From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day counts now. The sooner I get home the better."
"Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to Sorel to-morrow morning."
"No: you know what I mean. I want to----"
"Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion, like you, I should fear nothing."
"Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I gave him my mother's letter.
My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and whistle softly.
"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"
"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety, too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"
I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.
"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said, seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get well as fast as you like, and we will be off."