"If now, why not before?"

"Haven't I said I've been blind to you until to-night? At first I regarded you as only an enemy to be turned to my use in my peril. Having been fortunate in that, I gave myself to other thoughts. But, thinking my false love had drawn true love from you, I saw I could not in honor leave you under a false belief. But now the falsehood has become truth. A week ago, I avowed a pretended passion, to gain my life! Now, I declare a real one, to gain your love!"

"What, you expect to take my love by storm, in reality, as you did, in appearance, a week ago?" She had risen from the music seat, and now stood with her back against the spinet, her hands behind her, her head turned slightly upward, facing him.

"I don't expect," said he. "I only hope."

"And what gives you reason to hope?"

"My own love for you. Love elicits love, they say."

"They say wrong, then. If that were true, there would be no unrequited lovers."

"Ay, but such love as mine,—how can it so fill me to overflowing, and not infect you?"

"Love is not an infectious disease. If it were, I should have no fear,—knowing myself love-proof."

"I can't believe that,—for a woman with no spark in herself could not light so fierce a flame in me, by the mere meeting of our eyes."

"If it should create in me such a disturbance as you seem to undergo, I shouldn't wish it to increase. But, I assure you, it isn't in me."

"Pray think it is. Only imagine it is there, and soon it will be."

She felt that the time was at hand to strike the blow.

"If I could be perfectly sure you spoke in earnest," she said, seeming to search his countenance for testimony.

"In earnest!" he echoed. "Great heavens, what evidence do you want? If there is an aspect of love I do not have, tell me, and I shall put it on."

"Yes, you are experienced in putting on the aspects of love."

"Oh, you well know I have no reason now for declaring a love I don't feel. If you could be sure I spoke in earnest, you said,—what then? Tell me, and I shall find a way to convince you I am in earnest."

"Convince me first."

"'Convince me,' you say. And I say, 'Be convinced.' By the Lord, never was so great a sceptic! Is not your sense of your own charms sufficient to convince you of their effect?"

"Mere words!"

"I'll prove my love by acts, then!"

"By what acts?"

"By fighting for you or suffering for you, dying for you or living for you, as you may command."

"You can prove it thus. Say, 'Long live the King!'"

He gazed at her a moment. "No," he said.

"Say, 'Long live the King!'" She went to the door, and paused on the threshold, looking at him, as if to give him a last opportunity.

"Long live the King—" he said.

She came back from the door.

"Of France!" he added.

"No," she cried, and dictated, "'Long live the King of Great Britain!'"

"Long live the King of Great Britain,—but not of America."

"No! 'Long live George the Third, King of Great Britain and the American colonies!'"

"Long live George the Third, King of Great Britain and—Ireland."

"'And of the American colonies.' Say it! Say it all!"

"Long live Elizabeth Philipse, queen of beauty in the United States of America!" he answered.

"You don't love me," said she, and set her mind to finding some other means by which he might evince what she knew he would never demonstrate in the way she had demanded. And she resolved his humiliation should be all the greater for the delay. "You don't love me."

"I do. I swear, on my knees."

"Then get on your knees!"

"I do!" He dropped on one knee.

"Both knees!"

"Both." He suited action to word.

"Bow lower."

"I touch the floor." He did so, with his forehead. "Are you convinced?"

"Yes." And she moved thoughtfully towards the door of the east hall.

"Ah! Convinced that I love you madly?" In obedience to a gesture, he remained on his knees.

"Perfectly convinced."

"Then, the reward of which you hinted?"

"Reward?"

"You said, if you could be sure I spoke in earnest. Now you admit you are sure. What then?"

She let her eyes rest on him a moment, without speaking, as he looked ardently and expectantly up at her from his kneeling attitude, while she took in breath, and then she flung her answer at him.

"What then? This! That you are now more contemptible and ridiculous and utterly non-existent, to me, than you have formerly been! That, whatever I may have done which seemed in your behalf, was partly from the strange insanity of which I have spoken, and partly from the most meaningless caprice! That, if you remain here till to-morrow, you may see me in the arms of the man I really love, and that he may not be as careless of the fate of a vagabond rebel as I am. And now, Captain Crayton, or Dayton, or Peyton, or whatever you please, of somebody or other's light horse, go or stay, as you choose; you're as welcome as any other casual passer-by, for all the comical figure your impudence has made you cut! Learn modesty, sir, and you may fare better in your next love-making, if you do not aim too high! And that piece of advice is the reward I hinted at! Good night!"

And she whirled from the room, slamming behind her the mahogany door, at which Peyton stared for some seconds, in blank amazement, too overwhelmed to speak or move or breathe or think.

But gradually he came to life, slowly rose, stood for a moment thoughtful, fashioned his brows into a frown, drew his lips back hard, and muttered through his closed teeth:

"I'll stay and fight that man, at least!"

And he sat down by the table, to wait.



CHAPTER XII.

THE CHALLENGE.

A very few moments had elapsed, and Peyton still sat by the table, in a dogged study, when the door from the south hall was opened slightly, and if he had looked he might have seen a pair of eyes peeping through the aperture. But he did not look, either then or when, some seconds later, the door opened wide and Miss Sally bobbed gracefully in.

It has been related how, after her brilliant but exhausting conduct of the important scene assigned her, she sought repose in her room. Looking out of her window presently, she saw something, of which she thought it advisable to inform Elizabeth. Therefore she came down-stairs. Did she listen at the door to the last part of that notable conversation? Ungallant thought, aroint thee! 'Tis well known women have little curiosity, and what little they have they would not, being of Miss Sally's station in life, descend to gratify by eavesdropping. Let it be assumed, therefore, that the much vaunted informant, feminine intuition, told Miss Sally of the end of the interview between her niece and the captain, both as to the time of that end and as to its nature.

She entered, tremulous with a vast idea that had blazed suddenly on her mind. Now that Elizabeth was quite through with Peyton, now that Peyton must be low in his self-esteem for Elizabeth's humiliation of him, and therefore likely to be grateful for consolatory attentions, Miss Sally might resume her own hopes. But there was no time to be lost.

"Your pardon, captain," she began, sweetly, with her most flattering smile. "I am looking for Miss Elizabeth."

"She was here awhile ago," replied Peyton, glumly, not bringing his eyes within range of the smile. "She went that way. I trust you've recovered from your attack."

"My attack?" inquiringly, with surprise.

"The queer spell, I think Miss Philipse called it. She said you were subject to them."

"Well, how does she dare—" She checked her tongue, lest she might betray the device for his detention. Something in his absent, careless way of associating her with a queer spell irritated her a little for the moment, and impelled her to retaliation. "I suppose that was not the only thing she said to you?" she added, ingenuously.

"No,—she said other things." He rose and went to the fireplace, leaned against the mantel, and gazed pensively at the red embers.

"They don't seem to have left you very cheerful," ventured Miss Sally.

"Not so very damned cheerful!—I beg your pardon."

Miss Sally's moment of resentment had passed. Now was the time to strike for herself. She thought she had hit on a clever plan of getting around to the matter.

"Captain," said she, "you're a man of the world. I know it's presumptuous of me to ask it, but—if you would give me a word of advice—"

Peyton did not take his look from the fire, or his thoughts from their dismal absorption. He answered, half-unconsciously:

"Oh, certainly! Anything at all."

"You are aware, of course," she went on, with smirking, rosy confusion, "that Mr. Valentine is a widower."

"Indeed? Oh, yes, yes, I know."

"Yes, a widower twice over."

"How sad! He must feel twice the usual amount of grief."

"Why,—I don't know exactly about that."

"The poor man has my sympathy. Doubtless he is inconsolable." Peyton scarce knew what he was saying, or whom it was about.

"Why, no," said Miss Sally, averting her eyes, with a smiling shyness, "not altogether inconsolable. That's just it."

"Oh, is it?" said Peyton, obliviously.

"You may have noticed that he spends a good deal of time here at present," she went on.

"A good deal of time," he repeated. "There's doubtless some strong attraction."

"Yes. Perhaps I oughtn't to say it, but there is a strong attraction. In fact, he has proposed marriage to me, and now, as a man of the world to a woman of little experience, would you advise me to accept him?"

And she looked at the disconsolate officer so sweetly, it seemed impossible he should do aught but say it would be throwing herself away to bestow on an old man charms of which younger and warmer eyes were sensible. But he answered only:

"Certainly! An excellent match!"

For a time Miss Sally was speechless, yet open-mouthed. And then, for the length of one brief but fiery tirade, she showed herself to be her niece's aunt:

"Sir! The idea! I wouldn't have that old smoke-chimney if he were the last man on earth! I'd have given him his conge long ago, if it hadn't been that he might propose to my friend, the widow Babcock! I've only kept him on the string to prevent her getting him. When I want your advice, Captain Peyton, I'll ask for it! Excuse me, I must find Elizabeth. I've news for her."

