Thanks to the dimness, to his uniform, and to his swift entrance, Peyton had not been recognized by Major Colden until he had given his name. That name had on the major the effect of an apparition, and he stepped back into the dark corner of the hall, drawing his cloak yet closer about him. This alarm and movement were not noticed by the others, as Peyton was the object of every gaze but his own, which was fixed on Elizabeth.

“What do you want?” her voice rang out, while she frowned from her place on the staircase, in cold resentment. Her aunt, meanwhile, made the newcomer a tremulous curtsey.

“I want to see the person in charge of this house, and I want a horse,” replied Peyton, with more promptitude than gentleness, yet with strict civility. Elizabeth’s manner would have nettled even a colder man.

Elizabeth did not keep him waiting for an answer.

“I am at present mistress of this house, and I am neither selling horses nor giving them!”

Peyton stared up at her in wonderment.

The candle-flame struggled against the wind, turning this way and that, and made the vague shadows of the people and of the slender balusters dance on floor and wall. From without came the sound of Peyton’s horses pawing, and of his men speaking to one another in low tones.

“Your pardon, madam,” said Peyton, “but a horse I must have. The service I am on permits no delay—”

“I doubt not!” broke in Elizabeth. “The Hessians are probably chasing you.”

“On the contrary, I am chasing the Hessians. At Boar Hill, yonder, my horse gave out. ’Tis important my troops lose no time. Passing here, we saw horses being led into your stable. I ordered one of my men to take the best of your beasts, and put my saddle on it,—and he is now doing so.”

“How dare you, sir!” and Elizabeth came quickly to the foot of the stairs, a picture of regal, flaming wrath.

“Why, madam,” said Peyton, “’tis for the service of the army. I require the horse, and I have come here to pay for it—”

“It is not for sale—”

“That makes no difference. You know the custom of war.”

“The custom of robbery!” cried Elizabeth.

Captain Peyton reddened.

“Robbery is not the custom of Harry Lee’s dragoons, madam,” said he, “whatever be the practice of the wretched ‘Skinners’ or of De Lancey’s Tory Cowboys. I shall pay you as you choose,—with a receipt to present at the quartermaster’s office, or with Continental bills.”

“Continental rubbish!”

And, indeed, Elizabeth was not far from the truth in the appellation so contemptuously hurled.

“You prefer that, do you?” said Peyton, unruffled; whereupon he took from within his waistcoat a long, thick pocketbook, and from that a number of bills; which must have been for high amounts, for he rapidly counted out only a score or two of them, repocketing the rest, and at that time, thereabouts, “a rat in shape of a horse,” as Washington himself had complained a month before, was “not to be bought for less than £200.”[4] Peyton handed her the bills he had counted out. “There’s a fair price, then,” said he; “allowing for depreciation. The current rate is five to one,—I allow six.”

Elizabeth looked disdainfully at the proffered bills, and made no move to take them.

“Pah!” she cried. “I wouldn’t touch your wretched Continental trash. I wouldn’t let one of my black women put her hair up in it. Money, 90 do you call it? I wouldn’t give a shilling of the King for a houseful of it.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Peyton, cheerfully. “Since July in ’76 there has been no king in America. I leave the bills, madam.” He laid them on the newel post, beside the candlestick. “’Tis all I can do, and more than many a man would do, seeing that Colonel Philipse, the owner of this place, is no friend to the American cause, and may fairly be levied on as an enemy—”

“Colonel Philipse is my father!”

“Then I’m glad I’ve been punctilious in the matter,” said Peyton, but without any increase of deference. “Egad, I think I’ve been as scrupulous as the commander-in-chief himself!”

“The commander-in-chief!” echoed Elizabeth. “Sir Henry Clinton pays in gold.”

“I meant our commander-in-chief,” with a suavity most irritating.

“Mr. Washington!” said Elizabeth, scornfully, with a slight emphasis on the “Mr.”

“His Excellency, General Washington.” Peyton spoke as one would in gently correcting a child who was impolite. Then he added, “I think the horse is now ready; so I bid you good evening!”

And he strode towards the door.

Elizabeth was now fully awake to the certainty that one of the horses would indeed be taken. At 91 Peyton’s movement she ran to the door, reaching it before he did, and looked out. What she saw, transformed her into a very fury.

“Oh, this outrage!” she cried, facing about and addressing those in the hall. “It is my Cato they are leading out! My Cato! Under my very eyes! I forbid it! He shall not go! Where are Cuff and the servants? Why don’t they prevent? And you, Jack?”

