He seemed to be one who continually carried a burden, and a stripling just from the woods could not long have a place, either favorable or unfavorable, in his memory.

Robert began to wonder if St.Luc had net been mistaken.

What could a man born and bred in France, and only in recent years an inhabitant of Canada, know of Adrian Van Zoon of New York?
What, above all, could he know that would cause him to warn Robert against him?
But this, like all his other questions, disappeared in the enjoyments of the moment.

Nature, which had been so kind in giving to him a vivid imagination, had also given with it an intense appreciation.

He liked nearly everything, and nearly everybody, he could see a rosy mist where the ordinary man saw only a cloud, and just now New York was so kind to him that he loved it all.
A week in the city and he attended a brilliant ball given by William Walton in the Walton mansion, in Franklin Square, then the most elaborate and costly home in North America.