"News?" he echoed, stupidly.

"Yes. From my chamber window awhile ago I saw some one riding this way on the post-road,—Major Colden!"

And she swept out by the same door that had closed, a few minutes before, on Elizabeth.

"Major Colden!" Peyton's teeth tightened, his eyes shot fire, his hand flew to his sword-hilt, as he spoke the name.

He went to the window, the same window at which Elizabeth had looked out a week ago, and peered through the panes at the night.

"Why, the ground is white," he said. "It has begun to snow."

But, through the large flakes that fell thick and swiftly among the trees, he did not yet see any humankind approaching. His view of the branch road was, at some places, obstructed by tall shrubbery that rose high above the palings and the hedge.

Yet through those flakes, assaulted by them in eyes and nostrils, invaded by them in ears and neck, humankind was riding. It was, indeed, Colden that Miss Sally had seen through a fortuitous opening, which gave, between the trees, a view of the most eminent point of the post-road southward. He was to conduct Elizabeth home the next day, but had availed himself of his opportunity to ride out to the manor-house that night, so as to have the few more hours in her society. He had this time taken an escort of two privates of his own regiment, but these men were not as well mounted as he, and, in his impatience, having seen the best their horses could do, and having passed King's Bridge, he had ridden ahead of them, leaving them to follow to the manor-house in their own speediest time. Thus it was that now he bore alone down from the post-road, his horse's feet making on the new-fallen snow no other sound than a soft crunching, scarce louder than its heavy breathing or its mouth-play on the bit, or the creak and clank of saddle, bridle, stirrups, pistols, and scabbard. His eyes dwelt eagerly on the manor-house, where awaited him light and warmth and wine, refuge from the pelting flakes, and, above all else, the joy-giving presence of Elizabeth. His breast expanded, he sighed already with relief; he approached the gate as a released soul, with admission ticket duly purchased by a deathbed repentance, might approach the gate of heaven.

But Peyton, looking out on the white world, saw no one. He did not change his attitude when the door reopened and Elizabeth and her aunt came into the parlor, arm in arm.

"You're sure 'twas he, aunt Sally?" Elizabeth had been saying.

"Positive. He should be here now," Miss Sally had replied.

Elizabeth cast a look of secret elation on the unheeding rebel captain, whose forehead was still against the window-pane. She saw a possible means of his still further degradation.

Suddenly he took a quick step back from the window, impulsively renewed his grasp of his sword-hilt, and showed a face of resolute antagonism.

Elizabeth knew from this that he had seen Colden. She gave a smile of pleasant anticipation.

But Miss Sally had relapsed into her usual timid self. She held tightly to Elizabeth's arm.

"Oh, dear!" she whispered. "Won't something happen when those two meet?"

"I hope so!" said Elizabeth, placidly.

"Why?" demanded Miss Sally, beginning to weaken at the knees.

"If Colden sends him to the ground, in our presence, that will crown the fellow's humiliation."

Five brisk knocks, in quick succession, were heard from the outside door of the east hall.

Peyton walked across the parlor, turned, and stood facing the east hall door, the greater part of the room's length being between him and it. His hand remained on his sword. He paid no heed to Elizabeth, she paid none to him.

"His knock!" she said, and called out through the east hall door: "'Tis Major Colden, Sam. Show him here at once." She then stepped back from the door, to a place whence she could see both it and Peyton. Her aunt clung to her arm all the while, and now whispered, "Oh, Elizabeth, I fear there will be trouble!"

"If there is, it won't fall on your silly head," whispered Elizabeth, in reply.

From the hall came the sound of the drawing of bolts. Peyton did not take his eyes from the door.

A noise of footfalls, accompanied by clank of spurs and weapons, and in came Colden, his hat in his left hand, snow on his hat and shoulders, his cloak open, his sword and pistols visible, his right hand ungloved to clasp Elizabeth's.

She received him with such a cordial smile as he had never before had from her.

"Elizabeth!" he cried,—beheld only her, hastened to her, took her proffered hand, bent his head and kissed the fingers, raised his eyes with a grateful, joyous smile,—and saw Peyton standing motionless at the other side of the room. The smile vanished; a look of amazement and hatred came.

"I wish you a very good evening, Major Colden!"

Peyton said this in a voice as hard and ironical as might have come from a brass statue.

For the next few seconds the two men stood gazing at each other, the women gazing at the men. At last the Tory major found speech:

"Elizabeth,—what does it mean? Why is this man here,—again?"

"'Tis rather a long story, Jack, and you shall hear it all in time," said Elizabeth, determined he should never hear the true story.

Before she could continue, Colden suffered a start of alarm to possess him, and asked, quickly:

"Are any of his troops here?"

"No; he is quite alone," she answered.

Colden at once took on height, arrogance, and formidableness.

"Then why have not your servants made him a prisoner?" he asked.

"Why," said she, "you being mentioned to-night, in his presence, he made some kind of boast of not fearing you, and I, divining how soon you would be here, thought fit his freedom with your name should best be paid for at your hands, major."

"Ay, major," put in Peyton, "and I have stayed to receive payment!"

Colden thought for a short while. Then he said, "A moment, Elizabeth. Your pardon, Miss Williams," and drew Elizabeth aside, and spoke to her in a low tone: "We have only to temporize with him. Two of my men have attended me from my quarters. I had a better horse, and rode ahead, in my eagerness to see you. My two fellows will be here soon, and the business will be done."

But such doing of the business did not suit Elizabeth's purpose. "I wish to humiliate the man," she answered Colden, inaudibly to the others; "to take down his upstart pride! 'Twould be no shame to him, to be made prisoner by numbers."

"What, then?" asked Colden, dubiously.

"Bring down the coxcomb, before us women, in an even match!"

To prevent objections, she then abruptly went from Colden, and resumed her place at her aunt's side.

Colden stood frowning, not half pleased at her hint. It occurred to him, as it did not to her, that the mere allegiance and favoring wishes of herself were not sufficient possessions to ensure victory in such a match as she meant. Elizabeth, accustomed to success, did not conceive it possible that the chosen agent of her own designs could fail. But the chosen agent had, in this case, wider powers of conception.

All this time, Captain Peyton had stood as motionless as a figure in a painting. He now interrupted Colden's meditations with the gentle reminder:

"I am waiting for my payment, Major Colden."

Colden was not a man of much originality. So, in his instinctive endeavor to gain time, he bungled out the conventional reply, "You wish to seek a quarrel with me, sir?"

"Seek a quarrel?" retorted Peyton. "Is not the quarrel here? Has not Miss Philipse spoken of an offence to your name, for which I ought to receive payment from you? Gad, she'd not have to speak twice to make me draw!"

Colden continued to be as conventional as a virtuous hero of a novel. "I do not fight in the presence of ladies, sir," said he.

"Nor I," said Peyton. "Choose your own place, in the garden yonder. With snow on the ground, there's light enough."

And Harry went quickly, almost to the door, near which he stopped to give Colden precedence.

"Nay," put in Elizabeth, "we ladies can bear the sight of a sword-cut or two. Wait for us," and she would have gone to send for wraps, but that Colden raised his hand in token of refusal, saying:

"Nay, Elizabeth. I will not consent."

"Come, sir," said Peyton. "'Tis no use to oppose a lady's whim. But if you make haste, we may have it over before they can arrive on the ground."

In handling his sword-hilt, Peyton had pulled the weapon a few inches out of the scabbard, and now, though he did not intend to draw while in the house, he unconsciously brought out the full length of what remained of the blade. For the time he had forgotten the sword was broken, and now he was reminded of it with some inward irritation.

Meanwhile Colden was answering:

"There's no regularity in such a meeting. Where are the seconds?"

"I'll be your second, major," cried Elizabeth. "Aunt Sally, second Captain Peyton."

"Ridiculous!" said the major.

"Anything to bring you out," said Peyton, as desirous of avenging himself on Elizabeth, through her affianced, as she was to complete her own revenge through the same instrument. "I'll fight you with half a sword. I'd forgotten 'tis all I've left."

"I would not take an advantage," said the New Yorker.

"Then break your own sword, and make us equal," said the Virginian.

"I value my weapon too much for that."

Peyton smiled ironically. But he tried again.

"Then I shall be less scrupulous," said he. "I will take an advantage. The greater honor to you, if you defeat me. You take the broken sword, and lend me yours."

He held out his hilt for exchange.

Colden pretended to laugh, saying:

"Am I a fool to put it in your power to murder me?"

"I'll tell you what, gentlemen," put in Elizabeth. "Use the swords above the chimney-place, yonder. They are equal."

"Yes!" cried Peyton.

