After a moment I said: "But a moment since you told me that Sir John
comes here."

She nodded. "He comes and gees in secret with young Walter Butler--one
of your Ormond-Butlers, cousin--and old John Butler, his father, Colonel
of the Rangers, who boast they mean to scalp the whole of Tryon County
ere this blood-feud is ended. Oh, I have heard them talk and talk,
drinking o' nights in the gun-room, and the escort's horses stamping at
the porch with a man to each horse, to hold the poor brutes' noses lest
they should neigh and wake the woods. Councils of war, they call them,
these revels; but they end ever the same, with Sir John borne off to bed
too drunk to curse the slaves who shoulder his fat bulk, and Walter
Butler, sullen, stunned by wine, a brooding thing of malice carved in
stone; and father roaring his same old songs, and beating time with his
long pipe till the stem snaps, and he throws the glowing bowl at Cato--"

"Dorothy, Dorothy," I said, "are these the scenes you find already too
familiar?"

"Stale as last month's loaf in a ratty cupboard."

"Do they not offend you?"

"Oh, I am no prude--"

"Do you mean to say Sir Lupus sanctions it?"

"What? My presence? Oh, I amuse them; they dress me in Ruyven's clothes
and have me to wine--lacking a tenor voice for their songs--and at