She turned to Colden for the first time since Peyton’s arrival.

“My troop would make short work of any who interfered, madam,” said Peyton, warningly, still looking at Elizabeth only.

“Oh, that I should have to endure this!” she said. “Oh, if I had but a company of soldiers at my back, you dog of a rebel!”

And she paced the hall in a great passion. Passing the newel post, she noticed the Continental bills. She took these up, violently tore them across, and threw the pieces about the hall, as one tosses corn about a chicken-yard.

Major Colden had been having a most uncomfortable five minutes. As a Tory officer, he was in close peril of being made prisoner by this Continental captain and the latter’s troop outside, and this peril was none the less since he had so adversely criticised Peyton in the talk which had led to the duel in 92 Bayard’s woods. He had not put himself on friendly terms with Peyton after that affair. There was still no reason for any other feeling towards him, on Peyton’s part, than resentment. Now Jack Colden had no relish for imprisonment at the hands of the despised rebels. Moreover, he had no wish that Elizabeth should learn of his former defeat by Peyton. He had kept the meeting in Bayard’s woods a secret, thanks to Peyton’s having quitted New York immediately after it, and to the relation of dependence in which the two only witnesses stood to him. Thus it was that he had remained well out of view during Elizabeth’s sharp interview with Peyton, being unwilling alike to be known as a Tory officer, and to be recognized by Peyton. His civilian’s cloak hid his uniform and weapons; the dimness of the candle-light screened his face.

But matters had reached a point where he could not, without appearing a coward, refrain longer from taking a hand. He stepped forward from the dark remoteness.

“Sir,” said he to Peyton, politely, “I know the custom of war. But since a horse must be taken, you will find one of mine in the stable. Will you not take it instead of this lady’s?”

Peyton had been scrutinizing Colden’s features.

“Mr. Colden, if I remember,” he said, when the major had finished.

“You remember right,” said Colden, with a bow, concealing behind a not too well assumed quietude what inward tremors the situation caused him.

“And you are doubtless now an officer in some Tory corps?” said Peyton, quickly.

“No, sir, I am neutral,” replied Colden, rather huskily, with an instant’s glance of warning at Elizabeth.

“Gad!” said Peyton, with a smile, still closely surveying the major. “From your sentiments the time I met you in New York in ’75, I should have thought you’d take up arms for the King.”

“That was before the Declaration of Independence,” said Colden, in a tone scarcely more than audible. “I have modified my opinions.”

“They were strong enough then,” Peyton went on. “You remember how you upheld them with a rapier in Bayard’s woods?”

“I remember,” said Colden, faintly, first reddening, then taking on a pale and sickly look, as if a prey to hidden chagrin and rage.

It seemed as if his tormentor intended to torture him interminably. Peyton, who knew that one of his men would come for him as soon as the horse should be saddled and bridled, remained facing the unhappy major, wearing that frank half-smile which, from the triumphant to the crestfallen, seems so insolent and is so maddening.

“I’ve often thought,” said Peyton, “I deserved small credit for getting the better of you that day. I had taken lessons from London fencing-masters.” (Consider that the woman whom Colden loved was looking on, and that this was all news to her, and imagine how he raged beneath the outer calmness he had, for safety’s sake, to wear.) “’Twas no hard thing to disarm you, and I’m not sorry you’re neutral now. For if you wore British or Tory uniform, ’twould be my duty to put you again at disadvantage, by taking you prisoner.”

The face of one of Peyton’s men now appeared in the doorway. Peyton nodded to him, then continued to address the major.

“As for your request, my traps are now on the other horse, and there is not time to change. I must ride at once.”

He stepped quickly to the door, and on the threshold turned to bow.

Then cried Elizabeth:

“May you ride to your destruction, for your impudence, you bandit!”

“Thank you, madam! I shall ride where I must! Farewell! My horse is waiting.”

And in an instant he was gone, having closed the door after him with a bang.

“His horse! The highwayman!” quoth Elizabeth.

“Give the gentleman his due,” said Miss Sally, in a way both mollified and mollifying. “He paid for it with those.” She indicated the strewn fragments of the Continental bills on the floor.

“Forward! Get up!”

It was the voice of Captain Peyton outside. The horses were heard riding away from the lawn.

