So George went away; and the night after, the night before he sailed, the horseman and his company came.
It was at dusk, and a gossamer silvery mist had drifted up from the Delaware. He had hitched his horse by the gate. He was in riding-breeches and gaiters and a rather old-fashioned riding-coat. And in the band of his hat he had stuck a small American flag which looked oddly enough almost like a cockade. He knocked at the door, quite ignoring the new electric bell which George had installed one idle Sunday morning when his grandmother had felt he should have been at church. As it happened, old Mrs. Buchan had been standing by the window, watching the mist creep up and the twilight come, thinking of Georgie so soon to be upon the water. As the horseman knocked she, quite suddenly and quite contrary to her usual custom, went herself to the door.
His hat was immediately off, swept through a nobler circle than the modern bow demands, and he spoke with the elaboration of courtesy which suited his age; for, though his stride was vigorous, he was no longer young. It was a severe, careworn face of a stern, almost hard, nobility of expression. Yet the smile when it came was engaging, and old Mrs. Buchan, as she smiled in return, found herself saying to herself that no Southerner, however stern, could fail to have this graceful lighter side. For his question had been put in the softer accents of Virginia and of the states farther south.
“I’ve lost my way,” he began, with the very slightest, small, gay laugh. But he was instantly serious. “It is so many, many years since I was here.”
Mrs. Buchan pointed up the road.
“That is the way to Princeton.”
“Princeton, of course. That’s where we fought the British and beat them. It seems strange, does it not, that we now fight with them?”
“We must forget the Revolution now, must we not?” This from Mrs. Buchan.
“Forget the Revolution!” he flashed back at her, almost angrily. Then more gently: “Perhaps. If we remember liberty!” He glanced an instant up the road to Princeton hill and then went on. “They fought well then, madam. As a soldier I am glad to have such good allies. But I was forgetting. Yonder lies Princeton, and from there there is the post-road to New York, is there not? I must be in New York by morning.”