But Colden said:

"I will not so degrade myself as to cross swords, except on the battle-field, with one who is a rebel, a deserter, and no gentleman."

Peyton turned to Elizabeth with a smile.

"Then you see, madam," said he, "'tis no fault of mine if my affronts go unpunished, since this gentleman must keep his courage for the battle-field! Egad," he added, sacrificing truth for the sake of the taunt, "you Tories need all the courage there you can save up in a long time! I take my leave of this house!"



He thrust his sword back into the scabbard, bowed rapidly and low, with a flourish of his hat, and went out by the same door Elizabeth had used in her own moment of triumph. He unbolted the outside door himself, before black Sam could come from the settle to serve him. Snowflakes rushed in at the open door. He plunged into them, swinging the door close after him. Out through the little portico he went, down the walk outside the very parlor window through which he had looked out awhile ago, but through which he did not now look in as he passed; through the gate, and up the branch road to the highway. He was possessed by a confusion of thoughts and feelings,—temporary and superficial elation at having put Elizabeth's preferred lover in so bad a light, wild ideas of some future crossing of her path, swift dreams of a future conquest of her in spite of all, a fierce desire for such action as would lead to that end. He was eager to rejoin the army now, to participate in the fighting that would bring about the humbling of her cause and make it the more in his power to master her. He heeded little the snow that impeded his steps as his boots sank into it, and which, in falling, blinded his eyes, tickled his face, and clung to his hair. The tumult of flakes was akin to that of his feelings, and he was in mood for encountering such opposition as the storm made to his progress.

Arriving at the post-road, he turned and went northward. At his left lay the great lawn fronting the manor-house, and separated from the road by hedge and palings. He could see, across the snowy expanse, between the dark trunks and whitened branches of the trees, the long front of the manor-house, its roof and its porticoes already covered with snow, the light glowing in the one exposed window of the east parlor. As he quieted down within, he felt pleasantly towards the house, to which his week's half-solitary residence in it, with the comfort he had enjoyed there and the books he had read, had given him an attachment. He cast on it a last affectionate look, then breasted the weather onward, wondering what things the future might have in store for him.

He had little fear of not reaching the American lines in safety. It was unlikely that any of the enemy's marauders would be out on such a night, and more unlikely that any regular military movement would be making on the neutral ground. He expected to meet no one on the road, but he would keep a sharp lookout in all directions as he went, and, in case of any human apparition, would take to the fields or the woods. But all the world, thought he, would stay within doors this white night.

Sliding back a part of every step he took in the snow, he passed the boundary of the Philipse lawn, and that of such part of the grounds as included, with other appurtenances, the garden north of the house. He had come, at last, to a place where the fence at his left ended and the forest began. He had, a moment before, cast a long look backward to assure himself the road was empty behind him. He now trudged on, his eyes fixed ahead.

From behind a low pine-tree, at the end of the fence, two dark figures glided up to the captain's rear, their steps noiseless in the snow. One of them caught both his forearms at the same instant, and pulled them back together, as with grips of iron. A second pair of hands placed a noose about his wrists, and quickly tightened it. Ere he could turn, his first assailant released the bound arms to the second, drew a pistol, and thrust the muzzle close to Peyton's cheek, whereupon the second man said:

"Your pardon, captain. Come quietly, or you're a dead man!"



CHAPTER XIII.

THE UNEXPECTED.

Peyton's somewhat elate exit from the parlor was followed by a moment of silence and inertia on the part of the three who remained there. But Elizabeth's chagrin was speedily translated into anger against Major Colden.

"Why didn't you fight him?" she demanded of that gentleman, who was flinching inwardly, but who maintained a pale and haughty exterior.

"What was the use?" he replied. "He's reserved for the gallows. If my two men were here! Why not send your servants after him? Sam is a powerful fellow, and Williams is shrewd and strong."

Elizabeth ignored Colden's reply, and answered her own question, thus:

"It was because you remembered the time he disarmed you, three years ago."

"You may think so, if you choose," he replied, in the patient manner of one who quietly endures unjust reproaches when self-defence is useless.

"You will find refreshments in the dining-room," said Elizabeth, coldly. "Sam will show you to your room."

"I would rather remain with you," he replied.

"I would rather be alone with my aunt a while."

A deep sigh expressed his dejecting sense of how futile it would be to oppose her.

"As you will," he then said, and, bowing gravely, left the parlor.

Elizabeth's feelings now burst out.

"Oh," she exclaimed to her aunt, "what a chicken-hearted copy of a man! And he calls himself a soldier! I wonder where he found the spirit to volunteer!"

"From you, my dear," replied Miss Sally. "Didn't you urge him to take a commission?"

"And that rebel fellow had the best of it all through," Elizabeth went on. "I was to see him laid low by his rival, as my crowning revenge! How he swaggered out! with what a look of triumph in his eye! And—aunt Sally! He won't come back! I shall never see him again!"

"Why, child, do you wish to?"

"Of course not! But I can't have him go away with the laugh on his side! He made me ridiculous after my trying to stab him with my love for the other man. Such another man! Oh, the rebel must come back!"

"But he isn't likely to," said Miss Sally.

"Oh, what shall I do?" wailed the niece.

"Elizabeth, I'll wager you're still in love with him!"

"I'm not! I hate him!—Well, what if I am? He loved me, I'm sure, the last time he said it. But, good heavens, he's going farther away every instant!"

She clasped her hands, and, for once, looked at her aunt for help, like a distressed child on the verge of weeping.

"Why don't you call him back?" said Miss Sally.

"I? Not if I die for want of seeing him!—I know! I will send the servants after him." And she started for the door, but stopped at her aunt's comment:

"But that will be as bad as calling him yourself."

"Not at all, you empty pate!" cried Elizabeth, who had become, in a moment, all action. "While he's going around by the road, Williams and Sam shall cut across the garden, lie in wait, and take him by surprise. He has no weapon but a broken sword, and they can make him prisoner. They shall bring him back here bound, and he'll think he's to be turned over to the British after all!"

"But what then?"

"Why, he shall be left alone here, well guarded, for half an hour, and then I'll happen in, give him an opportunity to make love again, and I can yield gracefully! Don't you see?"

"Then you do love him?" said the aunt.

"I don't know. However, I don't love Jack Colden. Not a word to him, of this! I'm going to give orders to the men."

As she entered the hall, she met Colden, who was coming from the dining-room with Mr. Valentine. The major had limited his refreshments to two glasses of brandy and water, swallowed in quick succession. Mr. Valentine, who was smoking his pipe, held Colden fraternally by the arm.

"What, Elizabeth, are you still angry?" said Colden, stopping as she passed.

"Excuse me, I have something to see to," said the girl, coolly, hurrying away from him.

He made a slight movement to follow her, but old Valentine drew him into the parlor, saying:

"Come, major, you'll see the lady enough after she's married to you. I was just going to say, the last lot of tobacco I got—"

"Oh, damn your tobacco!" said the other, jerking his arm from the old man's tremulous grasp.

"Damn my tobacco?" echoed Mr. Valentine, quite stupefied.

"Yes. I've matters more important on my mind just now."

"The deuce!" cried the old man. "What could be more important than tobacco?"

And he stood looking into the fire, muttering to himself between furious puffs.

Colden sought comfort of Miss Sally. "Was ever a woman as unreasonable as Elizabeth?" he said to her. "She'd have had me lower myself to meet that rebel vagabond as one gentleman meets another."

But Miss Sally was not going to betray her own disappointment by showing a change from her oft-expressed opinion of the rebel captain,—particularly in the presence of Mr. Valentine. So she answered:

"You met him so once, three years ago."

"I had a less scrupulous sense of propriety then," replied Colden, raging inwardly.

"But, as he's a rebel and deserter," pursued Miss Sally, "was it not your duty as a soldier to take him, just now?"

"I'd have done so, had my men been here," growled the major. "Elizabeth ought to've had her servants hold him. I had half a mind to order them, in the King's name, but I never can bring myself to oppose her, she's so masterful! By George, though, I'll have him yet! My two fellows will soon come up. They shall give chase. He will leave tracks in the snow."

Colden went to the window, and peered out as Peyton himself had done not long before. The flakes were coming down as thick as ever.

"I don't see my rascals yet!" he muttered. "They've stopped at the tavern, I'll warrant."

And he continued to gaze eagerly out, impatient that his men should arrive before the new-fallen snow should cover his enemy's tracks.

Old Mr. Valentine, having exhausted his present stock of mutterings, now walked over to Miss Sally, who had sat down near the spinet.

"Miss Williams," said he, "this is the first chance I've had to speak to you alone in a week."

"But we're not alone," said Miss Sally, motioning her head towards Colden.

"He's nobody," contemptuously replied the octogenarian. "A man that damns tobacco is nobody. So you may go ahead and speak out. What's your answer, ma'am?"