Elizabeth opened the door and looked out. Her aunt accompanied her. Old Valentine gazed with a sagely deploring expression at the torn-up bills on the floor. Colden stood where he had been, lest by some chance the enemy might return and discover his relief from straint.

“Oh,” cried Elizabeth, at the door, as the light horsemen filed out the gate and up the branch road towards the highway, “to see the miserable rebel mounted on my Cato!”

“He looks well on him,” said her aunt.

It was a brief flow of light from the fresh-risen moon, between wind-driven clouds, that enabled Miss Sally to make this observation.

“Looks well! The tatterdemalion!” And Elizabeth came from the door, as if loathing further sight of him.

But Miss Sally continued to look after the riders, as their dark forms were borne rapidly towards the post-road. “Nay, I think he is quite handsome.”

“Pah! You think every man is handsome!” said the niece, curtly.

Miss Sally turned from the door, quite shocked.

“Why, Elizabeth, you know I’m the least susceptible of women!”

Old Mr. Valentine nodded sadly, as much as to say, “I know that, all too well!”

As the racing clouds now rushed over the moon, and the horsemen’s figures, having become more and more blurred, were lost in the blackness, Miss Sally closed and bolted the door. The horses were faintly heard coming to a halt, at about the junction of the branch road with the highway, then moving on again rapidly, not further towards the south, as might have been expected, but back northward, and finally towards the east. Meanwhile Elizabeth stood in the hall, her rage none the less that its object was no longer present to have it wreaked on him. Such hate, such passionate craving for revenge, had never theretofore been awakened in her. And when she realized the unlikelihood of any opportunity for satisfaction, she was exasperated to the limit of self-control.

“If you had only had some troops here!” she said to Colden.

“I know it! May the rascal perish for finding me at such a disadvantage! ’Twas my choice between denying my colors and becoming his prisoner.”

This brought back to Elizabeth’s mind the talk 97 between Colden and Peyton, which her feelings had for the time driven from her thoughts. But now a natural curiosity asserted itself.

“So you knew the fellow before?”

“I met him in ’75,” said Colden, blurting awkwardly into the explanation that he knew had to be made, though little was his stomach for it. “He was passing through New York from Boston to his home in Virginia, after he had deserted from the King’s army—”

“Deserted?” Elizabeth opened wide her eyes.

Colden briefly outlined, as far as was desirable, what he knew of Peyton’s story.

It was Miss Sally who then said:

“And he disarmed you in a duel?”

“He had practised under London fencing-masters, as he but now admitted,” replied Colden, grumpily. “He made no secret of his desertion; and in a coffee-house discussion I said it was a dastardly act. So we—fought. Since then I’ve met officers of the regiment he left. Such a thing was never known before,—the desertion of an officer of the Sixty-third,—and General Grant, its colonel, has the word of Sir Henry Clinton that this fellow shall hang if they ever catch him.”

“Then I hope my horse will carry him into their hands!” said Elizabeth, heartily. “My poor Cato! I shall never see him again!”

“We may get him back some day,” said Colden, for want of aught better to say.

“If you can do that, John Colden, and have this rebel hanged who dared treat me so—” Elizabeth paused, and her look dwelt on the major’s face.

“Well?”

“Then I think I shall almost be really in love with you!”

But Colden sighed. “A rare promise from one’s betrothed!”

“Heavens, Jack!” said Elizabeth, now diverted from the thought of her horse. “Don’t I do the best I can to love you? I’m sure I come as near loving you as loving anybody. What more can I do than that, and promising my hand? Don’t look dismal, major, I pray,—and now make haste back to New York.”

“How can I go and leave you exposed to the chance of another visit from some troop of rebels?” pleaded Colden, in a kind of peevish despair, taking up his hat from the settle.

“Oh, that fellow showed no disposition to injure me!” she answered, reassuringly. “Trust me to take care of myself.”

“But promise that if there’s any sign of danger, you will fly to New York.”

“That will depend on the circumstances. I may be safer in this house than on the road.”

“Then, at least, you will have guns fired, and also send a man to one of our outposts for help?” There was no pretence in the young man’s solicitude. Such a bride as Elizabeth Philipse was not to be found every day. The thought of losing her was poignant misery to him.

“To which one?” she asked. “The Hessian camp by Tippett’s Brook, or the Highlanders’, at Valentine’s Hill?”

“No,” said Colden, meditating. “Those may be withdrawn if the weather is bad. Send to the barrier at King’s Bridge,—but if your man meets one of our patrols or pickets on the way, so much the better. Good-by! I shall see your father to-night, and then rejoin my regiment on Staten Island.”

