onor? The Boston people took him and placed
him on his honor to live at Johnson Hall and do no meddling. And now
he's fled to Fort Niagara to raise the Mohawks. Is that honorable?"

After a moment I said: "But a moment since you told me that Sir John
comes here."

She nodded. "He comes and gees in secret with young Walter Butler--one
of your Ormond-Butlers, cousin--and old John Butler, his father, Colonel
of the Rangers, who boast they mean to scalp the whole of Tryon County
ere this blood-feud is ended. Oh, I have heard them talk and talk,
drinking o' nights in the gun-room, and the escort's horses stamping at
the porch with a man to each horse, to hold the poor brutes' noses lest
they should neigh and wake the woods. Councils of war, they call them,
these revels; but they end ever the same, with Sir John borne off to bed
too drunk to curse the slaves who shoulder his fat bulk, and Walter
Butler, sullen, stunned by wine, a brooding thing of malice carved in
stone; and father roaring his same old songs, and beating time with his
long pipe till the stem snaps, and he throws the glowing bowl at Cato--"

"Dorothy, Dorothy," I said, "are these the scenes you find already too
familiar?"

"Stale as last month's loaf in a ratty cupboard."

"Do they not offend you?"

"Oh, I am no prude--"

"Do you mean to say Sir Lupus sanctions it?"

"What? My presence? Oh, I amuse them; they dress me in Ruyven's clothes
and have me to wine--lacking a tenor voice for their songs--and at
first, long ago, their wine made me stupid, and they found rare sport in
baiting me; but now they tumble, one by one, ere the wine's fire touches
my face, and father swears there is no man in County Tryon can keep our
company o' nights and show a steady pair of legs like mine to bear him
bedwards."

After a moment's silence I said: "Are these your Northern customs?"

"They are ours--and the others of our kind. I hear the plain folk of the
country speak ill of us for the free life we lead at home--I mean the
Palatines and the canting Dutch, not our tenants, though what even they
may think of the manor house and of us I can only suspect, for they are
all rebels at heart, Sir John says, and wear blue noses at the first run
o' king's cider."

She gave a reckless laugh and crossed her knees, looking at me under
half-veiled lids, smooth and pure as a child's.

"Food for the devil, they dub us in the Palatine church," she added,
yawning, till I could se