"Oh, Mr. Valentine, not now! You must give me time."

"That's what you said before," he complained.

She had, indeed, said it before, scores of times.

"Well, give me more time, then," she replied.

"How much?" asked the old man, in a matter-of-fact way.

"Oh, I don't know! Long enough for me to make up my mind."

Thus far, this conversation had followed in the exact lines of many that had preceded it, but now Mr. Valentine made a departure from the customary form.

"I think," said he, "if my other two wives had taken as long as you to make up their minds, I shouldn't have been twice a widower by now."

"Oh, Mr. Valentine!" said Miss Sally, in a sweetly reproachful way. "Now you know—"

But he cut her speech off short. "Very likely," said he. "I don't know. Well, take your time. Only please remember I haven't so very much time left! Better take me while I'm here to be had! Good night, ma'am!" And he went to the dining-room to fortify himself for his long homeward walk through the snow.

In crossing the hall, he saw Cuff on the settle in Sam's place. In the dining-room he met Molly, who was clearing the table of the supper that Colden had disdained. He asked her the whereabouts of Williams, and she replied that the steward and Sam had gone out on some order of Miss Elizabeth's. Deciding to await Williams's return, the old man sat down before the dining-room fire, and was soon peacefully snoring.

Elizabeth had gone up-stairs to watch from her darkened window the issue of the expedition of Williams and Sam, who had gone out by the kitchen, equipped respectively with rope and pistol. While they were in the immediate vicinity of the house, she could not see them from her elevation, but presently she beheld them glide swiftly across a white open space in the garden, cross a stile, and disappear among the trees and bushes between the garden and the post-road. Turning her eyes to the road itself, that lonely highway now called Broadway,[9] she made out a solitary figure toiling forward through the whirling whiteness,—and she gave a sigh, the deepest and longest with which her frame had ever trembled.

Meanwhile Miss Sally remained in the parlor, thinking it best not to go to Elizabeth unless sent for; while Colden continued to stand at the window, showing his impatience for the arrival of his two soldiers in a tense contracting of the brow, in a restless shifting from foot to foot, and in intermittent stifled curses.

As he kept his eyes on the place where the branch road left the highway, he did not see that part of the lawn walk which led from the garden. But suddenly a slight noise drew his look towards the portico before the east hall.

"Who are these coming?" he cried, startling Miss Sally out of her musings and her chair.

"Are they your men?" she asked, hastening to join him at the window.

"No, mine are mounted," said he. "Why,—these are Williams and Sam,—and they are bringing,—yes, it is he! They're bringing him back a prisoner! She has done it, after all, without consulting me!" And he strode to the centre of the room, in the utmost elation.

Miss Sally weakened at the imminent prospect of a meeting between the two enemies in the changed circumstances, and felt the need of her niece's support.

"I must tell Elizabeth they have him," she said, and ran out to the east hall, and thence to the dining-room, just in time to avoid seeing Peyton led in through the outer door, which Cuff had opened at Williams's call.

The steward and Sam conducted their prisoner immediately into the parlor. There Colden stood, with a rancorously jubilant smile, to receive him.

Peyton's wrists were as Williams had tied them. He was without his hat, which had been knocked off in a brief struggle he had essayed against his captors in a moment when Sam had lowered the pistol. There was a little fresh snow on his hair, and more on his shoulders. The feet of his boots were cased with it. His left arm was held by Williams, who carried the broken sword, having taken it from the scabbard at the first opportunity. Peyton's other arm was grasped by the huge, bony left hand of Sam, who held the cocked pistol in his right. The two men walked with him to the centre of the parlor, and stopped.

"By George," said he, turning his face towards Sam, with fire in his eyes, "had the snow not killed the sound of your sneaking footsteps till you'd caught my arms behind, I'd have done for the two of you!"

"Good, Williams!" said Colden. "Place him on that chair, and leave him here with me. But stay in the hall on guard."

"So Miss Elizabeth ordered us, sir," said Williams, dryly, and, with Sam, conducted Peyton to the chair, on which he sat willingly.

"Of course she did," replied Colden. "Was it not at my suggestion?"

Peyton looked sharply up at the major, who regarded him with the undisguised pleasure of hate about to be satisfied.

Williams handed the broken sword to Colden, saying, "This was the only weapon he had, sir. We grabbed him before he could use it. We ran out behind him from the roadside, and he couldn't hear us for the snow."

"Ay, or the pair of you couldn't have taken me!" said Peyton, with hot scorn and defiant gameness.

Colden, with the piece of sword, motioned Williams to go from the room.

"Leave the door ajar a little," he added, "so you can hear if I call."

Peyton uttered a short laugh of derision at this piece of prudence. The steward and Sam withdrew to the hall, where Sam remained, while Williams went in search of Elizabeth for further orders. As soon as she had assured herself, by watching and listening, that Peyton was safe in the parlor, she had stolen quietly down-stairs to the dining-room, where she had met her aunt, with whom the steward now found her sitting. She told him to get the duck-gun, make sure it was loaded and primed, and to wait with Sam on the settle in the hall. She then requested her aunt to remain in the dining-room, silently returned to the hall, and took station by the door leading from the parlor,—the door which Williams, at Colden's command, had left slightly ajar. Her original plan, she felt, might have to be altered by reason of Colden's having obtruded his hand into the game, a possibility she had not, in roughly sketching that plan, taken into account. It was in order to have the guidance of circumstance, that she now put herself in the way of hearing, unseen, what might pass between the two men. Meanwhile, through the snow-storm, Colden's two soldiers, who had indeed tarried at the tavern for the heating up of their interiors, were blasphemously urging their sleepy horses towards the manor-house.

In the parlor, the two enemies were facing each other, Peyton on his chair, his tied wrists behind him, Colden standing at some distance from him, holding the broken sword. As soon as they were alone, Peyton uttered another one-syllabled laugh, and said:

"The hospitality of this house beats my recollection. One is always coming back to it."

"You'll not come back the next time you leave it!" said Major Colden, his eyes glittering with gratified rancor.

"And when shall that time be?" asked Peyton, airily.

"As soon as two of my men arrive, whom I outrode on my way hither to-night. They attended me out of New York. I shall be generous and give them over to you, to attend you into New York."

"Thanks for the escort!"

"'Tis the only kind you rebels ever have, when you enter New York," sneered the major.

"We shall enter it with an escort of our own choosing some day! And a sorry day that for you Tories and refugees, my dear gentleman!"

"But if that day ever comes, you'll have been rotting underground a long time,—and thanks to me, don't forget that!"

"Thanks to her, you coward!" cried Peyton. "'Twas she that sent her servants after me! You didn't dare try taking me, alone!"

"Bah!" said Colden, hotly, "I might have pistolled you here to-night"—and he placed his hand on the fire-arm in his belt—"but for the presence of the ladies!"

"Was it the ladies' presence," retorted Peyton, contemptuously, "or the fact that you're a devilish bad shot?"

Neither man heard the door moved farther open, or saw Elizabeth step through the aperture to the inner side of the threshold, where she stopped and watched. Peyton's back was towards her, and Colden's rage at the last words was too intense to permit his eyes to rove from its object.

"Damn you!" cried the major. "I'd show you how bad a shot I am, but that I'd rather wait and see you on the gallows!"

"Will she come to see me there, I wonder?" said Peyton, half thoughtfully. "She ought to, for it's her work sends me there, not yours! 'Twill not be your revenge when they string me up, my jolly friend!"

Taunted beyond all self-control, the Tory yelled:

"Not mine, eh? Then I'll have mine now, you dog!"

With that, he strode forward and struck Harry a fierce blow across the face with the flat side of Harry's own broken sword.

Harry merely blinked his eyes, and did not flinch. He turned pale, then red, and in a moment, first clearing his voice of a slight huskiness, said, quietly:

"That blow I charge against you both,—the lady as well as you!"

Colden had stepped back some distance after delivering the blow. Something in Harry's answer seemed to infuriate still further the devil awakened in the Tory's body, for he cried out:

"The lady as well as me,—yes! And this, too!"

And he advanced on Peyton, to strike a second time.

"Stop! How dare you?"

The cry was Elizabeth's. It startled Colden so that he loosened his hold of the broken sword before he could deliver the blow. At that instant, she caught his arm in her one hand, the sword-guard in her other. She tore the weapon from his grasp, and faced him with a countenance as furious as his own.

"What do you mean?" he cried.

For answer she struck him in the face with the flat of the sword, as he had struck Peyton. "You sneak!" she said.

He recoiled, and stood staring, a ghastly image of bewilderment and consternation. After a moment he turned livid.

"Ah! I see now!" he gasped. "You love him!"

"Yes!" came the answer, prompt and decided.

