“Why, this is only a commission,” he growled. “What do I care for that? I want your dispatches, Captain Schuyler, since that seems to be your name.”

“I have none, on my word as an officer,” said Schuyler calmly.

“Then what were you doing on the road to Derryfield?” asked Butler, bending his shaggy brows on the other.

“On duty,” was the laconic reply.

“What kind of duty?”

“That is my own affair and my General’s.”

“Who is your General?”

“General Philip Schuyler.”

[Pg 30]

[Pg 30]

“So,” said the ranger leader, musingly. “Are you a relation of his?”

“His second cousin.”

“On his staff?”

“As an aide—yes.”

“What uniform is that you wear? I know none such among the rebel ragamuffins.”

“It is the uniform of the Zieten regiment of hussars, in the Prussian service.”

Butler looked at the other with more respect. At that time, the name of Frederic of Prussia was as famous as that of Napoleon, twenty-five years later, and the Tories, while despising the “rebels,” held a great reverence for the few foreign officers who had found their way into the American service.

“Have you, indeed, served in the Zieten Hussars?” be asked.

“Seven years,” said young Schuyler, proudly.

“You must have been a 

 Prev. P 20/84 next