r landmark touching the quick of some memory of other days.
Childhood habit drew me into the path to Wilmot House. I came upon it
just as the sunlight was stretching level across the Chesapeake, and
burning its windows molten red. I had been sitting long on the stone
steps, when the gaunt figure of McAndrews strode toward me out of the
dusk.

"God be gude to us, it is Mr. Richard!" he cried. "I hae na seen ye're
bonny face these muckle years, sir, sync ye cam' back frae ae sight o'
the young mistress." (I had met him in Annapolis then.) "An' will ye be
aff to the wars?"

I told him yes. That I had come for a last look at the old place before
I left.

He sighed. "Ye're vera welcome, sir." Then he added: "Mr. Bordley's
gi'en me a fair notion o' yere management at Gordon's. The judge is
thinking there'll be nane ither lad t' hand a candle to ye."

"And what news do you hear from London?" I asked, cutting him short.

"Ill uncos, sir," he answered, shaking his head with violence. He had
indeed but a sorry tale for my ear, and one to make my heart heavier than
it was. McAndrews opened his mind to me, and seemed the better for it.
How Mr. Marmaduke was living with the establishment they wrote of was
more than the honest Scotchman could imagine. There was a country place
in Sussex now, said he, that was the latest. And drafts were coming in
before the wheat was in the ear; and the plantations of tobacco on the
Western Shore had been idle since the non-exportation, and were mortgaged
to their limit to Mr. Willard. Money was even loaned on the Wilmot House
estate. McAndrews had a shrewd suspicion that neither Mrs. Manners nor
Miss Dorothy knew aught of this state of affairs.

"Mr. Richard," he said earnestly, as he bade me good-by, "I kennt Mr.
Manners's mind when he lea'd here. There was a laird in't, sir, an' a
fortune. An' unless these come soon, I'm thinking I can spae th' en'."

In truth, a much greater fool than McAndrews might have predicted that
end.

On Monday Judge Bordley accompanied me as far as Dingley's tavern, and
showed much emotion at parting.

"You need have no fears for your friends at Gordon's Pride, Richard,"
said he. "And when the General comes back, I shall try to give him a
good account of my stewardship."

The General! That title brought old Stanwix's cobwebbed prophecy into my
head again. Here, surely, was the war which he had foretold, and I ready
to embark in it.

Why not the sea, indeed?