He gazed at her with such an expression as a painter of hell might put into the face of a lost soul, and he said, faintly, in a kind of articulate moan:

"I might have known!"

Suddenly there came from the outer night the exclamation, quick and distinct:

"Whoa!"



CHAPTER XIV.

THE BROKEN SWORD.

The sound wrought a transformation in Colden. His face lighted up with malevolent joy.

"You love too late!" he cried, to Elizabeth. "My men are there! They shall take him to New York a prisoner, at last!"

"But not delivered up by me, thank God!" replied Elizabeth, while Peyton rose quickly from his chair, and Colden reeled like a drunken man to the window.

She went behind Peyton, and, with the edge of the broken sword, hacked rather than cut through one of the outer windings that bound his wrists together, whereupon she speedily uncoiled the rope.

"You were my prisoner. I set you free!" she said, dropped the rope to the floor, and handed him the broken sword.

He took the weapon in his right hand, and imprisoned Elizabeth with his left arm.

"I'm more your prisoner now than ever!" he said. "You've cut these bonds. Will you put others on me?"

"Sometime,—if we can save your life!" she answered.

Both turned their eyes towards Colden.

The Tory officer had drawn his sword, and was motioning, in great excitement, to his soldiers outside.

"This way, men!" he shouted. "To the front door! Damn the louts! Can't they understand?" He beat upon the window with his sword, knocking out panes of glass. "Come through that door, I say! Quick, curse you, there's a prisoner here, with a price for his taking! Ay, that's it! Some one in the hall there, open the front door to my men!"

The sound now came of knocks bestowed on the outside door, and of Sam's heavy tread on the hall floor.

"Williams! Sam!" shouted Elizabeth. "Don't let them in!"

The heavy tread was heard to stop short. The knocking on the outer door was resumed.

"Let them in, I say," roared Colden, too proud to go himself to the door. "I command it, in the name of the King!"

"Obey your mistress," cried Peyton, to those in the hall. "I command it, in the name of Congress!"

Colden was silent for a moment, then suddenly threw open the window and called out, "This way, men! Quick!"

And he drew pistol, and stood ready with steel and ball to guard the window by which his men were to enter. A new, wild ferocity was on his face, a new, nervous hardness in his body, as if the latent resolution and strength which a prudent man keeps for a great contest, on which his all may depend, were at last aroused. In such a mood, the man who, governed by interest, may have seemed a coward all his life becomes for the once supremely formidable. At last he thinks the stake worth the play, at last the prize is worth the risk, and because it is so he will play and risk to the end, hazarding all, not yielding while he breathes. Having opened the theme which alone, of all themes, shall transform his irresolution into action, he will, Hamlet like, "fight upon this theme until" his "eyelids will no longer wag." So was Colden aroused, transfigured, as he stood doubly armed by the window, waiting for his men to clamber in.

"What shall we do, dear?" said Elizabeth.

"Fight!" replied Peyton, tightening at the same time his right palm around his broken sword, and his left around the hand she had let him take,—for she had moved from the embrace of his arm.

"Ay, there are only two of them," she said, as two burly forms appeared in the open window, one behind the other.

"There will be three of us, you'll find!" cried Colden. "This time I'll take a hand, if need be."

"You must not stay here," said Peyton to Elizabeth, quickly. "Things will be flying loose in a moment!"

"I won't leave you!" said she.

"Go! I beg you, go!" he said, releasing her hand, and stepping back.

Meanwhile, Colden's men bounded in through the window. Rough, sturdy fellows were they, who landed heavily on the parlor floor, and blinked at the light, drawing the while the breeches of their short muskets from beneath their coats. Their hats and shoulders were coated with snow.

"Take that rebel alive, if you can!" ordered Colden. "He's meant to hang! Stun him with your musket-butts!"

The men quickly reversed their weapons, and strode heavily towards Harry. To their surprise, before they could bring down their muskets, which required both hands of each to hold, Harry dashed forward between them, thinking to cut down Colden with his broken sword, possess himself of the latter's pistol, shoot one of the soldiers, and meet the other on less unequal terms. He saw a possibility of his leaping through the open window and fleeing on one of the soldiers' horses, but the idea was accompanied by the thought that Elizabeth might be made to suffer for his escape. Her safety now depended on his getting the mastery over his three would-be captors. So, ere the two astonished fellows could turn, Harry had leaped within sword's reach of his doubly armed enemy.

But Colden was now as alert as rigid, and he opposed his officer's sword against Peyton's broken cavalry blade, guarding himself with unexpected swiftness, and giving back, for Harry's sweeping stroke, a thrust which only the quickest and most dexterous movement turned aside from entering the Virginian's lungs. As Harry stepped back for an instant out of his adversary's reach, the Tory raised his pistol. At the same moment the two soldiers, having turned about, rushed on Peyton from behind. He heard them coming, and half turned to face them. Their movement had for him one fortunate circumstance. It kept Colden from shooting, for his bullet might have struck one of his own men.

Now Elizabeth had not been idle. At the moment when Harry had stepped back from her and bade her go, she had run to the door of the east hall, and called Williams and Sam. While Peyton had been engaging Colden near the window, the steward and the negro had entered the parlor, and she had excitedly ordered them to Peyton's aid. Williams still had the duck-gun, Sam the pistol. Thus it occurred that, as Peyton half turned from Colden towards the two soldiers, these last-named saw Williams and Sam rush in between them and their prey. Before Williams could bring his duck-gun to bear, he was struck down senseless by one of the musket blows first intended for Peyton. Another blow, and from another musket, had been aimed at Sam's woolly head, but the negro had put up his left hand and caught the descending weapon, and at the same time had discharged his pistol at the weapon's holder. But Williams, in falling, had knocked against the darky, and so disturbed his aim, and the ball flew wide. The man who had brought down Williams now struck Sam a terrible blow with the musket-club, on the temple, and the negro dropped like a felled ox.

During this brief passage, Peyton had returned to close quarters with Colden. The latter, who had lowered his pistol when his men had last approached Peyton, and who had resumed the contest of swords unequal in size and kind, now raised the pistol a second time. But it was caught by the hands of Elizabeth, who had run around to his left, and who now, suddenly endowed with the strength of a tigress, wrenched it from him as she had wrenched the broken sword earlier in the evening. She tried to discharge the pistol at one of the two soldiers, as they, relieved of the brief interposition of Williams and Sam, were again taking position to bring down their muskets on Peyton's head while he continued at sword-work with Colden. But the pistol snapped without going off, whereupon Elizabeth hurled it in the face of the man at whom she had aimed. The blow disconcerted him so that his musket fell wide of Peyton, who at the same instant, having seen from the corner of his eye how he was menaced, leaped backward from under the other descending musket. Then, taking advantage of the moment when the muskets were down, he ran to the music seat before the spinet, and mounted upon it, thinking rightly that the infuriated major would follow him, and that he might the better execute a certain manoeuvre from the vantage of height. Colden indeed rushed after him, and thrust at him, Peyton sweeping the thrusts aside with pendulum-like swings of his own short weapon. His thought was to send the point that menaced him so astray that he might leap forward and cleave his enemy with a downward stroke before the Tory could recover his guard. But Colden pressed him so speedily that he was at last fain to step up from the music seat to the spinet, landing first on the keyboard, which sent out a frightened discord as he alighted on it. Finding the keys an uncertain footing, he took another step, and stood on the body of the instrument, so that Colden would be at the disadvantage of thrusting upwards. But Colden, seeming to tire a little after a few such thrusts, called to his men:

"Shoot the dog in the legs!"

Both men aimed at once. Elizabeth screamed. Peyton leaped down from his height to the little space behind the spinet projection, where he had hidden a week before. Here he found himself well placed, for here he could be approached on one side only,—unless his adversaries should follow his example and come at him from the top of the spinet.

Colden attacked him with sword, at the open side, and shouted to his men:

"One of you get on the spinet. The other crawl under. We have him now."

Still guarding himself from his enemy's thrusts, Peyton heard one of the men leap from the music seat to the spinet, and the other advance creeping, doubtless with gun before him, under the instrument. Peyton sank to his knees, placed his shoulder under the back edge of the spinet's projection, and, warding off a downward movement of Colden's sword, turned the instrument over on its side, checking the creeping man under it, and throwing the other fellow to the floor some feet away. As the spinet fell, one of its legs, rising swiftly into the air, knocked Colden's blade upward, and the Tory leaped back lest Peyton might avail himself of the opening. But the spinet-leg itself hindered Peyton from doing so. Colden rushed forward again, thrusting as he did so. Peyton leaped aside, made a swift half-turn, and landed a stroke on Colden's sword-hand, making the Tory cry out and drop the sword. Harry put his foot on it and cried:

"You're at my mercy! Beg quarter!"

