“We have been gay here.  Young Mr. Van Rensselaer came from Albany to heal the breach with father.  We danced and had games.  He is a good young man, this patroon and patriot.  Listen, dear:  he permitted all his tenants to join the army of Gates, cancelled their rent-rolls during their service, and promised to provide for their families.  It will take a fortune, but his deeds are better than his words.

“Only one thing, dear, that troubled me.  I tell it to you, as I tell you everything, knowing you to be kind and pitiful.  It is this:  he asked father’s permission to address me, not knowing I was affianced.  How sad is hopeless love!

“There was a battle at Bennington, where General Stark’s men whipped the Brunswick troops and took equipments for a thousand cavalry, so that now you should see our Legion of Horse, so gay in their buff-and-blue and their new helmets and great, spurred jack-boots and bright sabres!

“Ruyven was stark mad to join them; and what do you think?  Sir Lupus consented, and General Schuyler lent his kind offices, and to-day, if you please, my brother is strutting about the yard in the uniform of a Cornet of Legion cavalry!

“To-night the squadron leaves to chase some of McDonald’s renegades out of Broadalbin.  You remember Captain McDonald, the Glencoe brawler?—­it’s the same one, and he’s done murder, they say, on the folk of Tribes Hill.  I am thankful that Ruyven is in Sir George Covert’s squadron.

“And, dear, what do you think?  Walter Butler was taken, three days since, by some of Sir George Covert’s riders, while visiting his mother and sister at a farm-house near Johnstown.  He was taken within our lines, it seems, and in civilian’s clothes; and the next day he was tried by a drum-court at Albany and condemned to death as a spy.  Is it not awful?  He has not yet been sentenced.  It touches us, too, that an Ormond-Butler should die on the gallows.  What horrors men commit!  What horrors!  God pity his mother!

* * * * *

     “I am writing at a breathless pace, quill flying, sand
     scattered by the handful—­for my feverish gossip seems to
     help me to endure.

     “Time, space, distance vanish while I write; and I am with
     you ... until my letter ends.

“Then, quick! my budget of gossip!  I said that we had been gay, and that is true, for what with the Legion camping in our quarters and General Arnold’s men here for two days, and Schuyler’s and Gates’s officers coming and going and always remaining to dine, at least, we have danced and picnicked and played music and been frightened when McDonald’s men came too near.  And oh, the terrible pall that fell on our company when news came of poor Janet McCrea’s murder by Indians—­you did not know her, but I did, and loved her dearly in school—­the dear little thing!