← catalogue

Joscelyn Cheshire: A Story of Revolutionary Days in the Carolinas

by Sara Beaumont Kennedy · English · Gutenberg #35519 · 460,297 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Joscelyn Cheshire: A Story of Revolutionary Days in the Carolinas
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Joscelyn Cheshire: A Story of Revolutionary Days in the Carolinas

Author: Sara Beaumont Kennedy


        
Release date: March 8, 2011 [eBook #35519]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35519

Credits: Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOSCELYN CHESHIRE: A STORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DAYS IN THE CAROLINAS ***




Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









 JOSCELYN CHESHIRE

 A STORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DAYS
 IN THE CAROLINAS

 BY
 SARA BEAUMONT KENNEDY

 NEW YORK
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
 1901




 COPYRIGHT, 1901,
 BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.




[Illustration: "SHE SWEPT HIM A COURTESY FULL OF OPEN DEFIANCE AND
RIDICULE."]




 To my Husband
 WALKER KENNEDY
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED




CONTENTS.


 CHAPTER                                          PAGE

      I. Cupid and Mars                             1
     II. The March of the Continentals             10
    III. Onward to Valley Forge                    20
     IV. The Company on the Veranda                25
      V. Winding the Skein                         35
     VI. The Fete at Philadelphia                  43
    VII. A Dare-devil Deed                         56
   VIII. A Maid's Dream and the Devil's Wooing     65
     IX. On Monmouth Plain                         73
      X. In Clinton's Tents                        81
     XI. From Camp to Prison                       93
    XII. A Message out of the North               104
   XIII. Dreams                                   120
    XIV. News of Love and War                     128
     XV. An Awakening and a Mutiny                141
    XVI. Into the Jaws of Death                   151
   XVII. Out of the Shadow and into the Sun       163
  XVIII. "Kiss me quick, and let me go"           181
    XIX. The Wearing of a Red Rose                192
     XX. Joscelyn's Peril                         204
    XXI. Trapped                                  217
   XXII. "Search my Lady's Wardrobe"              227
  XXIII. In Tarleton's Toils                      242
   XXIV. Thwarted                                 263
    XXV. Good-by, Sweetheart                      278
   XXVI. By the Beleaguered City                  293
  XXVII. Homecomings                              305
 XXVIII. An Unanswered Question                   320
   XXIX. The End of the Thread                    331




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

                                           FACING PAGE

 Frontispiece. "She swept him a courtesy
     full of open defiance and ridicule."

 "Thus they passed, with small parley, the
     picket-posts."                                48

 "Richard was dragged along with the British
     until their position was regained."           81

 "... The Prisoners lined up and answered
     to their names."                             149

 "For a long minute he stood there, trembling,
     horror-stricken."                            164

 "'My God, Joscelyn, you will not give me
     up like that!'"                              226

 "'I have seen no human being save our party
     of three.'"                                  262

 "'My Heart's prisoner for time and eternity.'"   331




JOSCELYN CHESHIRE.




CHAPTER I.

CUPID AND MARS.

     "Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat."
                         --SHAKESPEARE.


He threw the door wide open and, with one foot advanced and his weight
on the other hip, stood at pose with uplifted arm and sword; as gallant
a figure as ever melted a maiden's heart or stormed a foeman's citadel.
There was great suggestion of power in the straight limbs, a marvellous
promise of strength in the upward sweep of the arm, which, for a moment,
held the inmates of the room in silence of admiration. Then an avalanche
of exclamations broke loose.

"Richard, Richard!"

"Master Clevering!"

"A health to the young Continental!"

"Oh, the new uniform, how bravely it doth become him!"

"The buff and blue forever!"

"What an air the coat gives him."

"And the breeches have never a wrinkle in them. I have ever said, my
son, that you were not over fair of feature, but that the Lord made it
up to you in the shape o' your legs." The last speaker was his mother,
who, passing behind him, ran her fingers caressingly along the seams of
his military outfit.

The young man lowered his sword and answered with a boyish laugh: "And
truly did the Lord owe me a debt in that He gave me not your beauty,
mother."

"He balanced His account," was the complacent answer, "for you are a fit
figure to please even a king."

"Nay, I care not to please the king--but the assembled queens!" He
doffed his hat, and bowed with courtly grace to the group of young women
in the centre of the room.

Full of laughter and chaffing they crowded about him--his sister Betty,
her friend Patience Ruffin, Mistress Dorothy Graham, who had come in to
learn a new knitting stitch of Betty, and pretty Janet Cameron, who had
followed Dorothy to hear the gossip which must necessarily flow freely
where so many women were assembled. Immediately they surrounded the
young soldier, and there was much laughter and talking as they relieved
him of his sword and gun.

"Only a private in the ranks, and yet here am I attended like a
commander-in-chief," he said, laughing. "Methinks no hero of olden
romance had ever such charming squirage. Are you going to give me your
gloves and fasten your colours on my helmet, that I may go forth to
battle as did the knights of yore?"

"Yes; kill me a Redcoat for this," and Janet tossed him her glove, while
Dorothy tied a strand of the bright wool from her knitting ball upon his
sleeve. "An you win not a battle for each of us, you are no knight of
ours."

But the fifth girl of the group, after one glance at him upon his
entrance, had turned abruptly to the window and stood gazing into the
street, tapping the air to "King George, Our Royal Ruler" upon the
panes. No part of her face was visible, but her attitude was spirited,
and the poise of her head bespoke defiance. Richard Clevering's eyes
travelled every few minutes to that straight, lithe figure, and anon he
called out banteringly:--

"Hey, you, there at the window, are King George and his army passing by
that you have no eyes for other folk?"

"I would that they were," was the short answer, and the fingers went on
with their strumming.

"Come, Joscelyn, leave off sulking and see how brave Richard's uniform
doth make him," said Betty, coaxingly, eager that her brother's unspoken
wish should be gratified.

"And truly doth he need somewhat to make him brave, seeing he is in arms
against his king," Joscelyn retorted, but turned not her head.

"In arms against the king? Aye, truly am I; and yours be not the only
Royalist back I shall see 'twixt this and the end of the campaign,
Mistress Joscelyn Cheshire."

"Then, forsooth, will they be in luck--not having you to look at."

But the others had caught his meaning, and her retort was half lost in
the shout of laughter that greeted him.

"Aye, I warrant me when the fighting comes you will see the backs of so
many Redcoats that you can e'en cut their pattern in the dark," declared
Dorothy.

"Then will his head be twisted forever awry with looking so much over
his shoulder behind him."

"My Lady Royalist's ears are in the room though her eyes be elsewhere,"
laughed Janet.

"And neither is her tongue paralyzed. Turn about, Joscelyn, and let us
see you have also other power of motion."

"Not quite so much as some folk who turn like a weather-cock in every
gust of a partisan wind."

Thus the sparring went on until the visitors took their departure,
followed to the gate by Mistress Clevering and her daughter for that one
last word which women so love. Richard bowed them out and closed the
door upon their backs; then, marching straight to the window, he placed
himself by Joscelyn, who immediately turned her face in the opposite
direction. He spoke to her, but only a shrug of the shoulders answered
him.

"You _shall_ look at me," he cried, with sudden determination; and,
seizing her by the shoulders, he twisted her about until she faced him;
but even then he did not accomplish his purpose, for she covered her
face with her hands, declaring vehemently she would rather see him in
his shroud than in the uniform of a traitor.

"Traitor, forsooth! You know not whereof you speak. In what button or
seam see you aught that is traitorous?" He dragged her hands from her
face, and held them in his strong grip; but still he was foiled, for her
eyes were tightly closed. "An you open not your eyes immediately, I will
kiss them soundly upon either lid."

Which threat had the desired effect, for instantly the lashes parted and
a pair of sea-blue eyes looked angrily into his.

"So--I have brought you to terms. Well, and what think you of my
uniform?"

"Methinks," and her voice was not pleasant to hear, "that 'tis most
fitting apparel for one who refuses allegiance to his king and--uses his
greater strength against a woman."

He flung her hands away with what, for him, was near to roughness. "By
the eternal stars, Joscelyn, your tongue has a double edge!"

"A woman has need of a sharp tongue since Providence gave her but
indifferent fists."

"In sooth, it is the truth with you," he cried, his good-humour restored
as he again caught one of her slender hands and held it up for
inspection. "Nature wasted not much material here; methinks it would
scarce fill a fly with apprehension."

But she wrung it out of his grasp, and, with an exclamation of
annoyance, turned once more to the window. His expression changed, and
he stood some moments regarding her in silence. At last he said:--

"Joscelyn, 'tis now more than two years since you came to live
neighbours with us, and for the last half of that time you and I have
done little else than quarrel. But on my part this disagreement has not
gone below the surface; rather has it been a covering for a tenderer
feeling. I have heard it said that a woman knows instinctively when a
man loves her. Have you spelled out my heart under this show of
dispute?"

She shrugged her shoulders mockingly. "I am but an indifferent speller,
Master Clevering."

"Right well do I know that, having seen some of your letters to Betty,"
he answered with ready acquiescence. Whereat she flashed upon him a
glance of indignant protest; but he went on calmly, as though he noted
not the look: "But you are a fair reader, and mayhap I used a wrong
term. Have you not read my heart all these months?"

"It is not given even unto the wise to read so absolute a blank."

It was his time to wince, but the minutes were flying, the women might
return from the gate at any moment, and this would be his last chance
for a quiet word with her. "Let us have done with this child's play,
Joscelyn. To-morrow I march with my company; 'twill be months, perhaps
years, before we meet again. I love you! Will you not give me some
gentle word, some sweet promise, to fill with hope the time that is to
come?"

"What manner of promise can you wish?" she asked, her back still toward
him.

"A promise which shall mean our betrothal."

"Betrothal?--and we always quarrelling?"

"Quarrels cease where love doth rule," he answered softly.

"But I have no love for you."

"You might have if you would cease dwelling so much on the king's
affairs and think somewhat of me. I would give you love unqualified if
so you would but lean ever so little my way."

"And think you, Master Clevering, that I would turn traitor for your
love? Nay, sir; I am a loyal subject to King George, and can enter into
no compact with his enemies."

"Then will I be forced to conquer you along with the other adherents of
the tyrant, for have you I will," he cried impetuously. "An you yield
not to persuasion, you shall yield to force. From this day I hold you as
a part of the English enemy who needs must be subdued; and I do hereby
proclaim war against your prejudice for your heart."

"And I do accept the challenge, foreseeing your failure in both
causes." She swept him a courtesy full of open defiance and ridicule,
and again turned her back upon him as Betty entered the room.

But Master Clevering was neither dismayed nor discouraged by the turn
his wooing had taken. He had never thought to win her lightly, and his
combative disposition recognized in the prospect before him the elements
of a struggle, so that he was filled with the keen joy of a warrior at
the onset of the fray. The possibility of final defeat did not occur to
him.

Bidding Betty an affectionate good-by, Joscelyn quitted the house,
declining his proffered escort, nor did he speak with her again for a
space of many hours; for when the company, bidden that night to a
farewell feast with him, assembled about the board, the chair set for
her was vacant. Betty and Janet glanced meaningly at each other, for
they had seen her at dusk in company with Eustace and Mary Singleton,
and the Singletons were among the most pronounced Tories in the county.
But at the other end of the table Richard only laughed as he thrust his
knife into the fowl before him and felt for the joint.

"Tell her, Aunt Cheshire, that our loss does not equal hers, since she
gets none of this bird, which is browned to the taste of Epicurus
himself."

His tone was careless, and in truth he was not surprised at her
defection, for he, too, had seen the Singletons at her gate; and later
on, as he stood at his own door, had seen her, through her lighted
parlour window opposite, take off, for the entertainment of her guests,
his own theatrical entrance in his uniform that afternoon. She was an
excellent mimic, and her sense of humour enabled her to give a ludicrous
side to the scene, which drew forth peals of laughter from her auditors.
The vanity, the swagger, the monumental pose, were so exactly reproduced
that Richard felt a quick tingle of irritation flush his veins. And that
picture was still in his mind as he sat at table among his guests.

It is questionable whether it would have been an added nettlement or a
relief had he known that she had been aware of his presence across the
way, seeing him distinctly against the hall light behind him, and that
the scene enacted was more for him than for her visitors.




CHAPTER II.

THE MARCH OF THE CONTINENTALS.

     "Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream."
                         --LINLEY.


The Cheshires and Cleverings were not akin, although the young people
gave titles of kinship to the older folk. Mistress Cheshire had been
twice married, her first husband being brother to James Clevering. After
her second widowhood she had moved from New Berne to Hillsboro'-town, to
be near her brother-in-law, for neither she nor her last husband had any
nearer male relative this side of the sea. There had been no quarrel
with the Cleverings concerning her second marriage, so that she found in
Hillsboro' a ready welcome. The inland town promised more peace than the
bustling seaport whence she had moved. There news of king and colony
came in with every vessel that cast anchor at the wharves, and, as a
result, the community was in a constant state of ferment. All this was
very repugnant to Mistress Cheshire, who was a timid woman with no very
decided views upon public questions. Her one ruling desire was for
peace, no matter whence the source; she had lived quite happily under
the king's sceptre; but if Washington could establish a safe and quiet
government, she would have no quarrel either with him or fate.

But Joscelyn was different. Her father had been an ardent advocate of
kingly rule, and she had imbibed all of his enthusiasm for England and
English sovereignty. He had died just before the battle of Lexington set
the western continent athrob with a new national life. Consequently, the
removal from New Berne had been much against Joscelyn's inclination, for
she desired to be in the front and press of the excitement. But seeing
how her mother's heart was set on it, she finally withdrew her
opposition. Still she carried to her new home the bitter Toryism with
which her father had so deeply ingrained her nature. In another
atmosphere this feeling might have spent itself in idle fancies and vain
regrets; but in daily, almost hourly, contact with the Cleverings, whose
patriotism was ever at high tide, she was kept constantly on the
defensive, and in a spirit of resistance that knew no compromise. The
elder Cleverings and Betty looked upon her outbreaks good-humouredly,
treating them as the whims of a spoiled child. But not so Richard. His
whole soul was in the revolt of the colonies; every nerve in him was
attuned to war and strife, and he was vehemently intolerant of any
adverse opinion, so that between him and Joscelyn the subject came to be
as flint and steel. He did not scruple to tell her that she was foolish,
obstinate, logically blind, and that her opinions were not of the
smallest consequence; and yet the stanch loyalty with which she
defended her cause, and the ready defiance with which she met his every
attack won his admiration. Very speedily he separated her personality
from her views, and loved the one while he despised the other. Nothing
but fear of her ridicule had hitherto held him silent upon the subject
of his love.

While the merry-making went on at the Cleverings' that last night of his
stay at home, Joscelyn sat playing cards with the Singletons, whom she
persuaded to remain to tea, making her loneliness her plea.

"It passes my understanding," said Eustace, as he slowly shuffled the
cards, "how these insurgents can hope to win. Even their so-called
congress has had to move twice before the advance of his Majesty's
troops. A nation that has two seats of government in two years seems
rather shifty on its base."

"It must have been a brave sight to see General Howe march into
Philadelphia," said Joscelyn. "Methinks I can almost hear the drums beat
and see the flags flying in the wind. Would I had been there to cry
'long live the king' with the faithful of the land."

But Mary shuddered. "I am content to be no nearer than I am to the
battle scenes. The mustering of the Continental company to-day has
satisfied my eyes with martial shows."

"Call you that a martial show?" her brother laughed derisively. "Why,
that was but a shabby make-believe with only half of the men properly
uniformed and equipped. Martial show, indeed! Rather was it a gathering
of scarecrows. I prophesy that in six months the 'indomitable army of
the young Republic,' as the leaders style the undisciplined rabble that
follows them, will be again quietly ploughing their fields or looking
after other private affairs."

"And while you are prophesying you are playing your cards most
foolishly, and I am defeating you."

