Here was something that Andrew, in the innocence of his heart, had never even considered. The glittering Lucius seemed to him far too splendid an adornment of the house of Beard to be spared for any such errand. He said something of the sort. "Your obleeged servant sir, I'm sure, but Lucius is a damned macaroni!" said Alexander Beard abruptly, then, as Andrew grew rigid with loyalty, "Sorry, boy--I lost my temper then--but your brother, Lucius--if you can inform me why your brother Lucius" (the goose-quill rapped on his knuckles) "makes such friends of the pack of ranting Mohocks that set up barber's poles to Liberty all over the town--" "My brother, sir," said Andrew, stiffly, "has his own political opinions, but--" "But, but, but," said his father impatiently, "Oh your brother's a damned fine fellow--but he'll marry that Livingston wench before he's done and set the De Lanceys against him for good and all--if he doesn't do worse and go to bed with some Boston madam who thinks Sam Adams is God Almighty because he talks like a codfish. A plague on them all, I say--a plague out of Egypt--" He threw the snapped goose-quill aside. Andrew was silent--his father's tempers were rare, but when they came, they had to run their course. He tried not to hear what his father was saying about the Livingstons and the De Lanceys. His father's passionate reverence for James De Lancey, the dead ex-Governor, had always irked him queerly, and he had never been able to see the great, stately family coach roll by behind its famous white horses without a secret feeling of discontent. He remembered the time it had drawn up before their own door and the arrogant, courteous, languid gentleman who was carried like a phial of holywater inside it had descended to take a glass of Malaga with an Alexander Beard whose hands and manner were suddenly and definitely obsequious. That had happened when Andrew was only a small boy, but the imprint of it had remained in his mind. He had not been sorry, a little later, to stand in the crowd and watch the long black worm of the funeral procession wind slowly, with its gilt-escutcheoned hearse, toward Trinity Church, while the minute guns from Copsey Battery tolled out the fifty-seven years of the dead man's life. "A great gentleman," his father was saying. He sighed. "And yet one that would drink his glass of wine in my house and never once--" He checked himself. Andrew stirred rebelliously. "Father! But why should not even a gentleman like Governor De Lancey take wine in our house?" "Why not indeed?" said his father, and smiled. "Why not indeed?" The words were gently-spoken, but at their implication, Andrew felt the steady world rock under his feet. "But, Father, we--we've always been--gentle--haven't we?" "Gentle enough, of a surety," said his father, with eyes averted. "Or why should my eldest son be able to carry a sword?"