While the sun still hung high in the west, and ere any hint of evening was heard either in the robin’s note or from the high-soaring martins, we had dressed.  Boyd went away first, saying carelessly that he meant to look to the horses before paying his respects to the ladies.  A little later I descended, a black servant conducting me to the family sitting room.

Here our gallant Major made me known to his lady and to his numerous family—­ six young children, and still a seventh, the pretty maid whom we had seen on approaching the house, who proved to be a married daughter.  Betsy, they called her—­ and she was only seventeen, but had been two years the wife of Alsop Hunt.

As for the Major’s lady, who seemed scarce thirty and was six years older, she so charmed me with her grace, and with the bright courage she so sweetly maintained in a home which every hour of the day and night menaced, that even Mrs. Hunt, with her gay spirits, imperious beauty, and more youthful attractions, no more than shared my admiration for her mother.

In half an hour Lieutenant Boyd came in, was presented, and paid his homage gayly, as he always did.  Yet, I thought a slight cloud rested on his brow, but this soon passed, and I forgot it.

So we talked of this and that as lightly as though no danger threatened this house; and Boyd was quickly at his best with the ladies.  As for me, I courted the children.  And I remember there were two little maids of fourteen and eleven, Ruhannah and Hannah, sweet and fresh as wild June roses, who showed me the tow cloth for our army which they were spinning, and blushed at my praise of their industry.  And there was Mary, ten, and Clarissa, eight, and two little boys, one a baby—­ all save the last two children carding or spinning flax and tow.

It was not easy to understand that this blooming matron could be mother of all of these, so youthful she seemed in her Quaker-cut gown of dove-colour—­ though it was her handsome, high-spirited daughter who should have worn the sober garb.

“Not I,” said she, laughing at Boyd.  “I’d sooner don jack-boots and be a dragoon—­ and we would completely represent a holy cause, my husband with his broad-brim and I with my sword.  What do you say, Mr. Boyd?”

“I beg of you first to consider the rifle-frock if you must enlist!” urged Boyd, with such fervour that we all laughed at his gallant effort to recruit such beauty for our corps; for even a mental picture of Betsy Hunt in rifle-frock seemed too adorable.  Mr. Hunt, entering, smiled in his quiet, embarrassed way; and I thought that this wise and gentle-mannered man must have more than a handful in his spirited young wife, whose dress was anything but plain.

I had taken the tiny maid, Clarissa, upon my knees and was telling her of the beauty of our Northland, and of that great, dusky green ocean of giant pines, vast as the sea and as silent and uncharted, when Major Lockwood bent over me saying in a quiet voice that it might be well for me to look about in the town for the wench who knew the whereabouts of Mayaro.