He took her hand, bent over it, and kissed it.

“Be careful you don’t fall in with those rebel dragoons,” said Elizabeth, lightly, as his lips dwelt on her fingers.

“No danger of that,” put in old Valentine, from the settle, for the moment ceasing to chew an imaginary cud. “They took the road to Mile Square.” The octogenarian’s hearing was better than his sight.

“I shall notify our officers below that this rebel force is out,” said Colden, “and our dragoons may cut it off somewhere. Farewell, then! I shall return for you in a week.”

“In a week,” repeated Elizabeth, indifferently.

He kissed her hand again, bowed to Miss Sally, and hastened from the hall, closing the door behind him. Once outside, he made his way to the stables, where he knew that Cuff, not having returned to Elizabeth, must still be.

“It’s little reward you give that gentleman’s devotion, Elizabeth,” said Miss Sally, when he had gone.

“Why, am I not going to give him myself? Come, aunty, don’t preach on that old topic. My parents wish me to be married to Jack Colden, and I have consented, being an obedient child,—in some things.”

“More obedient to your own whims than to anything else,” was Miss Sally’s comment.

The sound of Colden’s horse departing brought to the amiable aunt the thought of a previous departure.

“That fine young rebel captain!” said she. “If our troops take him they’ll hang him! Gracious! As if there were so many handsome young men that any could be spared! Why can’t they hang the old and ugly ones instead?”

Mr. Valentine suspended his chewing long enough to bestow on Miss Sally a look of vague suspicion.

The door, which had not been locked or bolted after Colden’s going, was suddenly flung open to admit Cuff. The negro boy had been thrown by 101 the dragoons’ visit into an almost comatose condition of fright, from which the orders of Colden had but now sufficiently restored him to enable his venturing out of the stable. He now stood trembling in fear of Elizabeth’s reproof, stammering out a wild protestation of his inability to save the horse by force, and of his inefficacious attempts to save him by prayer.

Elizabeth cut him short with the remark, intended rather for her own satisfaction than for aught else, that one thing was to be hoped,—the chance of war might pay back the impertinent rebel who had stolen the horse. She then gave orders that the hall and the east parlor be lighted up.

“For the proper reception,” she added to her aunt, “of the next handsome rebel captain who may condescend to honor us with a visit. Mr. Valentine, wait in the parlor till supper is ready. I’ll have a fire made there. Come, aunt Sally, we’ll discuss over a cup of tea the charms of your pretty rebel captain and his agreeable way of relieving ladies of their favorite horses. I’ll warrant he’ll look handsomer than ever, on the gallows, when our soldiers catch him.”

And she went blithely up the stairs, which at the first landing turned rightward to a second landing, and thence rightward again to the upper hall. The darkness was interrupted by a narrow stream of light 102 from a slightly open doorway in the north side of this upper hall. This was the doorway to her own room, and when she crossed the threshold she saw a bright blaze in the fireplace, lights in a candelabrum, cups and saucers on a table, and Molly bringing in a steaming teapot from the next room, which, being northward, was nearer the kitchen stairs. This next room, too, was lighted up. Solid wooden shutters, inside the windows of both chambers, kept the light from being seen without, and the wind from being felt within.

As Elizabeth was looking around her room, smiling affectionately on its many well-remembered and long-neglected objects, there was a sudden distant detonation. Molly looked up inquiringly, but Elizabeth directed her to place the tea things, find fresh candles, if any were left in the house, and help Cuff put them on the chandelier in the lower hall, and then get supper. As Molly left the room, Miss Sally entered it.

“Elizabeth! Oh, child! There’s firing beyond Locust Hill. It’s on the Mile Square road, Mr. Valentine says,—cavalry pistols and rangers’ muskets.”

“Mr. Valentine has a fine ear.”

“He says the rebel light horse must have met the Hessians! There ’tis again!”

“Sit down, aunt, and have a dish of tea. Ah-h! 103 This is comfortable! Delicious! Let them kill one another as they please, beyond Locust Hill; let the wind race up the Hudson and the Albany road as it likes,—we’re snugly housed!”

Williams, who had, from the upper hall, safely overheard Captain Peyton’s intrusion, and had not seen occasion for his own interference, now came in from the next room, which he had been making ready for Miss Sally, and received Elizabeth’s orders concerning the east parlor.

