Dim-eyed, I stared at the passing troops, the blurred colors of their uniforms ever changing as the regiments succeeded each other, now brown and red, now green and red, now gray and yellow, as Massachusetts infantry, New York line, and Morgan’s Rifles poured steadily by in unbroken columns.

Wrapped in my chamber-robe, head supported on my hand, I sat by the window, dully content, striving to think, to realize all that had befallen me.  The glitter of the passing rifles, the constantly changing hues and colors, the movement, the noise, set my head swimming.  Yet I must prepare to leave within the hour, for the stable bells were ringing for eight o’clock.

Cato scratched at the door and entered, bringing me hot water, and hovering around me with napkin, salve, and basin, till my battered body had been bathed, my face shaved, and my bruised head washed where the Seneca castete had glanced, tearing the skin.  Clothed in fresh linen and a new uniform, sent by Schuyler, I bade him call Sir Lupus; who came presently, his mouth full of toast, a mug of cooled ale in one hand, clay pipe in the other.

He laid his pipe on the mantel, set his mug on a chair, and embraced me, shaking his head in solemn silence; and we sat for a space, considering one another, while Cato filled my bowl with chocolate and removed the cover from my smoking porridge-dish.

“They beat all,” said Sir Lupus, at length; “don’t they, George?”

“Do you mean our troops, sir?” I asked.

“No, sir, I don’t.  I mean our women.”

He struck his fat leg with his palm, drew a long breath, and regarded me, arms akimbo.

“Mad, sir; all stark, raving mad!  Look at those two chits of girls!  The Legion had gone tearing off after you to Schell’s with an Oneida scout; Sir George pops in with his tale of your horrid plight, then pelts off to find his troopers and do what he could to save you.  Gad, George! it looked bad for you.  I—­I was half out o’ my senses, thinking of you; and what with the children a-squalling and the household rushing up stairs and down, and the militia marching to the grist-mill bridge, I did nothing.  What the devil was I to do?  Eh?”

“You did quite right, sir,” I said, gravely.

He lay back, staring at me, shoving his fat hands into his breeches pockets.

“If I’d known what that baggage o’ mine was bent on, I’d ha’ locked her in the cellar!...  George, you won’t hold that against me, will you?  She’s my own daughter.  But the hussy was gone with Magdalen Brant before I dreamed of it—­gone on the maddest moonlight quest that mortal ever dared conceive!—­one in rags cut from a red blanket, t’other in that rotten old armor that your aunt thought fit to ship from England when her father stripped the house to cross an ocean and build in the forests of a new world.  George, she’s all Ormond, that girl o’ mine.  A Varick would never have thought to cut such a caper, I tell you.  It isn’t in our line; it isn’t in Dutch blood to imagine such things, or do ’em either!”