time, although unseasonable vigils sometimes rendered it bloodshotten. A thick neck and rosy complexion betokened a hale constitution; and the ripple of a deep and constantly welling humour, that played upon his strongly marked features, expressed in characters that could not be misread, that love of companionship which had been, perhaps, the most frequent shoal upon which his hopes in life had been stranded. His crown was bald and encircled by a fair supply of crisp, curly and silvery hair, whilst a thick grey moustache gave a martial and veteran air to his visnomy.

His dress served to set off his figure to the best advantage. It consisted of the doublet and ruff, short cloak and trunk hose, the parti-coloured stocking and capacious boot proper to the old English costume which, about the period of the Restoration, began to give way to the cumbrous foppery of the last century. This costume was still retained by many in the province, and belonged to the military equipment of the garrison of St. Mary's, where it was fashioned of light green cloth garnished with yellow lace.

Arrayed in this guise, Captain Dauntrees had some excuse for a small share of vanity on the score of having worn well up to a green old age; and it was manifest that he sought to improve this impression by the debonair freedom with which he wore a drab beaver, with its broad flap looped up on one side, leaving his ample brow bared to wind and weather.

This combination of the martinet and free companion exhibited in the dress of the Captain, was a pretty intelligible index to his character, which disclosed a compound, not unfrequent in the civil wars of that period, of the precisian and ruffler,—the cavalier and economist. In the affairs of life,—a phrase which, in regard to him, meant such matters principally and before all others, as related to his own comfort—he was worldly-wise, sagaciously provident, as an old soldier, of whatever advantages his condition might casually supply; in words, he was, indifferently, according to the occasion, a moralist or hot-brained reveller—sometimes affecting the courtier along with the martialist, and mixing up the saws of peaceful thrift with the patter of the campaigns.

As the occasions of my story may enable me to illustrate some of these points in the character of the worthy Captain, I will not forestall the opinion of my readers, regarding him, by further remark,—preferring that he should speak for himself, rather than leave his merits to be certified by so unpractised an adept, as I confess myself to be, in unriddling the secret properties of a person so deserving to be known.

CHAPTER III.

"Of all seasons of the year, autumn is the most voluptuous, and October the loveliest of months. Then may a man sit at his door—in the sun if he choose, for he will not find it too hot—or in the shade, if it liketh him, for neither will he find this too cool, and there hold converse with his own meditations: or he may ride or walk, dance or sing, for in this October time a man hath heart for any pastime, so rich is the air, and such pleasant imaginations doth it engender. And if he be poetical, therein will he be greatly favoured; for surely never nature puts on such gaudy attire, on earth or sky, as she wears in our October. The morning haze, which the hoarfrost flings up to meet the sun, hangs across the landscape as if made on purpose to enchant the painter; and the evening sunset lights up the heavens with a glory that shall put that painter—even Claude or Salvator—to shame at the inadequacy of his art. And then the woods!—what pallet hath colours for the forest? Of all the months of the year, commend me to October!"

Some such rhapsody as this was running through the thoughts, and breaking forth in slight mutterings from the lips of the Captain of Musqueteers, on an afternoon in this much lauded month of October, in the year I have alluded to in a former chapter, as he sate in front of his quarters in the fort. A small table was displayed upon the pavement, supplied with a flagon, pipes, and drinking cups. The Captain's solid bulk was deposited in a broad arm-chair, close by the table. His sword and cloak lay upon a bench at the door, and a light breeze flickered amongst his short and hoary locks, where they escaped from the cover of a cloth bonnet which he had now substituted for his beaver. A sentinel stood on post at the gate, towards which the Captain, as he slowly quaffed a cup, ever and anon turned an expectant eye. Once or twice he rose from his seat and strode backward and forward across the parade, then visited the rampart, which afforded him a view of the road leading from the town, and finally resumed his seat and renewed his solitary and slow potation.

When the sun had sunk halfway down the flag-staff, the Captain's wishes were crowned by the arrival of a brace of visiters.

The first of these was Garret Weasel, the publican, a thin, small man, in a suit of gray; of a timid carriage and slender voice. He might have been observed for a restless, undefinable eye which seemed to possess the habitual circumspection of a tapster to see the need of a customer; and this expression was sustained by a rabbit-like celerity of motion which raised the opinion of his timidity. There was an air of assentation and reverence in his demeanour, which, perhaps, grew out of the domestic discipline of his spouse, a buxom dame with the heart of a lioness. She had trained Master Garret to her hand, where he might have worn out his days in implicit obedience, had it not luckily fallen out for him, that Captain Dauntrees had settled himself down in this corner of the New World. The Captain being a regular trafficker in the commodities of the Crow and Archer, and no whit over-awed by the supremacy of mine hostess, soon set himself about seducing her worse-half from his allegiance, so far as was necessary, at least, to satisfy his own cravings for company at the fort. He therefore freely made himself the scapegoat of Garret's delinquencies, confiding in the wheedling power of his tongue, to pacify the dame. With all the tapster's humility and meekness, he still followed the Captain through his irregularities with the adhesiveness and submission of a dog—carousing on occasion like a man of stouter mould, and imitating the reveller-tone of his companion with an ambitious though not always successful zeal. He did not naturally lack merriment; but it was not of the boisterous stamp: there was, at his worst outbreak, a glimmering of deference and respect, rising up to a rickety laugh, and a song sometimes, yet without violent clamour; and the salt tears were often wrung from his eyes by the pent-up laughter which his vocation and his subordinate temper had taught him it was unseemly to discharge in a volley.

His companion was a tall, sinewy, and grave person, habited in the guise of a forester—a cap, namely, of undressed deer skin, a buff jerkin, guarded by a broad belt and buckle at the waist, and leggings of brown leather. This was a Fleming, named Arnold de la Grange, who belonged to the corps of wood rangers in the service of the Lord Proprietary. He had arrived in the province in the time of Lord Cecilius, many years before, and had shared much of the toil of the early settlement. His weather-beaten and gaunt form, tawny cheek, and grizzled hair, bespoke a man inured to the hard service of a frontier life, whilst his erect port and firm step, evinced that natural gracefulness which belongs to men trained to the self-dependence necessary to breast the ever-surrounding perils of such a service. He was a man of few words, and these were delivered in a Low Dutch accent, which his long intercourse with the English had failed to correct.