But the man who had been thrown from the top of the spinet now returned to the attack, coming around that end of the upset instrument which was opposite the end where Colden had menaced Harry. Seeing this new adversary, Harry retreated past Colden, in order to put himself in position. The soldier hastened after him, with upraised musket. At this moment, Peyton saw himself confronted by Elizabeth, who pulled open the door of the south hall. He stopped short to avoid running against her.

"Save yourself!" she cried, and pushed him through the open doorway, flinging the door shut upon him, a movement which the pursuing soldier, stayed for a moment by collision with Colden, was not in time to prevent. Harry heard the key move in the lock, and knew that Elizabeth had turned it, and that he was safe in the south hall, with a minute of vantage which he might employ as he would.

Elizabeth withdrew the key from the locked door, just as the pursuing soldier arrived at that door. The man, in his excitement, violently tried to open the door. Colden, who was wrapping a handkerchief around his wounded hand, shouted to the man:

"You fool, she has the key! Take it from her!"

"You shall kill me first!" she cried, and ran from the man towards the open window, stepping over the prostrate bodies of Sam and Williams as she went.

"After her! She'll throw it into the snow!" cried Colden.

This much Harry heard through the door, and heard also the heavy tread of the soldier's feet in pursuit of the girl. His mind imaged forth a momentary picture of the fellow's rough hands laid on the delicate arms of Elizabeth, of her body clasped by the man in a struggle, her white skin reddened by his grasp. The spectacle, imaginary and lasting but an instant, maddened Peyton beyond endurance, made him a giant, a Hercules. He threw himself against the door repeatedly, plied foot and body in heavy blows. Meanwhile Elizabeth had reached the window, and thrown the key far out on the snow-heaped lawn. She had no sooner done so than the man laid his clutch on her arm.

"Fly, Peyton, for God's sake! For my sake!" she shouted.

"You shall pay for aiding the enemy, if he does!" cried Colden. "Don't let her escape, Thompson!"

At that instant the locked door gave way, and in burst Harry, having broken, to save Elizabeth from a rude contact, the barrier she had closed to save his life. That life, which he had once saved by callously assailing her heart, he now risked, that her body might not suffer the touch of an ungentle hand. So swift and sudden was his entrance, that he had crossed the room, and floored Elizabeth's captor, with a deep gash down the side of the head, ere Colden made a step towards him.

The man who had been under the fallen spinet had now extricated himself, and regained his feet, and he and Colden rushed on Peyton at once. Elated by having so speedily wrought Elizabeth's release, and reduced the number of his able adversaries to two, Peyton bethought himself of a new plan. He fled through the deep doorway to the east hall, and took position on the staircase. He turned just in time to parry Colden's sword, which the major had picked up and made shift to hold in his wrapped-up, wounded hand. Harry saw that an opportune stroke might send the sword from his enemy's numb and weakening grasp, and his heart swelled with anticipated triumph, until he heard Colden's hoarse cry:

"Shoot him, James, while I keep him occupied!"

This order was now the more practicable from Harry's being on the stairs, above Colden, a great part of his body exposed to an aim that could not endanger his antagonist. Breathing heavily, his eyes afire with hatred, Colden repeated his attacks, while Harry saw the other's musket raised, the barrel looking him in the eyes. He leaped a step higher, swung his broken sword against the pendent chandelier, knocked the only burning candle from its socket, and threw the hall into darkness. A moment later the gun went off, giving an instant's red flame, a loud crack, and a smell of gunpowder smoke. Harry heard a swift singing near his right ear, and knew that he was untouched.

Lest Colden's sword, thrust at random, might find him in the dark, Harry instantly bestrode the stair-rail, and dropped, outside the balustrade, to the floor of the hall. He grasped his half-sword in both hands, so as to put his whole weight behind it, and made a lunge in the direction of a muttered curse. The curse gave way to a roar of pain and rage, and Colden's second follower dropped, spurting blood in the darkness, his shoulder gashed horribly by the blunt end of Peyton's imperfect weapon. Harry now ran back to the parlor, to deal with Colden in the light, the latter's greater length of weapon giving a greater searching-power in the darkness. In the parlor Elizabeth stood waiting in suspense. Sam was sitting on the floor and staring stupidly at Williams, who was now awake and rubbing his head, and the Tory first fallen was still senseless. Harry had no sooner taken this scene in at a glance, than Colden was upon him.

The major's eyes seemed to stand out like blazing carbuncles from the face of some deity of rage.

"G—d d——n your soul!" he screamed, and thrust. The point went straight, and Elizabeth, seeing it protrude through the back of Harry's coat, near the left side of his body, uttered a low cry, and sank half-fainting to her knees. Colden shouted with triumphant laughter. "Die, you dog! And when you burn in hell, remember I sent you there!"

But the evil joy suddenly faded out of Colden's face, for Harry Peyton, smiling, took a forward step, grasped near the hilt the sword that seemed to be sheathed in his own body, forced it from Colden's hand, and then drew it slowly from its lodgment. No blood discolored it, and none oozed from Harry's body.

The Virginian's quick movement to escape the thrust had left only a part of his loose-fitting coat exposed, and Colden's sword had passed through it, leaving him unhurt. Colden's momentary appearance of victory had been the means of actual defeat.

The Tory major saw his cup of revenge dashed from his lips, saw himself deprived of sword and sweetheart, neither chance left of living nor motive left for life. His rage collapsed; his hate burst like a bubble.

"Kill me," he said, quietly, to Peyton.

His look, innocent of any thought to draw compassion, quite disarmed Harry, who stood for a moment with moistening eyes and a kind of welling-up at the throat, then said, in a rather unsteady voice:

"No, sir! God knows I've taken enough from you," and he looked at Elizabeth, who had risen and was standing near him. Softened by the triumphant outcome for her love, she, too, was suddenly sensible of the defeated man's unhappiness, and her eyes applauded and thanked Harry.

"You've taken what I never had," said Colden, with a chastened kind of bitterness, "yet without which the life you give me back is worthless."

"Make it worth something with this," and Peyton held Colden's sword out to him.

"What! You will trust me with it?" said Colden, amazed and incredulous, taking the sword, but holding it limply.

"Certainly, sir!"

Colden was motionless a moment, then placed his arm high against the doorway, and buried his face against his arm, to hide the outlet of what various emotions were set loose by his enemy's display of pity and trust.

Harry gently drew Elizabeth to him and kissed her. Yielding, she placed her arms around his neck, and held him for a moment in an embrace of her own offering. Then she withdrew from his clasp, and when Colden again faced them she had resumed that invisible veil which no man, not even the beloved, might pass through till she bade him.

"You will find me worthy of your trust, sir," said Colden, brokenly, yet with a mixture of manly humility and honorable pride.[10]

"I am so sure of that," said Harry, "that I confide to your care for a time what is dearest to me in the world. I ask you to accompany Miss Philipse to her home in New York, when it may suit her convenience, and to see that she suffer nothing for what has occurred here this night."

"You are a generous enemy, sir," said Colden, his eyes moistening again. "One man in ten thousand would have done me the honor, the kindness, of that request!"

"Why," said Harry, taking his enemy's hand, as if in token of farewell, "whatever be the ways of the knaves, respectable and otherwise, who are so cautious against tricks like their own, thank God it's not so rotten a world that a gentleman may not trust a gentleman, when he is sure he has found one!"

Turning to Elizabeth, he said: "I beg you will leave this house at dawn, if you can. Williams and Sam, there, will be little the worse for their knocks, and can look after the fellows on the floor."

"And you," she replied, "must go at once. You must not further risk your life by a moment's waiting. Cuff shall saddle Cato for you. I sha'n't rest till I feel that you are far on your way."

He approached as if again to kiss her, but she held out her hand to stay him. He took the hand, bent over it, pressed it to his lips.

"But,—" he said, in a tone as low as a whisper, "when—"

"When the war is over," she answered, softly, "let Cato bring you back."



NOTES.

NOTE 1. (Page 41.)

"The old county historian." Rev. Robert Bolton, born 1814, died 1877. His "History of the County of Westchester," especially the revised edition published in 1881, is a rich mine of "material." Among other works that have served the author of this narrative in a study of the period and place are Allison's "History of Yonkers," Cole's "History of Yonkers," Edsall's "History of Kingsbridge," Dawson's "Westchester County during the Revolution," Jones's "New York during the Revolution," Watson's "Annals of New York in the Olden Time," General Heath's "Memoirs," Thatcher's "Memoirs," Simcoe's "Military Journal," Dunlap's "History of New York," and Mrs. Ellet's "Domestic History of the Revolution." For an excellent description of the border warfare on the "neutral ground," the reader should go to Irving's delightful "Chronicle of Wolfert's Roost." Cooper's novel, "The Spy," deals accurately with that subject, which is touched upon also in that good old standby, Lossing's "Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution." Philipse Manor-house has been carefully written of by Judge Atkins in a Yonkers newspaper, and less accurately by Mrs. Lamb in her "History of New York City," and Marian Harland in "Some Colonial Homesteads and Their Stories." Of general histories, Irving's "Life of Washington" treats most fully of things around New York during the British occupation, and these things are interestingly dealt with in local histories, such as the "History of Queens County," Stiles's "History of Brooklyn," Barber and Howe's "New Jersey Historical Collections," etc., as well as in such special works as Onderdonk's "Revolutionary Incidents."