"True, you have me fairly with that ace. Let us try it again--'Deprissa
resurgit,' as the Continentals say on their worthless paper money."

"Joscelyn," said Mary suddenly, "did I tell you that Aunt Ann said in
her letter that Cousin Ellen wore a yellow silk to the ball given to
welcome General Howe to Philadelphia?"

"I do believe you left out that important item," laughed Joscelyn.

"Why, how came you to be so remiss, I pray you, sister? The flight of
congress from the Quaker city, and its seizure by his Majesty's troops,
are but insignificant matters compared to the fact that our cousin wore
yellow silk to the general's ball," teased her brother. Whereupon Mary
went pouting across the room and sat at the window, calling out to the
players at the table the names of those who went in and out of the house
of festivity opposite.

"Yonder are Mistress Strudwick and Doris Henderson--dear me! I wonder
what it feels like to be so stout as Mistress Strudwick? Billy Bryce and
his mother are just behind them. I see Janet and Betty through the
window. Betty has on that pink brocade with the white lace."

"Then I warrant some of those recruits will go to the war already
wounded, for in that gown Mistress Betty is sweet enough to break any
man's heart."

"Eustace, I do believe you are halfway in love with Betty."

"Why put it only halfway, my dear? The whole is ever better than a
part."

"What think you, Joscelyn, is he in earnest? And how does Betty like
him?"

But Joscelyn laughingly quoted the biblical text about being "unevenly
yoked together with unbelievers," reminding Mary that Betty was a Whig,
and Eustace a Loyalist, and this was a bar that even Cupid must not pull
down. Whereupon Eustace laughed aloud; and Mary was satisfied.

Early the next morning Betty ran over to make her protest against
Joscelyn's absence of the night before. "Richard seemed not to care, but
mother and I were much chagrined that you did not come."

"I certainly meant no offence to you and Aunt Clevering," answered
Joscelyn, "but Richard and I have a way of forgetting our company
manners which is most unpleasant to spectators."

"Yes; mother read Richard a most proper lecture this morning about the
way he quarrels with you, and he is coming over later to make his peace;
he says he thinks that perhaps mother is right, and that he will feel
better to carry in his heart no grudge against any one when he goes into
battle. And you must be very kind to him, Joscelyn, for it is a great
concession on his part to apologize thus. Supposing if--if anything
happened to him, and you had sent him away in anger!"

Joscelyn drew the young girl to her. "So you have appointed yourself
keeper-in-chief of my conscience? Well, well; I will hold a most strict
watch over my tongue during the next few hours, so that it may give you
no offence. Still, I am not easily conscience-stricken, and neither, I
think, is Master Clevering."

"The Singletons passed the evening with you, did they not?" asked Betty,
who had glanced across at her friend's window the night before, and had
seen them playing cards together.

"Yes; and Eustace said some very pretty things about you and your pink
frock. What a pity you are of different political beliefs, for--Why,
Betty, what a beautiful colour has come into your cheeks."

"Stuff, Joscelyn! But--what said Master Singleton?" And when the speech
was repeated, the girl's sweet face was redder than ever.

For a few moments Joscelyn looked at her in consternation. Betty cared
for Eustace! It seemed the very acme of irony. Then tenderly she stroked
the brown hair, wondering silently at the game of cross-purposes love is
always playing. Uncle and Aunt Clevering, with their violent views,
would follow Betty to her grave rather than to her bridal with Eustace,
for, besides the party differences, the older folk of the two families
had long been separated by a bitter quarrel over a title-deed.
Joscelyn's own friendship for Mary and Eustace had been the cause of
some sharp words between her and her uncle; a thousand times more would
he resent Betty's defection. "But they shall not break her heart!" she
said to herself, with a sudden tightening of her arms about the clinging
girl.

An hour later Richard knocked at the door and was admitted by Mistress
Cheshire, for Joscelyn had gone to her own room at the sound of his step
outside.

"No, I will not come down. I have promised Betty not to quarrel with
him, and the only way to keep my word is not to see him," she said to
her mother over the banister. "Tell him I hope he will soon come back
whole of body, but as gloriously defeated as all rebels deserve to be."

In vain her mother urged, and in vain Richard called from the foot of
the stair; she neither answered nor appeared in sight.

"Tell her, Aunt Cheshire, that I never thought to find her hiding in her
covert; a soldier who believes in his cause hesitates not to meet his
adversary in open field; it is the doubtful in courage or confidence who
run to cover." And he went down the step with his head up angrily and
his sword clanging behind him.

In the upper hall Joscelyn held her hands tightly over her mouth to
force back the stinging retort. Then, with a derisive smile, she went
downstairs and sat in the hall window, in plain view of the street and
the house across the way.

That afternoon his company marched afield. The town was full of noise
and excitement, and the mingled sound of sobbing and of forced laughter,
as the line was formed in the market-place and moved with martial step
down the long, unpaved street, the rolling drums and clear-toned bugles
stirring the blood to a frenzy of enthusiasm. The sidewalks were lined
with spectators, the patriots shouting, the luke-warm looking on
silently. Every house along the route through the town was hung with
wind-swung wreaths of evergreen or streamers of the bonny buff and
blue--every one until they reached the Cheshire dwelling. There the
shutters were close drawn as though some grief brooded within, and upon
the outside of the closed door hung a picture of King George framed in
countless loops of scarlet ribbon that flamed out like a sun-blown poppy
by contrast with the soberer tints of the Continentals. Here was a
challenge that none might misunderstand. The sight was as the red rag in
the toreador's hand to the bull in the arena; and, like an infuriated
animal, the crowd surged and swayed and rent the air with an angry roar.
The marching line came suddenly to a full stop without a word of
command, and the roar was interspersed with hisses. Then there was a
rush forward, and twenty hands tore at the pictured face and flaunting
ribbons, and brought them out to be trampled under foot in the dust of
the road, while a voice cried out of the crowd:--

"Down with the Royalists! Fire!"

And there was a rattle and a flash of steel down the martial line as
muskets went to shoulders. But Richard Clevering, pale with fear, sprang
to the steps between the deadly muzzles and the door and lifted a hand
to either upright, while his voice rang like a trumpet down the line:--

"Stay! There are no men here. This is but a girl's mad prank. Men, men,
turn not your guns against two lonely women; save your weapons for
rightful game! Shoulder arms! Forward! March!"

There was a moment's hesitation, a muttering down the ranks; then the
guns were shouldered and the column fell once more into step with the
drums, while the crowd shouted its approval. But above the last echoes
of that shout a woman's jeering laugh rang out upon the air; and,
lifting eyes, the crowd beheld Joscelyn Cheshire, clad in a scarlet
satin bodice, lean out of her opened casement and knot a bunch of that
same bright-hued ribbon upon the shutter. With the throng in such
volcanic temper it was a perilous thing to do; and yet so insidious was
her daring, so great her beauty, that not so much as a stone was cast at
this new signal of loyalty, and not a voice was lifted in anger.

And this was the last vision that Richard had of her--the vivid, glowing
picture he carried in his heart through the long campaigns, whether it
was as he rushed through the smoke-swirls of battle or bivouacked under
the cold, white stars.




CHAPTER III.

ONWARD TO VALLEY FORGE.

     "He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
     And all are slaves besides."
                         --COWPER.


The colony of North Carolina had long been ready for rebellion against
kingly authority. Governor Tryon had sown the seeds of discontent by his
unpopular measures, and the taxes levied upon the people that he might
build his "palace" at New Berne. This discontent had culminated in the
insurrection of the Regulators and the battle of Alamance, where was
made the first armed stand against England. But Tryon was victorious,
and the captured leaders of the insurrection were hanged on Regulators'
hill in Hillsboro'-town. But from that field of Alamance, the defeated
people carried to their homes the same persistent, haunting dream of
liberty which was to rise incarnate when the tocsin of the Revolution
blew through the land.

That tocsin waked many an echo among the hills that surrounded the town
upon the Eno. At the first call to arms, the older men had gone to the
field, some marching away to the north, others serving under the
partisan leaders throughout their own section. Now the younger
ones--those who had been but boys when the cannon at Lexington made the
pulse of the people first to quicken and throb--were going out to bear
their share in the fray.

For the past year the company of which Richard Clevering was a member
had done service in the militia at home, keeping the Tories in a
semblance of subjection, and now and then going to Sumter's aid when he
made one of those electrical sallies which were like lightning flashes
amid the general storm. In this hard school Richard had learned his
first lessons in soldiering; but graver and sterner military work was
now ahead, for the company was marching northward to aid in recruiting
Washington's regular army, reduced and discouraged by the terrible
winter at Valley Forge.

When they started, the willows that fringed the Eno, that fierce little
river that winds about Hillsboro', had already lost their winter
grayness, and, with the rising of the sap, had taken on that wonderful
golden brown which is the aureole of the coming springtime. The
bluebirds had not yet come back to the fence corners, but the earth was
soggy with the thaw, and from under the whirls of last year's dead
leaves, crocuses were holding up green signals to the sun. But as the
troop held their steady way to the north the spring signs disappeared,
and hoar frost and bleak winds told that winter's reign was not yet
over.

It was a long tramp up through the Virginia woods and along the salt
marshes of the coast, and down and up the desolate streams hunting a
ford. But youth and enthusiasm lighten many a burden, and to Richard the
greatest hardship was lack of news from Joscelyn. The thought of her
tugged at his heart, and if his step ever lagged in the line, it was
because the memory of her face drew him back with that sickening sense
of longing that youth finds so hard to resist. At every chance he sent
her a missive.

"Not that she will care, but just to show her _I_ do," he said, trying
to convince himself there was no bitterness in the thought.

Peter Ruffin, marching beside him, often looked at the knit brows and
compressed lips and smiled, guessing something of the cause; he said to
himself that it was safer to leave a wife behind than a sweetheart,
since one was sure to find the wife waiting his return, while a
sweetheart might be gone with a fresher fancy. But little Billy Bryce,
who could never have kept up with the line had it not been for Richard's
aid now and then, could not fathom the meaning of that dark look in his
benefactor's face, and so was silent and sorry.

The March winds tore at them, and the storms pelted them as they tramped
the rugged roads or slept in their thin tents, and the bullets that they
had intended for the enemy, often went to provide game for their daily
sustenance. The Tories of the districts through which they passed
sometimes rallied to oppose them, so that they had to fight their way
through ambuscades, or, when the enemy greatly outnumbered them, slip
away under cover of night or by circuitous paths through the forest and
swamps.

And so, at last, toward the end of March, they reached their goal--the
encampment at Valley Forge, and shuddered at the desolation they
witnessed. As the little band marched down the streets of the military
village, gaunt men who had survived the horrors of the winter came out
to meet them with huzzas, and the drums beat a long welcome. Their
coming was as a thrill that runs through a half-numb body, a sign of
revivification and awakened hope. But under it all was a sense of
unspeakable sadness that filled the hearts of the newcomers with a
strange wistfulness of pity and admiration.

The succeeding weeks were given up literally to camp work, to ceaseless
mustering and drilling under the vigilant eye of Baron Steuben, until
the newcomers lost the air of recruits and bore themselves with the
semblance of veterans.

"We had hoped to fight under Morgan," Richard wrote his mother, "but,
doubtless for excellent reasons, we are to be assigned to General
Wayne's command, which just now sorely needs strengthening. Save that
Morgan is from our part of the country, the change matters not to me,
since both men are fearless leaders. What I want is a fray, and with
either of these men I am like to get my fill."

Here there was a long blot on the page, as though the back of his quill
had been drawn along a line. In truth it had, for he had started to send
a message to Joscelyn, and then with a sudden accession of determination
had erased it, lest she come to think he had never anything in mind save
herself. But he fondled the letter as he folded it, knowing that her
fingers would doubtless hold each page and her eyes travel along each
line, for his mother would share her news of him with her neighbours
over the way.




CHAPTER IV.

THE COMPANY ON THE VERANDA.

     "Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
     Some banished lover or some captive maid."
                         --POPE.


For several weeks after the departure of the soldiers an expectant hush
settled over Hillsboro'-town--the reaction of the mustering and drilling
that had gone before. So few men were left in the town that Janet
Cameron one day dressed herself in the garb of a nun, and, with the
feigned humility of folded hands and downcast eyes, went calling upon
her companions "of the convent town." A ripple of merriment followed in
her wake, for she made a most quaint figure. But the Reverend Hugh
McAden, meeting her upon the corner, so reprimanded her for her levity
that she ran home in tears and hid her gray frock and hood in the
garret. Joscelyn sobered her own face and made the girl's peace with the
reverend gentleman with such explanations as at last seemed to him
reasonable. But Janet went on no more masquerading tours.

With both the work and the gayety of the town interrupted, there was
nothing of moment to engage attention but the news that came once in a
while from the camps and battle-fields. The interest in this was shared
by every one, so that all the tidings, whether by message or letter,
were looked upon as public property. News that came by word of mouth was
cried out from the church steps or the court-house door, for no good
citizen wished to keep his knowledge to himself. Thus it fell out when
it became known that a missive had come from Richard to Joscelyn, that a
score or more of women gathered about her door to learn the contents.
She came out to them upon the veranda, her saucy beauty enhanced by the
scarlet bodice, her eyes full of laughter.

"Read you Master Clevering's letter?--As you will, Mistress Strudwick;
you may perchance find more of interest in it than I," she answered with
that sweet courtesy she showed ever to her elders. And so having
enthroned Mistress Strudwick upon the wicker bench of the porch, while
the others disposed themselves upon the steps and the grass of the
terrace which sloped directly to the street, she unfolded her letter and
cleared her throat pompously as is the manner of public speakers.

"I pray you have patience with me, good ladies," she said, "if so I read
but slowly. Master Clevering ever had trouble with his spelling; and as
for the writing, 'tis as though a fly had half drowned itself in the
inkhorn and then crawled upon the page."

Then did she proceed to read them the letter from its greeting to its
close, pausing now and then to laboriously spell out a word. There were
accounts of the life at Valley Forge, of the drilling and the picket
duty and the ceaseless watching of the enemy. Then there was an exultant
description of the victory at far-off Stillwater, as it was given to him
by a fellow-soldier who had been a participant.

     "Said I not the Continentals would win? Would I had been there to
     see! Five times was one cannon captured and recaptured. How
     glorious the fighting was; and think of the surrender! Well, well,
     it consoles me somewhat to think of that coming last surrender of
     that archest of all the Royalists. I shall bear a part in that, for
     it is to me the capitulation will be made--"

"Why, dear me, is Master Clevering to be made commander-in-chief of the
American forces, that his Majesty's troops should yield arms to him?"
Joscelyn broke off to ask with assumed innocence. "I heard naught of his
rapid promotion."

"Come, come, Joscelyn, leave off sneering at Richard and read us the
rest."

She laughed as she turned the page.

     "Say to Mistress Strudwick that the fame of her gallant brother,
     Major William Shepperd, hath reached even this remote quarter, and
     his old friends glory in his prowess. Little Jimmy Nash has lost
     his wits and wants another pair--

("A pair of wits! What can that mean? Oh, I ask your pardon, Mistress
Nash; it is 'mits,' not 'wits.' Master Clevering hath so queer a
handwriting.)

     "--and wants another pair; let his mother know, that she may knit
     them and send them by the first chance."

There were other messages and news items which the girl read, and then
came the signature.

"There follows here a postscript which perchance some of you may help me
to unravel," she added; and then, with the air of a town-crier
announcing his errand, she proceeded:--

     "To the girl of my heart say this, that I forget not I am fighting
     for her, and that I look upon every Redcoat my gun can bring down
     as one more obstacle removed from betwixt us. I think of her
     always."

She paused and puckered her brow in a perplexed frown. "Now who, I pray
you, is the girl of his heart? Cannot some of you help me to guess?"

"Methinks 'twould be an easy task for you," laughed Mistress Strudwick.

