“I thought your people were Tory,” said I.

“Not mine, Euan; Clarissa’s.”

“Where is that child?” I asked pityingly.

“Clarissa?  Poor lamb—­ she’s in Albany still.”

I did not speak, but it was as though she divined my unasked question.

“Aye, she is in love with him yet.  I never could understand how that could be after he married Polly Watts.  But she has not changed....  And that beast, Sir John, installed her in the Albany house.”

I said:  “He’s somewhere out yonder with the marauders against whom we are to march.  They’re all awaiting us, it is said; the whole crew—­ Johnson’s Greens, Butler’s Rangers, McDonald’s painted Tories, Brant’s Mohawks—­ and the Senecas with their war-chiefs and their sorcerer, Amochol—­ truly a motley devil’s brood, Lana; and I pray only that one of Morgan’s men may sight Walter Butler or Sir John over his rifle’s end.”

“To think,” she murmured, “that you and I have dined and wined with these same gentlemen you now so ardently desire to slay....  And young Walter Butler, too!  I saw his mother and his sister in Albany a week ago—­ two sad and pitiable women, Euan, for every furtive glance cast after them seemed to shout aloud the infamy of their son and brother, the Murderer of Cherry Valley.”

“To my mind,” said I, “he is not sane at all, but gone stark blood-mad.  Heaven!  How impossible it seems that this young man with his handsome face and figure, his dreamy melancholy, his charming voice and manners, his skill in verse and music, can be this same Walter Butler whose name is cursed wherever righteousness and honour exist in human breasts.  Why, even Joseph Brant has spurned him, they say, since Cherry Valley!  Even his own father stood aghast before such infamy.  Old John Butler, when he heard the news, dashed his hands to his temples, groaning out:  ’I would have crawled from this place to Cherry Valley on my hands and knees to save those people; and why my son did not spare them, God only knows.’”

Lana shook her pretty head.

“I can not seem to believe it of him even yet.  I try to think of Walter as a murderer of little children, and it is not possible.  Why, it seems but yesterday that I stood plaguing him on the stone doorstep at Guy Park—­ calling him Walter Ninny and Walter Noodle to vex him.  You remember, Euan, that his full name is Walter N. Butler, and that he never would tell us what the N. stands for, but we guessed it stood for Nellis, in honour of Nellis Fonda....  Lord!  What a world o’ trouble for us all in these three years!”

“I had supposed you married long ago, Lana.  The young Patroon was very ardent.”

“I?  The sorry supposition!  I marry—­ in the face of the sad and miserable examples all my friends afford me!  Not I, Euan, unless——­” She smiled at me with pretty malice. “——­ you enter the lists.  Do you then enter?” I reddened and laughed, and she, always enchanted to plague and provoke me, began her art forthwith, first innocently slipping her arm through mine, as though to support her flagging steps, then, as if by accident, letting one light finger slip along my sleeve to touch my hand and linger lightly.