Upon rounding the lower end of the town, and crossing the Hudson to Paulus Hook, which post our troops had reoccupied after the rebel capture of its former garrison, we went ashore and were joined by men and horses from up the river, and by others from Staten Island. We then exchanged our hats for the caps taken from the rebel cavalry, donned the blue surtouts, and set out; Captain Falconer and the guide riding at the head.

For a short distance we kept to the Newark road, but, without proceeding to that town, we deviated to the right, and made Northwestwardly, the purpose being to pass through a hiatus in the semicircle of rebel detached posts, turn the extremity of the main army, and approach Morristown—where Washington had his headquarters—from a side whence a British force from New York might be the less expected.

Each man of us carried a sword and two pistols, having otherwise no burden but his clothes. At first we walked our horses, but presently we put them to a steady, easy gallop. The snow on the ground greatly muffled the sound of our horses' footfalls, and made our way less invisible than so dark a night might have allowed. But it made ourselves also the more likely to be seen; though scarce at a great distance nor in more than brief glimpses, for the wind raised clouds of fine snow from the whitened fields, the black growth of tree and brush along the road served now as curtain for us, now as background into which our outlines might sink, and a stretch of woods sometimes swallowed us entirely from sight. Besides, on such a night there would be few folk outdoors, and if any of these came near, or if we were seen from farmhouses or village windows, our appearance of rebel horse would protect our purpose. So, in silence all, following our captain and his guide, we rode forward to seize the rebel chief, and make several people's fortunes.

I must now turn to Philip Winwood, and relate matters of which I was not a witness, but with which I was subsequently made acquainted in all minuteness.

We had had no direct communication with Philip since the time after our capture of Mr. Cornelius, who, as every exchange of prisoners had passed him by, still remarked upon parole at Mr. Faringfield's. If Mr. Faringfield received news of Winwood through his surreptitious messenger, Bill Meadows, he kept it to himself, naturally making a secret of his being in correspondence with General Washington.

Though Philip knew of Meadows's perilous employment, he would not risk the fellow's discovery even to Margaret, and so refrained from laying upon him the task of a message to her. How she found out what Meadows was engaged in, I cannot guess, unless it was that, unheeded in the house as she was unheeding, she chanced to overhear some talk between her father and him, or to detect him in the bringing of some letter which she afterward took the trouble secretly to peep into. Nor did I ever press to know by what means she had induced him to serve as messenger between her and Ned, and to keep this service hidden from her father and husband and all the world. Maybe she pretended a desire to hear of her husband without his knowing she had so far softened toward him, and a fear of her father's wrath if he learned she made Ned her correspondent in the matter. Perhaps she added to her gentler means of persuasion a veiled threat of exposing Meadows to the British if he refused. In any event, she knew that, once enlisted, he could be relied on for the strictest obedience to her wishes. It needed not, in his case, the additional motive for secrecy, that a knowledge of his employment on Margaret's business would compromise him with General Washington and Mr. Faringfield.

How Meadows contrived to meet Ned, to open the matter to him, to convey the ensuing correspondence, to avoid discovery upon this matter in the rebel camp, as he avoided it upon Washington's business in New York, is beyond me: if it were not, I should be as skilful, as fit for such work, as Meadows himself. 'Tis well-known now what marvellously able secret agents Washington made use of; how to each side many of them had to play the part of spies upon the other side; how they were regarded with equal suspicion in both camps; and how some of them really served their enemies in order finally to serve their friends. More than one of them, indeed, played a double game, receiving pay from both sides, and earning it from both, each commander conceiving himself to be the one benefited. In comparison with such duplicity, the act of Meadows, in undertaking Margaret's private business as a secret matter adjunctive to his main employment, was honesty itself.

'Tis thus explained why, though Margaret might communicate with her brother in the enemy's camp, she got no word from her husband there. But his thoughts and his wishes had scarce another subject than herself. The desire to see her, possessed him more and more wholly. He imagined that her state of mind must in this be a reflection of his own. Long ago her anger must have died—nay, had it not passed in that farewell embrace when she held up her face to invite his kiss? The chastening years of separation, the knowledge of his toils and dangers, must have wrought upon her heart, to make it more tender to him than ever. She must grieve at their parting, long for his home-coming. So convinced was he of such feelings on her part, that he pitied her for them, felt the start of many a tear in sorrow for her sorrow.

"Poor girl!" he thought. "How her face would gladden if I were to walk into her presence at this moment!"

And the thought gave birth to the resolution. The joy of such a meeting was worth a thousand risks and efforts.

His first step was to get leave of absence and General Washington's permission to enter New York. The former was quickly obtained, the latter less so. But if he failed to demonstrate to the commander the possible profit of his secretly visiting the enemy's town, he convinced him that the entrance was not too difficult to one who knew the land so well, and who could so easily find concealment. Sympathising with Philip's private motive in the case, trusting him implicitly, and crediting his ability to take care of himself in even so perilous a matter, Washington finally gave consent.

Philip rode in proper manner from the rebel camp, bound apparently Southward, as if perchance he bore despatches to the rebel civil authorities at Philadelphia. Once out of observation, he concealed his uniform cap and outer coat, and provided himself at a New Jersey village with an ordinary felt hat, and a plain dark overcoat. He then turned from the Southward road, circled widely about the rebel camp, and arrived at a point some distance north of it. Here, in a hospitable farmhouse, he passed the night. The next day, he rode Eastward for the Hudson River, crossing undiscovered the scanty, ill-patrolled line of rebel outposts, and for the most part refraining from use of the main roads, deserted as these were. By woods and by-ways, he proceeded as best the snow-covered state of the country allowed. 'Twas near dusk on the second day, when he came out upon the wooded heights that looked coldly down upon the Hudson a few miles above the spot opposite the town of New York.

He looked across the river and Southeastward, knowing that beyond the low hills and the woods lay the town, and that in the town was Margaret. Then he rode back from the crest of the cliff till he came to the head of a ravine. Down this he led his beast, arriving finally at the narrow strip of river-bank at the cliff's foot. He followed this some distance Southward, still leading the horse. 'Twas not yet so dark that he could not make out a British sloop-of-war, and further down the river the less distinct outline of a frigate, serving as sentinels and protectors of this approach to the town. From these he was concealed by the bushes that grew at the river's edge.

At last he turned into the mouth of a second ravine, and, rounding a sharp side-spur of the interrupted cliff, came upon a log hut built upon a small level shelf of earth. At one end of this structure was a pent-roof. Philip tied his horse thereunder, and, noting a kind of dim glow through the oiled paper that filled the cabin's single window, gave two double knocks followed by a single one, upon the plank door. This was soon opened, and Philip admitted to the presence of the single occupant, an uncouth fellow, fisherman and hunter, whose acquaintance he had made in patrolling the New Jersey side at the head of his troop. The man was at heart with the rebels, and Winwood knew with whom he had to deal. Indeed Philip had laid his plans carefully for this hazardous visit, in accordance with his knowledge of the neighbourhood and of what he might rely upon.

"I wish to borrow one of your canoes, Ellis," said he, "and beg your attention to my horse, which is in the shed. Be so kind as to give it feed, and to cover it with a blanket if you have such a thing. But leave it in the shed, and ready saddled; I may have to ride in a hurry. I sha'n't need you with me in the canoe—nor any supper, I thank you, sir."

For the man, with the taciturn way of his kind, had motioned toward some pork frying at a fire. With no thought to press, or to question, he replied:

"I'll fetch the canoe down the gully, cap'n. You stay here and warm yourself a minute. And don't worry about your hoss, sir."

A few minutes later, Philip was launched upon the dark current of the Hudson, paddling silently toward the Eastern shore. Darkness had now fallen, and he trusted it to hide him from the vigilance of the British vessels whose lights shone dim and uncertain down the river.

Much larger craft landed much larger crews within our lines, on no darker nights—as, for one case, when the Whigs came down in whaleboats and set fire to the country mansion of our General De Lancey at Bloomingdale. Philip made the passage unseen, and drew the canoe up to a safe place under some bushes growing from the face of a low bluff that rose from the slight beach. His heart galloped and glowed at sense of being on the same island with his wife. He was thrilled to think that, if all went well, within an hour or two he should hold her in his arms.

He saw to the priming of his pistols, and loosened the sword that hung beneath his overcoat; and then he glided some way down the strip of beach. Coming to a convenient place, he clambered up the bluff, to a cleared space backed by woods.

"Who goes there?"

'Twas the voice of a man who had suddenly halted in the clearing, half-way between the woods and the crest of the bluff. The snow on the ground enabled the two to descry each other. Winwood saw the man raise a musket to his shoulder.

"A word with you, friend," said Philip, and strode swiftly forward ere the sentinel (who was a loyalist volunteer, not a British regular) had the wit to fire. Catching the musket-barrel with one hand, Winwood clapped his pistol to the soldier's breast with the other.

"Now," says he, "if you give a sound, I'll send a bullet through you. If I pass here, 'twill bring you no harm, for none shall know it but us two. Let go your musket a moment—I'll give it back to you, man."

A pressure of the pistol against the fellow's ribs brought obedience. Philip dropped the musket, and, with his foot, dug its lock into the snow, spoiling the priming.

"Now," he continued, "I'll leave you, and remember, if you raise an alarm, you'll be blamed for not firing upon me."

Whereupon Philip dashed into the woods, leaving the startled sentinel to pick up his musket and resume his round as if naught had occurred. The man knew that his own comfort lay in secrecy, and his comfort outweighed his military conscience.

Through woods and fields Winwood proceeded, skirted swamps and ponds, and waded streams, traversing old familiar ground, the sight of which brought back memories of countless holiday rambles in the happy early days. Margaret's bright face and merry voice, her smiles, and her little displays of partiality for him, were foremost in each recollection; and that he was so soon to see her again, appeared too wonderful for belief. He went forward in the intoxication of joy, singing to himself as a boy would have done.

