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He came out of the house presently, and I asked him if he would go with me. "One of us should stay here with Magdalen Brant," he said, gravely. "Is she not safe here?" I asked. "You cannot leave a child like that absolutely alone," he answered. "Then take her to Varicks'," I said, sullenly. "If she remains here some of Butler's men will be after her to attend the council."
Varick and myself, over the garden wall, and he asked me if I would mind coming in some day and seeing his wife. I had a great deal of idle time on my hands, so very soon I spent even more time with the Varicks than I did with my friend, and she I mean poor Milly became very, very fond of me." There was a pause.
If it be the custom of the people here to go mad, I'll not sit in a corner croaking, 'Repent and be wise! If the Varicks and the Butlers set the pace, I promise you to keep the quarry, Mistress Folly, in view perhaps outfoot you all to Bedlam!... But, cousin, if you, too, run this uncoupled race with the pack, I mean to pace you, neck and neck, like a keen whip, ready to turn and lash the first who interferes with you."
So, escorted by prancing, clattering cavalry, and surrounded by a brilliant staff, Magdalen Brant rode away from Varicks'; and beside her, alert, upright, transfigured, rode Sir George Covert, whose life she had accepted only after she had paid her debt to Dorothy by offering her own life to rescue mine.
And to myself, muttering aloud as I rode: "A fine name he has given to my cousins the Varicks, this giant forest-runner, with his boy's face and limbs of iron! And he was none too cordial concerning the Butlers, either cousins, too, but in what degree they must tell me, for I don't know "
I asked, curiously, wondering, too, at his knowledge of me, a stranger. "You will answer that question for yourself when you meet your kin, the Varicks and Butlers," he said; and the reply had an insolent ring that did not please me, yet I was loath to quarrel with this boyish giant whose amiable company I had found agreeable on my long journey through a land so new to me.
But instead of taking advantage of their opportunities, the Varicks had gone not upwards, but steadily downwards the final crash having been owing to the folly, indeed the far more than folly, as Lionel Varick had come to know when still a child, of his own father. Lionel's father had not lived long after his disgraceful bankruptcy.
And now it was two o'clock in the afternoon; Sir George had already set out with Magdalen Brant to Varicks' by way of Stoner's; Elerson and Mount stood by the door, waiting to pilot me towards Gansevoort's distant outposts; the noon sunshine filled the deserted house and fell across the table where I sat, reading over my instructions from Schuyler ere I committed the paper to the flames.
I reminded him that, from his letters to me, I had acquired a fair knowledge of the estates endangered; that I understood that Sir John Johnson owned enormous tracts in Tryon County which his great father, Sir William, had left him when he died; that Colonel Claus, Guy Johnson, the Butlers, father and son, and the Varicks, all held estates of greatest value; and that these estates were menaced, now by Tory, now by rebel, and the lords of these broad manors were alternately solicited and threatened by the warring factions now so bloodily embroiled.
"What the devil is it in us Varicks that set folk whispering and snickering and nudging one another? Am I parti-colored, like an Oneida at a scalp-dance? Does Harry wear bat's wings for ears? Are Dorothy's legs crooked, that they all stare?" "It's your red head," observed Cecile. "The good folk think to see the noon-sun setting in the wood " "Oh, tally! you always say that," snapped Ruyven.
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