stols on the table
in the drawing-room.

"Do they fear a surprise?" I whispered to Sir George Covert.

"Oh yes; Jack Mount and the Stoners are abroad. But Sir John has a troop
of his cut-throat horsemen picketed out around us. You see, Sir John
broke his parole, and Walter Butler is attainted, and it might go hard
with some of these gentlemen if General Schuyler's dragoons caught them
here, plotting nose to nose."

"Who is this Jack Mount?" I asked, curiously, remembering my companion
of the Albany road.

"One of Cresap's riflemen," he drawled, "sent back here from Boston to
raise the country against the invasion. They say he was a highwayman
once, but we Tories"--he laughed shamelessly--"say many things in these
days which may not help us at the judgment day. Wait, there's that
little rosebud, Claire Putnam, Sir John's flame. Take her in to table;
she's a pretty little plaything. Lady Johnson, who was Polly Watts, is
in Montreal, you see." He made a languid gesture with outspread
hands, smiling.

The girl he indicated, Mistress Claire Putnam, was a fragile, willowy
creature, over-thin, perhaps, yet wonderfully attractive and pretty, and
there was much of good in her face, and a tinge of pathos, too, for all
her bright vivacity.

"If Sir John Johnson put her away when he wedded Miss Watts," said Sir
George, coolly, "I think he did it from interest and selfish
calculation, not because he ceased to love her in his bloodless, fishy
fashion. And now that Lady Johnson has fled to Canada, Sir John makes
no pretence of hiding his amours in the society which he haunts; nor
does that society take umbrage at the notorious relationship so
impudently renewed. We're a shameless lot, Mr. Ormond."

At that moment I heard Sir John Johnson, at my elbow, saying to Sir
Lupus: "Do you know what these damned rebels have had the impudence to
do? I can scarce credit it myself, but it is said that their Congress
has adopted a flag of thirteen stripes and thirteen stars on a blue
field, and I'm cursed if I don't believe they mean to hoist the filthy
rag in our very faces!"

V

A NIGHT AT THE PATROON'S

Under a flare of yellow candle-light we entered the dining-hall and
seated ourselves before a table loaded with flowers and silver, and the
most beautiful Flemish glass that I have ever seen; though they say that
Sir William Johnson's was finer.

The square windows of the hall were closed, the dusty curtains closely
drawn; the