Meanwhile, what of Harry Peyton and his troop?

Riding up the little tree-lined road towards the highway, they saw dark forms of other riders standing at the point of junction. These were the men whom Peyton had directed to patrol the road. They now told him that, by the account of a belated farmer whom they had halted, the Hessians had turned from the highway into the Mile Square road. Peyton immediately led his men to that road. Thus, as old Valentine said, that part of the highway between the manor-house and King’s Bridge remained clear of these rebel dragoons, and Major Colden stood in no danger of meeting them on his return to New York. The major, nevertheless, did not spare his horse as he pursued his lonely way through the windy darkness. When he arrived at King’s Bridge he was glad to give his horse another rest, and to accept an invitation to a bottle and a game in the 104 tavern where the British commanding officer was quartered.

The Hessians had not gone far on the Mile Square road, when their leader called a halt and consulted with his subordinate officer. They were now near Mile Square, where the Tory captain, James De Lancey, kept a recruiting station all the year round, and Valentine’s Hill, where there was a regiment of Highlanders. Their own security was thus assured, but they might do more than come off in safety,—they might strike a parting blow at their pursuers. A plan was quickly formed. A messenger was despatched to Mile Square to request a small reinforcement. The troop then turned back towards the highway, having planned for either one of two possibilities. The first was that the rebel dragoons, not thinking the Hessians had turned into the Mile Square road, would ride on down the highway. In that case, the Hessians would follow them, having become in their turn the pursuers, and would fall upon their rear. The noise of firearms would alarm the Hessian camp by Tippett’s Brook, below, and the rebels would thus be caught between two forces. The second possibility was that the Americans would follow into the Mile Square road. When the sound of their horses soon told that this was the reality, the Hessians promptly prepared to meet it.

The force divided into two parts. The foremost 105 blocked the road, near a turning, so as to remain unseen by the approaching rebels until almost the moment of collision. The second force stayed some rods behind the first, forming in two lines, one along each side of the road. As to each force, some were armed with sabres and cavalry pistols, but most, being mounted yagers of Van Wrumb’s battalion, with rifles.

As for the little detachment of Lee’s Light Horse that was now galloping along the Mile Square road, under Harry Peyton’s command, the arms were mainly broadswords and pistols, but some of the men had rifles or light muskets.

The troop went forward at a gallop against the wind, there being just sufficient light for keen eyes to make out the road ahead. Harry Peyton was inwardly deploring the loss of time at Philipse Manor-house, and fearing that the prey would reach its covert, when suddenly the moon appeared in a cloud-rift, the troops passed a turn in the road, and there stood a line of Hessians barring the way.

Ere Peyton could give an order, came one loud, flaming, whistling discharge from that living barrier. Harry’s horse—Elizabeth Philipse’s Cato—reared, as did others of his troop. Some of the men came to a quick stop, others were borne forward by the impetus of their former speed, but soon reined in for orders. No man fell, though one groaned, and two cursed.

Harry got his horse under control, drew his broadsword with his right hand, his pistol with his left,—which held also the rein,—and ordered his men to charge, to fire at the moment of contact, then to cut, slash, and club. So the little troop, the well and the wounded alike, dashed forward.

But the line of Hessians, as soon as they had fired, turned and fled, passing between the two lines of the second force, and stopping at some further distance to reform and reload. The second force, being thus cleared by the first, wheeled quickly into the road, and formed a second barrier against Peyton’s oncoming troop.

Peyton’s men, intoxicated by the powder-smell that filled their nostrils as they passed through the smoke of the Hessians’ first volley, bore down on this second barrier with furious force. They were the best riders in the world, and many a one of them held his broadsword aloft in one hand, his pistol raised in the other, the rein loose on his horse’s neck; while those with long-barrelled weapons aimed them on the gallop.

The Hessians and Peyton’s foremost men fired at the same moment. The Hessians had not time to turn and flee, for the Americans, unchecked by this second greeting of fire, came on at headlong speed. “At ’em, boys!” yelled Peyton, discharging his pistol at a tall yager, who fell sidewise from his horse 107 with a fierce German oath. The light horse men dashed between the Hessians’ steeds, and there was hewing and hacking.

