details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's
allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went
over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and
whistle softly.

"Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?"

"My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my
great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of
his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been
credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like
potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How
much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety,
too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a
God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'"

I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views
upon the tidings in the letter that I wished.

"I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said,
seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters
from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the
doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward
Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get
well as fast as you like, and we will be off."

This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was
judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General
Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was
accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his