NOTE 2. (Page 47.)

Of Colonel Gist's escape, Bolton gives the following account: "The house was occupied by the handsome and accomplished widow of the Rev. Luke Babcock, and Miss Sarah Williams, a sister of Mrs. Frederick Philipse. To the former lady Colonel Gist was devotedly attached; consequently, when an opportunity afforded, he gladly moved his command into that vicinity. On the night preceding the attack, he had stationed his camp at the foot of Boar Hill, for the better purpose of paying a special visit to this lady. It is said that whilst engaged in urging his suit the enemy were quietly surrounding his quarters; he had barely received his final dismissal from Mrs. Babcock when he was startled by the firing of musketry.... It appears that all the roads and bridges had been well guarded by the enemy, except the one now called Warner's Bridge, and that Captain John Odell upon the first alarm led off his troops through the woods on the west side of the Saw Mill [River]. Here Colonel Gist joined them. In the meantime Mrs. Babcock, having stationed herself in one of the dormer windows of the parsonage, aided their escape whenever they appeared, by the waving of a white handkerchief."

The British attack was under Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, whose journal shows that his force so far outnumbered Gist's that the latter's only sensible course was in flight. About the year 1840, trees cut down near the site of Gist's camp were found to contain balls buried six inches in the wood.

NOTE 3. (Page 76.)

The three generals arrived on the Cerberus, May 25th. All the histories say that they arrived "with reinforcements." It is true, troops were constantly arriving at Boston about that time, but none came immediately with the three generals. The Connecticut Gazette (published in New London) printed, early in June, this piece of news, brought by a gentleman who had been in Boston, May 28th: "Generals Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe arrived at Boston last Friday in a man-of-war. No troops came with them. They brought over 25 horses." It is a wonder that Frothingham, in his admirably complete history of the siege of Boston, missed even this little circumstance. Probably everybody has read the incident thus related by Irving: "As the ships entered the harbor and the rebel camp was pointed out, Burgoyne could not restrain a burst of surprise and scorn. 'What!' cried he; 'ten thousand peasants keep five thousand King's troops shut up! Well, let us get in and we'll soon find elbow room!'" I don't think Irving relates anywhere the sequel, which is that when, after his surrender, Burgoyne marched with his conquered army into Cambridge, an old woman shouted from a window to the crowd of spectators, "Give him elbow room!" This story ought to be true, if it is not.

NOTE 4. (Page 89.)

It was in a letter under date of October 4, 1778, that Washington wrote: "What officer can bear the weight of prices that every necessary article is now got to? A rat in the shape of a horse is not to be bought for less than L200; a saddle under thirty or forty."

NOTE 5. (Page 124.)

Captain Cunningham was the British provost marshal, as everybody knows, whose name became a synonym for wanton cruelty in the treatment of war prisoners. He had come to New York before the Revolution, and had kept a riding school there. As soon as the war broke out he took the royal side. It was he who had in charge the summary execution of Nathan Hale. He would often amuse himself by striking his prisoners with his keys and by kicking over the baskets of food or vessels of soup brought for them by charitable women, who, he said, were the worst rebels in New York. He died miserably in England after the war. His career is briefly outlined in Sabine's "Loyalists." As to the manner in which Peyton, if caught, would have died, it must be remembered that in the American Revolution the rope served in many a case which, occurring in Europe or in one of our later wars, would have been disposed of with the bullet. Writing of General Charles Lee, John Fiske says: "There is no doubt that Sir William Howe looked upon him as a deserter, and was more than half inclined to hang him without ceremony." Then, as now, a deserter in time of war was liable to death if caught at any subsequent time, his case being worse than that of a spy, who was liable to death only if caught before getting back to his own lines. There was, by the way, much unceremonious hanging on the "neutral ground." Not far from the Van Cortlandt mansion there still stood, in Bolton's time, "a celebrated white oak, in the midst of a pretty glade, called the Cowboy Oak," from the fact that many of the Tory raiders had been suspended from its branches during the war of Revolution.

NOTE 6. (Page 127.)

I am not sure whether the saying, "The corpse of an enemy smells sweet," attributed to Charles IX. of France, in allusion to Coligny, is historical or was the invention of a romancer. It occurs in Dumas's "La Reine Margot."

NOTE 7. (Page 136.)

Mr. Valentine's unwillingness to lend aid was doubtless due to the frequency of such incidents as one that had occurred to his neighbor, Peter Post, in 1776. Post's estate occupied the site of the present town of Hastings. He gave information to Colonel Sheldon regarding the movements of some Hessians, and afterwards deceived the Hessians as to the whereabouts of Sheldon's own cavalry. Thereby, Sheldon's troop was enabled to surprise the Hessians, and defeat them in a short and bloody conflict. The Hessians' comrades later caught Post, stripped him, beat him to insensibility, and left him for dead. He recovered of his injuries. His house, a small stone one, became a tavern after the Revolution, and was a celebrated resort of cock-fighters and hard-drinkers. Not far north of Hastings is Dobbs Ferry, which was occupied by both armies alternately, during the Revolution. Further north is Sunnyside, Irving's house, elaborated from the original Wolfert's Roost, and beyond that are Tarrytown, where Andre was stopped and taken in charge, and Sleepy Hollow. Enchanted ground, all this, hallowed by history, legend, and romance.

NOTE 8. (Page 179.)

The secret passage or passages of Philipse Manor-house have not been neglected by writers of fiction, history, and magazine articles. The passage does not now exist, but there are numerous traces of it. The different writers do not agree in locating it. The author of an interesting story for children, "A Loyal Little Maid," has it that the passage was reached through an opening in the panelling of the dining-room, this opening concealed by a tall clock. I think Marian Harland says that a closet in one of the parlors or chambers connects with the secret passage. Both these assumptions are wrong. Mr. R. P. Getty has pointed out in the northwestern corner of the cellar what seems to have once been the entrance to the passage. One authority quotes a belief "that from the cellar there was a passage to a well now covered by Woodworth Avenue," and that this was to afford access to what may have been a storage vault. A man who was born in 1821 says that, when a boy, he saw, near the house, a dry cistern, from the bottom of which was an arched passage towards the Hudson, large enough for a man six feet tall to pass through. Judge Atkins says that the well was opposite the kitchen door, and had, at its western side, about ten feet deep, a chamber in which butter was kept. One writer locates an ice-house where Judge Atkins places this well, and says a subterranean arched way led northward as far as the present Wells Avenue. "The ice-house was formerly, it is said, a powder-magazine." Many years ago, the coachman of Judge Woodworth used to say he had "gone through an underground passage all the way from the manor-house to the Hudson River." Judge Atkins has written interesting legends of the manor-house, involving the secret passage and other features.

NOTE 9. (Page 259.)

"That lonely highway now called Broadway." A block of houses and another street now lie between that highway and the east front of the manor-house. The building is closely hemmed in by the sordid signs of progress. Ugly houses, in crowded blocks, cover all the great surrounding space that once was thick forest, fair orchards, gardens, fields, and pastoral rivulet. The Neperan or Saw Mill River flows, sluggish and scummy, under streets and houses. A visit to the manor-house, now, would spoil rather than improve one's impression of what the place looked like in the old days. Yet the house itself remains well preserved, for which all honor to the town of Yonkers. There is in our spacious America so much room for the present and the future, that a little ought to be kept for the past. It is well to be reminded, by a landmark here and there, of our brave youth as a people. A posterity, sure to value these landmarks more than this money-grabbing age does, will reproach us with the destruction we have already wrought. Worse still than the crime of obliterating all human-made relics of the past, is the vandalism of nature herself where nature is exceptionally beautiful. To rob millions of beauty-lovers, yet to live, of the Palisades of the Hudson, would bring upon us the amazement and execration of future centuries. This earth is an entailed estate, that each generation is in honor bound to hand down, undefaced, undiminished, to its successor. In order that a close-clutched wallet or two may wax a little fatter, shall we bring upon ourselves a cry of shame that would ring with increasing bitterness through the ages,—shall we invite the execration merited by such greed as could so outrage our fair earth, such stolid apathy as could stand by and see it done? Shall an alien or two, as hard of soul as the stone in which he traffics, mar the Hudson that Washington patrolled, rob countless eyes, yet unopened, of a joy; countless minds, yet to waken, of an inspiration; countless hearts, yet to beat, of a thrill of pride in the soil of their inheriting? Shall some future reader wonder why Irving, deeming it "an invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of some grand and noble object in nature," should have thanked God he was born on the banks of the Hudson? I write this with the sound of the blowing up of Indian Head still echoing in my ears, and knowing nothing done by Government to protect the next fair Hudson headland from similar destruction.

