quite sure the voice 
 in the dark singing, 
 
 " O never despise the soldier lad 
 Though his station be but low o ! " 
 
 was not his mother s, and broke into fresh howls. 
 
 "Where is his mother?" asked madame. The soldier 
 who came back in Charlotte s blue cloak began his story 
 over again. 
 
 " Please don t ! " said Catherine. " Wait till to-morrow. 
 The boy understands that we are talking about her." 
 
 Next day it was a common soldier s wife who brought 
 water up the hill and went and came, courage being of 
 one woman no more than one man, in a world given to un 
 expected incidents of this sort. Madame de Riedesel, whose 
 diary chiefly relates to the army and persons in it or con 
 nected with it, celebrates this woman s devotion; which 
 went on for many days and was rewarded with a hatful 
 of money. 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 371 
 
 Of Charlotte s one trip, and the one when she did not 
 return, madame says nothing : perhaps she never knew ; 
 it was chiefly spoken of in the middle cellar. But Charlotte 
 had her reward. 
 
 The soldier s wife brought word that a female spy, a 
 woman young and of great beauty, had been found and 
 buried among the British dead, dressed in the coat and hat 
 of a grenadier ; shot by her own side probably before she 
 had completed the work of her disguise. Thus the tale 
 which the young Cornishman could only tell in part was 
 finished, for those who held the clew. 
 
 With shamefaced sympathy, he gave back the cloak 
 and kerchief, blaming his own " carcass " they had cov 
 ered. Catherine took them reverently, and assured him 
 that he had nothing with which to reproach himself. 
 
 " Had you not accepted, you would have taken from her 
 a joy she richly deserved." 
 
 What was meant precisely by these words the soldier 
 found himself unable to see ; neither did it matter. 
 
 It was Catherine s humble belief that now she would be 
 nearer her sister than ever she had been while the veil of 
 mortality lay between them. It was waiting, she knew, 
 that peace which unites us finally to those with whom we 
 have come into the last, most perfect understanding, where 
 no word can pass to hinder or estrange. 
 
 But there were days of unnatural strain between this time 
 and that : the excitement of the war-drama rushing on out 
 side; the tax upon nerves unused to witnessing so much 
 raw physical suffering ; the anxiety for her father, like a 
 deep under-pain. Catherine thought of him and of Bassy 
 together (and with the same pain) as she had seen them last, 
 
372 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 her father s hand on Bassy s shoulder, helping him with his 
 orders as a man respects another s duty who has tried to 
 do his own. 
 
 Following those six days in the cellar came the scenes of 
 the surrender, still spoken of by British historians as the 
 " convention " of Saratoga. 
 
 But the honorable terms General Gates had granted 
 Burgoyne and Washington had approved, our Congress of 
 that day saw fit to revoke on some quibble that put the 
 army and the country to shame. 
 
 The "convention troops " thought they were bound for 
 England within a few weeks at the outside. But eight years 
 of exile were to pass with Madame de Riedesel and her 
 husband before she was to see him ride into the great 
 square of his own city amid the sobs and cheers of those 
 who welcomed back the sad little remnant of his army. 
 
 We leave the prisoners of war and the protectioners at 
 Albany, where doors were opened gladly to friends and gen 
 erously to vanquished enemies. But Catherine went alone to 
 the house on North Pearl Street, where " Aunt Schuyler " 
 was expecting her. 
 
CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 THE autumn twilights were lengthening. Catherine no 
 longer took her walk in the garden after supper, before time 
 for putting Batty-boy to bed. Candles would now be lighted, 
 and Madam s knitting brought forth, a signal that she was 
 ready for the evening s reading. 
 
 To-night, however, Catherine had no little boy to hear 
 his prayers ; it was Batty s father who carried him up to 
 bed, followed by Amanda, the same giddy, black mocker, 
 sobered now, who once was Charlotte s peculiar detestation. 
 
