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 255 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 257 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 258 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 259 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 260 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 261 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 263 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. 265 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 266 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!”