"_Me?_" repeated Joscelyn, still with that air of perplexed innocence.
"Nay, he was ever so full of jokes and quarrels that it never came to me
he had a heart."

"Mayhap it is Dorothy Graham he means," said a voice in the crowd.

"More like 'tis Patience Ruffin."

"Or little Janet Cameron--he set much store by her."

"Nay," said a teasing voice, "Janet is going to be a nun; such messages
to her would not be proper." Whereat there was a general laugh.

"Whoever she is, 'tis a pity she should miss her love message through
her lover's obscurity and our ignorance," said Joscelyn. "What think
you, Mistress Strudwick, were it not a good plan to post this page upon
the banister here that all who pass may read? In this wise we may find
the maid."

With a pin from her bodice, and using her high-heeled slipper--which she
drew off for the purpose--as a hammer, she tacked the paper to the
banister. But it had not fluttered twice in the wind ere Betty had
snatched it down.

"Shame on you, Joscelyn, for so exposing my brother's letter!"

"Oh, I meant not to anger you, Betty," returned the girl, sweetly, as
she took the letter again and thrust it into her bodice. "Since you like
not this plan, we will have the town-crier search out the mysterious
damsel and bring her here to read for herself. Let us see how the cry
would run: 'Wanted, wanted, the girl of Richard Clevering's heart to
read his greeting on Mistress Cheshire's porch!'"

She stooped to buckle her shoe, her foot on the round of Mistress
Strudwick's chair, and so they saw not the laughter in her eyes. She
knew well that Betty would not fail to write Richard of the scene, and
she already fancied his anger; she could have laughed aloud. "Methinks
I have paid you back a score, Master Impertinence," she said to herself,
and then fell to talking to Dorothy Graham until the company dispersed.
That night Betty, running in on a message from her mother, found
Joscelyn using the fragments of the ill-fated letter to curl the long
hair of Gyp, the house-dog, and she went home to add an indignant
postscript to the missive to her brother, over which she had spent the
afternoon. But even as she wrote she knew he would not heed her advice;
and sure enough, in course of time another letter came to the house on
the terrace:--

     "The girl of my heart is that teasing Tory, Joscelyn Cheshire, who
     conceals her tender nature under such show of scorning. One day her
     love shall strike its scarlet colours to the blue and buff of mine;
     and her lips, instead of mocking, will be given over to smiles and
     kisses, for which purpose nature made them so beautiful.

     "Post this on your veranda for the town to read, an you will,
     sweetheart. For my part, I care not if the whole world knows that I
     love you."

But Joscelyn did no such thing. Instead, she thrust the letter out of
sight, and refused to read it even to Betty, who had only half forgiven
her for her former offence against her brother.

As the days passed, however, Betty was full of concern for the
privations Richard endured, and out of sheer force of habit she carried
her plaint to Joscelyn.

"Richard drills six hours a day, rain or shine," she said, with an
expostulatory accent on the numeral.

"Dear me, is he that hard of learning? Methinks even _I_ could master
the art of shouldering a gun and turning out my toes in less time than
that. It seems not so difficult a matter."

"And even after all this," Betty went on, taking no heed of the other's
laugh, "he may not rest at night, but must needs do picket duty or go on
reconnoitring expeditions. And he hath not tasted meat in two weeks, not
since he hath been in camp."

"What a shame! A soldier such as Master Clevering should sit among the
fleshpots and sleep all night in a feather bed."

"I knew you would laugh," Betty said with sudden heat. "You treat
Richard as though he counted for naught; but the truth is, Joscelyn, you
are not half good enough for him."

And Betty flung out of the house with her chin in the air, while
Joscelyn kissed her hand to her with playful courtesy, but with a
genuine admiration for her spirit.

But she softened not her heart toward Richard. Because of his impatience
with her opinions, and the personal nature of their disputes and
oppositions, he had come to typify to her the very core and heart of
the insurrection. She knew this was foolish, that he was in truth
but an insignificant part of the general turmoil; and yet he was the
prominent figure that always came before her when the talk turned on the
Revolution, no matter in what company she was. His masterful ways of
wooing and cool assumption of her preference also grated harshly upon
her, and even in his absence her heart was often hot against him. She
listened indifferently to his mother's and Betty's praise of him.

Her position in the community was rather a peculiar one; for while many
of her companions disliked her tenets, they loved her for her merry ways
and grace of manner, and so they refused to listen to some of the more
rabid members who counselled ostracism. Her mother, too, was a strong
bond between her and the public; for when the patriotic women of the
town met together to sew and knit for the absent soldiers, Mistress
Cheshire often went with them, and no needle was swifter than hers. It
was her neighbours she was helping; the soldiers were a secondary
consideration. She was not going to quarrel with Ann Clevering and
Martha Strudwick because their husbands had fallen out with the king;
that was his Majesty's affair, not hers, and she did not believe in
meddling in other people's quarrels. But Joscelyn shut herself in her
room on these days and read her English history; or else, being deft
with her pencil, made numerous copies of the historical pictures of King
George and his ministers, which were pinned up on the railing of her
balcony as a new testimonial of her loyalty. But no sooner was her back
turned than some passer-by tore them away, sometimes leaving instead a
written threat of retaliation that made her mother's heart cold with a
nameless dread.

It was in the end of March, some six weeks after the departure of the
troops, that sad news came from the south. Where the Pedee widened
toward its mouth a blow had been struck for liberty, and Uncle Clevering
had fallen in a charge with Sumter.

There had been a body of Tories to disperse, a wagon-train to capture,
and despatches to intercept; and Sumter's troops, knowing this, rode all
the windy night through moonshine and shadow to surprise the enemy in
the daffodil dawn of that March morning. Swift, silent, resistless, like
spectres of the gray forest, they came upon the astonished Redcoats--and
kept their tryst with Victory! The prisoners, the wagon-train, the
despatches were theirs; but one of them had ridden to his rendezvous
with death. The elder Clevering's horse was led back through all the
long miles to Hillsboro' with the stirrups crossed over the saddle; and
Ann Clevering sat in her house, bereft. Each day Martha Strudwick and
other friends went to her with words of kindly commiseration; but it was
Mistress Cheshire who did most to comfort the afflicted widow, so that
these two were drawn yet closer together with that bond of sympathy that
comes of a mutual loss. And in Betty's or Mistress Clevering's presence
Joscelyn never again talked tauntingly of English prowess, since it was
an English bullet that had wrought such sorrow to her friends. But even
this death, shocking as it was to her, in no way shook her allegiance to
the cause she held to be right.




CHAPTER V.

WINDING THE SKEIN.

     "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."
                         --BROWNING.


It was April, and the days came with a sheen of blue sky between rifts
of rain.

Quick steps sounded at the Cheshire door, and the brass knocker beat
like an anvil through the house, setting the maid's feet in a run to
answer it. Joscelyn came down from her room with wide eyes of curiosity
to find Eustace Singleton in the parlour, a great nosegay of roses in
his hand.

"From the knocking you kept up, I thought the whole Continental army
must be at my door! You have brought me the first roses of the year,"
she exclaimed; "how kind!" and she stretched out her hand for the
flowers.

"No--they are not for you--not exactly," he stammered, holding them out
of her reach.

"Mother will appreciate them, and I shall enjoy them quite the same."

"No, she will not, for I had her not in mind when I plucked them."

"Oh!"

"I was thinking of--of--'n faith, Joscelyn, I was thinking of Mistress
Betty Clevering."

"Of Betty Clevering! Red roses for Betty Clevering!"

"They are not all red. See this one; it is near as buff as her own party
colour."

The girl nodded, smiling at his eagerness. He walked the length of the
room, then stopped before her abruptly.

"Joscelyn, I leave for the front to-night."

"I did not know--"

"Yes; I have but waited orders from Lord Cornwallis. This morning a
messenger brought them, and I am to report at once. His lordship has
been most kind because of my father's friendship when they were boys,
and I am appointed aide upon his staff."

She held out her hand impulsively. "'Tis what we hoped for you."

"But," he went on hurriedly, "I cannot go without first speaking with
Mistress Betty. Methinks I cannot fight against her people without first
asking her pardon. Oh, of course, that sounds foolish; but will you help
me, Joscelyn? It would be useless for me to go to her house; the door
would be shut in my face."

"And you want me--"

"I want you to ask her here now, and then go away upstairs like the dear
girl you are, and give me a chance."

"Aunt Clevering would never forgive me."

"She need not know; think up some excuse for sending for Betty."

"And Betty herself might be angry."

"Not with you. She may turn me away. I have small hope, for she has
always been so shy, and public questions and private quarrels have kept
our families so far apart. You know how seldom we meet; but speak with
her I must, for who knows whether I shall ever come back? My departure
to-night must, of course, be in secret, for were my intentions known, I
should be apprehended and held, mayhap hanged for treason. This is my
one chance to see Betty; you are going to send for her, Joscelyn?"

She hesitated: she hated deception, and she loved her Aunt Clevering.
Then there came to her the memory of Betty's face when she had teased
her about Eustace, and her own resolution to be the girl's friend where
so much heartache and opposition awaited her. This was her opportunity;
if she refused it, she would be abetting the general harshness the girl
was likely to encounter. She left the room without a word, and presently
Eustace saw through the window her little maid dart across the street
and into the opposite gate.

"Thank you," he said jubilantly, taking her hand when she reentered the
room.

"Wait and see if she comes. She is here but seldom these days; partly
because she is still angry with me about Richard, and partly because of
the sorrow that came to her a month ago. She may not accept my
invitation."

But even as she spoke, a clear voice cried in the hall: "Joscelyn,
Joscelyn, are you upstairs?"

"Nay, I am here," and she met the girl at the door and drew her into the
parlour.

Eustace came forward smiling. "Now, Mistress Betty, I call this a lucky
chance to have dropped in here when you were coming to sit with
Joscelyn. Fortune does sometimes favour even so humble a subject as I.
Let me move this chair for you."

Betty's cheeks had reddened faintly, and she glanced quickly from him to
Joscelyn, but found in neither face any confirmation of a suspicion that
stirred in her mind. Joscelyn was turning over a great pile of coloured
worsteds.

"You promised to help me sort the colours for my new cross-stitch--you
have such a fine eye for contrasts. But since Eustace is here, methinks
we had best put it off; men are so impatient over such matters," she
said.

"Nay, nay," he protested; "you slander me along with the rest of my
fellow-men. Mistress Betty here shall prove it, for I will hold those
tangled skeins for her, and she will find that I am patience itself."

"Very well, we will put you to the test. What think you, Betty, will
this green do for the flower stems?--You like that shade better?--Hold
out your hands, Eustace. Now, Betty, wind that while I find a blue for
the flowers."

Never was anything brought about more naturally and deftly. Almost
before she was aware, Betty found herself seated in front of Eustace,
who was making great show of resignation.

"How does a man sometimes fall from the high estate of his manhood and
dignity and become no better than a wooden frame whereon to hang a
length of yarn," he said, laughing; then coloured with pleasure as Betty
bent toward the table and put her face close to the roses lying there.

"Ah, how sweet! I have only a few buds, as yet. Master Singleton brought
them to you, Joscelyn?"

"On the contrary, he said expressly they were not for me. There is no
blue in this lot of wools, I must have left it upstairs. 'Tis a shame I
have to mount those steps again. I hope you will have that skein wound
by the time I find the blue one." At the door she paused and looked back
archly at Eustace; then, blowing a kiss to Betty's unconscious back, she
went away, shutting the door softly behind her.

"God bless you, Betty dear; I hope I am acting for your happiness," she
said to herself on the stairs.

Betty added to her soft ball in unruffled silence for a minute. Then,
glancing up, she met Eustace's gaze, and her hand faltered in its
winding.

"Do you know for whom I brought the roses?" he asked, bending toward
her.

"Stay, Master Singleton, you are dropping the skein--and you promised to
be so patient."

"True, true; I have it all in a mess. Wind your ball up closer that we
may pass it through this loop."

And so they set themselves, with here a turn and there a backward twist,
to that old task of unravelling the snarled skein. Now and then their
fingers touched, and both hands trembled and both faces reddened;
Eustace's from the exquisite pleasure of the contact, for never before
had they been so alone, so near together, and out of pure joy he would
have prolonged the happiness. But the shadows were already lengthening
backward to the east, and with nightfall he must be away. And so when
Betty's little hand was again near to his he seized it in both of his.

"Betty--sweetheart--I love you!"

The thread was snapped apart, and the ball fell to the floor, but he
held her hands fast.

"Nay, you must listen to me, for this night I go away to bear my share
in the war, perchance to give my life for the cause I hold to be right.
But before I go I must tell you what is in my heart--tell you that I
love you as a man loves the woman to whom he gives his name, with whom
he leaves his honour. And not only must I tell you that, but I must hear
you say that, believing as I do, you do not blame me for going to the
war. You do not blame me, do you?"

Her hands lay still in his, but her head was bent so low he could not
see into her eyes.

"This war means everything to me, for the enemies of the king against
whom I shall have to fight are my neighbours and acquaintances, and,
worse still, the near and dear relatives of my love. Under such
circumstances you do not think I would fight save from principle?"

"No."

"And you do not condemn the step I am taking, even though it sets me
against your dear ones? I cannot see things as they do."

She lifted her head and looked at him squarely for a moment. "Every man
should follow the dictates of his conscience."

"I knew your heart would recognize the justice of my case. And when it
is all over, and I come back, you will not let this stand between
us--you will be my wife?"

But she drew her hand away, shaking her head with downcast eyes, and his
pleading was futile. "To promise you would be to go against my mother,
and it were undutiful in me to add to her present distress; now that my
father is dead and my brother gone to the war, my mother has only me to
comfort her."

"Then at least let me carry away the glad assurance that you care for
me; that will suffice, for, if you love me, you will wait for me."

"You--you will find me waiting," she whispered; and then her lips
trembled under the kiss that he put upon them.

But there was a sound at the door, a warning rattle of the knob, and out
of consideration for her he let her go.

"Aunt Clevering is calling you, Betty," Joscelyn said, but she did not
enter. "She'll be there directly, Aunt Clevering," she called from the
front door. And presently, when Betty passed her with Eustace's colours
flaming in her cheeks and his roses on her breast, she knew that Redcoat
and not Continental had won this battle in her parlour.

"She would not promise me," Eustace said, wringing her hand; "but I am
so happy, for there are some things that are better than a spoken
promise."




CHAPTER VI.

THE FETE AT PHILADELPHIA.

     "Drink to her that each loves best;
       And if you nurse a flame
     That's told but to her mutual breast,
       We will not ask her name."
                         --CAMPBELL.


The sixth day of May dawned clear at Valley Forge. In the crowded huts
and tents was an unusual stir, a brushing and repairing of ragged
uniforms, and a burnishing of bayonets and sword-hilts. Then the bugles
sounded their stirring call, and the morning sun looked down upon the
army drawn up in two lines upon the drill plateau. Richard, gazing down
the line in front of him, and knowing that the one in which he stood was
but its ragged prototype, felt his heart swell with admiration and a
sickening pity; for everywhere were the marks of privation and
starvation. Only the faces, transfigured by the radiance of a new hope,
told of the unconquered wills that lay dormant under the scars of
suffering.

Thus they heard the news for which they had been mustered into
line--France had acknowledged the independence of the colonies, and
would send them substantial martial aid. Franklin had won, and the
_fleur-de-lys_ was to float beside the star-studded banner of the young
republic fighting for her life.

When the proclamation was read, a salute of thirteen guns boomed out,
each the symbolic voice of a State pledging allegiance to the new
alliance. Down the lines went the rattle of musketry, and there rolled
up a shout that filled the blue hollow of the sky with its hoarse echo.

"Long live the king of France!"

"Long live the new Republic!"

"Hip--hip--huzza!"

It was as if the prisoned joy of months had broken into song. Scars and
tatters and hunger, pains and aching wounds were forgotten, and only the
radiance of peace and freedom yet to come shone in the dazzled upturned
eyes.