 Captain Dunbar was up on leave from his regiment s 
 station on the Hudson. He had come to bid his child good- 
 by; for Catherine was leaving Madam Schuyler s house 
 in the morning to join her father in Canada, and Batty-boy 
 was going with " Aunt Catherine." She had coveted this 
 trust, claiming it, indeed; and Captain Dunbar took his 
 great relief and joy in it soberly, as one might say, in the 
 fear of God. He rested his few acknowledgments to Cath 
 erine on commonplace grounds : until the war was ended 
 he, a man without family connections, could not give his 
 child a home. 
 
 This had been talked over in Madam Schuyler s presence, 
 though she took no heed of their conversation. She had 
 fallen into a musing habit; much that was said she ap 
 peared willing to lose. Her eyes were seldom raised now 
 in one of those strong, penetrating looks through which 
 her powers of apprehension and of will had been wont 
 to impress themselves. 
 
374 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 These signs of age in her beloved friend fell upon Cath 
 erine heavily at parting. She was facing this, and other 
 partings, alone for a few moments in the garden. The win 
 dows of the dining-room were still dark, but for an occa 
 sional flash of firelight. 
 
 From the bedroom window where he sat with his little 
 boy on his knee, Bassy could watch Catherine walking to 
 and fro. He looked once, and then shut out the vision. This 
 hour belonged to the past, the years of that dull, remorseful 
 sickness he had carried in his breast ; and here was his 
 little son. 
 
 As he came down into the hall, he was still divided. 
 The effect of his love for Catherine in the strange tumult 
 of this parting caused him to watch himself in every side- 
 relation, lest by some word or slip he mar, for all the time 
 to come, her last impressions of him. She would refuse to 
 acknowledge that they were on a different footing, yet in 
 the short hour left he must claim the right so long denied 
 him, however little it might mean to her, the man s right 
 to assert his truth to the first, constant, and highest demand 
 of his whole being. His sense of the difficulty of what he 
 had to say by far outweighed his hopes as to her way of 
 taking it. He was not conscious of any expectation beyond 
 that she would hear him and remember what he had said, 
 till time gave him his chance to repeat it. " But what we 
 call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed 
 hope." 
 
 Yet after all he did not go into the garden. An old 
 negro servant crossed the hall, with candles in a branched 
 candlestick illuminating his white woolly poll. He held 
 the door open for Bassy. 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 375 
 
 Mechanically he went in. Madam sat in the dining- 
 room, alone. She had conquered much of her feeling for 
 class, through her Christianity and common sense, but she 
 could not forget and showed it that Captain Dunbar, 
 in spite of his new epaulets (Continental uniforms counted 
 for little in her eyes), had been a young man " raised" as 
 it were on her nephew s estate, admitted to his office, his 
 library perhaps, but not to his table. She had heard that 
 he was or had been one of the notorious " Green Mountain 
 Boys." This Catherine refuted with all the particulars, 
 which Madam found confusing, not convincing. 
 
 But when this unexplainable person began to talk of 
 General Philip Schuyler, the strong color coming into his 
 face with the thrill of his indignant pride, she looked at 
 him suddenly and keenly and long. She shut her lips. 
 Her dark eyes glistened. The knitting trembled in her 
 hands that could not find the stitches. 
 
 General Gates had been put over her nephew s head in 
 the hour that should have been his own. That she had 
 heard. How his humiliation had been worked for and ac 
 complished that also she knew. What she waited to hear 
 was how her Philip had taken it. Had he kept " his fine 
 unruffled soul " ? 
 
 To Madam his aunt, Philip Schuyler, the man of great 
 ideals, the friend of Washington, the high-minded patriot 
 and lover of his country, was still her boy : asking advice 
 what profession he should follow, marrying too soon and 
 not repenting ! A gay, debonair, laughter-loving lad. Ah ! 
 how the house missed all that bygone laughter ! Not this 
 house, but the one she should never see again. 
 
 Peter, third of the name and her husband s heir, was 
 
376 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 dead long ago, with Gertrude, his beautiful young wife ; 
 their little Peter 4th had taken the "wrong side." Cortland 
 was dead, and Philip, her own favorite of all her husband s 
 nephews, had confounded all her hopes in him, and behold 
 his reward ! She knew how he was entertaining Burgoyne, 
 who burned his country house that was a matter of 
 course ; but how had her Philip borne himself to General 
 Gates? 
 
