Major Jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke.
"Yes, we never doubted that. But we are not agreed how you can best serve us. You are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and to speak English like an Englishman. Some think you can be of most use here, standing between us and the Albany committee; others say that things would go better if we had you among us. Matters are very bad. John Johnson is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. I don't know what to advise you. What do you think?"
While we were still debating the question thus raised by Major Fonda--although I have written it in an English which the worthy soul never attained--my cousin Teunis Van Hoorn burst into the room with tidings from Boston which had just arrived by courier. Almost before he could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of his story. It was the tale of Bunker Hill which he shouted out to us--that story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling!
An hour later Major Jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off.
He would sleep that night at Mabie's, so as to have all the Tryon County part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer.
It was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that I found how the secretive Dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital, tidings for the last.
"Oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps I did not mention it. Young Cross has left his home and gone to join Guy Johnson and the Butlers. They say he had angry words with his wife--your Daisy--before he deserted her. She has come back to the Cedars again to live!"
Chapter XXII
The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome ego, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent enough as the tale unfolds.