Forced by courtesy to drink ere I had yet tasted meat, I did my part with the best grace I could muster, turning the beautiful glass downward, with a bow to my host.

“The same trick o’ grace in neck and wrist,” he muttered, thickly, wiping his lips.  “All Ormond, all Ormond, George, like that vixen o’ mine, Dorothy.  Hey!  It’s not too often that good blood throws back; the mongrel shows oftenest; but that big chit of a lass is no Varick; she’s Ormond to the bones of her.  Ruyven’s a red-head; there’s red in the rest o’ them, and the slow Dutch blood.  But Dorothy’s eyes are like those wild iris-blooms that purple all our meadows, and she has the Ormond hair—­that thick, dull gold, which that French Ormond, of King Stephen’s time, was dowered with by his Saxon mother, Helen.  Eh?  You see, I read it in that book your father left us.  If I’m no Ormond, I like to find out why, and I love to dispute the Ormond claim which Walter Butler makes—­he with his dark face and hair, and those dusky, golden eyes of his, which turn so yellow when I plague him—­the mad wild-cat that he is.”

Another fit of choking closed his throat, and again he soaked it open with his chilled toddy, rattling the stick to stir it well ere he drained it at a single, gobbling gulp.

A faint disgust took hold on me, to sit there smothering in the fumes of pipe and liquor, while my gross kinsman guzzled and gabbled and guzzled again.

“George,” he gasped, mopping his crimsoned face, “I’ll tell you now that we Varicks and you Ormonds must stand out for neutrality in this war.  The Butlers mean mischief; they’re mad to go to fighting, and that means our common ruin.  They’ll be here to-night, damn them.”

“Sir Lupus,” I ventured, “we are all kinsmen, the Butlers, the Varicks, and the Ormonds.  We are to gather here for self-protection during this rebellion.  I am sure that in the presence of this common danger there can arise no family dissension.”

“Yes, there can!” he fairly yelled.  “Here am I risking life and property to persuade these Butlers that their interest lies in strictest neutrality.  If Schuyler at Albany knew they visited me, his dragoons would gallop into Varick Manor and hang me to my barn door!  Here am I, I say, doing my best to keep ’em quiet, and there’s Sir John Johnson and all that bragging crew from Guy Park combating me—­nay, would you believe their impudence?—­striving to win me to arm my tenantry for this King of England, who has done nothing for me, save to make a knight of me to curry favor with the Dutch patroons in New York province—­or state, as they call it now!  And now I have you to count on for support, and we’ll whistle another jig for them to-night, I’ll warrant!”

He seized his unfilled glass, looked into it, and pushed it from him peevishly.