 The language of this young Continental officer was really 
 extraordinary, considering. Madam gave him her deepest 
 attention. One might have supposed him to be a personal 
 friend of General Schuyler s, instructed through the finest 
 sympathy in his motives and trials in the unhappy service 
 he had chosen. 
 
 Catherine meanwhile had entered quietly; she took a 
 low seat near Madam s chair. Her presence altered the 
 current of the old lady s thoughts. Presently, in her deep, 
 husky voice she observed : 
 
 " How can they drive Colonel Yelverton into exile when 
 they have no proof of any charge against him?" 
 
 " He is not driven, dear aunt. He goes himself. All 
 his friends are gone," said Catherine, smoothing mat 
 ters. 
 
 " I understood there were conditions attached to his re 
 lease that would be wounding to any gentleman s dignity, 
 if he remained." 
 
 " Not of necessity, I think," said Captain Dunbar. 
 " There can be nothing binding in restrictions you have 
 no desire to exceed." 
 
 * I cannot understand why he still is under surveillance : 
 I suppose that is what such conditions mean ? Did not my 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 377 
 
 godchild testify to his absolute ignorance of her unhappy 
 attempt?" 
 
 " She gave it under oath, Madam. She refused the im 
 munity offered her at her benefactor s expense." 
 
 " My good Charlotte would have done that. She was a 
 child, but she had a noble heart. I always said justice 
 was never done that poor girl." 
 
 In the deep silence Catherine covered her face. Bassy s 
 eyes were on the fire ; his expression was unreadable. 
 
 " And what will be done about the colonel s property ? 
 Is that to be safe?" 
 
 " It will be sequestered and sold at public auction," said 
 Captain Dunbar. 
 
 " On what grounds, pray, if the charge was not sus 
 tained?" 
 
 " On the grounds that he is a Tory absentee, and that 
 money is needed to feed hungry men in the American 
 army." 
 
 " It is an infamous act, whoever may be responsible ! " 
 
 "It is an act of war, madam." 
 
 " Then thy father will lose everything ! He will have 
 nothing to come back to. I shall never see you, either of 
 you, again, if General Washington s armies win the day." 
 
 Catherine moved closer and laid her hand on Madam s 
 lap, who stroked it tremulously. Her voice was thick and 
 broken. " Two more gone ! There is nothing left but part 
 ings. Would I might go myself ! 
 
 " Captain Dunbar, do you honor us with your company 
 to-morrow? I have had you a bed prepared." 
 
 " I thank you, madam. I sleep at General Schuyler s. 
 I must very presently take leave, with thanks for your 
 
378 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 hospitality and your kindness to my little boy. He is 
 greatly improved since you took him under your roof." 
 
 Madam looked at him, startled. To her, it was Char 
 lotte s child she had sheltered. Who could this be ? 
 
 " I am bewildered," she said. " I did not remember. 
 Catherine, dear, is this Charlotte s husband ? " she whis 
 pered. 
 
 " Yes, dear aunt.". 
 
 * Forgive me, sir, forgive me ! An old woman s forge t- 
 fulness. I have not understood to whom I was speaking. 
 I should have written to you, but I am much bewil. 
 dered ! " 
 
 As she rose, awaiting help, Catherine placed herself at 
 one side and Bassy took the other, offering his arm. 
 
 Madam stepped back and looked at him strangely. 
 
 " I did not think I should ever bring myself to rest 
 upon an arm that has given its strength to this unholy 
 rebellion." 
 
 " Unless it were the arm of one of your brave nephews 
 engaged in it, aunt," said Catherine. 
 
 " I am sorry my sword-arm offends you, madam. If 
 Catherine will change sides, and you give me leave, I can 
 offer you with my duty the one that is nearest the heart." 
 
 If Madam Schuyler perceived these young persons 
 were bent on humoring her, the knowledge did not hurt. 
 It was pleasant to hear young male tones in her house 
 once more. Gallant speeches did not offend her, and if 
 Bassy s unpracticed effort did homage to her present help 
 lessness rather than to the grandeur of her past, that was 
 his way of regarding it. 
 
