he permitted all his tenants to join the army
of Gates, cancelled their rent-rolls during their service,
and promised to provide for their families. It will take a
fortune, but his deeds are better than his words.

"Only one thing, dear, that troubled me. I tell it to you, as
I tell you everything, knowing you to be kind and pitiful. It
is this: he asked father's permission to address me, not
knowing I was affianced. How sad is hopeless love!

"There was a battle at Bennington, where General Stark's men
whipped the Brunswick troops and took equipments for a
thousand cavalry, so that now you should see our Legion of
Horse, so gay in their buff-and-blue and their new helmets
and great, spurred jack-boots and bright sabres!

"Ruyven was stark mad to join them; and what do you think?
Sir Lupus consented, and General Schuyler lent his kind
offices, and to-day, if you please, my brother is strutting
about the yard in the uniform of a Cornet of Legion cavalry!

"To-night the squadron leaves to chase some of McDonald's
renegades out of Broadalbin. You remember Captain McDonald,
the Glencoe brawler?--it's the same one, and he's done
murder, they say, on the folk of Tribes Hill. I am thankful
that Ruyven is in Sir George Covert's squadron.

"And, dear, what do you think? Walter Butler was taken, three
days since, by some of Sir George Covert's riders, while
visiting his mother and sister at a farm-house near
Johnstown. He was taken within our lines, it seems, and in
civilian's clothes; and the next day he was tried by a
drum-court at Albany and condemned to death as a spy. Is it
not awful? He has not yet been sentenced. It touches us, too,
that an Ormond-Butler should die on the gallows. What horrors
men commit! What horrors! God pity his mother!

* * * * *

"I am writing at a breathless pace, quill flying, sand
scattered by the handful--for my feverish gossip seems to
help me to endure.

"Time, space, distance vanish while I write; and I am with
you ... until my letter ends.

"Then, quick! my budget of gossip! I said that we had been
gay, and that is true, for what with the Legion camping in
our quarters and General Arnold's men here for two days, and
Schuyler's and Gates's officers coming and g