to me—and, musing, I thought to savor a breeze from the pines, and hear water flowing, unseen, far in the forest silence.
Thendara! Thendara!
The name is not Iroquois—yet it may be, too—a soft, gracious trisyllable stolen from the Lenape. Lord! how the name intrigues me, sweetly sonorous, throbbing in my ears—Thendara, Thendara—and always I hear the pine breeze high blowing and the flowing undertone of waters.
July 17th.—Nothing extraordinary. The Hon. Elsin Grey arrived from Halifax by the Swan packet to visit Sir Peter's family, she being cousin twice removed to Lady Coleville. I have not seen her; she keeps her chamber with the migraine. As she comes from her kinsman, General Sir Frederick Haldimand, Governor of Canada, she may be useful, being lately untethered from the convent and no more than seventeen or eighteen, and vain, no doubt, of her beauty, and so, I conclude, prone to babble if flattered.
Here my journal ended; I dipped my quill into the inkhorn and wrote slowly:
July 18th.—Nothing remarkable. The Hon. Elsin Grey still keeps her chamber. The heat in New York is very great. I am, without suspicion, sending money through Ennis to our prisoners aboard the ships in the Wallabout, and next week shall have more for the unfortunates in the Provost, the prisons, jails, and the sugar-house—my salary being due on the 20th inst. I have ever in mind a plan for a general jail delivery the instant his Excellency assaults by land and sea, but at present it is utterly hopeless, Mr. Cunningham executing the laws with terrible rigor, and double guards patrolling the common. As for those wretched patriots aboard the "Hell" and on those hulks—the Falconer, Good Hope, and Scorpion—which lie southeast of the Jersey, there can be no delivery save through compassion of that Dark Jailer who one day shall free us all.
I dropped my pen, listening intently. Close to my door the garret stairs creaked, ever so lightly; and I bent forward across the table, gathering my papers, on which the ink lay still wet.
Listening, I heard nothing more. Perhaps the great heat was warping the new stairway, which led past my door, up through the attic, and out to the railed cupola upon the roof.
I glanced at my journal; there was nothing more to add, and so, sanding the sheets, I laid them back behind the swinging panel which I myself had fashioned so cunningly that none might suspect a cupboard in the simple wainscot. Then to wash hands and face in fresh water, and put on my coat without the waistcoat, prepared to take the air on the cupola, where it should soon blow cool from the bay.
Slipping lock and bolt, I paused, hand on the knob, to glance back around the room—a habit formed of caution. Then, satisfied, I opened the door and left it standing wide so that the room might air. As I ascended the attic stairs a little fresh puff of wind cooled me. Doubtless a servant had opened the flaps to the cupola, for they were laid back; and as I mounted, I could see a square of blue sky overhead.
I had taken my pipe, and paused on the stairs to light it; then, pouching flint and tinder-box, I emerged upon the roof, to find myself face to face with a young girl I had never before seen—the Hon. Miss Grey, no doubt—and very dainty in her powder and one coquette patch that emphasized the slow color tinting a skin of snow.
My bow, I think, covered my vexation—I being all unpowdered and wearing no waistcoat over an unfrilled shirt, for I do love fine clothes when circumstances require; but the lady was none the less punctilious, and as I made to toss my pipe into the street below, she forbade me with perfect courtesy and a smile that only accented her youthful self-possession.
"Mr. Renault need neither retire nor sacrifice his pleasure," she said. "I have missed Sir Frederick's pipe-smoke dreadfully—so much, indeed, that I had even thought to try Sir Peter's snuff to soothe me."
"Shall I fetch it, madam?" I asked instantly; but she raised a small hand in laughing horror.
"Snuff and picquet I am preparing for—a youth of folly—an old age of snuff and cards, you know. At present folly suffices, thank you."
And as I stood smiling before her, she said: "Pray you be seated, sir, if you so desire. There should be sufficient air for two in this half-charred furnace which you call New York. Tell me, Mr. Renault, are the winters here also extreme in cold?"
"Sometimes," I said. "Last winter the bay was frozen to Staten Island so that the artillery crossed on the ice from the city."
She turned her head, looking out over the water, which was now all a golden sparkle under the westering sun. Then her eyes dropped to the burned district—that waste of blackened ruins stretching south along Broadway to Beaver Street and west to Greenwich Street.
"Is that the work of rebels?" she asked, frowning.
"No, madam; it was an accident."
"Why do the New Yorkers not rebuild?"
"I think it is because General Washington interrupts local improvements," I said, laughing.
She looked around at me, pretty brows raised in quaint displeasure.
"Does the insolence of a rebel really amuse you, Mr. Renault?"
I was taken aback. Even among the British officers here in the city it had become the fashion to speak respectfully of the enemy, and above all of his Excellency.
"Why should it not amuse me?" I asked lightly.
She had moved her head again, and appeared to be absorbed in the view. Presently she said, still looking out over the city: "That was a noble church once, that blackened arch across the way."
"That is Trinity—all that is left of it," I said. "St. Paul's is still standing—you may see it there to the north, just west of Ann Street and below Vesey."
She turned, leaning on the railing, following with curious eyes the direction of my outstretched arm.
"Please tell me more about this furnace you call a city, Mr. Renault," she said, with a pretty inflection of voice that flattered; and so I went over beside her, and, leaning there on the cupola rail together, we explored the damaged city from our bird's perch above it—the city that I had come to care for strangely, nay, to love almost as I loved my Mohawk hills. For it is that way with New York, the one city that we may love without disloyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the birth-spot which all cherish. I know not why, but this is so; no American is long strange here; for it is the great hearth of the mother-land where the nation gathers as a family, each conscious of a share in the heritage established for all by all.
And so, together, this fair young English girl and I traced out the wards numbered from the cardinal points of the compass, and I bounded for her the Out-Ward, too, and the Dock-Ward. There was no haze, only a living golden light, clear as topaz, and we could see plainly the sentinels pacing before the Bridewell—that long two-storied prison, built of gloomy stone; and next to it the Almshouse of gray stone, and next to that the massive rough stone prison, three stories high, where in a cupola an iron bell hung, black against the sky.
"You will hear it, some day, tolling for an execution," I said.
"Do they hang rebels there?" she asked, looking up at me so wonderingly, so innocently that I stood silent instead of answering, surprised at such beauty in a young girl's eyes.
"Where is King's College?" she asked. I showed her the building bounded by Murray,