A Hessian officer struck with a sabre at Peyton’s left arm, but only knocked the pistol from his hand. Peyton then found himself threatened on the right by a trooper, and slashed at him with broadsword. The blow went home, but the sword’s end became entangled somehow with the breast bones of the victim. A yager, thinking to deprive Peyton of the sword, brought down a musket-butt heavily on it. But Peyton’s grip was firm, and the sword snapped in two, the hilt in his hand, the point in its human sheath. At that instant Peyton felt a keen smart in his left leg. It came from a second sabre blow aimed by the Hessian officer, who might have followed it with a third, but that he was now attacked elsewhere. Peyton had no sooner clapped his hand to his wounded leg than he was stunned by a blow from the rifle-butt of the yager who had previously struck the sword. Harry fell forward on the horse’s neck, which he grasped madly with both arms, still holding the broken sword in his right hand; and lapsed from a full sense of the tumult, the plunging and shrieking horses, the yelling and cursing men, the whirr and clash of swords, and the thuds of rifle-blows, into blind, red, aching, smarting half-consciousness.

When he was again aware of things, he was still clasping the horse’s neck, and was being borne alone he knew not whither. His head ached, and his left leg was at every movement a seat of the sharpest pain. He was dizzy, faint, bleeding,—and too weak to raise himself from his position. He could not hear any noise of fighting, but that might have been drowned by the singing in his ears. He tried to sit up and look around, but the effort so increased his pain and so drew on his nigh-fled strength, that he fell forward on the horse’s neck, exhausted and half-insensible. The horse, which had merely turned and run from the conflict at the moment of Peyton’s loss of sense, galloped on.

Clouds had darkened the moon in time to prevent their captain’s unintentional defection from being seen by his troops. They had, therefore, fought on against such antagonists as, in the darkness, they could keep located. The moon reappeared, and showed many of the Hessians making for the wooded hill near by, and some fleeing to the force that had re-formed further on the road. Some of the Americans charged this force, which thereupon fired a volley and fled, having the more time therefor inasmuch as the charging dragoons did not this time possess their former speed and impetus. The dragoons, in disorder and without a leader, came to a halt. Becoming aware of Peyton’s absence, they sought in 109 vain the scene of recent conflict. It was soon inferred that he had been wounded, and, therefore of no further use in the combat, had retreated to a safe resting-place. It was decided useless to follow the enemy further towards the near British posts, whence the Hessians might be reinforced,—as they would have been, had they held the ground longer. So, having had much the better of the fight, the surviving dragoons galloped back towards the post-road, expecting to come upon their captain, wounded, by the wayside, at any moment. He might, indeed, to make sure of safe refuge, ride as far towards the American lines as the wound he must have received would allow him to do.

Such were the doings, on the windy night, beyond Locust Hill, while Elizabeth Philipse and her aunt sat drinking tea by candle-light before a sputtering wood fire. Elizabeth having set the example, the others in the house went about their business, despite the firing so plainly heard. Black Sam had, after Elizabeth’s arrival, returned from the orchard, whither he had gone late in the day, lest he might attract the attention of some dodging whale-boat or skulking Whig to the few remaining apples. He had been let in at a rear door by Williams, who had repressed him during the visit of the American dragoons,—for Sam was a sturdy, bold fellow, of different kidney from the dapper, citified Cuff. At 110 Williams’s order he had made a roaring fire in the east parlor, to the great comfort of old Mr. Valentine, and was now putting the dining-room into a similar state of warmth and light. Williams was setting out provisions for Molly presently to cook; and the maid herself was, with Cuff’s assistance, replenishing the hall chandelier with fresh candles.

The sound of firing had put Elizabeth’s black boy into a tremulous and white-eyed state. When Molly, who stood on the settle while he handed the candles up to her, assured him that the firing was t’other side of Locust Hill, that the bullets would not penetrate the mahogany door, and that anyhow only one bullet in a hundred ever hit any one, Cuff affrightedly observed ’twas just that one bullet he was afraid of; and when, at the third discharge, Molly dropped a candle on his woolly head, he fell prostrate, howling that he was shot. Molly convinced him after awhile that he was alive, but he averred he had actually had a glimpse of the harps and the golden streets, though the prospect of soon possessing them had rather appalled him, as indeed it does many good people who are so sure of heaven and so fond of it. He had been reassured but a short time, when he had new cause for terror. Again a horse was heard galloping up to the house. It stopped before the door and gave a loud whinny.

Molly exchanged with Cuff a look of mingled wonder, delight, and doubt; then ran and opened the front door.

“Yes!” she cried. “It is! It’s Miss Elizabeth’s horse! It’s Cato!”

