"If I'm what I am," he said, hoarsely, "an old jack-ass he-hawing
'Peace! peace! thrift! thrift!' it is because I must and not because the
music pleases me.... And I had not meant to tell you why--for none other
suspects it--but my personal honor is at stake. I am in debt to a
friend, George, and unless I am left in peace here to collect my tithes
and till my fields and run my mills and ship my pearl-ashes, I can never
hope to pay a debt of honor incurred--and which I mean to pay, if I
live, so help me God!

"Lad, if this house, these farms, these acres were my own, do you think
I'd hesitate to polish up that old sword yonder that my father carried
when Schenectady went up in flames?... Know me better, George!... Know
that this condemnation to inaction is the bitterest trial I have ever
known. How easy it would be for me to throw my own property into one
balance, my sword into the other, and say, 'Defend the one with the
other or be robbed!' But I can't throw another man's lands into the
balance. I can't raise the war-yelp and go careering about after glory
when I owe every shilling I possess and thousands more to an honorable
and generous gentleman who refused all security for the loan save my own
word of honor.

"And now, simple, brave, high-minded as he is, he offers to return me my
word of honor, free me from his debt, and leave me unshackled to conduct
in this coming war as I see fit.

"But that is more than he can do, George. My word once pledged can only
be redeemed by what it stood for, and he is powerless to give it back.

"That is all, sir.... Pray think more kindly of an old fool in future,
when you plume yourself upon your liberty to draw sword in the most just
cause this world has ever known."

"It is I who am the fool, Sir Lupus," I said, in a low voice.

XI

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

I remember it was the last day of May before I saw my cousin Dorothy
again.

Late that afternoon I had taken a fishing-rod and a book, The Poems of
Pansard, and had set out for the grist-mill on the stream below the
log-bridge; but did not go by road, as the dust was deep, so instead
crossed the meadow and entered the cool thicket, making a shorter route
to the stream.

Through the woodland, as I passed, I saw violets in hollows and blue
innocence starring moist glades with its heavenly color, and in the
drier woods those slender-stemmed blue bell-flowers which some call the
Venus's looking-glass.

In my sadde