 He and Catherine exchanged silent looks over the aged 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 379 
 
 head between them, in its marvelous flutings and wrap 
 pings of gauze, the head that had done so much weari 
 some thinking for others and now must go bent to the 
 grave under the weight of the storm. 
 
 Bassy, in his plain regimentals of the poorest paid 
 army in the world, looked to Catherine somehow a nobler 
 than the noblest Schuyler of them all ; and they were all 
 watching him from the portraits above the wainscot, those 
 keen, world-wise faces in flowing wigs and steenkirks, 
 some with the merchant s globe and inkstand, some in 
 breastplates with hand on sword. What they would have 
 done with their pens and swords in a crisis like the present, 
 let the history of their ancestors in the sixteenth century 
 bear witness. 
 
 They smiled discreetly on the tall, deep-browed young 
 Continental. " The Republic of the United States," one 
 of our foremost writers has said, " is far more the child 
 of the Dutch Republic than of England." 
 
 " Give me your arm, sir. Catherine need not * change 
 sides. It is true I do not like the color of your coat, but 
 who am I to dispute about colors ! " 
 
 The old Madam s eyes grew filmy. "My loved ones 
 will leave me, whether in the scarlet or the blue. It will 
 make no difference in their graves. You will excuse my 
 withdrawing so early, Captain Dunbar ; and pardon, sir, 
 any words of mine spoken in ignorance of your great 
 trial ! The aged cannot keep pace with the lives of the 
 young. We stand still while the world spins away from 
 us. Good-night, Catherine. Come to me, dear, before you 
 sleep. I wish you both good-night," she repeated. A ser 
 vant met her and closed the door. 
 
380 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 The younger ones reseated themselves with a sense of 
 difficulty and yet of relief. Their difficulties were at least 
 their own. They felt the moments going while both clung 
 to the sense of rest in each other s presence so long 
 denied. 
 
 Catherine sprang up, her face full of color, saying in 
 her old, impetuous way, leaving all to the understand 
 ing of her company, 
 
 " It has never been 4 you in this war. You ought to 
 know that, Bassy ! Never with me. 4 Us, always us ; but 
 I told you I was dumb. In Canada I shall pray for our 
 country, with your little boy at my knees : for his father 
 and his father s sword. Fight hard, my brother ! " 
 
 It struck Catherine that her confession of a daughter s 
 apostasy was received with singular coldness. She was 
 disappointed in the effect of her words. 
 
 " If you pray for me, Catherine, you may leave out the 
 
 * brother, " said Bassy. She had given him his opening. 
 
 " Does it mean so little to you ? We are not rich in 
 brothers and sisters " 
 
 " It means to me more than I am able to bear any 
 longer, and not anything I want. I do not ask how far 
 you can go ; but if you think of me at all, I wish your 
 thoughts might begin, now, to take the right direction." 
 
 " If I think of you at all ! " 
 
 " I can go no farther on the road of brother 
 
 * friend anything of that sort. To be honest with you, 
 at last, is too great a good to play with. Let me keep 
 that, if I am to have nothing more. Tell me that from 
 this forth you will try to think of me a little as I am 
 forced to think of you, or shut you out of my mind again. 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 381 
 
 Forgive me," he continued, as she would not speak ; 
 " I am leaving in an hour. Forgive my hammering at 
 your door. I ask for my life." 
 
 " If it could do any good," she said. " It will only 
 bring more sorrow." 
 
 " Sorrow ! " he groaned. " I wish I might know sor 
 row. Those who have sorrows have had joys. Unhappiness 
 is nothing. Have you had much to boast of in the way of 
 happiness since you were a child, Catherine ? " 
 
 " Mine stopped while I was a child," said she. " In 
 England I knew not the word. Sometimes, with papa, 
 great gladness, but mostly a steady nipping, pruning down. 
 The summer I came home, oh, what a summer ! " She 
 drew a deep breath. " That was the reaction, I suppose. 
 I should hate to think I could go out of my senses with 
 no excuse at all. But happy I was not ; I was not sure " 
 
 Bassy s eyes did not leave her face. She softened and 
 trembled under his long, mute question. At last it found 
 words. 
 