"Long live the lilies of France!"

When it was all done Richard sat down to write by the light of a pine
knot one of those letters that Joscelyn hated.

     "I am much grieved at the news of you in Betty's last letter. She
     says you daily draw upon yourself the disapproval of the townsfolk
     by your public rejoicing over news of any British success. This is
     not wise in you, for the people are in no temper to be mocked; and
     I feel my hands grow cold at the thought that some danger may come
     near you, and I too far away to stand between you and it! Go often
     to see my mother, both because she loves you and because the
     friendship of so good a patriot will be a safeguard in the
     community. Betty hath writ me so queer a page about trying to love
     my enemies, and her hope that I will look carefully at every man
     toward whom my gun is pointed so that I shoot not a neighbour, that
     I am at a loss to understand her meaning--unless, indeed, she hath
     been tainted by your Toryism. What think you hath come to the
     little minx?"

She would not answer the epistle, of course--she never did; but it was
such a relief to put his feelings into words. That she would be angry at
some of his words he knew, but it made him laugh to think of the
disdainful lips and flashing eyes.

He must have laughed aloud, for a man stretched upon the ground suddenly
asked him what the joke was.

"Oh, just a passing thought," Richard answered. "A man has to think
funny things to keep alive in this state of inactivity into which we are
called."

"You would like a little excitement?"

"Indeed I should. 'Tis now six weeks since I came into camp, and only
that one secret trip with you down the river has broken the monotony of
drilling and mounting guard."

The man, a Virginian named Dunn, one of the most daring and capable
scouts of the army, smoked a moment in silence.

"How would you like to witness the festivities in honour of General Howe
before he leaves Philadelphia?"

Richard's eyes lit up. "Take me with you, Dunn!" he cried, with great
eagerness.

"H-u-s-h!" said Dunn. "Nothing is arranged yet; but there will be much
to learn of the enemy's intended movements, and when would there fall so
fine a chance as these days of festivity when wine and tongues will both
run free? If I can so fix it, you shall go with me; you suit me better
than Price, for you are quicker to catch a cue. You have got just one
fault for this kind of business--you are always so d--n sure of yourself
and your own powers; a little humility would improve you."

Richard laughed and wrung his hand. "You can knock me down for a
conceited coxcomb, only take me with you."

For a few days the French alliance was the all-absorbing theme of talk;
and La Fayette's laughing prophecy that France's recognition of a
republic would one day come home to her seemed, to these aroused sons of
Liberty, like an augury that the countries of the Old World would one
day follow in the paths their swords were blazing out--the paths that
lead over thrones and crowns to self-government. But Richard soon had
other things whereof to think. Dunn was planning his expedition into the
lines of the enemy; but two weeks went by before he came to Richard's
tent and beckoned him aside.

"To-night at eight, by the pine tree down the road. I have spoken to
your captain, so there will be no hubbub about your absence. Bring no
arms but your pistols."

Under the young May moon Richard kept his tryst with the veteran scout,
as eager as a lover to meet his mistress.

"Sit down," said Dunn. "I shall tell you my mission, for I do not work
by halves. Sometimes an assistant has to act on his own responsibility,
and he spoils sport if he does not know the plan. First, we are to find
out when the British are to move, what is their destination, and by what
road they will go. If an attack is to be made before-hand on our camp,
we must bring back the plans. If there is a chance for our men to strike
a blow, we must know it."

"And how are we to learn these things?"

"By keeping our ears and eyes open and our wits sharpened. It will
take cool heads and steady nerves. We are to gain entrance into the
city as ordinary labourers. In this bundle are the necessary clothes.
Circumstances must govern us after we are there. Now to get ready."

It took but a few minutes to transform the soldiers into workmen, so far
as dress makes a transformation. Leaving their uniforms in the hollow
of a tree, where Dunn's man was to search for them, they mounted their
horses and set off by an unused road toward the distant city. The direct
route would have given them about twenty miles of travel, but the
numerous diversions they were obliged to make added a fourth of that
distance to their journey, so there was a gray streak of dawn in the
sky ahead of them when they drew rein at a lonely cabin on the edge
of a wood, beyond which were the cleared fields of a farm that skirted
the city. On the door of this hut Dunn struck three sharp taps, then
one, then two. After the signal was repeated the door was cautiously
opened by a man within, who, upon being assured of the identity of the
newcomers, bade them enter; and Richard found himself in an humble room
whose rafters were hung with drying herbs that gave out a pungent odour.

In a few words Dunn explained to the man, whom he called George,
something of their purpose.

"Well, I was expecting you. My vegetable cart starts in two hours; one
of you can go with me, the other must straggle on behind, for two would
be more than is safe with one cart. My daily pass allows me an
assistant."

[Illustration: "THUS THEY PASSED, WITH SMALL PARLEY, THE PICKET POSTS."]

When their horses had been hidden in an out-house, Richard and Dunn
threw themselves down and slept heavily until the carter aroused them.
The smell of breakfast, along with his eagerness for the coming
adventure, made Richard quick to answer the summons, and in a short time
the three were on their way. It had been arranged that Richard, who knew
nothing of the city, should go on with the carter, and that Dunn should
take his chances and follow. But in the public road, where other carts
were beginning to appear, they overtook a black-eyed lass carrying a
huge basket of eggs. It took but a few glances, flashed coquettishly
across the road, to bring Richard to her side. There were some gallant
speeches, a protest that ended in a pouting laugh, and then the two went
down the road like old friends, merry with the carelessness of youth,
she swinging her hands idly, he carrying her basket. Thus they passed,
with small parley, the picket posts, for the guards knew the girl who
came and went daily with her market wares.

Once they were in the city, Richard bade adieu to his companion, and,
after some little search, joined Dunn behind the market-house, the
latter having slipped in by an obscure alley. They soon knew from the
talk on the streets and the general air of bustle that the fete they had
come to witness was to begin on the water, so they repaired to the pier
above the city and waited for a chance to slip into the crowd. The
opportunity came through a boatman, who wanted two men to help row his
barge down to the appointed landing. They readily bargained to go, and
took their places in the boat, which was soon filled with a gay crowd of
ladies and their escorts, all in gala humour and attire. Richard,
sitting in front of Dunn, forgot all about his oar as he watched the
flutter of the brilliant throng, the glowing faces, the flashing smiles.
Never before had he seen so many magnificent costumes or such an array
of masculine and feminine beauty. But there was one face that seemed
strangely familiar--a face with dark eyes and tropical colouring of
olive and carmine. Where had he seen it? Nowhere, he felt sure, for a
girl like that was not to be forgotten. And yet his eyes went back to
her as to a friend. Who, then, was it she resembled? He was searching
his memory for a cue when suddenly something struck him sharply on the
arm, and Dunn said in a whisper:--

"Mind your oar and quit gaping that way; the whole company will be
noticing it directly, and coming over to examine you, and that'll be a
pretty kettle of fish!"

Richard picked up his oar quickly, ashamed of his defection; but for the
life of him he could not keep his eyes from the dark, vivacious face
across the boat, until her escort, a splendidly dressed officer of
Howe's staff, laughed and said to her:--

"I told you all hearts would be at your feet this day, and see, even the
boatman over there is worshipping from afar."

The half whisper reached Richard, and as the girl turned toward him
their eyes met. She laughed, and then threw up her head with a
disdainful toss, turning back to her companion. But the gesture had
cleared the doubt in Richard's mind. It was Mary Singleton over again,
and the vivid likeness was to her. This must be her Philadelphia cousin,
of whom he had often heard. She would know much of the plans of the
British, for her father was an intimate of Howe, and she herself said
to be betrothed to his chief of staff. This much Richard remembered
from Joscelyn's talk, and glad he was to recall the idle chatter
which at the time had bored him, since it kept him from more personal
conversation. It was of Joscelyn and himself that he had always wanted
to talk; but she had declared lightly that neither subject suited her,
for her own charms were too patent to need comment, and his were too few
to bear exposure, and had gone on to tell him of the Singletons, whom
she knew through Mary's letters. A plan that seemed like the gauzy web
of a fairy tale began to weave itself in Richard's mind as he bent to
his oar.

The river was full of boats of every description, from barges like the
one he was in, to giddy cockleshells that seemed a dare to Providence
as they careened and dipped and darted in and out among the larger
craft, like monster dragonflies rather than conveyances for human beings.
And each one, great and small, was packed from prow to stern with a
laughing, singing crowd in festal array. As the gay fleet approached
the appointed landing-place, it passed in line between two men-of-war
strung with flags and sun-kissed garlands; and then, amid the music of
hautboys, the braying of trumpets, and the booming of guns, the company
landed and proceeded to the grounds laid out for the tourney which was
to be the chief event of the day. It was a dazzling picture upon which
the afternoon sun looked down. In the centre stretched the tourney ring,
around which beautiful women, gorgeously gowned, sat on mimic thrones to
watch their gallants--tricked out like knights of old--contend for the
honours. The multi-hued throng of spectators filled out the picture
which had for its foreground the river with its decorated craft, and for
its background the deep green of the forest, with the city's clustered
roofs to one side. Thousands of flags and garlands and streamers of
ribbon tossed in the wind, while the music, like the invisible incense
of pleasure, drifted like the sunshine everywhere.

And the man for whom this was all planned sat on his dais, the
embodiment of soldierly bearing, of courtesy and gratification; for this
splendid demonstration told unequivocally the appreciation in which the
army held him, notwithstanding the implied disapprobation of the home
government in so promptly accepting his resignation, tendered, no doubt,
in an hour of chagrin and hurt pride at the strictures passed upon him
at home.

As soon as the barge was tied to its pier, Richard and Dunn mingled with
the throng, bent on seeing the sport. Richard longed to become a part of
the merry-making, but knew he must be content to be a spectator. He
looked about carefully for the black-eyed girl, and finally located her
through a remark overheard in the crowd:--

"Mistress Singleton occupies the place of honour on the right of the
master of ceremonies."

And when he had pushed his way farther on, he saw her. So he had been
right; this was Ellen Singleton, the _fiancee_ of Grant, one of the most
accomplished officers under Howe. All the afternoon he lingered in her
vicinity, but unable to advance in any way the mad scheme he had in
mind. When darkness fell, the company repaired to the hall where the
tourney victor crowned his queen, and the dancers took their places to
spend the time until supper was announced. More than four hundred guests
sat down to that table, over which twelve hundred waxen candles shed
their radiance. As Richard leaned into one of the low windows, absorbed
in the scene, he noticed that Grant was whispering earnestly to his fair
companion, and that she looked serious, even alarmed. Before he had
finished wondering at the cause, some one touched him on the arm, and he
turned to find Dunn at his elbow.

"Hist!" said the latter; "something is afoot. Couriers have come, and
General Howe spoke with them apart in the anteroom, and you should have
seen his face light up as he listened. It is, of course, something about
our troops. I heard La Fayette's name, but can get no particulars. Grant
is leaving the table; keep him in sight if possible while I try the
couriers."

Mistress Singleton also had risen, and was leaving the room on Grant's
arm. Quitting the window hastily, Richard was at the door when they came
out of the hall.

"I must speak with you," Grant said earnestly, in a low tone, to the
girl on his arm. The lawn was practically deserted, and the mimic
thrones erected for the tourney stood unoccupied in the blended light
of the moon and flambeaux. "The general's pavilion yonder is our best
place. There are some ladies and gentlemen on the far side, but at the
corner, there where the shadow falls, no one is sitting. Come."

He led her across the open space, and Richard saw them take their places
in the dim light, the girl's white dress marking the spot even from
where he stood. He followed slowly, not knowing what next to do, for he
was too new in the _role_ of scout to willingly play at eavesdropping,
so he stood irresolutely near the pavilion watching the quiet couple at
one side and the bevy of laughing revellers at the other. Evidently
Mistress Singleton was much agitated, for her hand rose in frequent
gesture, and her voice was a trifle shrill. Presently two young men from
the other party came down the pavilion steps, and one of them dropped
his long military cloak in the shadow at the end of the step, saying he
would find it again after the dance. Then they passed on. Behind them
two soldiers came at quickstep, and Richard heard these words:--

"Grant's division has the orders. Quick work of the whole crew of
rebels."

In the light of the flambeaux at the banquet-hall door Richard saw Dunn,
and hastened to join him. Putting together what they had gathered, they
made out that La Fayette had left Valley Forge with a body of troops,
intending to do whatever mischief he might, but that his movement had
been discovered, and Howe was planning to capture his whole force, and
Grant was to be detailed for the work. But what his course would be,
when he would set out, and what force would be with him were things yet
to learn. However, these were the very things La Fayette would want to
know. Dunn was waiting for Howe to leave the banquet-hall, so Richard
went back to his vigil near the pavilion. As he approached, Grant was
coming down the steps.

"I shall not be gone twenty minutes. You are quite safe, for Mistress
Hamlin is just behind you, and I'll send one of the officers to sit with
you. Wait for me, for it may be our last meeting."

Evidently the girl consented, for she kept her place while he sprang
down the steps and strode toward the lighted hall.

The wild plan Richard had cherished all day was to speak with this girl
on equal terms. It might cost him his life, but a very dare-devil spirit
of adventure took possession of him. Now was the hour of which he had
dimly dreamed. He did not stop to think, but stooping into the shadow,
he snatched up the long cloak lying there and wrapped it about him,
turning up the collar jauntily. Then with his heart thumping against his
ribs, but with a smile on his face, he came to the side of the steps
nearest the girl and went boldly up into the pavilion.




CHAPTER VII.

A DARE-DEVIL DEED.

     "Thou fool, to thrust thy head into a noose."
                         --ANON.


The girl was leaning back with her hand over her eyes, evidently in deep
thought.

"Ah, Captain," she said, as Richard paused, mistaking him for one of
Mistress Hamlin's party from across the pavilion, "you have come to bear
me company in Major Grant's absence?"

"With your permission," answered Richard, gallantly, "and if Providence
is kind to me, General Howe will find much to say to him."

"That is not likely, since the plans are all laid."

"Yes; they were not long in the forming," he ventured cautiously. "The
division marches to-night."

"So soon? I thought it was at ten in the morning?"

"No doubt, then, I was misinformed; I was not at the meeting with the
couriers. If Major Grant said ten in the morning, then it must be so,"
he hastily corrected himself; but he had learned one needed item.

"I hoped it had been hurried up that it might the sooner be over."

"This French marquis is inclined to give us trouble and himself airs."

"Indeed, yes; but General Howe will have his revenge when, after this
fight to-morrow, he sends the young upstart back to England in chains."

"That will he. It would be a glorious sight to see our gallant general
capture him with his own hands."

"Oh, Major Grant will attend to that," she replied loftily. "General
Howe will do his share when he receives the prisoners at Chestnut Hill."

So Chestnut Hill road was to be their route. Richard mentally recorded
it, while he said with incisive compliment, "Major Grant has the place
of honour."

The pleasure in her voice when she answered told that the arrow had hit
its mark. "Major Grant could have circumvented the rebels with half the
five thousand men assigned to him."

"He takes so many? 'Tis a large force for so skilful an officer, unless,
indeed, the enemy should be very strong."

"Oh, I think they reach not half that number."

With the hour of starting, the route and the force to be sent, Richard
now knew all he had hoped to learn. Grant might return any moment, so
that his peril was imminent; and yet the audacity of the adventure gave
it such spice that he lingered unwilling, as he was unable to frame an
excuse for withdrawing, filling in the pause with comments on the day's
festivities.

"Your company does not go with the attacking party?" she said presently,
as though it were something they both knew positively.

"No," he replied, catching the cue, but wondering which company was
supposedly his, and for whom had she taken him.

"Major Grant told me you would go as the general's escort to receive and
guard the prisoners."

