I was received civilly enough at Riverview, and soon determined to remain
there until Major Washington returned from the west. My aunt treated me
with great consideration, doubtless because she feared to anger me, and I
soon fell into the routine of the estate. My cousin James, a roystering
boy of fourteen, was not yet old enough to be covetous, and he and I were
soon friends. Dorothy treated me as she had always done, with a hearty
sisterly affection, which gave me much uneasiness, 't was so unlike my
own, and I was at some pains to point out to her that we were not
cousins, nor, indeed, any relation whatsoever. In return for which she
merely laughed at me.

By great good fortune, I found among the overseers on my aunt's estate a
man who had been a soldier of fortune in the Old World until some
escapade had driven him to seek safety in the colonies, and with my
aunt's permission, I secured him to teach me what he knew of the practice
of arms, a tutelage which he entered upon with fine enthusiasm. He was
called Captain Paul on the plantation,--a little, wiry man, with fierce
mustaches and flashing eyes, greatly feared by the negroes, though he
always treated them kindly enough, so far as I could see. He claimed to
be an Englishman,--certainly he spoke the language as well as any I ever
heard,--but his dark eyes and swarthy skin bespoke the Spaniard or
Italian, and his quickness with the foils the French. A strain of all
these bloods I think he must have had, but of his family he would tell me
nothing, nor of the trouble which had brought him over-sea. But of his
feats of arms he loved to speak,--and they were worth the telling. He had
been with Plelo's heroic little band of Frenchmen before Dantzic, where a
hundred deeds of valor were performed every day, and with Broglie before
Parma, where he had witnessed the rout of the Austrians. For hours