CHAPTER IX
TANGLING THREADS
My surprise at this unexpected reference to the Lady of the Blended Rose, almost prevented utterance. What could this partisan ranger know of the girl? How could he even have identified her from my vague reference?
"Why do you say that?" I asked eagerly. "I did not mention the lady's name."
"There was no cause for you to do so," and the grim mouth smiled. "No one else in Philadelphia would have turned the trick so neatly; besides the fact that your opponent was Grant would have revealed the identity of the girl."
"You know them both then?"
"Fairly well; he was a boy in these parts, an' I have shod his riding horse many a time. A headstrong, domineering, spoiled lad he was, and quarrelsome. Once I gave him a sound thrashing in this very shop, an' when his father called me to task for it the next day he went home with a broken collar-bone. That was ten years before the war, an' we have not spoken pleasantly since. A hard man was Frederick Grant, an' none of his blood ever forgave an injury. Once the boy's company of Queen's Rangers raided this shop, but fortunately I was not here."
"But Mistress Mortimer," I interrupted, "is her family also from this neighborhood?"
"To the northeast of here, near Locust Grove; the properties of the two families adjoin each other, an' I have heard there is distant kinship between them, although if that be true all that was good in the strain must have descended to the one branch, an' all the evil to the other. Day and night could be no different. Colonel Mortimer is a genial, pleasant gentleman, an' a loyal friend, although we are in arms against each other. To tell the truth I half believe his heart is with the Colonies, although he cast his fortunes with the King. He even has a son in the Continental Army."
"On Lee's staff," I interrupted. "The daughter told me he was a twin brother."