Cuff ran to the threshold in great joy, but suddenly stopped short.

“Dey’s a soldier on hees back,” he whispered.

So Molly had noticed,—but a soldier who made no demonstration, a soldier who leaned forward on the horse’s neck and clutched its mane, holding at the same time in one hand a broken sword, and who tried to sit up, but only emitted a groan of pain.

“He’s wounded, that’s it,” said Molly. “Go and help the poor soldier in, Cuff. Don’t you see he’s injured? He can’t hurt you.”

Molly enforced her commands with such physical persuasions that Cuff, ere he well knew what he was about, was helping Peyton from the horse. The captain, revived by a supreme effort, leaned on the boy’s shoulder and came limping and lurching across the porch into the hall. Molly then went to his assistance, and with this additional aid he reached the settle, on which he dropped, weak, pale, and panting. He took a sitting posture, gasped his thanks to Molly, and, noticing the blood from his leg wound, called damnation on the Hessian officer’s sword. Presently he asked for a drink of water.

At Molly’s bidding the negro boy hastened for 112 water, and also to inform his mistress of the arrival. Elizabeth, hearing the news, rose with an exclamation; but, taking thought, sat down again, and, with a pretence of composure, finished her cup of tea. Cuff returned with a glass of water to the hall, where Molly was listening to Peyton’s objurgations on his condition. The captain took the glass eagerly, and was about to drink, when a footstep was heard on the stairs. He turned his head and saw Elizabeth.

“Here’s my respects, madam,” quoth he, and drank off the water.

Elizabeth came down-stairs and took a position where she could look Peyton well over. He watched her with some wonderment. When she was quite ready she spoke:

“So, it is, indeed, the man who stole my horse.”

“Pardon. I think your horse has stolen me! It made me an intruder here quite against my will, I assure you.”

“You will doubtless not honor us by remaining?” There was more seriousness of curiosity in this question than Elizabeth betrayed or Peyton perceived.

“What can I do? I can neither ride nor walk.”

“But your men will probably come for you?”

“I don’t think any saw the horse bear me from the fight. The field was in smoke and darkness. My troops must have pursued the enemy. They’ll 113 think me killed or made prisoner. If they return this way, however, I can have them stop and take me along.”

“Then you expect that, in repayment of your treatment of me awhile ago—” Elizabeth paused.

“Madam, you should allow for the exigencies of war! Yet, if you wish to turn me out—”

Elizabeth interrupted him:

“So it is true that, if you fell into the hands of the British, they would hang you?”

“Doubtless! But you shouldn’t blame me for what they’d do. And how did you know?”

“Help this gentleman into the east parlor,” said Elizabeth, abruptly, to Cuff.

“Ah!” cried Peyton, his face lighting up with quick gratitude. “Madam, you then make me your guest?” He thrust forward his head, forgetful of his condition.

“My guest?” rang out Elizabeth’s voice in answer. “You insolent rebel, I intend to hand you over to the British!”

There was a brief silence. Each gazed at the other.

“You will not—do that?” said Peyton, in a voice little above a whisper.

“Wait and see!” And she stood regarding him with elation.

He stared at her in blank consternation.

Again, the sound of the trample of many horses.

“Ah!” cried Peyton, joyfully. “My men returning!”

He rose to go to the door, but his wounded leg gave way, and he staggered to the staircase, and leaned against the balustrade.

Elizabeth’s look of gratification faded. She ran to the door, fastened it with bolt and key, and stood with her back against it.

The sound, first distant as if in the Mile Square road, was now manifestly in the highway. Would it come southward, towards the house, or go northward, decreasing?

“They are my men!” cried Peyton to Cuff. “Call them! They’ll pass without knowing I am here. Call them, I say! Quick! They’ll be out of hearing.”

“Silence!” said Elizabeth to Cuff, in a low tone, and stood listening.

Peyton made another attempt to move, but realized his inability. ’Twas all he could do to support himself against the balustrade.

“My God, they’ve gone by!” he cried. “They’ll return to our lines, leaving me behind.” And he shouted, “Carrington!”

The voice rang for a moment in the remoteness of the hall above. Then complete silence within. All in the hall remained motionless, listening. The sound of the horses came fainter and fainter.

“Carrington! Help! I’m in the manor-house,—a prisoner!”

A look of despair came over his face. On Elizabeth’s the suspense gave way to a smile of triumph.

The sound of the horses died away.