“I suppose you have heard, Corny, what the two old gentlemen have been at, lately?”
“Your father and mine?—I have not heard a syllable of any thing new.”
“They have been suing out, before the Governor and Council, a joint claim to that tract of land they bought of the Mohawks, the last time they were out together on service in the colony militia.”
I ought to mention, here, that though my predecessors had made but few campaigns in the regular army, each had made several in the more humble capacity of a militia officer.
“This is news to me, Dirck,” I answered. “Why should the old gentlemen have been so sly about such a thing?”
“I cannot tell you, lest they thought silence the best way to keep off the yankees. You know, my father has a great dread of a yankee's getting a finger into any of his bargains. He says the yankees are the locusts of the west.”
“But, how came you to know any thing about it, Dirck?”
“I am no yankee, Corny.”
“And your father told you on the strength of this recommendation?”
“He told me, as he tells me most things that he thinks it best I should know. We smoke together, and then we talk together.”