But he's too light metal--a mere buccaneer! That broadside of yours would predicate a general foe--and I'm damned if I wouldn't like to know his name!" "We would all like to know his name," said Rand.

"And when we know it, I for one would like to hear Mr.Cary's proofs of faithlessness to obligations." In the hush of expectation which fell upon the room the eyes of the two men met.

In Rand's there was something cold and gleaming, something that was not his father's nor his grandfather's, but his own, deadly but markedly courageous.

Cary's look was more masked, grave, and collected, with the merest quiver of the upper lip.

In the mind of each the curtain strangely lifted, not upon Richmond or Fontenoy or the Court House at Charlottesville, but upon a long past day and the Albemarle woods and two boys gathering nuts together.