with characteristic optimism—not shared by Harkness, and but partially approved by O'Neil. Details were solemnly discussed, questions of proper heeling, of silver and steel gaffs, of comb and wattle cutting, of the texture of feather and hackle, and of the "walks" at Flatbush and Horrock's method of feeding in the dark.
Tiring of the subject, Harkness, spoke of the political outlook and took a gloomy view, paying his Excellency a compliment by referring to him as "no fox, but a full-grown wolf, with an appetite for a continent and perhaps for a hemisphere."
"Pooh!" said Sir Peter, lazily sucking at his pipe, "Sir Henry has him holed. We'll dig him out before snow flies."
"What folly, Sir Peter!" remonstrated Harkness, leaning forward so that the candle-light blazed on his gold and scarlet coat. "Look back five years, Sir Peter, then survey the damnable situation now! Do you realize that to-day England governs but one city in America?"
"Wait," observed Sir Peter serenely, expelling a cloud of smoke so that it wreathed his handsome head in a triple halo.
"Wait? Faith, if there's anything else to do but wait I'll take that job!" exclaimed O'Neil ruefully.
"Why don't you take it, then?" retorted Sir Peter. "It's no secret, I fancy—that plan of Walter Butler's—is it?" he added, seeing that we knew nothing of any plan.
"Sir Henry makes no secret of it," he continued; "it's talked over and disparaged openly at mess and at headquarters. I can see no indiscretion in mentioning it here."
It was at such moments that I felt a loathing for myself, and such strong self-disgust must surely have prevailed in the end to make me false to duty if, as I have said, I had not an absolute faith that his Excellency required no man to tarnish his honor for the motherland's salvation.
"What's afoot?" inquired Harkness curiously.
"Why, you remember how the rebel General Sullivan went through the Six Nations, devastating the Iroquois country, laying waste, burning, destroying their orchards and crops—which, after all, accomplished the complete destruction of our own granary in the North?"
"'Twas a dhirty thrick!" muttered O'Neil. "Sure, 'tis the poor naked haythen will pay that score wan day, or I'm a Hessian!"
"They'll pay it soon if Walter Butler has his way," said Sir Peter. "Sir John Johnson and the Butlers and Colonel Ross are gathering in the North. Haldimand's plan is to strike at the rebels' food supply—the cultivated region from Johnstown south and west—do what Sullivan did, lay waste the rebel grain belt, burn fodder, destroy all orchards—God! it will go hard with the frontier again." He swung around to Harkness: "It's horrible to me, Captain—and Walter Butler not yet washed clean of the blood of Cherry Valley. I tell you, loyal as I am, humble subject of my King, whom I reverence, I affirm that this blackened, blood-soaked frontier is a barrier to England which she can never, never overcome, and though we win out to-day, and though we hang the rebels thick as pears in Lispenard's orchards, that barrier will remain, year by year fencing us in, crowding us back to the ocean, to our ships, back to the land from whence we English came. And for all time will the memory of these horrors set America's face against us—if not for all time, yet our children's children and their children shall not outlive the tradition burned into the heart of this quivering land we hold to-day, half shackled, still struggling, already rising to its bleeding knees."
"Gad!" breathed O'Neil, "'tis threason ye come singin' to the chune o' Yankee Doodle-doo, Sir Peter."
"It's sense," said Sir Peter, already smiling at his own heat.
"So Ross and the Butlers are to strike at the rebel granaries?" repeated Harkness, musing.
"Yes; they're gathering on the eastern lakes and at Niagara—Butler's Rangers, Johnson's Greens, Brant's Iroquois, some Jägers, a few regulars, and the usual partizan band of painted whites who disgrace us all, by Heaven! But there," added Sir Peter, smiling, "I've done with the vapors. I bear no arms, and it is unfit that I should judge those who do. Only," and his voice rang a little, "I understand battles, not butchery. Gentlemen, to the British Army! the regulars, God bless 'em! Bumpers, gentlemen!"
I heard O'Neil muttering, as he smacked his lips after the toast, "And to hell with the Hessians! Bad cess to the Dootch scuts!"
"Did you say the rendezvous is at Niagara?" inquired Harkness.
"I've heard so. I've heard, too, of some other spot—an Indian name—Thend—Thend—plague take it! Ah, I have it—Thendara. You know it, Carus?" he asked, turning so suddenly on me that my guilty heart ceased beating for a second.
"I have heard of it," I said, finding a voice scarce like my own. "Where is it, Sir Peter?"
"Why, here in New York there has ever been a fable about a lost town in the wilderness called Thendara. I never knew it to be true; but now they say that Walter Butler has assigned Thendara as his gathering place, or so it is reported in a letter to Sir Henry, which Sir Henry read to me. Have you no knowledge of it, Carus?"
"None at all. I remember hearing the name in childhood. Perhaps better woodsmen than I know where this Thendara lies, but I do not."
"It must lie somewhere betwixt us and Canada," said Harkness vaguely. "Does not Sir Henry know?"
"He said he did not," replied Sir Peter, "and he sent out a scout for information. No information has arrived. Is it an Iroquois word, Carus?"
"I think it is of Lenape origin," I said—"perhaps modified by the Mohawk tongue. I know it is not pure Oneida."
Harkness glanced at me curiously. "You'd make a rare scout," he said, "with your knowledge of the barbarians."
"The wonder is," observed Sir Peter, "that he is not a scout on the other side. If my home had been burned by the McDonalds and the Butlers, I'm damned if I should forget which side did it!"
"If I took service with the rebels," said I, "it would not be because of personal loss. Nor would that same private misfortune deter me from serving King George. The men who burned my home represent no great cause. When I have leisure I can satisfy personal quarrels."
"Lord!" laughed Sir Peter, "to hear you bewail your lack of leisure one might think you are now occupied with one cause or t'other. Pray, my dear Carus, when do you expect to find time to call out these enemies of yours?"
"You wouldn't have me deprive the King of Walter Butler's services, would you?" I asked so gravely that everybody laughed, and we rose in good humor to join the ladies in the drawing-rooms.
Sir Peter's house on Wall Street had been English built, yet bore certain traces of the old Dutch influence, for it had a stoop leading to the front door, and the roof was Dutch, save for the cupola; a fine wide house, the façade a little scorched from the conflagration of '78 which had ruined Trinity Church and the Lutheran, and many fine buildings and homes.
The house was divided by a wide hallway, on either side of which were drawing-rooms, and in the rear of these was a dining-room giving on a conservatory which overlooked the gardens. The ground floor served as a servant's hall, with a door at the area and another in the rear leading out through the garden-drive to the stables.
The floor above the drawing-rooms had been divided into two suites, one in gold leather and blue for Sir Peter and his lady, the other in crimson damask for guests. The third floor, mine, was similarly divided, I occupying the Wall Street side, with windows on that fashionable