 " Catherine by chance, have you ever heard the true 
 story of my marriage ? " 
 
 " All of it," she cried. 
 
 " Thank God ! Then I need never try to tell it. Thank 
 God ! " 
 
 " I only knew it too late after wronging you in my 
 thoughts for years. I treated you like a boy who has sold 
 himself out of his manhood." 
 
 " That does not matter. Are your thoughts of me clear 
 in that direction, now ? " 
 
 " Absolutely." 
 
 " I still have your respect ? " 
 
382 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " There could be no one I respect more." 
 
 " Then, with me, you could feel as it were sure ? Hap 
 piness, you know, is the last thing ! It might come, on a 
 good foundation, dug out of a man s mistakes paid for, 
 I hope. Some things are possible but not all, when the 
 start is false." 
 
 " Dear Bassy ! I stand outside with my own mis 
 takes. If you come to me for anything, ask for the crown 
 I told you belonged to you, years ago." 
 
 She had touched a nerve of passionate remembrance. 
 It thrilled in her sight. 
 
 " The truth, that day, would have been more to me than 
 many crowns." 
 
 " I know it, I knew it then, but I was tied. And learn 
 ing to my shame what trouble comes of a girl s keeping 
 the secret of her love for the sake of the man who has 
 won it. If he has n t the grace to be proud of it but I 
 told you I was not sure." 
 
 " Were you sure of yourself, Catherine ? " 
 
 Truth is the strength of love. Bassy s eyes were fixed 
 on her in a quiet agony of attention. She bore on. 
 
 " I was sure I loved Francis Havergal as sure as I 
 am that I am cured of that love. It was his fault, not mine, 
 that I am not his wife to-day. Whether I should be happy, 
 you who know me can judge ! It was your way of doing 
 things or letting them alone that taught me what a woman 
 needs in the man whom she goes to every day for one 
 thing or another. My daddy, you know how I feel about 
 the colonel, he d always do the best things in the very 
 worst way, bless him ! You were the head and the hands 
 and the will, at Yelverton." 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 383 
 
 Now she was fumbling, and the nerve began to throb 
 again. "Are you listening to me, Catherine, because of 
 my head or my hands or my " 
 
 " O Bassy, Bassy ! Why won t you let me spare you ? 
 The other way will only wear you out ! " 
 
 44 Let me be the judge of that. If you would but give 
 me a moment s rest a word to do my waiting on ? The 
 war will not end this year nor next ; but when I come 
 for Batty, I shall come for you." 
 
 "I can never leave my father while he lives." 
 
 44 God grant he may live long ! But not in Canada. 
 Colonel Yelverton will not be happy in Canada." 
 
 44 No, he will not be happy. You know whom we shall 
 be thrown with if we go into society at all. Honors there 
 are for those who break their word of honor : my father 
 will hardly seek a commission in the Royal Greens! 
 These times are not our times, neither in England nor in 
 Canada. But while we are two, we shall stay together." 
 
 44 1 wish I could make you think a little better of us in 
 the Grants. Good men s memories grow sweet in absence. 
 Your father will have friends there, when he is gone." 
 
 44 The Grants will never understand my father ; mainly 
 because he s determined they shall not." 
 
 44 Those men are not befooled. There is a method in 
 their bitterness now. Certain acts they are forced to per 
 form ; and friction between a man s nature and his duty is 
 apt to heat up his way of doing it." 
 
 44 1 admit all that. The fact remains they have left him 
 nothing to come home to." 
 
 44 He will have Yelverton, if he be not too proud to take 
 back his own." 
 
384 THE ROYAL AMERICANS 
 
 " What did I hear you say to Madam Sehuyler ? " 
 
 " I shall own Yelverton you shall own Yelverton. 
 This could not be said before Madam. Your cousin buys 
 my Wallkill land which he does not want for a price 
 I never asked ; he craves a hand in the matter. Yelver 
 ton will go very cheap for ready money. Do you grasp 
 this, Catherine?" 
 