He knew where there were houses and barns to avoid, and where there were most like to be British cantonments. At length he was so near the town, that he was surprised to have come upon no inner line of sentries. Even as he wondered, he emerged from a copse into a field, and received the usual challenge—spoken this time in so quick, machine-like a manner, and accompanied by so prompt and precise a levelling of the musket, that he knew 'twas a British regular he had to deal with.

He made a pretence of raising a pistol to shoot down the sentry. This brought the sentry's fire, which—as it too was of a British regular of those days—Philip felt safe in risking. But though the shot went far wide, he gave a cry as if he had been hit, and staggered back into the woods. He was no sooner within its cover, than he ran swiftly Eastward with all possible silence. He had noted that the sentry had been pacing in that direction; hence the first of the sentry's comrades to run up would be the one approaching therefrom. This would leave a break in the line, at that part of it East of the scene of the alarm. Philip stopped presently; peered forth from the woods, saw the second sentry hasten with long steps Westward; and then made a dash across the latter's tracks, bending low his body as he went. He thus reached a cover of thicket, through which he forced his way in time to emerge toward the town ere any results of the alarming gun-shot were manifest.

Unless he were willing to attempt crossing what British defences he knew not, or other impediments that might bar passage to the town elsewhere than at the Bowery lane entrance, he must now pass the guard there, which served for the town itself as the outer barriers at Kingsbridge served for the whole island of Manhattan. He chose the less tedious, though more audacious alternative of facing the guard.

He could not employ in this case the method used in passing the shore patrol, or that adopted in crossing the line of sentinels above the town; for here the road was the only open way through, it was flanked by a guardhouse, it was lighted by a lantern that hung above the door, and the sentinels were disciplined men. Philip gathered these facts in a single glance, as he approached by slinking along the side of the road, into which he had crawled, through a rail fence, from an adjoining field.

He was close upon the sentinels who paced before the guardhouse, ere he was discovered. For the third time that night, he heard the challenge and saw the threatening movement.

"All's well," he replied. "I'll give an account of myself." And he stepped forward, grasping one of his pistols, not by the breech, but by the barrel.

"Stop where you are!" said the sentry, menacingly.

Philip stood still, raised the pistol, flung it at the lantern, and instantly dropped to his knees. The sentinel's musket flashed and cracked. Total darkness ensued. Philip glided forward between the two men, his footfalls drowned by the sound of their curses. When past them, he hurled his remaining pistol back over his shoulder toward a mass of bushes on the further side of the sentinels. Its descent through the brush had some sound of a man's leap, and would, he hoped, lead the enemy to think he might have escaped in that direction. By the time the noise of a commotion reached him, with orders to turn out the guard, he was past the building used as a prison for his fellow rebels, and was hastening along the side of the common—now diverted to camp uses of the British as it had been to those of the rebels—able to find the rest of his way in Egyptian blackness. He knew what alleys to take, what short cuts to make by traversing gardens, what ways were most like to be deserted. The streets in the part of the town through which he had to pass were nearly empty, the taverns, the barracks, and most of the officers' quarters being elsewhere. And so, with a heart elated beyond my power of expression, he leaped finally into the rear garden of the Faringfield mansion, and strode, as if on air, toward the veranda.

He had guessed that the family would be in the smaller parlour, or the library, and so he was not surprised to see all the lower windows dark that were visible from the direction of his approach. But, which gave him a thrill of delightful conjecture, two upper windows shone with light—those above the great parlour and hence belonging to one of the chambers formerly occupied by Margaret and him. He knew no reason why his wife should not still retain the same rooms. She would, then, be there, and probably alone. He might go to her while none was present to chill their meeting, none before whom her pride might induce her to conceal the completeness of her reconciliation, or to moderate the joy of her greeting. Would she weep? Would she laugh? Would she cry out? Would she merely fall into his arms with a glad smile and cling in a long embrace under his lingering kiss? He trembled like a schoolboy as he climbed the trellis-work to enter by a window.

Creeping up the sloping, snow-covered roof of the veranda, he came at length to the window, and looked in. The chamber was empty, but the door was ajar that led to the apartment in front, used as a sitting-room. She must be in that room, for his first glance had recognised many of her trinkets and possessions in the first chamber. He asked himself if the years had changed her: they would have made her a little graver, doubtless.

He opened the window so slowly that the noise was scarce perceptible. Then he clambered over the ledge into the chamber; strode tiptoe toward the next room, catching a mirrored glimpse of his face as he passed her dressing-table—the most joyous, eager face in the world. He pushed the door further open, and stepped across the threshold. She was there, in the centre of the room, standing in meditation, her face turned by chance toward the door through which he entered.

"My dear," said he, in a voice scarce above a whisper; and started toward her, with arms held out, and (I am sure) a very angel's smile of joy and love upon his face.

She opened her eyes and lips in wonder, and then stood pale and rigid as marble, and made a faint gesture to check his approach. As he halted in astonishment, his joy dying at her look, she whispered hoarsely:

"You! You, of all men? And to-night, of all nights!"

'Twas the night of our setting forth upon her great design of seizing his commander-in-chief.



CHAPTER XII.

Their Interview.

Philip took note, at the time, rather of her look than of her words.

"Why, dear," said he, "don't be frightened. Tis I, Philip—'tis not my ghost."

"Yes, 'tis you—I know that well enough."

"Then—" he began, and stepped toward her.

But she retreated with such a movement that he stopped again.

"What's the matter?" he questioned. "Why do you look so?—This is scarce the welcome I had imagined."

"Why are you here?" she asked, in a low voice, regarding him steadily. "How did you come? What does it mean?"

"It means I love you so much, I could stay no longer from seeing you. I came by horse, boat, and foot. I passed the British sentries."

"You risked your life, then?"

"Oh, of course. If they caught me inside their lines, they would hang me as a spy. But—"

She could not but be touched at this. "Poor Philip!" she murmured, with a tremor in her voice.

"Not poor," said he, "now that I am with you—if you would not draw back, and look so. What is wrong? Am I—unwelcome?"

She saw that, to be true to her design, to her elaborate plan for the future, she must not soften toward him—for his reappearance, with the old-time boyish look and manner, the fond expression now wistful and alarmed, the tender eyes now startled and affrighted, revived much that had been dormant in her heart, and made Captain Falconer seem a very far-off and casual person. Against the influence of Philip's presence, and the effect of his having so imperilled himself to see her, she had to arm herself with coldness, or look upon the success of her project as going for naught to her advantage. She dared not contemplate the forfeit; so she hardened her heart.

"Why," she said, with a forced absence of feeling, "so many years have passed—so many things have happened—you appear so much a stranger—"

"Stranger!" echoed he. "Why, not if you had thought of me half as constantly as I have of you! You have been in my mind, in my heart, every hour, every minute since that day—Can it be? Is it my Margaret that stands there and speaks so? So unmoved to see me! So cold! Oh, who would have expected this?"

He sat down and gazed wretchedly about the room, taking no cognisance of what objects his sight fell upon. Margaret seated herself, with a sigh of annoyance, and regarded him with a countenance of displeasure.

"Margaret, do you mean what you say?" he asked, after a short silence.

"I'm sure you shouldn't blame me," said she. "You enabled me to learn how to endure your absence. You stayed away all these years. Naturally I've come to consider you as—"

"Nay, don't attempt to put me in the wrong. My heart is as warm to you as ever, in spite of the years of absence. Those years have made no change in me. Why should they have changed you, then? No—'tis not their fault if you are changed, nor mine neither. There is something wrong, I see. Be frank, dear, and tell me what it is. You need not be afraid of me—you know I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head. Oh, sweetheart, what has come between us? Tell me, I beg!"

"Why, nothing, of course—nothing but the gulf that time has widened. That's all—sure 'tis enough."

"But 'tis more than that. Were that all, and I came back to you thus, a minute's presence would bridge that gulf. All the old feelings would rush back. Why, if I were but a mere acquaintance whom you had once known in a friendly way, you wouldn't have greeted me so coldly. There would have been cordiality, smiles, a warm clasp of the hand, questions about my health and doings, at least a curiosity as to how I had passed the years. But you meet me, not merely with lack of warmth, but with positive coldness. Nay, you were shocked, startled, frightened! You turned white, and stood still as if you saw a spirit, or as if you were caught in some crime! Yes, 'twas for all the world like that! And what was't you said? It passed me then, I was so amazed at my reception—so different from the one I had pictured all the way thither, all the weeks and months. What was't you said?"

"Some word of surprise, I suppose; something of no meaning."

"Nay, it had meaning, too. I felt that, though I put it aside for the time. Something about the night—ah, yes: 'to-night of all nights.' And me of all men. Why so? Why to-night in particular? Why am I the most inconvenient visitor, and why to-night? Tell me that! Tell me—I have the right to know!"

"Nay, if you work yourself up into a fury so—"

"'Tis no senseless fury, madam! There's reason at the bottom of it, my lady! I must know, and I will know, what it is that my visit interferes with. You were not going out, I can see by your dress. Nor expecting company. Unless—no, it couldn't be that! You're not capable of that! You are my wife, you are Margaret Faringfield, William Faringfield's daughter. God forgive the mistrust—yet every husband with an imagination has tortured himself for an instant sometime with that thought, suppose his wife's heart might stray? I've heard 'em confess the thought; and even I—but what a hell it was for the moment it lasted! And how swiftly I put it from me, to dwell on your tenderness in the old days, your pride that has put you above the hopes of all men but me, the unworthy one you chose to reach down your hand to from your higher level!"

"So you have harboured that suspicion, have you?" she cried, with flashing eyes.

"No, no; harboured it never! Only let my perverse imagination 'light, for the space of a breath, on the possibility, to my unutterable torment. All men's fancies play 'em such tricks now and then, to torture them and take down their vanity. Men would rest too easy in their security, were it not so."

"A man that suspects his wife, deserves to lose her allegiance," cried Margaret, with a kind of triumphant imputation of blame, which was her betrayal.

He gazed at her with the dawning horror of half-conviction.

"Then I have lost yours?" he asked, in a tone stricken with doubt and dread.

"I didn't say so," she replied, reddening.

