Master Benjamin turned to Robert, and, as Master Jonathan had done, measured him from head to foot with those intensely bright blue eyes of his that missed nothing.

“Grown greatly and grown well,” he said, “but not beyond my expectations.  In truth, one could predict a noble bough upon such a stem.  But you and I, Dave, having many years, grow garrulous and forget the impatience of youth.  Come, lads, we’ll go into the drawing-room and, as supper was to have been served in half an hour, I’ll have the portions doubled.”

Robert smiled.

“In Albany and New York alike,” he said, “they welcome us to the table.”

“Which is the utmost test of hospitality,” said Master Benjamin.

They went into a great drawing-room, the barred windows of which looked out upon a busy street, warehouses and counting houses and passing sailors.  Robert was conscious all the while that the brilliant blue eyes were examining him minutely.  His old wonder about his parentage, lost for a while in the press of war and exciting events, returned.  He felt intuitively that Master Hardy, like Willet, knew who and what he was, and he also felt with the same force that neither would reply to any question of his on the subject.  So he kept his peace and by and by his curiosity, as it always did, disappeared before immediate affairs.

The drawing-room was a noble apartment, with dark oaken beams, a polished oaken floor, upon which eastern rugs were spread, and heavy tables of foreign woods.  A small model of a sloop rested upon one table and a model of a schooner on another.  Here and there were great curving shells with interiors of pink and white, and upon the walls were curious long, crooked knives of the Malay Islands.  Everything savored of the sea.  Again Robert’s imagination leaped up.  The blazing hues of distant tropic lands were in his eyes, and the odors of strange fruits and flowers were in his nostrils.

“Sit down, Dave,” said Master Benjamin, “and you, too, Robert and Tayoga.  I suppose you did not come to New Amsterdam—­how the name clings!—­merely to see me.”

“That was one purpose, Benjamin,” replied Willet, “but we had others in mind too.”

“To join the war, I surmise, and to get yourselves killed?”

“The first part of your reckoning is true, Benjamin, but not the second.  We would go to the war, in which we have had some part already, but not in order that we may be killed.”

“You suffer from the common weakness.  One entering war always thinks that it’s the other man and not he who will be killed.  You’re too old for that, David.”

Willet laughed.

“No, Benjamin,” he said, “I’m not too old for it, and I never will be.  It’s the belief that carries us all through danger.”

“Which way did you think of going in these warlike operations?”

“We shall join the force that comes out from England.”

“The one that will march against Fort Duquesne?”