My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The
little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all
unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We
two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and
Philip said:

"I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may.
My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me,
besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she
weren't Dutch."

When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table,
eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner,
a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen,
and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions.

The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not
know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender.
They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and
disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's
senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person,
deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents
of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his
knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down.

"It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to
some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have
trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their
estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a