"But your words imply that. You seemed to be justifying yourself by my suspicion. But there was no suspicion till now—nothing but a tormenting fancy of what I believed impossible. So you cannot excuse yourself that way."

"I'm not trying to excuse myself. There's nothing to excuse."

"I'm not sure of that! Your manner looks as if you realised having said too much—having betrayed yourself. Margaret, for God's sake, tell me 'tis not so! Tell me my fears are wrong! Assure me I have not lost you—no, no, I won't even ask you. 'Tis not possible. I won't believe it of you—that you could be inconstant! Forgive me, dear—your strange manner has so upset me—but forgive me, I beg, and let me take you in my arms." He had risen to approach her.

"No, no! Don't. Don't touch me!" she cried, rising in turn, for resistance. She kept her mind fixed upon the expected rewards of her project, and so fortified herself against yielding.

"By heaven, I'll know what this means!" he cried. He looked wildly about the room, as if the explanation might somewhere there be found. Her own glance went with his, as if there might indeed be some evidence, which she must either make shift to conceal, or invent an innocent reason for its presence. Her eye rested an instant upon a book that lay on the table. Philip noted this, picked up the book, turned the cover, and read the name on the first leaf.

"'Charles Falconer.' Who is he?"



"No matter," she said quickly, and made to snatch the book away. "He is a—an acquaintance. He is quartered in the house, in fact—a British officer."

"An acquaintance? But why do you turn red? Why look so confused? Why try to take the book away from me? Oh, my God, it is true! it is true!" He dropped the volume, sank back upon a chair, and regarded her with indescribable grief.

"Why," she blundered, "a gentleman may lend a lady a novel—"

"Oh, the lending is nothing! 'Twas your look and action when I read his name. 'Tis your look now, your look of guilt. Oh, to see that flush of discovered shame on your face! You care for this man, I can see that!"

"Well, what if I do?"

"Then you confess it? Oh, can it be you that say this?—you that stand there with eyes that drop before mine for shame—nay, eyes that you raise with defiance! Brazen—oh, my God, my God, tell me 'tis all a mistake! Tell me I wrong you, dear; that you are still mine, my Margaret, my Madge—little Madge, that found me a home that day I came to New York; my pretty Madge, that cried when I was going to leave on Ned's account; that I loved the first moment I saw her, and—always—"

He broke down at this, and leaned forward upon the table, covering his face with his hands. When he next looked up, with haggard countenance, he saw her lips twitching and tears in her eyes.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, with a flash of hope, and half rose to go to her.

"No, no! Let me alone!" she cried, escaping narrowly from that surrender to her feelings which would have meant forfeiting the fruits of her long planning.

His mood changed.

"I'll not endure this," he cried, rising and pacing the floor. "You'll find I'm no such weakling, though I can weep for my wife when I lose her love. He shall find it so, too! I understand now what you meant by 'to-night of all nights.' He was to meet you to-night. He's quartered in the house, you say. He was to slink up, no doubt, when all were out of the way—your father divines little of this, I'll warrant. Well, he may come—but he shall find me waiting at my wife's door!"

"You'll wait in vain, then. He is very far from here to-night."

"I'll believe that when it's proven. I find 'tis well that I, 'of all men,' came here to-night."

"Nay, you're mistaken. You had been more like to find him to-night where you came from, than where you've come to."

How true it is that a woman may always be relied on to say a word too much—whether for the sake of a taunt, or the mere necessity of giving an apt answer, I presume not to decide.

"What can that mean?" said he, arrested by the peculiarity of her tone and look. "Find him where I came from? Why, that's our camp. What does he do there, 'to-night of all nights?' Explain yourself."

"Nothing at all. I spoke without thinking."

"The likelier to have spoken true, then! So your—acquaintance—might be found in our camp to-night? Charles Falconer, a British officer. I can't imagine—not as a spy, surely. Oho! is there some expedition? Some attack, some midnight surprise? This requires looking into."

"I fear you will not find out much. And if you did, it would be too late for you to carry a warning."

"The expedition has too great a start of me—is that what you mean? That's to be seen. I might beat Mr. Falconer in this, as he has beaten me—elsewhere. I know the Jersey roads better than I have known my wife's heart, perchance. What is this expedition?"

"Do you think I would tell you—if there were one?"

"I'm satisfied there is some such thing. But I doubt no warning of mine is needed, to defeat it. Our army is alert for these night attempts. We've had too many of 'em. If there be one afoot to-night, so much the worse for those engaged in it."

This irritated her; and she never used the skill to guard her speech, at her calmest; so she answered quickly:

"Not if it's helped by traitors in your camp!"

"What?—But how should you, a woman, know of such a matter?"

"You'll see, when the honours are distributed."

"This is very strange. You are in this officer's confidence, perhaps. He is unwise to trust you so far—you have told me enough to—"

"There's no more need of secrecy. Captain Falconer's men are well on their way to Morristown. Even if you got out of our lines as easily as you got in, you could only meet our troops returning with your general."

Doubtless she conceived that by taunting him, at this safe hour, with this prevision of her success, she helped the estrangement which she felt necessary to her enjoyment of her expected rewards.

"Oho!" quoth he, with a bitter, derisive laugh. "Another attempt to seize Washington! What folly!"

"Not when we are helped by treason in your camp, as I said before. Folly, is it? You'll sing another song to-morrow!"

She smiled with anticipated triumph, and the smile had in it so much of the Madge of other days, that his bitterness forsook him, and admiration and love returned to sharpen his grief.

"Oh, Madge, dear, could I but win you back!" he murmured, wistfully.

"What, in that strain again!" she said, petulant at each revival of the self-reproach his sorrow caused in her.

"Ay, if I had but the chance! If I might be with you long enough, if I might reawaken the old tenderness!—But I forget; treason in our camp, you say. There is danger, then—ay, there's always the possibility. The devil's in it, that I must tear myself from you now; that I must part with you while matters are so wrong between us; that I must leave you when I would give ten years of life for one hour to win your love back! But you will take my hand, let me kiss you once—you will do that for the sake of the old times—and then I will be gone!"

"Be gone? Where?"

"Back to camp, of course, to give warning of this expedition."

"'Tis impossible! Tis hours—"

"'Tis not impossible—I will outride them. They wouldn't have started before dark."

"You would only overtake them, at your best. Do you think they would let you pass?"

"Poh! I know every road. I can ride around them. I'll put the army in readiness for 'em, treason or no treason! For the present, good-bye—"

The look in his face—of power and resolution—gave her a sudden sense of her triumph slipping out of her grasp.

"You must not go!" she cried, quite awakened to the peril of the situation to her enterprise.

"I must! Good-bye! One kiss, I beg!"

"But you sha'n't go!" As he came close to her, she clasped him tightly with both arms. She made no attempt to avoid his kiss, and he, taking this for acquiescence, bestowed the kiss upon unresponsive lips.

"Now let me go," said he, turning to stride toward the door by which he had entered from the rear chamber.

"No, no! Stay. Time to win back my love, you said. Take the time now. You may find me not so difficult of winning back. Nay, I have never ceased to love you, at the bottom of my heart. I love you now. You shall stay."

"I must not, I dare not. Oh, I would to God I could believe you! But whether 'tis true, or a device to keep me here, I will not stay. Let me go!"

"I will not! You will have to force me from you, first! I tell you I love you—my husband!"

"If you love me, you will let me go."

"If you love me, you will stay."

"Not a moment—though God knows how I love you! I will come to see you soon again."

"If you go now, I will never let you see me again!—Nay, you must drag me after you, then!"

He was moving toward the door despite her hold; and now he caught her wrists to force open the clasp in which she held him.

"Oh! you are crushing my arms!" she cried.

"Ay, the beautiful, dear arms—God bless them! But let me go, then!"

"I won't! You will have to kill me, first! You shall not spoil my scheme!"

"Yours!"

"Yes, mine! Mine, against your commander, against your cause!" She was wrought up now to a fury, at the physical force he exerted to release himself; and for the time, swayed by her feelings only, she let policy fly to the winds. "Your cause that I hate, because it ruined my hopes before! You are a fool if you think my being your wife would have kept me from fighting your hateful cause. I became your wife that I might go to England, and when that failed I was yours no longer. Love another? Yes!—and you shall not spoil his work and mine—not unless you kill me!"

For a moment his mental anguish, his overwhelming shame for her, unnerved him, and he stared at her with a ghastly face, relaxing his pressure for freedom. But this weakness was followed by a fierce reaction. His countenance darkened, and with one effort, the first into which he had put his real strength, he tore her arms from him. White-faced and breathing fast, with rage and fear of defeat, she ran to a front window, and flung it open.

"By heaven, I'll stop you!" she cried. "Help! A rebel—a spy! Ah, you men yonder—this way! A rebel spy!"

Philip looked over her head, out of the window. Far up the street swaggered five or six figures which, upon coming under a corner lamp whose rays yellowed a small circle of snow, showed to be those of British soldiers. Their unaltered movements evidenced that they had not heard her cry. Thereupon she shouted, with an increased voice:

"Soldiers! Help! Surround this house! A rebel—"

She got no further, for Philip dragged her away from the window, and, when she essayed to scream the louder, he placed one hand over her mouth, the other about her neck. Holding her thus, he forced her into the rear chamber, and then toward the window by which he meant to leave. At its very ledge he let her go, and made to step out to the roof of the veranda. But she grasped his clothes with the power of rage and desperation, and set up another screaming for help.

In an agony of mind at having to use such painful violence against a woman, and how much more so against the wife he still loved; and at the grievous appearance that she was willing to sacrifice him upon the British gallows rather than let him mar her purpose, he flung her away with all necessary force, so that, with a final shriek of pain and dismay, she fell to the floor exhausted.

He cast an anguished glance upon her, as she lay defeated and half-fainting; and, knowing not to what fate he might be leaving her, he moaned, "God pity her!" and stepped out upon the sloping roof. He scrambled to the edge, let himself half-way down by the trellis, leaped the rest of the distance, and ran through the back garden from the place he had so well loved.

