It was late in the afternoon, and the fashionable world was promenading on lower Broadway and on the Battery by the Fort.  It was the first time that Alexander had seen men in velvet coats, or women with hoopskirts and hair built up a foot, and he thought the city, with its quaint Dutch houses, its magnificent trees, and these brilliant northern birds, quite like a picture book.  They looked high-bred and intelligent, these animated saunterers, and Alexander regarded the women with deep inquisitiveness.  Women had interested him little, with the exception of his mother, who he took for granted sui generis.  The sisters of his friends were white delicate creatures, languid and somewhat affected; and he had always felt older than either of his aunts.  In consequence, he had meditated little upon the sex to which poets had formed a habit of writing sonnets, regarding them either as necessary appendages or creatures for use.  But these alert, dashing, often handsome women, stirred him with a new gratitude to life.  He longed for the day when he should have time to know them, and pictured them gracing the solid home-like houses on the Broadway, and in the fine grounds along the river front, where he strayed alter a time, having mistaken the way to King’s College.  He walked back through Wall Street, and his enthusiasm was beginning to ebb, he was feeling the first pangs of a lonely nostalgia, when he almost ran into Ned Stevens’s arms.  It was four years since they had met.  Stevens had grown a foot and Alexander a few inches, but both were boyish in appearance still and recognized each other at once.

“When I can talk,” exclaimed Stevens, “when I can get over my amazement—­I thought at first it was my double, come to tell me something was wrong on the Island—­I’ll ask you to come to Fraunces’ Tavern and have a tankard of ale.  It’s healthier than swizzle.”

“That is an invitation, Neddy,” cried Alexander, gaily.  “Initiate me at once.  I’ve but a day or two to play in, but I must have you for playfellow.”

They dined at Fraunces’ Tavern and sat there till nearly morning.  Alexander had much to tell but more to hear, and before they parted at Mr. Mulligan’s door he knew all of the New World that young Stevens had patiently accumulated in four years.  It was a stirring story, that account of the rising impatience of the British colonies, and Stevens told it with animation and brevity.  Alexander became so interested that he forgot his personal mission, but he would not subscribe to his friend’s opinion that the Colonials were in the right.

“Did I have the time, I should study the history of the colonies from the day they built their first fort,” he said.  “Your story is picturesque, but it does not convince me that they have all the right on their side.  England—­”

“England is a tyrannical old fool,” young Stevens was beginning, heatedly, when a man behind arose and clapped a hand over his mouth.