“Which country, sir?”

“Greater Britain.”

“And when Greater Britain divides?”

“It must not!”

“It has.”

I unbound the scarlet handkerchief which I wore for a cap, and held it between my fingers to dry its sweat in the breeze.  Watching it flutter, I said: 

“Friend, in my country we never cross the branch till we come to it, nor leave the hammock till the river-sands are beneath our feet.  No hunting-shirt is sewed till the bullet has done its errand, nor do men fish for gray mullet with a hook and line.  There is always time to pray for wisdom.”

“Friend,” replied Mount, “I wear red quills on my moccasins, you wear bits of sea-shell.  That is all the difference between us.  Good-bye.  Varick Manor is the first house four miles ahead.”

He wheeled his horse, then, as at a second thought, checked him and looked back at me.

“You will see queer folk yonder at the patroon’s,” he said.  “You are accustomed to the manners of your peers; you were bred in that land where hospitality, courtesy, and deference are shown to equals; where dignity and graciousness are expected from the elders; where duty and humility are inbred in the young.  So is it with us—­except where you are going.  The great patroon families, with their vast estates, their patents, their feudal systems, have stood supreme here for years.  Theirs is the power of life and death over their retainers; they reign absolute in their manors, they account only to God for their trusts.  And they are great folk, sir, even yet—­these Livingstons, these Van Rensselaers, these Phillipses, lords of their manors still; Dutch of descent, polished, courtly, proud, bearing the title of patroon as a noble bears his coronet.”

He raised his hand, smiling.  “It is not so with the Varicks.  They are patroons, too, yet kin to the Johnsons, of Johnson Hall and Guy Park, and kin to the Ormond-Butlers.  But they are different from either Johnson or Butler—­vastly different from the Schuylers or the Livingstons—­”

He shrugged his broad shoulders and dropped his hand:  “The Varicks are all mad, sir.  Good-bye.”

He struck his horse with his soft leather heels; the animal bounded out into the western road, and his rider swung around once more towards me with a gesture partly friendly, partly, perhaps, in menace.  “Tell Sir Lupus to go to the devil!” he cried, gayly, and cantered away through the golden dust.

I sat my horse to watch him; presently, far away on the hill’s crest, the sun caught his rifle and sparkled for a space, then the point of white fire went out, and there was nothing on the hill-top save the dust drifting.