ange-colored flowers, each
centred with a golden bead.

"A forest-runner," she motioned with her lips, "and, if I'm not blind,
he should answer to the name of Mount--and many crimes, they say."

The forest-runner stood alert, rifle resting easily in the hollow of his
left arm.

"Who passes?" he called out.

"White folk," replied Dorothy, laughing. Then we stepped out.

"Well, well," said the forest-runner, lifting his mole-skin cap with a
grin; "if this is not the pleasantest sight that has soothed my eyes
since we hung that Tory whelp last Friday--and no disrespect to Mistress
Varick, whose father is more patriot than many another I might name!"

"I bid you good-even, Jack Mount," said Dorothy, smiling.

"To you, Mistress Varick," he said, bowing the deeper; then glanced
keenly at me and recognized me at the same moment. "Has my prophecy come
true, sir?" he asked, instantly.

"God save our country," I said, significantly.

"Then I was right!" he said, and flushed with pleasure when I offered
him my hand.

"If I am not too free," he muttered, taking my hand in his great, hard
paw, almost affectionately.

"You may walk with us if you journey our way," said Dorothy; and the
great fellow shuffled up beside her, cap in hand, and it amused me to
see him strive to shorten his strides to hers, so that he presently fell
into a strange gait, half-skip, half-toddle.

"Pray cover yourself," said Dorothy, encouragingly, and Mount did so,
dumb as a Matanzas oyster and crimson as a boiled sea-crab. Then,
doubtless, deeming that gentility required some polite observation, he
spoke in a high-pitched voice of the balmy weather and the sweet
profusion of birds and flowers, when there was more like to be a "sweet
profusion" of Indians; and I nigh stifled with laughter to see this
lumbering, free-voiced forest-runner transformed to a mincing, anxious,
backwoods macaroni at the smile of a pretty woman.

"Do you bring no other news save of the birds and blossoms?" asked
Dorothy, mischievously. "Tell us what we all are fearful of. Have the
Senecas and Cayugas risen to join the British?"

Mount stole a glance at me.

"I wish I knew," he muttered.

"We will know soon, now," I said, soberly.

"Sooner, perhaps, than you expect, sir," he said. "I am summoned to the
manor to confer with General Schuyler on this very matter of the
Iroquois."

"Is it true that the Mohawks are in their war-paint?" asked Dorothy,
maliciously.