"Oh, no doubt, no doubt," grumbled Shew. "You, Mr. Drogue, are one of those gentlemen who seem trustful of the honour of all gentlemen. And for every gentleman who is one, the next is a blackguard. I do not contradict you. No, sir. But we plain folk of Tryon think it wisdom to watch gentlemen like Sir John Johnson."
"I am as plain a man as you are," said I, "but I am not able to doubt the word of honour given by the son of Sir William Johnson."
De Golyer laughed and asked me which way I rode, and I told him.
"Nick Stoner also went Mayfield way," said Shew with a shrug. "I think he unsaddled at Pigeon-Wood."
They wheeled their horses into the bushes with gestures of adieu; I shook my bridle, and my mare galloped out into the sandy road again.
The sky was very bright with that sweet springtime lustre which comes not alone from the moon but also from a million million unseen stars, all a-shining behind the purple veil of night.
Presently I heard the Mayfield creek babbling like a dozen laughing lasses, and rode along the bushy banks looking up at the mountains to the north.
They are friendly little mountains which we call the Mayfield Hills, all rising into purple points against the sky, like the waves on Lake Ontario, and so tumbling northward into the grim jaws of the Adirondacks, which are different—not sinister, perhaps, but grim and stolid peaks, ever on guard along the Northern wilderness.
Long, still reaches of the creek stretched away, unstarred by rising trout because of the lateness of the night. Only a heron's croak sounded in the darkness; there were no lights where I knew the Mayfield settlement to be.
Already I saw the grist mill, with its dusky wheel motionless; and, to the left, a frame house or two and several log-houses set in cleared meadows, where the vast ramparts of the forest had been cut away.