say that I regret the error
of my Cayugas which committed your house to the flames."

"The fortune of war, Captain Butler. I trust your home at Butlersbury
still survives intact."

A dull color crept into his pallid cheeks.

"The house at Butlersbury stands," he said, "as do Johnson Hall, Guy
Park, and old Fort Johnson. We hope erelong to open them again to our
friends, Mr. Renault."

"I have understood so," I said politely. "When do you march from
Thendara?"

Again the dark color came into his face. "Sir Frederick Haldimand is a
babbler!" he said, between tightening lips. "Never a secret, never a
plan, but he must bawl it aloud to all who care to listen, or sound it
as he gads about from camp to city--aye, and chatters it to the forest
trees for lack of audience, I suppose. All New York is humming with it,
is it not, Mr. Renault?"

"And if it is, what harm?" I said pleasantly. "Who ever heard of
Thendara, save as a legend of a lost town somewhere in the wilderness?
Who in New York knows where Thendara lies?"

He looked at me with unwinking eyes--the empty stare of a bird of prey.

"_You_ know, for one," he said; and his eyes suddenly became piercing.

I smiled at him without comprehension, and he took the very vagueness
of my smile for acquiescence.

Like the luminous shadow of summer lightning the flame flickered in his
eyes, and went out, leaving them darkly drowned in melancholy. He
stepped nearer.

"Let us sit under the trees for a moment--if I am not detaining you,
Mr. Renault," he said in a low, pleasant voice. I bowed. We turned,
walking shoulder to shoulder toward the shade of the cherry-trees, now
in full foliage and heavily fruited. With perfect courtesy he halted,
inclining his head, a gesture for me to pass before him. We seated
ourselves at a rustic table beneath the trees; and I remember the ripe
cherries which had dropped upon it from the clusters overhead, and how,
as we talked, I picked them up, tasting them one by one.

"I am here," he began abruptly, "of my own idea. No one, not even Sir
Henry, is aware that I am in New York. I came from Halifax by the
_Gannet_, schooner, landing at Coenties Slip among the fishing-smack in
time for breakfast; then to Sir Peter Coleville's, learning he was
here--cock-fighting!" A trace of a sneer edged his finely cut nostrils.

"If you desire concealment, is it wise to wear that uniform?" I asked.

"I am known on the fighting-line, not in this peacef