When I presented Grey to him, he became at once the
cavalier, as precise in his speech and polite in his deportment as any
Whitehall courtier. They talked high and disposedly of genteel matters,
and you would have thought that that red-haired pirate had lived his
life among proud lords and high-heeled ladies. That is ever the way of
the Highlander. He alters like a clear pool to every mood of the sky,
so that the shallow observer might forget how deep the waters are.
Presently, when we had ridden into the chestnut forests of the
Mattaponey, he began to forget his part. Grey, it appeared, was a
student of campaigns, and he and Ringan were deep in a discussion of
Conde's battles, in which both showed surprising knowledge. But the
glory of the weather and of the woodlands, new as they were to a
seafarer, set his thoughts wandering, and he fell to tales of his past
which consorted ill with his former decorum. There was a madcap zest in
his speech, something so merry and wild, that Grey, who had fallen back
into his Tidewater manners, became once more the careless boy. We
stopped to eat in a glade by a slow stream, and from his saddle-bags
Ringan brought out strange delicacies. There were sugared fruits from
the Main, and orange sirop from Jamaica, and a kind of sweet punch made
by the Hispaniola Indians.
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