"That sounds very tame after his own share in the work. Major Grant was
surely born under a lucky star, to be so favoured as he is by Mars and
the little blind god of love." There was a tone in his voice that she
could not fail to understand, and she laughed coyly in answer. He ought
to go, he knew; but still he lingered, and presently, urged on by the
spirit of recklessness that possessed him, he said: "You have relatives
in the south, Mistress Singleton?"

"Yes. How did you happen to know?" She turned toward him so abruptly
that he was for a moment disconcerted.

"Why, it is not a government secret," he said, laughing.

"But you are not from the south; you are English. How should you know,
and why should you think of it just at this time?"

She had scarcely looked at him before, being too busy watching the door
of the banquet-hall for Grant's return; but she had now lifted her eyes
directly to his face. Discovery seemed imminent. Cursing himself
inwardly, he hastily put up his hand to smother a pretended cough,
thankful that the light was behind him. But her scrutiny continued.

"Captain Barry--" she said, with that in her voice that told him she was
not quite satisfied.

"At your service--would that I could say forever," he said, putting all
the tenderness possible in his voice, and clicking his heels in a low
salute. Was everything over with him? Fool that he was to have tempted
fate by such an allusion.

She pushed her chair back as though to rise, but at this moment there
was a stir about the lighted doorway across the sward, and Grant came
out. If he reached the pavilion before Richard found an excuse to retire
his neck would pay the forfeit of his daring. He was thinking hard and
fast. The girl sank back with a sigh of pleasure, her doubt of her
companion momentarily forgotten in the joy of her lover's return.

"Your superior officer," she laughed softly and proudly.

"Yes," he replied, with that audacity which, even in danger, could not
be quelled; "my superior in the ways of wooing as well as in the ways of
war, since against him I have no chance to win a smile from your lips.
You will have much to say to him in these last moments--and Mistress
Hamlin is going," he added with a quick throb of gratitude as the party
across the pavilion left their seats.

"You need not leave us," she said with half-hearted politeness; but
already Grant was at the foot of the steps, and, with an audacious kiss
upon the hand she held out to him, Richard turned, and, with a beating
heart but no seeming haste, fell into the rear of the company across the
pavilion, descending the steps so close behind them as to seem to an
onlooker to be a member of the party. Every moment was precious to him,
and yet he loitered along the lighted sward as if eternity were his. As
he reached the corner of the building he heard Grant call:--

"Barry, Barry!"

But he pretended not to hear, and sauntered on into the shadow. There
his pace quickened. No one stopped him, for his military cloak
completely disguised him, and presently he found himself near the
landing. In an empty boat-house he cast aside his borrowed garment, and
soon found Dunn near the barge at the appointed place of meeting. The
old scout listened to his adventure with amazement not unmixed with
anger.

"You confounded dare-devil, you might have spoiled the whole plan," he
cried; yet acknowledging inwardly that he knew no one else who would
have dared to thrust his neck so far into a noose. He himself had not
been idle, and piecing together their bits of information, they made
out that La Fayette had crossed the Schuylkill and taken a post of
observation on a range of knobs known as Barren Hill, and that Howe's
plan was to capture him as a brilliant close to a campaign that had
been so much criticised. It became therefore instantly necessary to
warn the marquis of the plot. The details Richard had gotten from the
unsuspecting girl gave them all they needed to round out their plan; the
one thing now was to escape and carry the information to La Fayette.
This Richard found more difficult than he had imagined from their easy
entrance; for they had no friendly carter and market-maid beside them,
and despite the festivity, the pickets were keeping strict watch at the
outposts. Finally, by creeping on their hands for half a mile behind a
hedge, they managed to evade detection; but the sun was already high
over the eastern horizon before they gained the banks of the Schuylkill.
Keeping close to the stream and avoiding the open road, they finally
came upon a row-boat hidden among the reeds in a cove. This, without
ceremony, they appropriated, and were soon making more rapid progress on
their journey. For a long while nothing but the oars was heard; then
suddenly Richard laughed aloud.

"Suppose that young gallant had come back for his cloak while I was
talking with the girl?"

"You'd have had to content yourself with the angels--or the
imps--hereafter," growled Dunn.

But Richard laughed again. "Well, I'm glad he stayed away, for 'tis
pleasanter entertaining beautiful girls. It will be great sport to say
in my home letters that I, a private in the Continental army, was one of
Mistress Singleton's attendants at General Howe's _fete_! Mary will get
it all from Joscelyn and write it back to the lady, and she will then
know who the supposed Barry was. Who is Barry, anyhow?"

"One of the finest of the young officers that wears the red--a soldier
and a lady-killer, so they tell me." Long afterward Richard recalled the
words.

Presently Dunn, who had been looking intently ahead, said: "This is the
place; yonder are the two dead oaks by which I always locate Matson's
ford. We will tie up here and cut across country to the hills, trusting
to luck to find the way to La Fayette. Grant's guides, knowing their
road, give him the advantage, for I have never been sent to this part of
the country, so am ignorant of my bearings. It must be near to noon, and
the British column has long ago started."

"Will they guard this ford, do you think?"

"Hardly, for it is nearer to the English than to us. La Fayette will
retreat as he came, by the one higher up."

"Will he fight first?"

"He may be forced to; otherwise, no. It would be folly to deliberately
engage the superior force sent against him. If we only knew the direct
path!"

"If we only had some breakfast," sighed Richard.

They wanted to ask their way at the scattered cottages and of the men at
work in the fields, but they knew not friends from foes. Once they lay
for an hour under a plum thicket, not venturing to move, while two men,
who had met in the road, stopped their horses for a talk. The afternoon
was beginning to wane when they came to a secluded farmhouse where an
old woman gave them something to eat, and, thinking they were Tories,
warned them that a body of Americans was said to be camped three miles
to the southwest. They thanked her, but once out of her sight they
turned joyfully in the forbidden direction, and in less than an hour
were called to halt by two men with bayonets.

"Take us to your general, and take us quick," said Dunn.

La Fayette recognized Dunn, instantly, and received his news with much
emotion, for he had hoped to strike a telling blow on some of the
outposts, and maybe cut off a foraging party, whose members would be
valuable prisoners for exchange. Now there was nothing but to turn back.
But even as they were making ready for a retreat over the road by which
they had come, his scouts came flying through the lines with the news
that Grant was close upon them in the rear, having made a circuitous
march in order to get between them and their camp at Valley Forge. La
Fayette set his teeth as he said:--

"Then 'tis fight, though that means death to every brave man here."

But Dunn told of Matson's ford still unguarded, and the commander was
quick to seize the one chance left to save his men, and before midnight
the little band was safely over the river, with their faces toward
Valley Forge. There they were received with cheers by their comrades,
who, having heard some wild rumours brought by two countrymen from
beyond the Schuylkill, had feared the worst for them.

That night, long after Richard was sleeping the sleep of healthy but
exhausted youth, Dunn sat in the officers' quarters and told how, with
a military rain-coat over his workman's blouse, Richard Clevering had
played the gallant to the beauty of Philadelphia and the _fiancee_ of
Howe's chief of staff.




CHAPTER VIII.

A MAID'S DREAM AND THE DEVIL'S WOOING.

     "A pleasing land of drowsyhead it was:
     Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
     And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
     Forever flushing round a summer sky."
                         --THOMPSON.


It was June-time in the beautiful hill country along the Eno. Down the
long road that sloped to the bridge from the west two horses took their
leisurely way, while their riders talked or were silent at will. Below
them, in the curve of the river, lay the town in a green summer dream;
the roadside was lined with nodding blossom heads, and the thickets were
a-rustle now and then with the subdued whir of wings, for the song
season of their feathered tenants was done, and sparrow and wren and
bluebird were busy with family cares.

"Joscelyn, you are not listening to a word I am saying," complained Mary
Singleton, petulantly, after repeating a question a second time and
getting no answer.

"I beg your pardon, Mary; I believe you are right."

"Of what were you thinking so intently?"

"I was not thinking. It is too delicious this afternoon to do anything,
even think. I am just resting my mind."

"Well, I find you very dull under such a process."

"'A friend should bear a friend's infirmity,'" quoted Joscelyn.

"Dulness is not an infirmity; it is a crime."

"Then methinks the world must be full of criminals."

"And those who are so intentionally and voluntarily should be punished
like other wrong-doers."

Joscelyn laughed. "Well, pass sentence upon me, most wise judge, if you
think I was not born that way and that the sin is intentional. Am I to
hang for it, or will you be merciful and make it a prison offence?"

"Oh, you'll get the hanging soon enough if you go on wearing that red
bodice and stringing pictures of King George on your balcony!"

"So mother says. And hanging is not a becoming way to die; one has no
opportunity to say that 'prunes, prisms, and preserves' sentence that
leaves the mouth in such a charming pucker. Well, since my lips are to
be awry, I trust they will give me time to put on my new silver-buckled
shoes. It would be a comfort to know that at least my feet looked their
best."

"Joscelyn! You are perfectly horrid."

"You mean I would be without the 'prunes and prisms' expression."

Mary struck her horse and rode forward a few yards, but presently fell
back again beside her companion.

"What I asked you just now related to Eustace. Do you think--"

"I said I was not thinking."

"Well, begin at once. Is there any danger that Eustace will really try
to marry Betty Clevering?"

"Danger is a wrong word, Mary. If Eustace is ever so fortunate as to win
Betty, he should spend the rest of his life in thanksgiving. She is as
true as steel, and better tempered than either of us."

"I am not disparaging Betty, and I have often wished our parents were
not at outs, so that she and I might be better friends; we only meet at
your house or places of entertainment. But, Joscelyn, you know--you must
know what we all have hoped for you and Eustace."

Joscelyn turned her eyes fully and calmly upon her companion. "Yes, I
know. I should have been even duller than you pronounced me just now not
to see through your plan. Diplomacy is not your _forte_."

"You knew I--we all wanted you to marry--"

"Eustace? Yes; he and I have often laughed over it to each other. And
now that you have mentioned it, I want to tell you frankly that there is
not the faintest possibility of such a thing. As a friend Eustace is
charming; but as a husband--"

"Don't! Your mouth looks as if you had bitten a green persimmon."

"Well, I think with Eustace as a husband life would be all green
persimmons, without any prunes or prisms to break the monotony. It would
be quite as bad on him as on me; you would make us both utterly
miserable."

"I cannot believe it. I know Eustace looks at Betty with the utmost
admiration, and manages often to meet her; but 'tis much the same way
with every pretty girl,--he must be saying sweet things to each of them.
But in his heart I feel sure he prefers you above all the rest, only
your indifference holds him aloof. Here is a letter I had this morning,
in which he devotes a whole page to happy imaginings about a soldier's
welcome home when the war shall be over. He grows really poetic about
shy eyes and the joy of holding a white hand in his. Whom can he mean
but you?"

"Betty has shy eyes, and Janet has the whitest hands I know anywhere. As
you said, Eustace has a roving fancy."

Mary sighed. "I intended to read the letter to you, but here we are at
the bridge, and we will now be meeting so many people."

"Give it to me; I will read it at home," Joscelyn said, stretching out
her hand with sudden interest. "It would be preposterous to waste all
that sentiment on a mere sister; it takes an outsider to appreciate
touches like that. Oh, it shall be read with all the accessories of a
grand passion--sighs, smiles, blushes, and suchlike incense." She
laughed as she tucked the letter into her belt, but she did not say who
the reader would be, and Mary took much comfort in the thought that she
would appropriate the sentimental parts to herself. Whose eyes were
softer than Joscelyn's, whose hands whiter or sweeter to hold?

And so, each thinking her own thoughts, they crossed the wooden bridge
that spanned the river, the horses' hoofs making a rhythmic clatter on
the boards. In the street beyond they came upon Mistress Strudwick
carrying an uncovered basket heaped high with hanks of yarn. The road
was a slight ascent, and the corpulent dame was puffing sorely.

"Why, Mistress Strudwick, you with such a load as that? What does this
mean?" cried Joscelyn.

"It means that that little darky of mine has run away again, and that
there'll be one less limb on my peach tree to-night when he comes back."

"Will you not take my horse and ride?"

"It's been thirty years since I was in a saddle, and I'm not honing to
wear a shroud."

Joscelyn leaned down, and catching the handle, lifted the basket to the
pommel of her saddle. "I will not see you make yourself ill in this way.
Were there no other servants to spare you this exertion? You are all out
of breath."

A curious light came into the old lady's eyes as she saw the girl
steady the basket in front of her; but she checked the words that had
sprung to her lips and trudged slowly along, the riders holding back
their horses to keep beside her.

"What have you two been plotting together this afternoon?" she asked,
looking from one to the other with the pleasure age often finds in
contemplating youth and beauty.

"Have we the appearance of dark conspirators?" laughed Joscelyn.

"Nay, you both look sweet and innocent enough; but somehow I'm always
giving that Bible verse a twist and reading it: 'Where two or three
Tories are gathered together, there is the devil in their midst.'"

"You should not twist your Scripture, Mistress Strudwick."

"Mayhap not, but sometimes it makes an uncommon good hit."

"Well, you were wrong to-day. Two Loyalists have been congregated
together; but Cupid, rather than the devil, has been our
co-conspirator."

"So! It was sweethearts you were discussing? Tell me now, was it your
match or Mary's you were arranging? There is nothing pleases me more
than a wedding."

"I thought you took no interest in matters concerning King George's
subjects."

"King George has naught to do with the wooing of our maids; and love is
love, whether it be Redcoat or Continental," replied the old matchmaker.

Joscelyn laughed. "I verily believe you'd like to know the courtship of
Satan himself, provided he had one."

"Of course he had, my dear, and a most engaging lover he made, I'll be
bound, seeing he is so apt a beguiler in other things. Oh, yes,
everybody knows that Satan is a married man."

"Where got he his wife?"

The old lady threw up her hands with quizzical scouting: "'Tis not set
down in the books, but it would have been just like some soft-hearted
creature to creep after him when he was exiled from heaven. And she is
not the only woman who has followed a man to perdition, either,--more's
the pity!"

"You are seeing things awry to-day, Mistress Strudwick."

"Mayhap, mayhap," puffed the old lady. "I haven't much of a prophet's
eye, but I see things of to-day plain enough, and I know that you are a
pair of uncommon pretty girls, and are like to have many a beau on your
string; but when marrying time comes, take an old woman's advice and
choose a man who is hale and hearty, for as sure as you are born, love
flies out of the heart when indigestion enters the stomach."

"Truly, Mistress Strudwick, you are better than 'Poor Richard's
Almanac,'" laughed Joscelyn.

"Oh, my dear, I've seen it tried. Courtship is the finest thing in the
world, but after the wedding love is largely a question of good cooking;
and although you two are rank Tories, and so deserve any punishment the
fates might send you, still I'd be glad, because of your comely looks,
to see you escape your deserts. But here we are at my gate. I wonder
what the town will say, Joscelyn, when they hear that you, Tory that you
call yourself, brought a basket of wool for Continental socks from
Amanda Bryce's to my door."

The girl's face flamed with a sudden heat. Then she said with that
beautiful courtesy that older folks found so charming:--

"It was not for the Continentals, but for my good neighbour that I
brought the basket. I am not minded to see her kill herself in so bad a
cause; rather do I want her to live and repent of her mistakes, that she
herself may not be the first to solve that riddle of the devil's
wooing." And kissing their hands jauntily to the old woman, the two
girls rode away into the purple twilight.

"Bless her bonny face and quick tongue!" the old woman cried, waving her
hand after them.

That night Mary cried herself to sleep over her shattered hopes, and in
the privacy of a white-curtained room, Joscelyn read aloud the letter to
her whom Eustace had in mind when he thought of the welcome of shy eyes
and clinging white hands. And Betty fell asleep with the letter under
her cheek, and all the soft June night was filled with flitting cadences
and starry dreams.




CHAPTER IX.

ON MONMOUTH PLAIN.

     "Wut's words to them whose faith and truth
       On war's red techstone rang true metal;
     Who ventured life and love and youth
       For the great prize o' death in battle?"
                         --LOWELL.


