"Your name is Varick?"

I shook my head.

"Butler?"

"No. Look sharp to your knife, friend."

"Oh, then I have guessed it," he said, coolly; "your name is Ormond--and
I'm glad of it."

"Why are you glad of it?" I asked, curiously, wondering, too, at his
knowledge of me, a stranger.

"You will answer that question for yourself when you meet your kin, the
Varicks and Butlers," he said; and the reply had an insolent ring that
did not please me, yet I was loath to quarrel with this boyish giant
whose amiable company I had found agreeable on my long journey through a
land so new to me.

"My friend," I said, "you are blunt."

"Only in speech, sir," he replied, lazily swinging one huge leg over the
pommel of his saddle. Sitting at ease in the sunshine, he opened his
fringed hunting-shirt to the breeze blowing.

"So you go to the Varicks?" he mused aloud, eyes slowly closing in the
sunshine like the brilliant eyes of a basking lynx.