y best to keep 'em quiet, and there's Sir John Johnson and
all that bragging crew from Guy Park combating me--nay, would you
believe their impudence?--striving to win me to arm my tenantry for this
King of England, who has done nothing for me, save to make a knight of
me to curry favor with the Dutch patroons in New York province--or
state, as they call it now! And now I have you to count on for support,
and we'll whistle another jig for them to-night, I'll warrant!"

He seized his unfilled glass, looked into it, and pushed it from him
peevishly.

"Dammy," he said, "I'll not budge for them! I have thousands of acres,
hundreds of tenants, farms, sugar-bushes, manufactories for pearl-ash,
grist-mills, saw-mills, and I'm damned if I draw sword either way! Am I
a madman, to risk all this? Am I a common fool, to chance anything now?
Do they think me in my dotage? Indeed, sir, if I drew blade, if I as
much as raised a finger, both sides would come swarming all over
us--rebels a-looting and a-shooting, Indians whooping off my cattle,
firing my barns, scalping my tenants--rebels at heart every one, and I'd
not care tuppence who scalped 'em but that they pay me rent!"

He clinched his fat fists and beat the air angrily.

"I'm lord of this manor!" he bawled. "I'm Patroon Varick, and I'll do as
I please!"

Amazed and mortified at his gross frankness, I sat silent, not knowing
what to say. Interest alone swayed him; the right and wrong of this
quarrel were nothing to him; he did not even take the trouble to pay a
hypocrite's tribute to principle ere he turned his back on it;
selfishness alone ruled, and he boasted of it, waving his short, fat
arms in anger, or struggling to extend them heavenward, in protest
against these people who dared urge him to declare himself and stand or
fall with the cause he might embrace.

A faint disgust stirred my pulse. We Ormonds had as much to lose as he,
but yelled it not to the skies, nor clamored of gain and loss in such
unseemly fashion, ignoring higher motive.

"Sir Lupus," I said, "if we can remain neutral with honor, that surely
is wisest. But can we?"

"Remain neutral! Of course we can!" he shouted.

"Honorably?"

"Eh? Where's honor in this mob-rule that breaks out in Boston to spot
the whole land with a scurvy irruption! Honor? Where is it in this vile
distemper which sets old neighbors here a-itching to cut each other's
throats? One says, 'You're a Tory! Take that!' and slips a