NOTE 10. (Page 281.)

It is probable that Colden served with his brigade when it fought in the South in the last part of the war. He was afterwards lost at sea, leaving no heir. He was of a family prominent in New York affairs, both before the Revolution and afterwards, and which was intermarried with other New York families of equal prominence, as may be seen in the "New York Genealogical and Biographical Record," the "New England Genealogical and Historical Register," and similar publications. It is probable that Sabine means this Colden when he mentions a Captain Colden, of the First Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers. That he was a major, however, is certain, from the official British Army lists published in Hugh Gaines's "Universal Register" for the years of the Revolution.

People curious about Harry Peyton's military record may consult Saffel's "Lists of American Officers," Heitman's "Manual," and a large work on "Virginia Genealogies," by H. E. Hayden, published at Wilkes-barre. To the reader who demands a happy ending, it need be no shock to learn that Peyton, having risen to the rank of major, was killed at Charleston, S. C., May 12, 1780. For a love story, it is a happy ending that occurs at the moment when the conquest and the submission are mutual, complete, and demonstrated. A love to be perfect, to have its sweetness unembittered, ought not to be subjected to the wear and tear of prolonged fellowship. So subjected, it may deepen and gain ultimate strength, but it will lose its intoxicating novelty, and become associated with pain as well as with pleasure. We may be sure that the love of Peyton and Elizabeth was to Harry a sweetener of life on many a night encampment, many a hard ride, in the campaign of 1779, and in the spring of 1780, and exalted him the better to meet his death on that day when Charleston fell to the British; and that to Elizabeth, while it receded into further memory, it kept its full beauty during the half century she lived faithful to it. Her sisters were married into the English nobility, gentry, and military, but Elizabeth died in Bath, England, in March, 1828, unmarried. Colonel Philipse had moved with his family to England when the British quitted New York in 1783. Many other Tories did likewise. Some went to England, but more to Canada, the greater part of which was then a wilderness. Many of the Tory officers got commissions in the English army.

No Tory family did more for the King's cause in America, lost more, or got more in redress, than the De Lancey family, which had been foremost in the administration of royal government in the province of New York. It had great holdings of property in New York City, elsewhere on the island of Manhattan, and in various parts of Westchester County, notably in Westchester Township, where De Lancey's mills and a fine country mansion were a famous landmark "where gentle Bronx clear winding flows." The founder of the American family was a French Huguenot of noble descent. The family was represented in the British army and navy before the Revolution. One member of it, a young officer in the navy, at the breaking out of the war, resigned his commission rather than serve against the Colonies, but most of the other De Lancey men were differently minded. Oliver De Lancey, a member of the provincial council, was made a brigadier-general in the royal service, and raised three battalions of loyalists, known as "De Lancey's Battalions." Of these battalions, the Tory historian, Judge Jones, says: "Two served in Georgia and the Carolinas from the time the British army landed in Georgia until the final evacuation of Charleston." One of these, during this period, was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen De Lancey, the other by Colonel John Harris Cruger. The third battalion, during the whole war, was employed solely in protecting the wood-cutters upon Lloyd's Neck, Queens County, L. I. This General De Lancey's son, Oliver De Lancey, Junior, was educated in Europe, took service with the 17th Light Dragoons, was a captain when the Revolution began, a major in 1778, a lieutenant-colonel in 1781, and, on the death of Major Andre, adjutant-general of the British army in America. Returning to England, he became deputy adjutant-general of England; as a major-general, he was also colonel of the 17th Light Dragoons; was subsequently barrack-master general of the British Empire, lieutenant-general, and finally general. When he died he was nearly at the head of the English army list. This branch of the family became extinct when Sir William Heathcoate De Lancey, the quartermaster-general of Wellington's army, was killed at Waterloo.

The James De Lancey who commanded the Westchester Light Horse was a nephew of the senior General Oliver De Lancey, and a cousin of the Major Colden of this narrative. His troop was not "a battalion in the brigade of his uncle," Bolton's statement that it was so being incorrect; its operations were limited to Westchester County. It raided and fought for the King untiringly, until it was almost entirely killed off, at the end of the war, by the persistent efforts of our troops to extirpate it.

The members of this corps were called "Cowboys" because, in their duty of procuring supplies for the British army, they made free with the farmers' cattle. Like the other conspicuous Tories, this James De Lancey was attainted by the new State Government, and his property was confiscated. Local historians draw an effective picture of him departing alone from his estate by the Bronx, turning for a last look, from the back of his horse, at the fair mansion and broad lands that were to be his no more, and riding away with a heavy heart. He went, with many shipfuls of Tory emigrants, to Nova Scotia, and became a member of the council of that colony. His uncle went to England and died at his country house, Beverly, Yorkshire, in 1785. I allude to the case of this family, because it was typical of that of a great many families. The Tories of the American Revolution constitute a subject that has yet to be made much of. They were the progenitors of English-speaking Canada.

The act of attainder that deprived the De Lanceys of their estates, deprived Colonel Philipse of his. It was passed by the New York legislature, October 22, 1779. The persons declared guilty of "adherence to the enemies of the State" were attainted, their estates real and personal confiscated, and themselves proscribed, the second section of the act declaring that "each and every one of them who shall at any time hereafter be found in any part of this State, shall be, and are hereby, adjudged and declared guilty of felony, and shall suffer death as in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy." Acts of similar import were passed in other States. Under this act, Philipse Manor-house was forfeited to the State about a year after the time of our narrative. The commissioners whose duty it was to dispose of confiscated property sold the house and mills, in 1785, to Cornelius P. Lowe. It underwent several transfers, but little change, becoming at length the property of Lemuel Wells, who held it a long time and, dying in 1842, left it to his nephew. The town of Yonkers grew up around it, and on May 1, 1868, purchased it for municipal use. The fewest possible alterations were made in it. These are mainly in the north wing, the part added by the second lord of the manor in 1745. On the first floor, the partition between dining-room and kitchen was removed, and the whole space made into a court-room. On the second floor, the space formerly divided into five bedrooms was transformed into a council-chamber, the garret floor overhead being removed. The new city hall of Yonkers leaves the old manor-house less necessary for public purposes. May the old parlors, where the besilked and bepowdered gentry of the province used to dance the minuet before the change of things, not be given over to baser uses than they have already served.

Allusion has been made, in different chapters of this narrative, to the Hessians who daily patrolled the roads in the vicinity of the manor-house. This duty often fell to Pruschank's yagers, the troop to which belonged Captain Rowe, whose love story is thus told by Bolton: "Captain Rowe appears to have been in the habit of making a daily tour from Kingsbridge, round by Miles Square. He was on his last tour of military duty, having already resigned his commission for the purpose of marrying the accomplished Elizabeth Fowler, of Harlem, when, passing with a company of light dragoons, he was suddenly fired upon by three Americans of the water guard of Captain Pray's company, who had ambuscaded themselves in the cedars. The captain fell from his horse, mortally wounded. The yagers instantly made prisoners of the undisciplined water guards, and a messenger was immediately despatched to Mrs. Babcock, then living below, in the parsonage, for a vehicle to remove the wounded officer. The use of her gig and horse was soon obtained, and a neighbor, Anthony Archer, pressed to drive. In this they conveyed the dying man to Colonel Van Cortlandt's. They appear to have taken the route of Tippett's Valley, as the party stopped at Frederick Post's to obtain a drink of water. In the meantime an express had been forwarded to Miss Fowler, his affianced bride, to hasten without delay to the side of her dying lover. On her arrival, accompanied by her mother, the expiring soldier had just strength enough left to articulate a few words, when he sank exhausted with the effort." The room in which he died is in the well-known mansion in Van Cortlandt Park.

The incident of the horse, related in an early chapter, has a likeness to an adventure that befell one Thomas Leggett early in the Revolutionary war. He lived with his father on a farm near Morrisania, then in Westchester County, and was proud in the possession of a fine young mare. A party of British refugees took this animal, with other property. They had gone two miles with it, when, from behind a stone wall which they were passing, two Continental soldiers rose and fired at them. The man with the mare was shot dead. The animal immediately turned round and ran home, followed by the owner, who had dogged her captors at a distance in the hope of recovering her.