* Albany.
But as a result of this we saw no other white men until we reached the outlying villages above New York, and their residents could give us no tidings of the town's affairs, for they had been cut off by the great drifts since Christmas—a feast to which we had given no thought. We had completely lost track of days and were not even sure of the month. For years we had regulated ourselves by the seasons. It was hot or cold, Winter or Summer, with us. We let it go at that.
The burghers of the Out-ward eyed us askance for the wastrels we seemed in our deerskin shirts and leggings, bearskin robes belted about us, hair and beard sweeping our shoulders. And as it chanced, we saw none we knew until we reached the Broadway just above the Green Lane, when honest John Allen, my clerk, turned the corner in face of us and would have passed on, with an uneasy glance for our ruffian pair.
"How, now!" I cried. "Is it so you greet your master, John?"
He dropped his bundle of papers in the snow and his chin sagged to his chest.
"'Tis never you, Master Ormerod! Why, we had given you up two years gone—all, that is, save Master Burnet. But for him the magistrates would have settled your estate."
Now, why it was I know not, but at this I was smitten with an insane desire to laugh, and I rocked my sides so that people across the way deemed me witless and hastened by us.
"I am glad there is one man of intelligence left," I said when I had found my breath again. "But I never doubted the governor, John."
"He is governor no longer, sir."
"What?"