 Catherine s eyes shot laughter through their tears. " Is 
 it your American idea to buy me, Bassy 4 cheap ? " 
 
 " I shall not get thee cheap, my wife." (How did 
 Catherine know he had never used that word before!) 
 " Lord knows what the price has been. Has been may 
 I say it?" 
 
 " Oh, say anything if you really want to spend your 
 life in waiting ! Now I think you must go. / must go to 
 Madam. Give my love to Madame de Riedesel and to all 
 the Schuylers. Did I tell you the general was the first 
 to recognize me when we crawled out of that cellar into 
 the our lines ? The tender courtesy of that man ! Says 
 Madame de Riedesel but that shall wait, with all the 
 other things we have to talk over together. Come, you 
 must go." 
 
 She rose, flushed and trembling, a great pressure at her 
 heart. Bassy rose and stood tall above her, looking down 
 into her eyes. His soul clung to them, swooning in their 
 light. 
 
 " Let me have you, once, beloved one last moment 
 the first!" 
 
 She gave him his moment, a long one. Death was wait 
 ing, years were tolling off the chances of their ever meet 
 ing again. 
 
THE LIGHT ON THE FARTHER HILLS 385 
 
 He kissed her and looked into her face thinking " If I 
 die it will come between me and the last agony ; if I live 
 it shall teach me this is not the whole." 
 
 They lived to see their heavenly bow touch earth at the 
 other end, with all the glory of its brightening, its climb 
 ing, its fading in rain and mist, between. Bassy brought 
 them home all three. Catherine rewarded him for the 
 good fight he fought alone, and for his share in the coun 
 try s battles, and kept him up to his minor duties through 
 a long and honored life. 
 
 She loved Charlotte s boy better than she had loved 
 his mother till too late. He gave her more anxiety than 
 her own children all put together ; but she never was heard 
 to complain, more than saying once that life would be too 
 easy if one had only one s own to bring up. In her heart 
 she did not boast of it ; she considered it her share in what 
 she called the atonement : so we feel toward those who 
 have got no more out of life for themselves than a chance 
 to part with it nobly. 
 
 She comforted her old Tory father and laughed at his 
 prejudices, which he encouraged in himself as he did his 
 appetite for things that no longer agreed with him. He 
 was not greatly to be pitied. Though he would never take 
 back Yelverton for his own, he lived out his life there 
 and lorded it affectionately over all, beloved by all. The 
 Americans continued to irritate him, but an Englishman, 
 when he is thoroughly happy, is the better for being irri 
 tated somewhat ; it keeps his liver down. He enjoyed his 
 children s increasing wealth and consequence in propor 
 tion as he boasted himself ruined by the war. 
 
386 THE KOYAL AMERICANS 
 
 The good dominie passed to his reward and made 
 Catherine his heir. Aunt Gentrey passed to her reward 
 and did likewise. Francis, on her marriage, sent Cath 
 erine a deed of the Genesee valley lands, which she was 
 unable to refuse, knowing it to be his proud requital for 
 Bassy s deed to his mother. Francis could well afford 
 thus to square the account. 
 
 The colonel thought well of Francis s pride and very 
 well of his Genesee lands. None but Catherine could trace 
 the sad irony conveyed by that signature which laid them 
 mutely at her feet. Thus the name that made her heart 
 beat, once, was locked away among testaments and records 
 of the dead. 
 
 The great and bloody breach between England and her 
 late colonies did not of course begin to heal in Colonel 
 Yelverton s time. He looked on with interest though not 
 hopefully at American affairs ; and he called his grandsons 
 springing up about his knees his little royal Americans, 
 deriding gently in these relenting days that new po 
 litical dream of a sovereign people under God, accountable 
 to no authority save its own. His happiest memories went 
 back of the war of separation to those bygone Eoyal 
 Americans in red coats with blue facings, fighting men 
 of many breeds who were one at the king s command ; 
 and the first Latin his little Federalists learned were the 
 words of the old regiment s motto : Oeler et audax. 
 
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