And it was June-time, too, in the far-off New Jersey country across
which an army, glittering with scarlet and steel, took its way. Slowly
it moved; for with it went a wagon-train conveying many of the refugees
from the evacuated city of Philadelphia, people who could not crowd into
the transports that went by sea, but who feared to meet the incoming
Americans and so sought safety in New York. Children and delicately
reared women slept in army tents, or sat in their coaches all day,
listening to the crunching of the wheels in the sand and looking back
through the slowly increasing distance to the horizon, behind which lay
the deserted city where pleasure had held high carnival during the
months just passed. And with them they carried everything that could
be packed into coach or hidden in wagon; and though they went with the
semblance of victory and almost of pleasure-seekers, it was a sad
procession; for who could say when or upon what terms they might ever
see their old homes again? Often Clinton looked back impatiently at the
crawling train, for he had not liked to be so hampered, and yet had been
quite as unwilling to abandon these people to the vengeance they
imagined awaited them.

Almost before they had lost sight of the spires of the city, Arnold,
with braying bugles, marched his column down the echoing streets, and
set up the standard of the republic where late the British lion had
wooed the wind.

For nearly a week that long train crept on its way, held back by its own
cumbersome weight and the varying roughness of the route. And ever on
its flank hung the lean but resolute army of the Continentals, waiting
and longing for a chance to strike. All the suffering of Valley Forge
was to be avenged. Every wrong they had sustained was whispering at
their ears and tugging at their memories; every dead comrade seemed
calling out to them for retribution through the sunshine or the midnight
silence. And it should be theirs; the utmost atonement that arms,
nerved with patriotic and personal vengeance, could achieve should be
claimed--if only the hour would come. But still that long train moved
onward, and there came no word to fight.

Then, from out the blue sky-reaches of that June-time dawned Monmouth
day.

"We are to fight at last!"

And every man in that thin, dishevelled line felt his heart throb with
the exultation of action long desired and long delayed. Every man but
one, and he the one on whom rested the responsibility of the attack.

"Anybody but Lee!" Dunn had said with a groan, when he heard who was to
lead the attacking column. And Richard, having gone with him to report
some scouting work to the council of officers, and recalling Lee's
fierce opposition to any plan for battle, groaned too.

"His envy of General Washington and his imprisonment among the British
have made him half Tory. He is the senior officer, it is true,--but if
he had only persisted in his first refusal to lead the division and left
it to La Fayette!"

But in Richard's thoughts there was no time for doubt when, in the
brilliant light of the next morning, he swept with his column over the
brow of the low hill and on down the narrow valley toward the scarlet
line that marked Clinton's post. It was his first real battle; for
compared with this the engagements under Sumter had been but skirmishes,
and the frenzy of the fight was upon him. "For home and Joscelyn!" had
been the war-cry he had set himself, thinking to carry into the hottest
of every fray the memory-presence of the girl whom he loved. But when
the test came she was forgotten, and only the menace ahead, the death he
was rushing to meet, was remembered. Every musket along that steadfast
scarlet line seemed levelled at him alone, and into his heart there
flashed a momentary wish to turn and seek shelter in flight from the
leaping fire of the deadly muzzles. But in the quick onset, the shouts,
the growl of the guns, and the challenging call of the bugles, this fear
was conquered; and in its place a wild, unreasoning delirium seized upon
him, and the one thought of which he was conscious was to kill, kill,
kill!

To those blue-clad men, burning with the memory of their sufferings
and their wrongs, it seemed as if nothing could stand before them; but
British regulars were trained to meet such an advance, and the red line
was as a wall of adamant. Between the attack and the repulse there
seemed to Richard scarcely breathing-time; for they were repulsed, and,
fighting still, were driven back through that narrow defile, expecting
every moment that Lee would send them succour so that they might again
take up the offensive. But instead of reenforcements, there came that
strange order to retreat. Retreat? Had there not been some mistake? The
officers looked at each other incredulously, suspiciously, half-inclined
to disobey; for the battle was hardly yet begun, and this first check
was not a rout. Then full of rage and doubt they repeated to their
subordinates the orders of the couriers, and the regiment fell back
sullenly, clashing against other regiments who had not struck a blow,
but to whom had also come that mysterious order to fall back. What was
the matter, what was this paralyzing hand that had been laid upon them!
No one could tell; but men retreated looking longingly over their
shoulders at the enemy. Confusion grew almost into panic as those still
further away saw the retiring columns pursued by the Redcoats, and knew
not the cause nor yet what dire disaster had befallen.

Then suddenly upon the field there came the Achilles of the cause, and
the rout was turned.

"The general--thank God!" the officers sobbed; and the men cheered as
those who are drowning cheer a saving sail.

Richard was too far off to hear the fierce protest and rebuke heaped
upon Lee, but in a few minutes an aide galloped up to his regiment and
cried out to Wayne:--

"General Washington says you and Ramsey are to hold the enemy in check
here upon this hillside until he can re-form the rear."

And the blue line swung about and steadied, and met the English face
to face; and Richard Clevering's battle-cry rang full and clear amid
the yells that well-nigh drowned the roar of the musketry. About that
sun-scorched knoll there fell the fiercest part of the fray. The palsy
of hesitation was gone, and desperation had made the men invincible.
Again and again that red wave from the open space before surged against
them, broke and recoiled and gathered and came again like some strong
billow of the ocean that rolls itself against a headland--fierce, blind,
futile.

Then came the climax of the splendid tragedy. Upon Wayne's right was a
Continental battery from which a great gun sent its deadly challenge to
the foe. Again and again its whirring missives tore great gaps in the
red ranks, until Clinton gave orders to silence it at any cost.

Careless of danger, unconscious of his impending doom, the gunner loaded
his piece anew, and lifted the rammer to send the charge home. Behind
him stood his wife, who had left the safety of the wagons to bring him
water from a wayside ravine, for the sky was like copper and the dust
blew in suffocating gusts. She saw what he did not, the shifting of the
enemy's gun in the plain below, the turning of its deadly muzzle full
upon the knoll where they stood. But there was no time for so much as a
warning cry; for instantly the flame leaped out, the ground shook with a
strong reverberation, and a groan went up from the Continentals as they
saw the dust fly from the knoll and their own brave gunner throw up his
arms, swing sidewise, and then fall dead. For one awful moment no one
moved; then two men from the line sprang forward to take his place, but
some one was before them--some one with the face of an avenging Nemesis.
There was the flutter of a skirt, a woman's long black hair streamed
backward on the wind, and Moll Pitcher stood in her husband's place
like an aroused lioness of the jungle. Fury gave her the strength of a
Boadicea, and the rammer, still warm from the dead man's grasp, went
home with a single thrust; the flame flashed over the pan, and with a
roar that shook the heavens, the big gun sent back into the red ranks
the death it had witnessed. When the smoke had lifted, the breathless
men saw the woman, one hand still upon the great black gun, stoop down
and kiss the dead husband she had avenged; and all down the Continental
line eyes were wet and throats were cracked and dry with cheering.

All the rest of that fateful day, with the eyes of her dead love
watching her staringly, Moll Pitcher held her place beside the gun,
solacing her breaking heart with its flash and roar, holding back her
woman's briny tears until the silent vigils of the night, when her
mission was accomplished.

And in the meantime, in the rear, the voice of a single man, with its
trumpet tones of inspiration, was bringing order out of chaos. Regiments
were re-formed, scattered companies gathered, batteries turned, and
defeat robbed of its surety. Men, who a moment before had been
panic-stricken with the confused marching and counter-marching of the
day, looked into the face of the commander and felt their hearts beat
with an answering calm. Confidence was restored, and the routed corps
were turned into attacking columns. And so when that red wave broke for
the last time against Wayne's and Ramsey's divisions on the hillside,
reenforcements were close at hand.

But they came too late for some of the brave men who had saved liberty
and honour that day, for the red wave, receding, took as its flotsam all
the men in buff and blue who, in their enthusiasm and temerity, had
advanced too far beyond the ranks.

And among these prisoners went he whose battle-cry had been, "For home
and Joscelyn!"

[Illustration: "RICHARD WAS DRAGGED ALONG WITH THE BRITISH UNTIL THEIR
POSITION WAS REGAINED."]




CHAPTER X.

IN CLINTON'S TENTS.

     "Give me liberty or give me death."
                         --PATRICK HENRY.


Hatless, furious, half-blind from dust and the trickling of the blood
from the wound in the head that had dazed and rendered him powerless
to escape back to his own ranks after meeting the enemy, Richard was
dragged along with the British until their position was regained, and
thence despatched to the rear, where the other prisoners were held under
guard. There he lay on the ground for an hour, listening and longing
feverishly for the sound of Washington's assaulting guns; but the
twilight deepened into starlit dusk, and no rescue came. Then finally he
knew by the preparations about him that no further attack was expected,
but that a retreat was intended. Clinton dared not await the return of
daylight and the fight it would bring; and so in the still hours of the
night, while the Continentals slept the sleep of utter exhaustion after
the marches and counter-marches and combats of that sultry day, he drew
his force away, leaving his dead unburied upon the field, and his sorely
wounded in the deserted camp. To the very last moment, Richard had
listened for an attack, hoping that Washington had waited to plan a
surprise; but over in the direction of the American camp all was silent.
During the last half of that awful night Richard marched with the squad
of prisoners along the road that led to the sea. The wound in his head,
although but slight, made him dizzy with its throbbing, and his heart
called out fiercely for freedom and Joscelyn. He had asked not to be put
into the wagon with the wounded, protesting he was more able to walk
than some others; but in reality he was meditating an escape, and knew
it would be more easily accomplished from the ranks than from a guarded
wagon. Eagerly he watched for a chance. The bonds that at first held the
prisoners together had been removed to expedite the retreat,--there was
no time that night to spare for any kind of lagging,--so that he was
free to go alone if the opportunity came. Always his gaze was ahead,
every shadow across the road held a possibility, every dark hollow was
entered with hope. But the guard, as though divining his intention,
closed in compactly at these points and made egress impossible; and so
he plodded on until, with the returning daylight, they found him reeling
like a drunken man with fatigue and loss of blood, and, putting him into
an ambulance, carried him on toward Sandy Hook. From utter weariness and
hopelessness he fell asleep in the jolting vehicle, and only waked at
the prod of a bayonet to find the sun well past the zenith.

"Get up with you and let somebody take your place while you foot it a
bit," a rough voice said; and Richard sprang from the vehicle and helped
little Billy Bryce, of his own town, into his place, exclaiming
vehemently against his own selfish slumbering.

"Nay, nay," said the lad, "I am not wounded, more's the shame to me for
being taken! Besides, I have had a long rest under the wagon here, for
we halted before noon. I begged the guard not to waken you, but I put
your rations aside. Here--you must be near to starvation."

Richard caught eagerly at the pork and ship biscuit which the lad held
out; it seemed ages since he had tasted food.

"And you'll be better with your head washed," the guard said, not
unkindly, pointing to a little stream that trickled by the roadside; and
Richard was quick to obey.

In a little while they were in motion again, this time more leisurely,
and once more thoughts of escape filled Richard with a restless energy.
The country was more broken here; to hide would be easier, and he waited
impatiently for the coming of the dark, determined at all hazards to
make the attempt--another sunset might put him behind prison bars. But
he was doomed to disappointment, for they were not to march all night,
but with the early stars pitched their tents upon a flat stretch of
country that opened to the east.

Worn out by the long marches and the cloying sand through which they had
toiled, the army soon slept profoundly. Tied together for greater
security, the prisoners lay like so many sardines in their tent, before
which trod a sentinel. At first there was much whispering among them as
to their probable fate, and not a few solemn farewells to home and dear
ones, with now and then a happy reminiscence such as often comes with
the acme of irony to doomed men. One recalled his courting days, another
the swimming pool under the willows; and yet another his baby's laugh.
And set lips relaxed into smiling until suddenly the memory stabbed with
a new pain.

"I shall never see my mother any more, for I know I shall die in that
dreadful prison; but you'll be good to me, won't you, Richard?" groaned
little Billy Bryce, who lay next to Richard with his right hand tied to
the latter's left.

And Richard comforted him as best he could, and by and by the lad slept
with the others.

"I hope they will always let me stay with you," had been his last sleepy
whisper. For among the bigger boys Richard had been his hero and
protector, and no service was ever too great for him to undertake for
his idol. And Richard had petted and yet imposed upon him in the way
peculiar to all boys of a larger growth, when a small one asks nothing
better than to obey. It was really to be with Richard as much as to
share in the war that he had stolen away from his mother and followed
the Hillsboro' men to the field.

At last the tent was quiet save for the deep breathing of the tired men,
but Richard could not close his eyes; he meant to get away. After the
watch was changed toward midnight was the time he had set as the most
favourable for his plan. All being then found secure, the new guard
would be over-sure--and he, like the rest, was worn out with the trials
of the past two days. Certainly that was the best time; a confident,
tired sentinel ought not to be hard to elude. And he lay still, softly
gnawing the rope that bound him to Billy. As he was at the end of the
line, his right arm was free, and so his fingers aided his teeth to pick
the threads apart. Thus an hour went by, and then the lad beside him
stirred.

"What are you doing, Richard?" he whispered; then added quickly, as his
arm felt the loosened cord: "Why, you have bitten the rope in two. You
are going to escape? Take me with you, in mercy's name, Richard; do not
leave me to die in the prison yonder! Richard, let me go, too."

"H--sh!" whispered Richard, sternly, for the boy's excitement was like
to arouse the whole body of prisoners, perchance even alarm the guard
outside. "Be still, Billy! I cannot take you--two could never pass the
guard. I am sorry; I--I--wish you had not waked."

But the lad, whose arm was now free because of the final severance of
the cord, caught his hand as with a drowning grip: "You must take
me--you must!"

"I cannot."

"Oh, I will not go on to rot in that vile prison; I am so young, and my
mother has nobody but me! Don't you know how I have always loved you,
Richard? You never asked me to do anything that I was not ready to try
it. I'd never leave you here if I were going to freedom--never!"

To take him lessened his chances more than half, and Heaven knew how
slender they were already; but the struggle in Richard's mind lasted
only a moment. Then he leaned over the boy's body and began carefully
and quietly to untie the cord that bound him to the next sleeper,
stopping now and then when the man made any movement. The lad, guessing
his consent by his action, spoke no word, but lifted his head and kissed
him on the cheek; and Richard felt the tears that coursed down the
smooth face.

"You confounded young idiot!" he whispered, but his voice was very
tender, and presently, when the knot was loosed, he drew the lad close
to him and told his plan.

"God grant we may both of us get safely away; but if only one of us
succeeds, and that should be I, then will I carry your love to your
mother."

"And if I escape, I shall do the like for you."

"Ay, laddie, and more; for you shall say to Joscelyn Cheshire that even
behind prison bars I am her lover; and if death comes, her face, or the
blessed memory of it, will outshine those of the angels of Paradise."

"You love her so, then?"

"As a man loves sunshine and warmth and beauty and life."

"And she loves you?"

"No, lad, she loves me not."

And the boy left the silence that followed unbroken, knowing the other
wished it so.

A while later they heard the call of the watch farther down the beat,
and presently the sound of steps outside and the welcome "All's well!"
of the relieved sentry. Turning upon their backs with the ravelled ends
of the cords hidden close between them, they seemed asleep like their
comrades when the watchman cast the light of his lantern through the
flapping canvas door.

"Too d--n tired to give any trouble," the out-going sentinel said as he
glanced along the line. "You will have an easy time to-night." Then he
went away, and the two watchers in the tent waited for what seemed an
eternity. Finally Richard lifted the edge of the tent and looked out.
The sentinel leaned against a small tree in front of the tent, his gun
held slack in his fingers. He was very tired, even to drowsiness.

