In the morning came the quality in scores—all the landed gentry of Tryon County, Tory and Whig alike, to show their reverence:—old Colonel John Butler from his seat at Butlersbury near Caughnawaga, and his dark, graceful son Walter,—he of the melancholy golden eyes—an attorney then and sick of a wound which, some said, had been taken in a duel with Michael Cardigan near Fort Pitt.
Colonel Claus was there, too, son-in-law to Sir William, and battered much by frontier battles: and Guy Johnson, a cousin, and a son-in-law, too, had come from his fine seat at Guy Park to look upon a face as tranquil in death as a sleeping child's.
The McDonald, of damned memory, was there in his tartan and kilts and bonnet; and the Albany Patroon, very modest; and God knows how many others from far and near, all arrived to honour a man who had died very tired in the service of our Lord, who knows and pardons all.
The pretty lady of Sir John, who was Polly Watts of New York, came to me where I stood in the noon breeze near the lilacs; and I kissed her hand, and, straightening myself, retained it, looking into her woeful face of a child, all marred with tears.
"I had not thought to be mistress of the Hall for many years," said she, her lips a-tremble. "But yesterday, at this hour, he was living: and, today, in this hour, the heavy importunities of strange new duties are already crushing me.... I count on you, Jack."
I made no answer.
"May we not count on you?" she said. "Sir John and I expect it."
As I stood silent there in the breezy sunshine by the porch, there came across the grass Billy Alexander, who is Lord Stirling, a man much older than I, but who seemed young enough; and made his reverence to Lady Johnson, kissing the hand which I very gently released.
"Oh, Billy," says she, the tears starting again, "why should death take him at such a time, when God's wrath darkens all the world?"