“God be gude to us, it is Mr. Richard!” he cried.  “I hae na seen ye’re bonny face these muckle years, sir, sync ye cam’ back frae ae sight o’ the young mistress.” (I had met him in Annapolis then.) “An’ will ye be aff to the wars?”

I told him yes.  That I had come for a last look at the old place before I left.

He sighed.  “Ye’re vera welcome, sir.”  Then he added:  “Mr. Bordley’s gi’en me a fair notion o’ yere management at Gordon’s.  The judge is thinking there’ll be nane ither lad t’ hand a candle to ye.”

“And what news do you hear from London?” I asked, cutting him short.

“Ill uncos, sir,” he answered, shaking his head with violence.  He had indeed but a sorry tale for my ear, and one to make my heart heavier than it was.  McAndrews opened his mind to me, and seemed the better for it.  How Mr. Marmaduke was living with the establishment they wrote of was more than the honest Scotchman could imagine.  There was a country place in Sussex now, said he, that was the latest.  And drafts were coming in before the wheat was in the ear; and the plantations of tobacco on the Western Shore had been idle since the non-exportation, and were mortgaged to their limit to Mr. Willard.  Money was even loaned on the Wilmot House estate.  McAndrews had a shrewd suspicion that neither Mrs. Manners nor Miss Dorothy knew aught of this state of affairs.

“Mr. Richard,” he said earnestly, as he bade me good-by, “I kennt Mr. Manners’s mind when he lea’d here.  There was a laird in’t, sir, an’ a fortune.  An’ unless these come soon, I’m thinking I can spae th’ en’.”

In truth, a much greater fool than McAndrews might have predicted that end.

On Monday Judge Bordley accompanied me as far as Dingley’s tavern, and showed much emotion at parting.

“You need have no fears for your friends at Gordon’s Pride, Richard,” said he.  “And when the General comes back, I shall try to give him a good account of my stewardship.”

The General!  That title brought old Stanwix’s cobwebbed prophecy into my head again.  Here, surely, was the war which he had foretold, and I ready to embark in it.

Why not the sea, indeed?

CHAPTER LI

HOW AN IDLE PROPHECY CAME TO PASS

Captain Clapsaddle not being at his lodgings, I rode on to the Coffee House to put up my horse.  I was stopped by Mr. Claude.

“Why, Mr. Carvel,” says he, “I thought you on the Eastern Shore.  There is a gentleman within will be mightily tickled to see you, or else his protestations are lies, which they may very well be.  His name?  Now, ’Pon my faith, it was Jones—­no more.”

This thing of being called for at the Coffee House stirred up unpleasant associations.

“What appearance does the man make?” I demanded.

“Merciful gad!” mine host exclaimed; “once seen, never forgotten, and once heard, never forgotten.  He quotes me Thomson, and he tells me of his estate in Virginia.”