e gravely, "May I speak
plainly to a kinsman and dear friend?"

"Always," I said uneasily.

"Then, without offense, Carus, I think that, were I you, I should bet a
little--now and again--fling the guineas for a change--now and then--if
I were you, Carus."

"If you were I you would not," I said, reddening to the temples.

"I think I should, nevertheless," he persisted, smiling. "Carus, you
know that if you need money to bet with----"

"I'll tell you what I need, Sir Peter," said I, looking him in the eye.
"I need your faith in me that I am not by choice a niggard."

"God forbid!" he cried.

"Yet I pass among many for that," I said hotly. "I know it, I suffer.
Yet I can not burn a penny; it belongs to others, that's all."

"A debt!" he murmured.

"Call it as you will. The money you overpay me for my poor services is
not even my own to enjoy."

Sir Peter dropped his bridle and slapped his gloved hands together with
a noise that made his horse jump. "I knew it," he cried, "I knew it,
and so I told Elsin when she came to me, troubled, because in you this
one flaw appeared; yet though she questioned me, in the same breath she
vowed the marble perfect, and asked me if you had parents or kin
dependent. She is a rare maid, my pretty kinswoman--" He hesitated,
glancing cornerwise at me.

"Do you know Walter Butler well?" I asked carelessly.

"No, only a little. Why, Carus?"

"Is he married?"

"I never heard it. He is scarcely known to me save through Sir John
Johnson, and that his zeal led him to what some call a private
reprisal."

"Yes, he burned our house, or his Indians did, making pretense that
they did not know who lived there, but thought the whole Bush a rebel
hotbed. It is true the house was new, built while Sir John lay brooding
there in Canada over his broken parole. Perhaps Walter Butler did not
know the house was ours."

"You are very generous, Carus," said Sir Peter gravely.

"No, not very. You see, my father and my mother were in France, and I
here, and Butler's raiders only murdered one old man--a servant, all
alone there, a man too old and deaf to understand their questions. I
know who slew that ancient body-servant to my father, who often held me
on his knees. No, Sir Peter, I am not generous, as you say. But there
are matters which must await the precedence of great events ere their
turn comes in the mills which grind so slow, so sure, and so exceeding
fine."

Sir Peter looked at me in