While his wife, lying weak upon the floor of her chamber, gazed at the window through which he had disappeared, and, as if a new change had occurred within her, sobbed in consternation:

"Oh, what have I done? He is a man, indeed!—and I have lost him!"



CHAPTER XIII.

Wherein Captain Winwood Declines a Promotion.

Philip assumed that the greatest risk would lie in departing the town by the route over which he had made his entrance, and in which he had left a trail of alarm. His best course would be in the opposite direction.

Therefore, having leaped across the fence to the alley behind the Faringfield grounds, he turned to the right and ran; for he had bethought him, while fleeing through the garden, that he might probably find a row-boat at the Faringfield wharves. He guessed that, as the port of New York was open to all but the rebel Americans and their allies the French, Mr. Faringfield would have continued his trade in the small way possible, under the British flag, that his loss by the war might be the less, and his means of secretly aiding the rebel cause might be the more. So there would still be some little shipping, and its accessories, at the wharves.

Though the British occupation had greatly changed the aspect of the town by daylight, it had not altered the topography of that part which Philip had to traverse, and the darkness that served as his shield was to him no impediment. Many a time, in the old days, we had chased and fled through those streets and alleys, in make-believe deer-hunts or mimic Indian warfare. So, without a collision or a stumble, he made his way swiftly to the mouth of a street that gave upon the water-front, by the Faringfield warehouse where so many busy days of his boyhood and youth had passed, and opposite the wharves.

He paused here, lacking knowledge whether the river front was guarded or not. He saw no human being, but could not be sure whether or not some dark form might emerge from the dimness when he should cross to the wharves. These, like the street and the roofs, were snow-covered. Aloft beyond them, but close, two or three faint lights, tiny yellow islets in a sea of gloom, revealed the presence of the shipping on which he had counted. He could hear the slap of the inky water against the piles, but scarce another sound, save his own breathing.

He formed the intention of making a noiseless dash across the waterside street, with body bent low, to the part of the wharf where a small boat was most like to be. He was standing close to one side of a wooden building that fronted toward the wharf.

He sprang forward, and, just as he passed the corner of the edifice, his head struck something heavy but yielding, which toppled over sidewise with a grunt, and upon which Philip fell prone, forcing from it a second grunt a little less vigorous than the first. 'Twas a human body, that had come from the front of the house at the same instant in which Philip had darted from along the side.

"Shall I choke him to assure silence?" Phil hurriedly asked himself, and instinctively made to put his hands to the man's neck. But the body under him began to wriggle, to kick out with its legs, and to lay about with its hands.

"What the hell d'yuh mean?" it gasped. "Git off o' me!"

Philip scrambled promptly to his feet, having recognised the voice.

"I'll stake my life, it's Meadows!"

"Yes, it is, and who in the name of hellfire an' brimstone—?"

"Hush, Bill! Don't you know my voice? Let me help you up. There you are. I'm Philip Winwood!"

"Why, so y'are, boy! Excuse the way I spoke. But what on airth—?"

"No matter what I'm doing here. The thing is to get back to camp. Come! Is the wharf a safe place for me?"

"Yes, at this hour of a dark night. But I'd like to know—"

"Keep with me, then," whispered Philip, and made for the wharf, holding the old watchman's arm. "Show me where there's a small boat. I must row to the Jersey side at once, and then ride—by heaven, I wish I might get a horse, over there, without going as far as Dan Ellis's! I left mine with him."

"Mebbe I can get you a hoss, yonder," said Meadows. "An' I reckon I can row you round an' acrost, 'thout their plaguey ships a-spyin' us."

"Then, by the Lord," said Philip, while Meadows began letting himself down the side of the wharf to the skiff which he knew rode there upon the black water, "'tis enough to make one believe in miracles, my running into you! What were you doing out so late?"

"Mum, sir! I was jest back from the same camp you're bound fur. 'Tain't five minutes since I crawled up out o' this yer skift."

"What! And did you meet a party going the other way—toward our camp, I mean?"

"Ay," replied Meadows, standing up in the boat and guiding the legs of Philip as the latter descended from the wharf. "I watched 'em from the patch o' woods beyont Westervelt's. I took 'em to be Major Lee's men, or mebbe yours, from their caps and plumes; but I dunno: I couldn't see well. But if they was goin' to the Morristown camp, they was goin' by a roundabout way, fur they took the road to the right, at the fork t'other side o' them woods!"

"Good, if 'twas a British troop indeed! If I take the short road, I may beat 'em. Caps and plumes like ours, eh! Here, I'll pull an oar, too; and for God's sake keep clear of the British ships."

"Trust me, cap'n. I guess they ain't shifted none since I come acrost awhile ago. I'll land yuh nearest where we can get the hoss I spoke of. 'Tis the beast 'ut brung me from the camp—but mum about that." The two men moved at the oars, and the boat shot out from the sluggish dock-water to the live current, down which it headed. "Don't you consarn yerse'f about them ships—'tis the dark o' the moon an' a cloudy night, an' as fur our course, I could smell it out, if it come to that!"

They rounded the end of the town, and turned into the Hudson, gliding black over the surface of blackness. They pulled for some distance against the stream, so as to land far enough above our post at Paulus Hook. Going ashore in a little cove apparently well-known to Meadows, they drew up the boat, and hastened inland. Meadows had led the way about half a mile, when a dark mass composed of farmhouse and outbuildings loomed up before them.

"Here's where the hoss is; Pete Westervelt takes keer of him," whispered the watchman, and strode, not to the stables, but to the door of what appeared to be an outer kitchen, which he opened with a key of his own. A friendly whinny greeted him from the narrow dark space into which he disappeared. He soon came out, leading the horse he used in his journeys to and from the American camp, and bearing saddle and bridle on his arm. The two men speedily adjusted these, whereupon Philip mounted.

"Bring or send the beast back by night," said Meadows, handing over the key, with which he had meanwhile relocked the door of his improvised stable. "Hoss-flesh is damn' skeerce these times." This was the truth, the needs of the armies having raised the price of a horse to a fabulous sum.

Philip promised to return the horse or its equivalent; gave a swift acknowledgment of thanks, and a curt good-night; and made off, leaving old Meadows to foot it, and row it, once more back to New York.

'Twas now, till he should reach the camp, but a matter of steady galloping, with ears alert for the sound of other hoof-beats, eyes watchful at crossroads and open stretches for the party he hoped to forestall. While he had had ways and means to think of, and had been in peril of detection by the British, or in doubt of obtaining a horse without a long trudge to Ellis's hut, his mind had been diverted from the unhappy interview with Margaret. But now that swept back into his thoughts, inundating his soul with grief and shame, of the utmost degree of bitterness. These were the more complete from the recollection of the joyous anticipations with which he had gone to meet her.

Contemplation of this contrast, sense of his desertion, overcame his habitual resistance to self-pity, a feeling against which he was usually on the stronger guard for his knowledge that it was a concomitant of his inherent sensibility. He quite yielded to it for a time; and though 'twas sharpened by his comparison of the Margaret he had just left, with the pretty, soft-smiling Madge of other days, that comparison eventually supplanted self-pity with pity for her, a feeling no less laden with sorrow.

He dared not think of what her perverseness might yet lead her to. For himself he saw nothing but hopeless sorrow, unless she could be brought back to her better self. But, alas, he by whose influence that end might be achieved—for he could not believe that her heart had quite cast him out—was flying from her, and years might pass ere he should see her again: meanwhile, how intolerable would life be to him! His heart, with the instinct of self-protection, sought some interest in which it might find relief.

He thought of the cause for which he was fighting. That must suffice; it must take the place of wife and love. Cold, impersonal, inadequate as it seemed now, he knew that in the end it would suffice to fill great part of that inner heart which she had occupied. He turned to it with the kindling affection which a man ever has for the resource that is left him when he is scorned elsewhere. And he felt his ardour for it fanned by his deepened hate for the opposing cause, a hate intensified by the circumstance that his rival was of that cause. For that rival's sake, he hated with a fresh implacability the whole royal side and everything pertaining to it. He pressed his teeth together, and resolved to make that side pay as dearly as lay in him to make it, for what he had lost of his wife's love, and for what she had lost of her probity.

And the man himself, Falconer! 'Twas he that commanded this night's wild attempt, if she had spoken truly. Well, Falconer should not succeed this night, and Philip, with a kind of bitter elation, thanked God 'twas through him that the attempt should be the more utterly defeated. He patted his horse—a faithful beast that had known but a short rest since it had travelled over the same road in the opposite direction—and used all means to keep it at the best pace compatible with its endurance. Forward it sped, in long, unvarying bounds, seeing the road in the dark, or rather in the strange dusky light yielded by the snow-covered earth and seeming rather to originate there than to be reflected from the impenetrable obscurity overhead.

From the attempt which he was bent upon turning into a ridiculous abortion, if it lay in the power of man and horse to do so, Philip's thoughts went to the object of that attempt, Washington himself. He was thrilled at once with a greater love and admiration for that firm soul maintaining always its serenity against the onslaughts of men and circumstance, that soul so unshakable as to seem in the care of Fate itself. Capture Washington! Philip laughed at the thought.

And yet a British troop had seized General Charles Lee when he was the rebels' second in command, and, in turn, a party of Yankees had taken the British General Prescott from his quarters in Rhode Island. True, neither of these officers was at the time of his seizure as safely quartered and well guarded as Washington was now; but, on the other hand, Margaret had spoken of treachery in the American camp. Who were the traitors? Philip hoped he might find out their chief, at least.

It was a long and hard ride, and more and more an up-hill one as it neared its end. But Philip's thoughts made him so often unconscious of his progress, and of the passage of the hours, that he finally realised with a momentary surprise that he had reached a fork of the road, near which he should come upon the rebel pickets, and that the night was far spent. He might now take one road, and enter the camp at its nearest point, but at a point far from Washington's headquarters; or he might take the other road and travel around part of the camp, so as to enter it at a place near the general's house. 'Twas at or near the latter place that the enemy would try to enter, as they would surely be so directed by the traitors within the camp.

