And it was true, for now there came to the door and opened it a thin fellow wearing horn spectacles, who stood silent and cringing before us.  Slowly rubbing his workworn hands, he made us a landlord’s bow as listless and as perfunctory as ever I have seen in any ordinary.  But his welcome was spoken in a whisper.

“God have mercy on this house,” said Boyd loudly.  “Now, what’s amiss, friend?  Is there death within these honest walls, that you move about on tiptoe?”

“There is death a-plenty in Westchester, sir,” said the man, in a voice as colorless as his drab smalls and faded hair.  Yet what he said showed us that he had noted our dress, too, and knew us for strangers.

“Cowboys and skinners, eh?” inquired Boyd, unbuckling his belt.

“And leather-cape, too, sir.”

My lieutenant laughed, showing his white teeth; laid belt, hatchet, and heavy knife on a wine-stained table, and placed his rifle against it.  Then, slipping cartridge sack, bullet pouch, and powder horn from his shoulders, stood eased, yawning and stretching his fine, powerful frame.

“I take it that you see few of our corps here below,” he observed indulgently.

The landlord’s lack-lustre eyes rested on me for an instant, then on Boyd: 

“Few, sir.”

“Do you know the uniform, landlord?”

“Rifles,” he said indifferently.

“Yes, but whose, man?  Whose?” insisted Boyd impatiently.

The other shook his head.

“Morgan’s!” exclaimed Boyd loudly.  “Damnation, sir!  You should know Morgan’s!  Sixth Company, sir; Major Parr!  And a likelier regiment and a better company never wore green thrums on frock or coon-tail on cap!”

“Yes, sir,” said the man vacantly.

Boyd laughed a little: 

“And look that you hint as much to the idle young bucks hereabouts—­ say it to some of your Westchester squirrel hunters——­” He laid his hand on the landlord’s shoulder.  “There’s a good fellow,” he added, with that youthful and winning smile which so often carried home with it his reckless will—­ where women were concerned—­ “we’re down from Albany and we wish the Bedford folk to know it.  And if the gallant fellows hereabout desire a taste of true glory—­ the genuine article—­ why, send them to me, landlord—­ Thomas Boyd, of Derry, Pennsylvania, lieutenant, 6th company of Morgan’s—­ or to my comrade here, Mr. Loskiel, ensign in the same corps.”

He clapped the man heartily on the shoulder and stood looking around at the stripped and dishevelled room, his handsome head a little on one side, as though in frankest admiration.  And the worn and pallid landlord gazed back at him with his faded, lack-lustre eyes—­ eyes that we both understood, alas—­ eyes made dull with years of fear, made old and hopeless with unshed tears, stupid from sleepless nights, haunted with memories of all they had looked upon since His Excellency marched out of the city to the south of us, where the red rag now fluttered on fort and shipping from King’s Bridge to the Hook.