"Now," Richard whispered, and crawled stealthily from under the rear of
the tent, followed by Billy. Keeping in the shadow of the tents, they
moved on hands and knees across the ground toward a clump of bushes that
promised a hiding-place for reconnoitring. Only twenty yards the stretch
was, but to those two crawling figures it seemed a mile. Every weed that
swayed against its fellow had in it the sound of a rushing wind, and
every twig that broke under hands or knees seemed like the crack of a
rifle. To their overwrought senses each breath the other drew was as the
sough of a tempest, and they scarcely understood how the sentry could
not hear. So slowly they had to move that it took fully twenty minutes
to cover those few yards. Then, while Billy lay still in the shadow,
Richard raised himself stealthily and looked about. They could have
happened upon no worse place for their attempt. It was near the end of a
short beat up and down which two sentinels trod, passing each other near
this end, so that only a few moments intervened when one or the other
did not command the whole beat with his eye and gun. Behind and on
either side stretched the tents of the sleeping army, set thick with
picket posts and guards. On the other side of the narrow road was a rock
large enough to conceal a man, and beyond this was a field of high
grass, to gain which meant freedom. Not a detail of the starlit scene
escaped Richard. To go backward or to the right or left was to fall into
repeated dangers; this was the way since they were here. If only the
sentries passed each other in the middle of the beat, that there might
be more time when this crossing in front of them would be a little
longer unguarded!

He stood irresolute, trying to think accurately; but a noise behind left
him no time for further hesitation. Something was amiss yonder in the
rear,--perhaps their flight had been discovered. Billy, too, had heard,
and rising, stood close behind; softly he put out his hand and drew the
lad before him. One agile spring across the road, a moment's hiding in
the shadow of the rock yonder, then the tall grass and liberty; but
between the passing of the sentinels was time for only one man to cross
to safety--only one man could hide yonder behind that rock! The little
lad saw it, and his lips twitched.

"Good-by," he whispered, trying to move back.

But Richard held him fast. In his hands was not the semblance of a
tremor, but his face was ashen even in the dim light.

"Remember Joscelyn," he breathed, rather than spoke; then, as the guard
passed, he gave the lad a push. "Go."

With a stealthy, gliding step Billy was across the road and behind the
rock as Richard dropped to the ground and the guard turned round.
Evidently the man's trained ear had detected some sound, for he paused
and brought his gun to his shoulder. Richard's eyes were on the rock
over the road; if Billy moved now, they were both lost; but all was
still, and the guard once more took up his march. When he was gone a few
paces Richard saw a dark object crawl from the shadow of the rock, and a
moment later the tall grass shook as if a gentle zephyr had smitten it
in just one favoured spot; then all was silent and moveless save the
crickets and the night birds flapping past in the gloom.

Billy had left the way clear, and when the next sentinel should be at
the right place Richard meant to follow, and so he drew a deep breath
and waited. But fortune was against him, for before the man was quite
opposite to him another guard came out into the road from the camp
behind and accosted him. As they approached, Richard heard in part what
they said:--

"--couriers just arrived--enemy moving on the Brunswick road, supposed
intention to out-flank us. All outside pickets are being doubled to
prevent desertion, and I am sent to mount guard here at the end of your
beat. Two Hessians were caught in the act of deserting just now."

"I heard some kind of commotion."

"Yes; 'twill go pretty hard with them to-morrow. When we first took them
we thought they were a couple of those prisoners who were trying to
escape, and the air fairly smelt of the brimstone we were ready to give
them. The light came just in time to save them. Those Hessians are a
d--d set of hirelings."

He stooped to adjust his shoe-latchet, and when the regular guard passed
on to the end of his beat Richard dropped down quickly, but with an
inward groan, for with that man stationed there at the end of the track
escape was impossible. There had been but one chance, just one, and he
had given that away. He would not regret it, but--he should never see
Joscelyn again. It was all he could do to keep back the fierce cry that
gathered in his throat. For a long time he crouched there, hoping in the
face of despair; but the dawn was coming--if he was found thus, his
punishment would be made the greater. There was no use in courting
torture. And so, when a passing cloud obscured the stars, he crawled
back across the clearing, and crept at last under the edge of the tent.

"Here, Peter," he whispered in the ear of the next man, "Billy has
escaped. I failed; but 'tis no use to tempt the devil to double my
stripes. Wake up and tie this cord about my left arm that it may seem as
if he gnawed it himself until it was loose."

And in the morning the guard found him asleep with a bit of ravelled
rope about his arm. Search and inquiry failed to reveal anything of
Billy's escape or his whereabouts, and the incident, so far as the
prisoners were concerned, ended in the volley of oaths and threats
delivered to them second-hand by the guards from the officer of the
day. They were not pleasant words to hear; but Richard only drew a deep
breath, for he had feared Billy would linger waiting for him and so be
taken.




CHAPTER XI.

FROM CAMP TO PRISON.

     "My day is closed! the gloom of night is come!
     A hopeless darkness settles o'er my fate."
                         --JOANNA BAILLIE.


Many times during the day's march did Richard turn his eyes wistfully
toward the blue hills to the south, and wonder beyond which of them
Billy was speeding to rejoin his command. The thought had in it such an
element of bitterness that finally he thrust it from him lest it wax
into selfish envy.

Finally they reached their goal, and the vast body of men and animals
halted beside the bay whose waters sparkled under the blue and gold
tones of the summer sky. In the offing lay the English fleet, which by
the happiest chance for Clinton had arrived inside the Hook in time to
convey his exhausted army to New York.

The quick, salt wind whipping Richard in the face, gave him a sense of
vigour and reserve strength, which was speedily nipped by a chilling
realization of his hopeless captivity. Mechanically he ate and drank
when the guard bade him; for the prison bars were now inevitable, and he
would lie rusting his heart and manhood out while the fight went by
outside. In an agony of despair he cursed the impetuous daring that had
led him so far in advance of his column as to deliver him into the hands
of the enemy. And he cursed both the moonlight that had flooded the road
the first night of their march, and the guard whose lynx eyes seemed
ever upon him; and finally he cursed himself more sorely than aught
else, because he had not followed Billy at all hazards and let a bullet
end the problem forever.

But life is sweet to youth, and hope finds ever a place in the heart
that is full of an unsatisfied love; and so by the time he had finished
his spare meal he was ready to look at the future with more calmness.
Outside in the free world Joscelyn would wait for him, and prison doors
must sometimes yawn. The soldier who brought him his supper stayed for a
few minutes to talk. He had a frank, friendly face that Richard liked.

"So we gave your sly general the slip after all, and held to our march
as we at first intended."

"Did Clinton originally and intentionally propose to make a night march
at almost double-quick over such roads as we have traversed? D--d queer
military tactics."

The fellow grinned. "Oh, a little change of programme mattered not, so
we lost not a single wagon of our train. See, they are yonder, as safe
as a ship in port."

"Mayhap; but you saved your skins whole by stealing away from Monmouth
like a thief in the night, and, leaving the foe you pretended to
despise, camped on the battle-ground."

"Oh, we begrudge not you fellows a camping ground--we are not that
greedy."

"No; you wanted them, in fact, to have all the ground in the vicinity,
even if you had to be so unselfish as to march all night to leave it to
them."

"Come, your tongue's too sharp," the fellow said irritably.

"Sharper than your general's wits, if he took that march out of anything
but necessity. He has saved his baggage train, but, mark you, he has
lost his cause. Our victory at Monmouth will hearten up the doubtful and
send them flocking to our camp."

The man laughed satirically at the word "victory," and then said:--

"Well, at all events, your part of the flocking is done for good. 'Tis
not likely you'll see the outside of a prison for more months than you
are years old--if by any chance your general hangs on that long, which
is not likely."

Richard shivered at mention of a prison, but shrugged his shoulders with
outward calm. "A man must bear the fortunes of war, if he be a true
soldier. Prison life is harder than fighting, but some must carry the
heavy end of the burden, and 'tis not for me to bemoan if it falls to
me. Know you in which of your pest holes we are like to be confined?"

The soldier looked into the clear, steady eyes for a moment before
replying: "You're a rum chap to take your medicine without a whine. I
like your sort, and I hope, when this cursed war is done, you'll be
found alive; but it isn't likely, for methinks you are to go to the old
Sugar House in New York. 'Tis as full as an ant-hill now, but they'll
shove the poor devils a bit closer together and squeeze you in. You'll
have plenty of time, but not much room, to meditate on your evil doings
against King George. Still, I hope you'll live through it."

He picked up the empty can out of which the prisoner had been drinking,
and moved on. Richard, who had been sitting upright during the
conversation, sank back upon the ground and pulled his cap over
his eyes. The old Sugar House! Too well he knew of the misery and
degradation in store for those who crossed its threshold. No escapes
were ever effected, and the hope of exchange, unless one were an
officer, was too slim to dwell upon; Washington's captures went for
higher game than privates and raw recruits. But two things could open
these relentless gates to him--death or the end of the struggle; and
the latter seemed far enough away.

And Joscelyn! would she care that he suffered and died by inches? Would
she think of him regretfully, tenderly, when all was done? It was hard
to love a girl of whose very sympathy one was not sure; and yet he knew
he had rather have her mockery than another woman's caresses.

For an hour he lay upon the ground, his heart convulsed with grief, but
his body so rigidly quiet that his companions thought he slept. They
could not tell that under his cap his eyes were staring wide, seeing,
not the cap above, but a girl's face framed in soft meshes of hair and
lit by eyes as gray-blue as the sea when the tides are quiescent and the
winds are fast asleep. By and by the intense heat of the evening set the
wound in his head to throbbing, and rousing up, he begged the corporal
of the guard for a little water and a bandage. The man--the same with
whom he had talked before--brought these to him after a little delay,
and found for him in his own kit a bit of healing salve, which his
English mother had given him at parting.

"She said 'twould cure bad blood, and methinks yours is bad enough to
put it to the test," he said, laughing, and yet with a certain rough
kindliness.

"Well, since it hath not killed you, methinks I am safe," Richard
laughed back gratefully, while one of his comrades dressed the wound,
which gave promise of speedy healing.

"What is your name?" he asked of the corporal.

"James Colborn, of the King's Artillery."

"Well, 'tis a pity you are in such bad employ, for you have an uncommon
good heart and a face that matches it. When General Washington hath
licked the boots off you fellows, come down south and pay me a visit. My
mother'll be so grateful for every kind word you have spoken to me, that
she'll feed you on good cookery until you are as fat as a Michaelmas
goose."

"I'll come," the other laughed, "but I'll wear my boots; it will be you
fellows who will go barefooted from a licking."

"Don't wager your birthright on that; you'd lose even the mess of
pottage."

Under the relief the dressing of his wound afforded, Richard fell
asleep, and his dreams must have been comforting, for on his face was
a smile of happiness, and the words he murmured made the corporal of
the guard laugh to himself as he trod to and fro before the open tent.

"Have you a favourite dog named Joscelyn?" he asked teasingly, when he
roused Richard for supper.

"No."

"A horse, then?"

Richard looked at him questioningly, half-inclined to be angry.

"You have been talking in your sleep."

"Joscelyn is not a dog nor a horse; she is my sweetheart."

"Mine's named Margie."

There was a moment of silence during which the two young fellows felt
almost akin with friendly sympathy. They longed to shake hands and tell
each other their love tales.

"Margie's eyes are black," said Colborn softly.

"Joscelyn has sea-blue eyes."

"I like black ones better."

"I'd love Joscelyn's eyes, were they as vari-coloured as Joseph's coat."

"Well said." The speaker thrust his hand into his shirt and drew out a
metal case which contained a picture of a buxom English girl. "It took a
whole month's pay to have that made, but I wasn't coming to America
without bringing a likeness of her to look at. When I am promoted to a
captaincy I shall have it set in gold and brilliants. She is counting
the months until I go back to her," he continued with a burst of
confidence, while his honest face flamed with a boyish blush. "For every
week I am away, she drops a pebble into a china jar I gave her, that I
may count the kisses she shall owe me when we meet. Never you doubt but
I shall cheat in the count, though I have to carry back a pocketful of
American pebbles to help me out!" Then, by way of prelude to that coming
happiness, he kissed the picture with eager frankness before returning
it to the case, saying there were already twelve pebbles in the jar.

Many times during the few days when the army lay encamped upon the sandy
reaches of the Hook did Richard have occasion to be grateful to the
young corporal for little acts of kindness, and in return he told him
something of his own life, so that a curious friendship was formed
between the two; and when the embarkation finally came, Richard was
glad to find that the same guard and officers would have the prisoners
in charge until the dreaded doors of the jail should close upon them.

As they marched clankily down the streets of New York, he believed that
now he knew how condemned men felt as they approached the gallows, only
the gallows seemed better than those frowning walls yonder, at whose
narrow windows the miserable inmates stood in relays that each might
draw a few good breaths during the long and suffocating day. The old
Sugar House! He set his teeth hard when at last they stood before its
doors, and the first squad of prisoners passed out of sight within its
gloomy portals. He was telling the sunshine and the clouds good-by
before his turn to enter should come, when, to his surprise, the doors
swung to, and the squad in which he marched was wheeled down another
street. After a few minutes he caught Colborn's eye, and read therein
tidings of some new disaster. Whither were they carrying him and his
unfortunate companions! No faintest hint of their destination came to
him, until, the city being crossed, they halted again, this time beside
the water's edge, far to the east. As some delay was evident, the
corporal bade the prisoners sit down upon the shore; and while his men
formed in the rear to watch, he himself passed slowly up and down the
water's edge, stopping at last beside Richard, who sat at the end of
the line of captives as much to himself as possible, for his heart was
heavy with a new forboding.

"In ten minutes," said the corporal, speaking quickly and in an
undertone, "I shall have parted with you, perhaps forever. I know you
for a brave man and a generous one, and I am sorry for your fate. The
plan has been changed. The Sugar House would not hold all of you; so,
for lack of other accommodations, this squad of prisoners is ordered
to--"

"Where?"

"--to the prison-ships lying across the bay."

Richard staggered up. "The hells, the floating hells!"

"Yes, that is what they are sometimes called."

"My God!" For a moment the fortitude that had sustained him during the
last ten days gave way, and he sank down again, covering his face with
his hands in a dry-eyed anguish.

"I wish from my soul that I might have helped you, but this is all I can
do," the corporal said. "Pick them up as a gift from a brother in arms."
He surreptitiously dropped some coins upon the sand, and Richard, more
because of the friendliness of the gift than because he thought of their
value, ran his fingers through the sand and picked them up, shoving them
into a torn place in the lining of his boot.

"You have been good to me--" he began slowly, and with the look of a man
who is talking unconsciously; but with an impatient shrug the other had
moved away. When he had walked the length of the line and stood looking
over the water a minute, he came again to Richard's side, apparently
with no special object in view. His voice was very low as he said:--

"True soldiers respect each other, no matter what the colour of their
uniforms. I guessed--but I want to know for certain--did you let the
little lad escape the other night rather than go by yourself and leave
him?"

Richard nodded. Colborn took off his hat. Those who watched him from the
sand and from the picket line thought he but bared his head to the cool
sea breeze, but in truth it was to a brave man's self-sacrifice. A
Scripture verse was running in his head: "Greater love hath no man than
this, that he give his life for his friend." But he did not speak it,
for a boat grating on the sand behind made him turn.

"The ship's warden to receive you," he said, with a quick-drawn breath.
"God help you!" Then aloud: "Attention!"

The prisoners arose and lined up as the boat's crew came ashore. The
warden conferred a few minutes with the corporal, went over the list of
prisoners, counted them carefully, eying each one sternly as he did so;
then turned again to the corporal, who, after another short conference,
stepped out before the line of prisoners.

"Attention! My care of you ends here. The warden of the prison-ships
will henceforth have you in charge." At a signal his men fell back, and
the crew from the ship's long-boat took their places; the two officers
saluted, and the corporal stepped aside.

