The old clerk blinked again, and then his appraising eyes swept over Robert.

“’Twould be hard to find a nobler youth,” he said.

“I thought you would say so, and now lead us, without further delay, to Master Hardy.”

“Who is it who demands to be led to me?” thundered a voice from the rear of the house.  “I seem to know that voice!  Ah, it’s Willet!  Good old Willet!  Honest Dave, who wields the sharpest sword in North America!”

A tall, heavy man lunged forward.  “Lunged” was the word that described it to Robert, and his impetuous motion was due to the sight of Willet, whom he grasped by both hands, shaking them with a vigor that would have caused pain in one less powerful than the hunter, and as he shook them he uttered exclamations, many of them bordering upon oaths and all of them pertaining to the sea.

Robert’s eyes had grown used to the half light of the hall, and he took particular notice of Master Benjamin Hardy who was destined to become an important figure in his life, although he did not then dream of it.  He saw a tall man of middle age, built very powerfully, his face burnt almost the color of an Indian’s by the winds and suns of many seas.  But his hair was thick and long and the eyes shining in the face, made dark by the weather, were an intensely bright blue.  Robert, upon whom impressions were so swift and vivid, reckoned that here was one capable of great and fierce actions, and also with a heart that contained a large measure of kindness and generosity.

“Dave,” said the tall man, who carried with him the atmosphere of the sea, “I feared that you might be dead in those forests you love so well, killed and perhaps scalped by the Hurons or some other savage tribe.  You’ve abundant hair, Dave, and you’d furnish an uncommonly fine scalp.”

“And I feared, Benjamin, that you’d been caught in some smuggling cruise near the Spanish Main, and had been put out of the way by the Dons.  You love gain too much, Ben, old friend, and you court risks too great for its sake.”

Master Benjamin Hardy threw back his head and laughed deeply and heartily.  The laugh seemed to Robert to roll up spontaneously from his throat.  He felt anew that here was a man whom he liked.

“Perchance ’tis the danger that draws me on,” said Master Hardy.  “You and I are much alike, Dave.  In the woods, if all that I hear be true, you dwell continually in the very shadow of danger, while I incur it only at times.  Moreover, I am come to the age of fifty years, the head is still on my shoulders, the breath is still in my body, and Master Jonathan, to whom figures are Biblical, says the balance on my books is excellent.”

“You talk o’er much, Ben, old friend, but since it’s the way of seafaring men and ’tis cheerful it does not vex my ears.  You behold with me, Tayoga, a youth of the best blood of the Onondaga nation, one to whom you will be polite if you wish to please me, Benjamin, and Master Robert Lennox, grown perhaps beyond your expectations.”