Heedless of the apparent advantage of alarming the camp at the earliest possible moment, at whatever part of it he could then reach, he felt himself impelled to choose the second road. He ever afterward held that his choice of this seemingly less preferable road was the result of a swift process of unconscious reasoning—for he maintained that what we call intuition is but an instantaneous perception of facts and of their inevitable inferences, too rapid for the reflective part of the mind to record.

He felt the pressure of time relaxed, for a troop of horse going by the circuitous route Meadows had indicated could not have reached the camp in the hours since they had passed the place where Meadows had seen them. So he let his horse breathe wherever the road was broken by ascents. At last he drew up, for a moment, upon an eminence which gave, by daylight, a wide view of country. Much of this expanse being clear of timber, and clad in snow, it yielded something to a night-accustomed eye, despite the darkness. A low, far-off, steady, snow-muffled beating, which had imperceptibly begun to play on Winwood's ear, indicated a particular direction for his gaze. Straining his senses, he looked.

Against the dusky-white background of snow, he could make out an indistinct, irregular, undulating line of moving dark objects. He recognised this appearance as the night aspect of a distant band of horsemen. They were travelling in a line parallel to his own. Presently, he knew, they would turn toward him, and change their linear appearance to that of a compact mass. But he waited not for that. He gently bade his horse go on, and presently he turned straight for the camp, having a good lead of the horsemen.

He was passing a little copse at his right hand, when suddenly a dark figure stepped from behind a tree into the road before him. Thinking this was a soldier on picket duty, he recollected the word of the night, and reined in to give it upon demand. But the man, having viewed him as well as the darkness allowed, seemed to realise having made a mistake, and, as suddenly as he had appeared, stalked back into the wood.

"What does this mean?" thought Philip; and then he remembered what Margaret had said of treachery. Was this mysterious night-walker a traitor posted there to aid the British to their object?

"Stop or I'll shoot you down!" cried Philip, remembering too late that he had parted with both his pistols at the Bowery lane guard-house.

But the noise of the man's retreat through the undergrowth told that he was willing to risk a shot.

Philip knew the importance of obtaining a clue to the traitors. The rebels had suffered considerably from treachery on their own side; had been in much danger from the treason of Doctor Church at Boston; had owed the speedier loss of their Fort Washington to that of Dumont; and (many of them held) the retreat which Washington checked at Monmouth, to the design of their General Charles Lee. So the capture of this man, apart from its possible effect upon the present business, might lead to the unearthing of a nest of traitors likely at some future time, if not to-night, to menace the rebel cause.

Philip leaped from his horse, and, trusting to the animal's manifest habit of awaiting orders, stopped not to tie it, but plunged directly into the wood, drawing his sword as he went.

The sound of the man's flight had ceased, but Philip continued in the direction it had first taken. He was about to cross a row of low bushes, when he unexpectedly felt his ankle caught by a hand, and himself thrown forward on his face. The man had crouched amongst the bushes and tripped him up as he made to pass.

The next moment, the man was on Philip's back, fumbling to grasp his neck, and muttering:

"Tell me who you are, quick! Who are you from? You don't wear the dragoon cap, I see. Now speak the truth, or by God I'll shoot your head off!"

Philip knew, at the first word, the voice of Ned Faringfield. It took him not an instant to perceive who was a chief—if not the chief—traitor in the affair, or to solve what had long been to him also a problem, that of Ned's presence in the rebel army. The recognition of voice had evidently not been mutual; doubtless this was because Philip's few words had been spoken huskily. Retaining his hoarseness, and taking his cue from Ned's allusion to the dragoon cap, he replied:

"'Tis all right. You're our man, I see. Though I don't wear the dragoon cap, I come from New York about Captain Falconer's business."

"Then why the hell didn't you give the word?" said Ned, releasing his pressure upon Philip's body.

"You didn't ask for it. Get up—you're breaking my back."

Ned arose, relieving Philip of all weight, but stood over him with a pistol.

"Then give it now," Ned commanded.

"I'll be hanged if you haven't knocked it clean out of my head," replied Philip. "Let me think a moment—I have the cursedest memory."

He rose with a slowness, and an appearance of weakness, both mainly assumed. He still held his sword, which, happily for him, had turned flat under him as he fell. When he was quite erect, he suddenly flung up the sword so as to knock the pistol out of aim, dashed forward with all his weight, and, catching Ned by the throat with both hands, bore him down upon his side among the briars, and planted a knee upon his neck. Instantly shortening his sword, he held the point close above Ned's eye.

"Now," said Phil, "let that pistol fall! Let it fall, I say, or I'll run my sword into your brain. That's well. You traitor, shall I kill you now? or take you into camp and let you hang for your treason?"

Ned wriggled, but finding that Philip held him in too resolved a grasp, gave up.

"Is it you, brother Phil?" he gasped. "Why, then, you lied; you said you came from New York, about Falconer's business. I'd never have thought you'd stoop to a mean deception!"

"I think I'd better take you to hang," continued Philip. "If I kill you now, we sha'n't get the names of the other traitors."

"You wouldn't do such an unbrotherly act, Phil! I know you wouldn't. You've too good a heart. Think of your wife, my sister—"

"Ay, the traitress!"

"Then think of my father; think of the mouth that fed you—I mean the hand that fed you! You'll let me go, Phil—sure you'll let me go. Remember how we played together when we were boys. I'll give you the names of the other traitors. I'm not so much to blame: I was lured into this—lured by your wife—so help me God, I was—and you're responsible for her, you know. You ought to be the last man in the world—"

Philip's mood had changed at thought of Ned's father; the old man's pride of the name, his secret and perilous devotion to the rebel cause: he deserved better of that cause than that his son should die branded as a traitor to it; and better of Phil than that by his hand that son should be slain.

"How can you let me have the names without loss of time, if I let you go, on condition of your giving our army a wide berth the rest of your days?" Philip asked, turning the captive over upon his back.

"I can do it in a minute, I swear," cried Ned. "Will you let me go if I do?"

"If I'm convinced they're the right names and all the names; but if so, and I let you go, remember I'll see you hanged if you ever show your face in our army again."

"Rest easy on that. I take you at your word. The names are all writ down in my pocketbook, with the share of money each man was to get. If I was caught, I was bound the rest should suffer, too. The book is in my waistcoat lining—there; do you feel it? Rip it out."

Philip did so, and, sitting on Ned's chest, with a heel ready to beat in his skull at a treacherous movement, contrived to strike a light and verify by the brief flame of the tow the existence of a list of names. As time was now of ever-increasing value, Philip took it for granted that the list was really what Ned declared it. He then possessed himself of Ned's pistol, and rose, intending to conduct him as far as to the edge of the camp, and to release him only when Philip should have given the alarm, so that Ned could not aid the approach of Falconer's party. But Philip had no sooner communicated this intention than Ned suddenly whipped out a second pistol from his coat pocket, in which his hand had been busy for some time, and aimed at him. Thanks to a spoiled priming, the hammer fell without effect.

"You double traitor!" cried Philip, rushing upon Ned with threatening sword. But Ned, with a curse, bent aside, and, before Philip could bring either of his weapons into use, grappled with him for another fall. The two men swayed together an instant; then Philip once more shortened his sword and plunged the point into Ned's shoulder as both came down together.

"God damn your soul!" cried Ned, and for the time of a breath hugged his enemy the tighter. But for the time of a breath only; the hold then relaxed; and Philip, rising easily from the embrace of the limp form, ran unimpeded to the road, mounted the waiting horse, and galloped to the rebel lines.

When our party, all the fatigue of the ride forgotten in a thrill of expectation, reached the spot where Ned Faringfield was to join us, our leader's low utterance of the signal, and our eager peerings into the wood, met no response. As we stood huddled together, there broke upon us from the front such a musketry, and there forthwith appeared in the open country at our left such a multitude of mounted figures, that we guessed ourselves betrayed, and foresaw ourselves surrounded by a vastly superior force if we stayed for a demonstration.

"'Tis all up, gentlemen!" cried Captain Falconer, in a tone of resignation, and without even an oath; whereupon we wheeled in disappointment and made back upon our tracks; being pursued for some miles, but finally abandoned, by the cavalry we had seen, which, as we did not learn till long afterward, was led by Winwood. We left some dead and wounded near the place where we had been taken by surprise; and some whose horses had been hurt were made prisoners.

For his conduct in all this business, an offer was made to Philip of promotion to a majority; but he firmly declined it, saying that he owed the news of our expedition to such circumstances that he chose not, in his own person, to profit by it.[6]



CHAPTER XIV.

The Bad Shilling Turns up Once More in Queen Street.

"This will be sad news to Mrs. Winwood, gentlemen," said Captain Falconer to Tom and me, as we rode toward the place where we should take the boats for New York. The day was well forward, but its gray sunless light held little cheer for such a silent, dejected crew as we were.

The captain was too much the self-controlled gentleman to show great disappointment on his own account, though he had probably set store upon this venture, as an opportunity that he lacked in his regular duties on General Clinton's staff, where he served pending the delayed enlistment of the loyalist cavalry troop he had been sent over to command. But though he might hide his own regrets, now that we were nearing Margaret, it was proper to consider our failure with reference to her.

"Doubtless," he went on, "there was treachery against us somewhere; for we cannot suppose such vigilance and preparation to be usual with the rebels. But we must not hint as much to her. The leak may have been, you see, through one of the instruments of her choosing—the man Meadows, perhaps, or—" (He stopped short of mentioning Ned Faringfield, whose trustworthiness on either side he was warranted, by much that he had heard, in doubting.) "In any case," he resumed, "'twould be indelicate to imply that her judgment of men, her confidence in any one, could have been mistaken. We'd best merely tell her, then, that the rebels were on the alert, and fell upon us before we could meet her brother."

We thought to find her with face all alive, expectant of the best news, or at least in a fever of impatience, and that therefore 'twould be the more painful to tell her the truth. But when the captain's servant let the three of us in at the front door (Tom and I had waited while Falconer briefly reported our fiasco to General Clinton) and we found her waiting for us upon the stairs, her face was pale with a set and tragic wofulness, as if tidings of our failure had preceded us. There was, perhaps, an instant's last flutter of hope against hope, a momentary remnant of inquiry, in her eyes; but this yielded to despairing certainty at her first clear sight of our crestfallen faces.

"'Twas all for nothing, then?" she said, with a quiet weariness which showed that her battle with disappointment had been fought and had left her tired out if not resigned.

"Yes," said the captain, apparently relieved to discover that no storm of disappointment or reproach was to be undergone. "They are too watchful. We hadn't yet come upon your brother, when a heavy fire broke out upon us. We were lucky to escape before they could surround us. Nine of our men are missing."

She gave a shudder, then came to us, kissed Tom with more than ordinary tenderness, grasped my hand affectionately, and finally held the captain's in a light, momentary clasp.

"You did your best, I'm sure," she said, in a low voice, at the same time flashing her eyes furtively from one to another as if to detect whether we hid any part of the news.

We were relieved and charmed at this resigned manner of receiving our bad tidings, and it gave me, at least, a higher opinion of her strength of character. This was partly merited, I make no doubt; though I did not know then that she had reason to reproach herself for our failure.

"And that's all you have to tell?" she queried. "You didn't discover what made them so ready for a surprise?"

"No," replied the captain, casually. "Could there have been any particular reason, think you? To my mind, they have had lessons enough to make them watchful."

She looked relieved. I suppose she was glad we should not know of her interview with Philip, and of the imprudent taunts by which she herself had betrayed the great design.

"Well," said she. "They may not be so watchful another time. We may try again. Let us wait until I hear from Ned."

But when she stole an interview with Bill Meadows, that worthy had no communication from Ned; instead thereof, he had news that Captain Faringfield had disappeared from the rebel camp, and was supposed by some to have deserted to the British. Something that Meadows knew not at the time, nor I till long after, was of the treasonable plot unearthed in the rebel army, and that two or three of the participants had been punished for the sake of example, and the less guilty ones drummed out of the camp. This was the result of Philip's presentation to General Washington of the list of names obtained from Ned, some of the men named therein having confessed upon interrogation. Philip's account of the affair made it appear to Washington that his discovery was due to his accidental meeting with Ned Faringfield, and that Faringfield's escape was but the unavoidable outcome of the hand-to-hand fight between the two men—for Philip had meanwhile ascertained, by a personal search, that Ned had not been too severely hurt to make good his flight.

Well, there passed a Christmas, and a New Year, in which the Faringfield house saw some revival of the spirit of gladness that had formerly prevailed within its comfortable walls at that season. Mr. Faringfield, who had grown more gray and taciturn each year, mellowed into some resemblance to his former benevolent, though stately, self. He had not yet heard of Ned's treason. His lady, still graceful and slender, resumed her youth. Fanny, who had ever forced herself to the diffusion of merriment when there was cheerlessness to be dispelled, reflected with happy eyes the old-time jocundity now reawakened. My mother, always a cheerful, self-reliant, outspoken soul, imparted the cordiality of her presence to the household, and both Tom and I rejoiced to find the old state of things in part returned. Margaret, perhaps for relief from her private dejection, took part in the household festivities with a smiling animation that she had not vouchsafed them in years; and Captain Falconer added to their gaiety by his charming wit, good-nature, and readiness to please. Yet he, I made no doubt, bore within him a weight of dashed hopes, and could often have cursed when he laughed.

The happy season went, leaving a sweeter air in the dear old house than had filled it for a long time. All that was missing, it seemed to us who knew not yet as much as Margaret knew, was the presence of Philip. Well, the war must end some day, and then what a happy reunion! By that time, if Heaven were kind, I thought, the charm of Captain Falconer would have lost power over Margaret's inclinations, and all would be well that ended well.

One night in January, we had sat very late at cards in the Faringfield parlour, and my mother had just cried out, "Dear bless me, look at the clock!"—when there sounded a dull, heavy pounding upon the rear hall door. There were eight of us, at the two card-tables: Mr. Faringfield and his lady, my mother, Margaret and Fanny, Mr. Cornelius, Tom, and myself. And every one of us, looking from face to face, showed the same thought, the same recognition of that half-cowardly, half-defiant thump, though for so long we had not heard it. How it knocked away the years, and brought younger days rushing back upon us!

Mr. Faringfield's face showed a sweep of conjectures, ranging from that of Ned's being in New York in service of his cause, to that of his being there as a deserter from it. Margaret flushed a moment, and then composed herself with an effort, for whatever issue this unexpected arrival might portend. The rest of us waited in a mere wonder touched with the old disquieting dread of painful scenes.

Old Noah, jealous of the single duty that his years had left him, and resentful of its frequent usurpation by Falconer's servant, always stayed up to attend the door till the last of the family had retired. We now heard him shuffling through the hall, heard the movement of the lock, and then instantly a heavy tread that covered the sound of Noah's. The parlour door from the hall was flung open, and in strode the verification of our thoughts.

Ned's clothes were briar-torn and mud-spattered; his face was haggard, his hair unkempt, his left shoulder humped up and held stiff. He stopped near the door, and stared from face to face, frowning because of the sudden invasion of his eyes by the bright candlelight. When his glance fell upon Margaret, it rested; and thereupon, just as if he were not returned from an absence of three years and more, and heedless of the rest of us, confining his address to her alone, he bellowed, with a most malignant expression of face and voice:

"So you played a fine game with us, my lady—luring us into the dirty scheme, and then turning around and setting your husband on us in the act! I see through it all now, you underhanded, double-dealing slut!"

"Are you speaking to me, sir?" asked Margaret, with dignity.

"Of course I am; and don't think I'll hold my tongue because of these people. Let 'em hear it all, I don't care. It's all up now, and I'm a hanged man if ever I go near the American camp again. But I'm safe here in New York, though I was damn' near being shot when I first came into the British lines. But I've been before General Knyphausen,[7] and been identified, and been acknowledged by your Captain Falconer as the man that worked your cursed plot at t'other end; and I've been let go free—though I'm under watch, no doubt. So you see there's naught to hinder me exposing you for what you are—the woman that mothered a British plot, and worked her trusting brother into it, and then betrayed him to her husband."

"That's a lie!" cried Margaret, crimson in the face.

"What does all this mean?" inquired Mr. Faringfield, rising.

Paying no attention to his father, Edward retorted upon Margaret, who also rose, and who stood between him and the rest of us:

"A lie, is it? Perhaps you can make General Knyphausen and Captain Falconer believe that, now I've told 'em whose cursed husband it was that attacked me at the meeting-place, and alarmed the camp. You didn't think I'd live to tell the tale, did you? You thought to hear of my being hanged, and your husband promoted for his services, and so two birds killed with one stone! But providence had a word to say about that. The Lord is never on the side of plotters and traitors, let me tell you, and here I am to outface you. A lie, is it? A lie that your husband spoiled the scheme? Why, you brazen hussy, he came from New York that very night—he told me so himself! He had seen you, and you had told him all, I'll lay a thousand guineas!"

'Twas at the time a puzzle to me that Margaret should condescend to explanations with him as she forthwith did. But I now see how, realising that proofs of Philip's visit might turn up and seem to bear out Ned's accusation, she must have felt the need of putting herself instantly right with Tom and me, lest she might eventually find herself wrong with General Clinton and Captain Falconer.

"I own that Philip saw me that night," she said, with a self-control compelled by her perilous situation. "He came here by stealth, and took me by surprise. He found reason to suspect our plot, but till now I never knew 'twas really he that put the rebels on their guard. I thought he would be too late. 'Twas through no intention of mine that he guessed what was afoot. I never told Tom and Bert" (these words were meant for our ears) "—or Captain Falconer—of his visit, for fear they might think, as you seem to, that I was to blame. That's all the truth, and we shall see whether Captain Falconer will believe you or me."

Here Mr. Faringfield, whose patience at being so far ignored, though 'twas supported by the hope of receiving the desired enlightenment from their mutual speeches, was at length exhausted, put in with some severity.

"Pray, let us into these mysteries, one of you. Margaret, what is it I hear, of a visit from Philip? of a British plot? By heaven, if I thought—but explain the matter, if you please."

"I have no right to," said she, her face more and more suffused with red. "'Tis not my secret alone; others are concerned."

"It appears," rejoined Mr. Faringfield, "it is a secret that abides in my house, and therefore I have a right to its acquaintance. I command you to explain."

"Command?" she echoed lightly, with astonishment. "Is a married woman subject to her father's commands?"

"An inmate of my house is subject to my commands," he replied, betraying his hidden wrath by a dark look.

"I beg your pardon," said she. "That part of the house which Philip has paid, or will pay, for my living in, is my own, for the time being. I shall go there—"

"You shall not leave this room," cried her father, stalking toward the door. "You fall back upon Philip's name. Very well, he has delegated the care of you to me in his absence. 'Tis time I should represent his authority over you, when I hear of your plotting against his country."

"I have a right to be loyal to the king, above the authority of a husband."

"If your loyalty extends to plotting against your husband's cause, you have not the right under my roof—or under Philip Winwood's part of it. I will know what this scheme is, that you have been engaged in."

"Not from me!" said Margaret, with a resolution that gave a new, unfamiliar aspect to so charmingly feminine a creature.

"Oh, let her alone, father," put in Ned, ludicrously ready for the faintest opportunity either to put his father under obligation or to bring down Margaret. "I'll be frank with you. I've no reason to hide what's past and gone. She and Captain Falconer had a plan to make Washington a prisoner, by a night expedition from New York, and some help in our camp—"

"Which you were to give, I see, you treacherous scoundrel!" said his father, with contempt.

"Oh, now, no hard names, sir. You see, several of us—some good patriots, too, with the country's best interests at heart—couldn't swallow this French alliance; we saw that if we ever did win by it, we should only be exchanging tyrants of our own blood for tyrants of frog-eaters. We began to think England would take us back on good terms if the war could be ended; and we considered the state of the country, the interests of trade—indeed, 'twas chiefly the thought of your business, the hope of seeing it what it once was, that drove me into the thing."

"You wretched hypocrite!" interposed Mr. Faringfield.

"Oh, well; misunderstand me, as usual. Call me names, if you like. I'm only telling the truth, and what you wished to know—what she wouldn't tell you. I'm not as bad as some; I can up and confess, when all's over. Well, as I was about to say, we had everything ready, and the night was set; and then, all of a sudden, Phil Winwood swoops down on me; treats me in a most unbrotherly fashion, I must say" (Ned cast an oblique look at his embarrassed shoulder); "and alarmed the camp. And when the British party rode up, instead of catching Washington they caught hell. And I leave it to you, sir, whether your daughter there, after playing the traitor to her husband's cause, for the sake of her lover; didn't turn around and play the traitor to her own game, for the benefit of her husband, and the ruin of her brother. Such damnableness!"

"'For the sake of her lover,'" Mr. Faringfield repeated. "What do you mean by that, sir?" The phrase, indeed, had given us all a disagreeable start.

"What I say, sir. How could he be otherwise? I guessed it before; and I became sure of it this evening, from the way he spoke of her at General Knyphausen's quarters."

"What a lie!" cried Margaret. "Captain Falconer is a gentleman; he's not of a kind to talk about women who have given him no reason to do so. 'Tis ridiculous! You maligning villain!"

"Oh, 'twasn't what he said, my dear; 'twas his manner whenever he mentioned you. When a man like him handles a woman's name so delicate-like, as if 'twas glass and might break—so grave-like, as if she was a sacred subject—it means she's put herself on his generosity."

Margaret affected a derisive laugh, as at her brother's pretensions to wisdom.

"Oh, I know all the stages," he continued, watching her with a malicious calmness of self-confidence. "When gentry of his sort are first struck with a lady, but not very deep, they speak out their admiration bold and gallant; when they find they're hit seriously, but haven't made sure of her, they speak of her with make-believe carelessness or mere respect: they don't like to show how far gone they are. But when she's come to an understanding with 'em, and put 'em under obligations and responsibilities—it's only then they touch her name so tender and considerate, as if it was so fragile. But that stage doesn't last for ever, my young lady—bear that in mind!"

"You insolent wretch!" said Margaret, ready to cry with rage and confusion.

"This is outrageous," ventured Mrs. Faringfield, daring to look her indignation at Ned. "William, how can you tolerate such things said about your daughter?"

But Mr. Faringfield had been studying his daughter's countenance all the while. Alas for Margaret, she had never given pains to the art of dissimulation, or taken the trouble to learn hypocrisy, or even studied self-control: a negligence common to beauties, who rely upon their charms to carry them through all emergencies without resort to shifts. She was equal to a necessary lie that had not to be maintained with labour, or to a pretence requiring little effort and encountering no suspicion, but to the concealment of her feelings when she was openly put to the question, her powers were inadequate. If ever a human face served its owner ill, by apparently confessing guilt, where only folly existed, Margaret's did so now.

"What I may think of the rascal who says these things," replied Mr. Faringfield, with the unnatural quietness that betrays a tumult of inward feelings, "I will tolerate them till I am sure they are false." His eyes were still fixed on Margaret.

"What!" said she, a little hysterically. "Do you pay attention to the slanders of such a fellow? To an accusation like that, made on the mere strength of a gentleman's manner of mentioning me?"

"No, but I pay attention to your manner of receiving the accusation: your telltale face, your embarrassment—"

"'Tis my anger—"

"There's an anger of innocence, and an anger of guilt. I would your anger had shown more of contempt than of confusion." Alas! he knew naught of half-guilt and its manifestations.

"How can you talk so?—I won't listen—such insulting innuendoes!—even if you are my father—why, this knave himself says I betrayed Captain Falconer's scheme: how could he think that, if—"

"That proves nothing," said Ned, with a contemptuous grin. "Women do unaccountable things. A streak of repentance, maybe; or a lovers' quarrel. The point is, a woman like you wouldn't have entered into a scheme like that, with a man like him, if there hadn't already been a pretty close understanding of another kind. Oh, I know your whole damn' sex, begad!—no offence to these other ladies."

"William, this is scandalous!" cried Mrs. Faringfield. My mother, too, looked what it was not her place to speak. As for Tom and me, we had to defer to Mr. Faringfield; and so had Cornelius, who was very solemn, with an uneasy frown between his white eyebrows. Poor Fanny, most sensitive to disagreeable scenes, sat in self-effacement and mute distress.

Mr. Faringfield, not replying to his wife, took a turn up and down the room, apparently in great mental perplexity and dismay.

Suddenly he was a transformed man. Pale with wrath, his lips moving spasmodically, his arms trembling, he turned upon Margaret, grasped her by the shoulders, and in a choked, half-articulate voice demanded:

"Tell the truth! Is it so—this shame—crime? Speak! I will shake the truth from you!"

"Father! Don't!" she screamed, terrified by his look; and from his searching gaze, she essayed to hide, by covering her face with her hands, the secret her conscience magnified so as to forbid confession and denial alike. I am glad to recall this act of womanhood, which showed her inability to brazen all accusation out.

But Mr. Faringfield saw no palliating circumstance in this evidence of womanly feeling. Seeing in it only an admission of guilt, he raised his arms convulsively for a moment as if he would strike her down with his hands, or crush her throat with them. But, overcoming this impulse, he drew back so as to be out of reach of her, and said, in a low voice shaken with passion:

"Go! From my house, I mean—my roof—and from Philip's part of it. God! that a child of mine should plot against my country, for England—that was enough; but to be false to her husband, too—false to Philip! I will own no such treason! I turn you out, I cast you off! Not another hour in my house, not another minute! You are not my daughter, not Philip's wife!—You are a thing I will not name! We disown you. Go, I bid you; let me never see you again!"

She had not offered speech or motion; and she continued to stand motionless, regarding her father in fear and sorrow.

"I tell you to leave this house!" he added, in a slightly higher and quicker voice. "Do you wait for me to thrust you out?"

She slowly moved toward the door. But her mother ran and caught her arm, and stood between her and Mr. Faringfield.

"William!" said the lady. "Consider—the poor child—your favourite, she was—you mustn't send her out. I'm sure Philip wouldn't have you do this, for all she might seem guilty of."

"Ay, the lad is too kind of heart. So much the worse her treason to him! She shall go; and you, madam, will not interfere. 'Tis for me to command. Be pleased to step aside!"

His passion had swiftly frozen into an implacable sternness which struck fear to the childish heart of his wife, and she obeyed him dumbly. Dropping weakly upon a chair, she added her sobs to those of Fanny, which had begun to break plaintively upon the tragic silence.

Margaret raised her glance from the floor, in a kind of wistful leave-taking, to us who looked on and pitied her.

"Indeed, sir," began Mr. Cornelius softly, rising and taking a step toward Mr. Faringfield. But the latter cut his good intention short, by a mandatory gesture and the harshly spoken words:

"No protests, sir; no intercessions. I am aware of what I do."

"But at midnight, sir. Think of it. Where can she find shelter at this hour?"

"Why," put in my mother, "in my house, and welcome, if she must leave this one."

"Thank you, Mrs. Russell," said Margaret, in a stricken voice. "For the time being, I shall be glad—"

"For all time, if you wish," replied my mother. "And we shall have your things moved over tomorrow."

"By the Lord, sis," cried Ned, with a sudden friendliness quite astonishing after the part he had taken, and to be accounted for only by the idea that had struck him, "here's a blessing in disguise! There's a ship sails next Wednesday—so I found out this evening—and damn me if you sha'n't go to London with me! That's the kind of a forgiving brother I am!"

She had utterly ignored his first words, but when he reached the point, she looked at him thoughtfully, with a check upon her resentment. She made no reply, however; but he had not missed her expression. Tom and I exchanged side glances, remembering Ned's former wish that he might imitate his Irish friend by taking his sister to London to catch a fortune with. As for Margaret, as matters stood, it would be something to go to London, relying on her beauty. I fancied I saw that thought in her look.

Mr. Faringfield, who had heard with cold heedlessness my mother's offer and Ned's, now rang the bell. Noah appeared, with a sad, affrighted face—he had been listening at the door—and cast a furtive glance at Margaret, in token of commiseration.

"Bring Mrs. Winwood's cloak," said Mr. Faringfield to the old negro. "Then open the door for her and Mr. Edward."

While Noah was absent on this errand, and Margaret waited passively, Tom went to her, kissed her cheek, and then came away without a word.

"You'll accept Mrs. Russell's invitation, dear," said Mrs. Faringfield, in tears, "and we can see you every day."

"Certainly, for the present," replied Margaret, who did not weep, but spoke in a singularly gentle voice.

"And I, too, for to-night, with my best thanks," added Ned, who had not been invited, but whom my mother preferred not to refuse.

Noah brought in the cloak, and placed it around Madge with an unusual attentiveness, prolonging the slight service to its utmost possible length, and keeping an eye for any sign of relenting on the part of his master.

My mother and I stood waiting for Margaret, while Mrs. Faringfield and Fanny weepingly embraced her. That done, and with a good-night for Tom and Mr. Cornelius, but not a word or a look for her father, who stood as silent and motionless as marble, she laid her hand softly upon my arm, and we went forth, leaving my mother to the unwelcome escort of Ned. The door closed upon us four—'twas the last time it ever closed upon one of us—and in a few seconds we were at our steps. And who should come along at that moment, on his way to his quarters, but Captain Falconer? He stopped, in pleased surprise, and, peering at our faces in the darkness, asked in his gay, good-natured way what fun was afoot.

"Not much fun," said Margaret. "I have just left my father's house, at his command."

He stood in a kind of daze. As it was very cold, we bade him good night, and went in. Reopening the door, and looking out, I saw him proceeding homeward, his head averted in a meditative attitude. I knew not till the next day what occurred when he arrived in the Faringfield hall.

"Sir," said Tom Faringfield, stepping forth from where he had been leaning against the stair-post, "I must speak low, because my parents and sister are in the parlour there, and I don't wish them to hear—"

"With all my heart," replied Falconer. "Won't you come into my room, and have a glass of wine?"

"No, sir. If I had a glass of wine, I should only waste it by throwing it in your face. All I have to say is, that you are a scoundrel, and I desire an opportunity to kill you as soon as may be—"

"Tut, tut, my dear lad—"

"I'll think of a pretext, and send my friend to you to-morrow," added Tom, and, turning his back, went quietly up-stairs to his room; where, having locked the door, he fell face forward upon his bed, and cried like a heart-broken child.



CHAPTER XV.

In Which There Is a Flight by Sea, and a Duel by Moonlight.

It appeared, from Ned Faringfield's account of himself, that after his encounter with Philip, and his fall from the shock of his wound, he had awakened to a sense of being still alive, and had made his way to the house of a farmer, whose wife took pity on him and nursed him in concealment to recovery. He then travelled through the woods to Staten Island, where, declaring himself a deserter from the rebel army, he demanded to be taken before the British commander.

Being conveyed to headquarters in the Kennedy House, near the bottom of the Broadway, he told his story, whereupon witnesses to his identity were easily found, and, Captain Falconer having been brought to confront him, he was released from bodily custody. He must have had a private interview with Falconer, and, perhaps, obtained money from him, before he came to the Faringfield house to vent his disappointment upon Madge. Or else he had got money from some other source; he may have gambled with what part of his pay he received in the early campaigns. He may, on some occasion, have safely violated Washington's orders against private robbery under the cover of war. He may have had secret dealings with the "Skinners" or other unattached marauders. In any case, his assured manner of offering Madge a passage to England with him, showed that he possessed the necessary means.

He had instantly recognised a critical moment of Madge's life, the moment when she found herself suddenly deprived of all resource but a friendly hospitality which she was too proud to make long use of, as a heaven-sent occasion for his ends. At another time, he would not have thought of making Madge his partner in an enterprise like the Irishman's—he feared her too much, and was too sensible of her dislike and contempt.

He set forth his scheme to her the next day, taking her acquiescence for granted. She listened quietly, without expressing her thoughts; but she neither consented nor refused. Ned, however, made full arrangements for their voyage; considering it the crowning godsend of a providential situation, that a vessel was so soon to make the trip, notwithstanding the unlikely time of year. When Margaret's things were brought over to our house, he advised her to begin packing at once, and he even busied himself in procuring additional trunks from his mother and mine, that she might be able to take all her gowns to London. The importance of this, and of leaving none of her jewelry behind, he most earnestly impressed upon her.

Yet she did not immediately set about packing, Ned probably had moments of misgiving, and of secret cursing, when he feared he might be reckoning without his host. The rest of us, at the time, knew nothing of what passed between the two: he pretended that the extra trunks were for some mysterious baggage of his own: nor did we then know what passed between her and Captain Falconer late in the day, and upon which, indeed, her decision regarding Ned's offer depended.

She had watched at our window for the captain's passing. When at length he appeared, she was standing so close to the glass, her eyes so unmistakably met his side-look, that he could not pretend he had not seen her. As he bowed with most respectful civility, she beckoned him with a single movement of a finger, and went, herself, to let him in. When he had followed her into our parlour, his manner was outwardly of the most delicate consideration, but she thought she saw beneath it a certain uneasiness. They spoke awhile of her removal from her father's house; but he avoided question as to its cause, or as to her intentions. At last, she said directly, with assumed lightness:

"I think of going to London with my brother, on the Phoebe."

She was watching him closely: his face brightened wonderfully.

"I vow, you could do nothing better," he said. "There is your world. I've always declared you were a stranger in this far-off land. 'Tis time you found your proper element. I can't help confessing it; 'tis due to you I should confess it—though alas for us whom you leave in New York!"

She looked at him for a moment, with a slight curling of the lip; witnessed his recovery from the fear that she might throw herself upon his care; saw his comfort at being relieved of a possible burden he was not prepared to assume; and then said, very quietly:

"I think Mrs. Russell is coming. You had best go."

With a look of gallant adoration, he made to kiss her hand first. But she drew it away, and put her finger to her lip, as if to bid him depart unheard. When he had left the house, she fell upon the sofa and wept, but only for wounded vanity, for chagrin that she had exposed her heart to one of those gentry who will adore a woman until there is danger of her becoming an embarrassment.

Before long, she arose, and dried her eyes, and went up-stairs to pack her trunks. Thus ended this very light affair of the heart; which had so heavy consequences for so many people.

But Captain Falconer's inward serenity was not to escape with this unexpectedly easy ordeal. When he reached his room, he found me awaiting him, as the representative of Tom Faringfield. I had, in obedience to my sense of duty, put forth a few conventional dissuasions against Tom's fighting the captain; and had presumed to hint that I was nearer to him in years and experience than Tom was. But the boy replied with only a short, bitter laugh at the assured futility of my attempts. Plainly, if there was to be fighting over this matter, I ought not to seek a usurpation of Tom's right. And fighting there would be, I knew, whether I said yea or nay. Since Tom must have a second, that place was mine. And I felt, too, with a young man's foolish faith in poetic justice, that the right must win; that his adversary's superiority in age—and therefore undoubtedly in practice, Falconer being the man he was—would not avail against an honest lad avenging the probity of a sister. And so I yielded countenance to the affair, and went, as soon as my duty permitted, to wait upon Captain Falconer.

"Why," said he, when I had but half told my errand, "I was led to expect this. The young gentleman called me a harsh name, which I'm willing to overlook. But he finds himself aggrieved, and, knowing him as I do, I make no doubt he will not be content till we have a bout or two. If I refuse, he will dog me, I believe, and make trouble for both of us, till I grant him what he asks. So the sooner 'tis done, the better, I suppose. But lookye, Mr. Russell, 'tis sure to be an embarrassing business. If one or other of us should be hurt, there'd be the devil to pay, you know. I dare say the General would be quite obdurate, and go the whole length of the law. There's that to be thought of. Have a glass of wine, and think of it."

Tom and I had already thought of it. We had been longer in New York than the captain had, and we knew how the embarrassment to which he alluded could be provided against.

"'Tis very simple," said I, letting him drink alone, which it was not easy to do, he was still so likeable a man. "We can go from Kingsbridge as if we meant to join Captain De Lancey in another of his raids. And we can find some spot outside the lines; and if any one is hurt, we can give it out as the work of rebel irregulars who attacked us."

He regarded me silently a moment, and then said the plan seemed a good one, and that he would name a second with whom I could arrange details. Whereupon, dismissing the subject with a civil expression of regret that Tom should think himself affronted, he went on to speak of the weather, as if a gentleman ought not to treat a mere duel as a matter of deep concern.

I came away wishing it were not so hard to hate him. The second with whom I at length conferred—for our duties permitted not a prompt despatching of the affair, and moreover Captain Falconer's disposition was to conduct it with the gentlemanly leisure its pretended unimportance allowed—was Lieutenant Hugh Campbell, one of several officers of that name who served in the Highland regiment that had been stationed earlier at Valentine's Hill; he therefore knew the debatable country beyond Kingsbridge as well as I. He was a mere youth, a serious-minded Scot, and of a different sort from Captain Falconer: 'twas one of the elegant captain's ways, and evidence of his breadth of mind, to make friends of men of other kinds than his own. Young Campbell and I, comparing our recollections of the country, found that we both knew of a little open hollow hidden by thickets, quite near the Kingsbridge tavern, which would serve the purpose. Captain Falconer's duties made a daylight meeting difficult to contrive without exposing his movements to curiosity, and other considerations of secrecy likewise preferred a nocturnal affair. We therefore planned that the four of us, and an Irish surgeon named McLaughlin, should appear at the Kingsbridge tavern at ten o'clock on a certain night for which the almanac promised moonlight, and should repair to the meeting-place when the moon should be high enough to illumine the hollow. The weapons were to be rapiers. The preliminary appearance at the tavern was to save a useless cold wait in case one of the participants should, by some freak of duty, be hindered from the appointment; in which event, or in that of a cloudy sky, the matter should be postponed to the next night, and so on.

The duel was to occur upon a Wednesday night. On that afternoon I was in the town, having carried some despatches from our outpost to General De Lancey, and thence to General Knyphausen; and I was free for a few minutes to go home and see my mother.

"What do you think?" she began, handing me a cup of tea as soon as I had strode to the parlour fire-place.

"I think this hot tea is mighty welcome," said I, "and that my left ear is nigh frozen. What else?"

"Margaret has gone," she replied, beginning to rub my ear vigorously.

"Gone! Where?" I looked around as if to make sure there was no sign of her in the room.

"With Ned—on the Phoebe."

"The deuce! How could you let her do it—you, and her mother, and Fanny?"

"We didn't know. I took some jelly over to old Miss Watts—she's very feeble—and Madge and Ned went while I was out; they had their trunks carted off at the same time. 'Twasn't for an hour or two I became curious why she kept her room, as I thought; and when I went up to see, the room was empty. There were two letters there from her, one to me and one to her mother. She said she left in that way, to save the pain of farewells, and to avoid our useless persuasions against her going. Isn't it terrible?—poor child! Why it seems only yesterday—" And my good mother's lips drew suddenly down at the corners, and she began to sniff spasmodically.

"But is it too late?" I asked, in a suddenly quieted voice. That the brightness and beauty of Madge, which had been a part of my world since I could remember, should have gone from about us, all in a moment!—'twas a new thought, and a strange one. What a blank she left, what a dulness!

"Too late, heaven knows!" said my mother, drying her eyes with a handkerchief, and speaking brokenly. "As soon as Mrs. Faringfield read the letters, which I had taken over at once, Fanny and Mr. Cornelius started running for the wharves. But when they got there, the Phoebe wasn't in sight. It had sailed immediately their trunks were aboard, I suppose. Oh, to think of pretty Madge—what will become of her in that great, bad London?"

"She has made her plans, no doubt, and knows what she is doing," said I, with a little bitterness. "Poor Phil! Her father is much to blame."

When I told Tom, as soon as I reached the outpost, he gave a sudden, ghastly, startled look; then collected himself, and glanced at the sword with which he meant to fight that night.