"Attention! Forward! March!" the warden shouted, pointing with his sword
to the boat; and the handful of dazed and miserable captives, like so
many automatons, caught step and sullenly moved to the water. As
Richard, who brought up the rear, passed Colborn, the latter
whispered:--

"Your Joscelyn shall know," and Richard's eyes spoke his thanks.

Then the boat drew away from shore, carrying its freight of helpless
despair to the plague-infected hulk rocking in the tide, the plaything
of the winds, the sport of every leaping wave that cast its crystal
fringes to the sun.




CHAPTER XII.

A MESSAGE OUT OF THE NORTH.

             "I love thee, and I feel
     That in the fountain of my heart a seal
     Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright
     For thee."
                         --SHELLEY.


"It's all very well for our husbands and sons to be away fighting for
their country--I'd horsewhip one of mine who sneaked at home; but for
all that, this manless state of the town is a terrible test to the
tidiness and the tempers of the womenfolk," said Mistress Strudwick, as
she sat on her porch with some chosen cronies, and watched the young
girls of the town promenading in the aftermath of the July sunset with
never a cavalier among them. "Look at Lucinda Hardy, she's as cross as a
patch; and yonder is Janet Cameron, who has not curled her hair for a
week--just mops it up any way, since there are no men to see it."

"And there's 'Liza Jones without her stays," said Mistress Clevering.

"Yes, and looking for all the world like a comfortable pillow that has
just been shaken up; but if there was a man under threescore in seeing
distance, she'd be as trim as you please," replied Mistress Strudwick.
"Heigh-ho, what a slipshod world this would be if there were nobody but
women in it!"

"And what a topsy-turvy place 'twould be with only men. Nobody'd ever
know where anything was," said quiet Mistress Cheshire, with poignant
recollections of striving to keep up with the belongings of two
husbands. "Depend upon it, Martha Strudwick, the world would be a deal
worse off without women than without men, for men never can find
anything."

"I am quite of your mind, Mary. In sooth, I always had a sneaking notion
that Columbus brought his wife along when he came to discover America,
and that 'twas she who first saw the land," said Sally Ruffin.

"I don't seem to remember that there was a Mistress Columbus," said Ann
Clevering, biting off her thread with a snap.

"Well, goodness knows there had ought to have been, for Columbus had a
son," replied Martha Strudwick, greatly scandalized, although her own
knowledge in the matter was somewhat hazy.

"How 'pon earth did we ever get to talking such wise things as history?"
asked Mistress Cheshire, whose _forte_ was housewifely recipes.

"We were saying as how men never could find things."

"Oh, yes."

"Well," said Martha Strudwick, thoughtfully, "that depends on what kind
of things you mean. Now there's my husband--and he's a good man, good as
common--he can find a fish-hook in the dark if it's good biting season;
but he can't see the long-handled hoe in the broad daylight if it's
weeding time in the garden and the sun is hot. Finding things depends
more on a man's mind than his eyes."

"Then there's a heap of them who lose their minds mighty handy,"
retorted Ann Clevering.

Mistress Cheshire pushed back her chair: "I shall run home and caution
Dilsy about putting the bread to rise; she's that unseeing that I think
Providence must have first meant her to be a man." Which was as near a
joke as anything Mistress Cheshire ever said. As she trotted away the
others looked after her affectionately.

"Mary is such a mild-mannered woman," said Ann Clevering; "many's the
time I've heard her first husband--dead and gone these twenty-three
years--say it was an accident little short of a miracle how Providence
could make a woman with so little tongue."

"Joscelyn, with her goings-on, must be a dreadful trial to her," sighed
Amanda Bryce.

"And not only to her mother, but to the whole town," snapped another
woman.

"Hoity-toity!" bristled Mistress Strudwick, "what's the matter with
Joscelyn? She is the very life of the place, now that the men are gone.
If 'twere not for discussing her, and abusing her,"--with a withering
glance at the last speaker,--"we should go tongue-tied for lack of
somewhat to talk about. She's a tonic for us all, and without her we'd
be going to sleep."

"Sleep is a good thing," sniffed Amanda Bryce.

"Ay," retorted Mistress Strudwick, "when you are tucked in bed and the
lights are out, it is; but not when you are standing up flat-footed with
baking and brewing and weaving and such things to look after. Joscelyn's
all right, Tory though she be. Look at her now, with all those red roses
stuck around her belt; she's the finest sight on the street."

"Fine enough to look at, I'm not gainsaying you; what I object to is
hearing her when she talks about our war."

"Well, Amanda, if our swords were all as sharp as her tongue can be, the
war would soon be over."

"You always were partial to the lass, Martha."

"Ay, I often told Richard Clevering I'd be his rival were I a man, old
or young; and truly I believe Joscelyn would look with more favour upon
me of the two," laughed the corpulent dame, remembering the soft little
touches with which the girl sometimes tidied up her gray hair and unruly
neckerchief, and the caress upon her cheek that always closed the job.

"I wonder you can take up so for her, Martha, when all your menfolk are
in the Continental army, and she a rank Tory."

"Oh, I can forgive a woman her politics, because, like a man's
religion, it's apt to be picked up second-hand and liable to change at
any time."

"Don't you believe men have any true religion?"

"Well, ye-e-s; if the rain comes in season, and the crops are good, and
the cattle don't break into the corn, and their victuals are well
cooked, they are apt to be middling religious."

"Remember you have a husband of your own."

"Yes, praise God, I have, and a good man he is, too; but when the dam in
the levee breaks, or the cows get the hollow-horn, he's that rearing,
tearing put out that he couldn't say offhand whether preordination or
general salvation was the true doctrine; but the time never comes when
he's too mad or too worried to know he's a Whig, every hair of him. That
is what makes me say religion is a picked-up habit with men and politics
is their nature. With a woman it's the other way; so I laugh at
Joscelyn's politics, and kiss her bonny face and love her all the time."

"That is more than I can do. If it were not for her mother, I should
forbid my daughter to have aught to do with her," said Amanda Bryce,
sniffily, as Joscelyn passed the gate with Betty Clevering and Janet
Cameron, and called up a pleasant "good afternoon" to the elder women.

"Well, your girl and not Joscelyn would be the loser thereby," retorted
Martha Strudwick, regardless of the fact that she was in her own house;
and there would doubtless have been sharp words had not Mistress
Clevering interposed with some gentle remonstrance.

A little later the whole party of young people began to move toward the
tavern; for it was the day the post was due, if by good fortune it had
escaped the marauders and highwaymen who, in the assumed name of war,
infested the roads. Always there was a crowd about the tavern on
Thursday afternoons, in hopes that news of the fighting and of friends
would be forthcoming. This particular day they were not disappointed;
for the women on the porch, looking up the street, presently saw that
something unusual was to pay, and forgetful of bonnets or caps, they
hastened to learn what it was. The postbag, with its slender store, lay
neglected on the table, for the crowd had gathered eagerly about some
one on the steps, and exclamations and questions filled the air.

"What is it?" demanded Mistress Strudwick, breathless from her haste,
and the crowd divided and showed a lad, pale and worn, sitting on the
steps.

"Billy, my Billy!" shrieked Amanda Bryce, and passing the other women,
she caught him in her arms and hugged him frantically. For a few moments
no one spoke or interfered, but after the dame had kissed every square
inch of his face, and had felt his head, shoulders, and arms for
fractures, Martha Strudwick interposed.

"Come, Billy, tell us where you come from and what news you bring from
the front. Has there been a fight, boy?"

"Ay, and a victory for us."

"A victory? Hurrah! When? Where? Talk quick!" cried a dozen voices
shrill with their eagerness.

"At Monmouth town in Jersey. 'Twas there we overtook Clinton as he made
for New York."

"We have already had rumours of it. And you did fight him and put him to
rout? Who fell, and who was wounded? Can't you talk faster?"

"Truly we did fight when we got the chance, though Lee--the foul fiends
take him!--tried hard not to let us. It was the hottest day I ever felt.
The sand and dust--"

"Never mind about the sand and dust; tell us of the battle."

And so by piecemeal, with many a question and interruption, he told them
the story of that remarkable battle and his own capture.

"And who was taken with you?"

"Master Peter Ruffin, Amos Andrews, and Richard Clevering from our
company, and some threescore more whom I knew not."

But only a few heard the last clause of his sentence, for among the
women were relatives and friends of each of the men mentioned, and there
were sobs and moans for the fate of their loved ones. So great was the
abhorrence in which British prisons were held, that death seemed almost
preferable. Then presently Betty Clevering cried shrilly:--

"And if you were captured, how comes it you are here?"

"I escaped."

"And how many escaped with you?"

"None--none; not even Richard."

Mistress Ruffin took him sharply by the arm. "Do you mean to say that a
strip of a lad like you had sense enough to get away, and grown men were
held? That's a pretty tale!"

And then with stifled sobs he told of Richard's sacrifice and his own
getting away.

"For an hour I waited there in the grass, hoping for him to come; and
when I dared stay no longer I crept to the hillside and hid in a little
cave, from which I watched the army in the distance take up its march
next day. I started once to go back and die with Richard in prison,
but--"

"Talk not so, my son; 'twould have killed me and done Richard no good,"
cried his mother, caressing his curly head against her shoulder.
"Richard did not want you back--God bless him for a generous lad!"

"No," sobbed the lad, "he is so noble, so good; and I let him go back,
let him sacrifice himself for me, for had I but slept on he would have
gotten away."

All this while Mistress Clevering had not spoken; now she lifted her
head, and no mother of Sparta ever looked more proud or more resigned.

"Yes, you were right to come away; he gave you your freedom at the cost
of his own, and it would have grieved him had you returned and made the
sacrifice useless. 'Tis a beautiful thing to be the mother of a son like
that. I am content." And Martha Strudwick leaned over and kissed her
softly.

"And how fared it with you when the British had marched away?" asked his
mother of Billy.

"I reached the coast and followed it for two days, when I came to a
village whence a trading vessel was leaving to smuggle its cargo to the
south. The captain took me on, and after ten days I was put ashore near
New Berne town, from which place I have made my way home, travelling
with the post these two days."

"You have not then been back to the army?"

"No, but I shall start to-morrow, now that I have seen you, mother, and
when I have given Richard's messages to Mistress Clevering and--"

He stopped; but his glance had travelled to Joscelyn standing at the
edge of the crowd, and Janet Cameron laughed.

"What said my boy? Out with it!" cried Mistress Clevering, eagerly.

"He did send you his dear love, even as he was to bring mine to mother
had I been the one left behind. I would I could tell you how reverent
and tender his voice was when he spoke your name."

The Spartan in the woman broke down, and the mother prevailed. "My son,
my dear son, did God give you in answer to my prayers only to take you
away like this? What may he not be suffering at this very moment, and I
who have watched him from his cradle powerless to help him! Oh, but war
is a cruel thing! My son, my son!"

Betty and Mistress Cheshire led her away weeping, and for a few minutes,
silence held the women as they looked away to the north and thought of
the strife enacting, and the pain being endured there for liberty. And
besides those carried away into captivity, how many others--perhaps
their own nearest and dearest--had been left on the battle-field?

"See," cried Amanda Bryce, turning fiercely on Joscelyn, whose eyes,
full of a misty tenderness, were following Aunt Clevering down the
street--"see what you miserable Tories are doing to us, your neighbours!
Shame upon you, I say; shame upon you!"

"Ay, shame upon you!" cried several voices; and faces scowled and a few
fists were clenched. The girl cowered back, amazed, affrighted.

"Pull those red roses out of her belt; we want no Tory colours here!"
cried Amanda Bryce; and two or three hands reached toward the knot of
scarlet blossoms. But Joscelyn, her eyes beginning to kindle, stepped
back and raised her own hand warningly.

"Do not touch me! Yes, I am a Tory, as you are pleased to call us,
and I am not ashamed that the king's army hath been preserved from
destruction; but I am sorry, very sorry your friends and kindred are
to suffer--though perhaps some punishment is necessary to rebels."

Mistress Strudwick started to the girl's side, but little Billy Bryce
was before her.

"Who touches Joscelyn must first pass me!" he cried to the angry women.
"Mother, be silent! What share could a girl like this have in our
capture; and what matters a few men taken when the victory was ours?"

"Yes, praise God, we thrashed the miserable cowards of Redcoats as they
deserved."

"A great thrashing 'twas, when they lost not a wagon of their train, and
took more prisoners than Washington," Joscelyn answered tartly.

A dozen voices answered her angrily, and she opened her lips to reply,
but Mistress Strudwick clapped her broad palm over the girl's mouth.

"Hold your saucy tongue, Joscelyn; and you girls, there, be silent this
minute. What, is the war to ruin the manners of our women that they can
descend so low as to brawl in the public streets? Shame upon you, every
one! What hath come of your senses that you thus demean yourselves and
belittle the raising your elders gave you?"

The reproof had the desired effect; for the girl stood silent and
abashed, and her angry assailants drew back. Taking advantage of the
lull, Mistress Strudwick seized Joscelyn by the arm and almost forcibly
drew her away.

"Begone to your home, and bide there till you learn some sense," she
cried sharply. "What's the use in butting your brains out against a
wall, when there's room enough to go around it? There is no fool like a
self-made fool! Go." But when the girl had gone a few steps she made her
return. "Promise me truly," she whispered, "that you'll go straight home
and stay until the fire you kindled here burns down a bit--promise you
will not stir from the house, or I shall not sleep to-night."

"I promise, dear Mistress Strudwick," Joscelyn said, kissing the big
hand that patted her cheek. "You heard me say I was sorry our townsfolk
were taken, and so I am."

"Yes, yes. Harkee, tell your mother I say to be sure and send Amanda
Bryce a loaf of hot bread for supper--Billy will be hungry with running
so far from Monmouth," she said, with a meaning wink. In truth, she
intended the hot bread as a peace-offering to Mistress Bryce, for it
was by such small acts of quiet diplomacy that she kept down the enmity
against the Cheshires, or rather against Joscelyn, since she it was who
aroused the resentment.

Slowly the girl went down the street thinking of the scene just passed.
Mistress Strudwick was right; it was a disgrace for women to brawl thus
upon the public thoroughfares; never again would she let her temper get
the better of her in this way--only they should not touch her. And
already half-forgetful of her resolution, she mounted her steps with
flashing eyes and flaming cheeks.

Presently lights began to glimmer through the dusk, and when the dark
really came every house in the town showed a candle in its window in
token of the advantage won at Monmouth, for since Washington held the
field they deemed him victorious. Even in those houses where grief had
entered, the light shone; for true patriotism is never selfish. Only the
Cheshire windows were dark, so that the house made a blot in the street.
Mistress Cheshire had gone to the Cleverings to condole with them over
Richard; but Joscelyn, because of her promise to Mistress Strudwick, had
bided at home, though she would much have loved to comfort Betty. From
porch to porch the women called to each other, and some of the girls
sang snatches of song here and there, like mocking-birds hid in the
shadows. But Joscelyn sat at her upper window, silent and musing,
thinking what a beautiful thing Richard Clevering had done to let the
little lad go free while he himself went back to captivity. Suddenly a
voice below her whispered:--

"Hist! Joscelyn, Joscelyn!"

She leaned over the window-sill. "Who is it?"

"It is I--Billy Bryce. I have only a minute, for mother must not know I
came, but I have a message for you."

"From whom comes it, Billy?"

"From Richard. Come quickly."

She ran lightly down to the veranda and leaned over the railing to the
boy in the shadow. He took her hands eagerly in his.

"He loves you, Joscelyn!"

She did not answer. He was too earnest for a jest, so she only pressed
his hand and waited.

"He is so noble, so generous, Joscelyn; even among us younger boys he
never did a mean thing, and there's not a man in the company who is not
his friend."

"Yes, I always knew Richard had a kind heart, and his letting you go in
his stead was unselfish--beautiful; and I honour him for it."

"And do you not love him for it also?" the lad begged wistfully. "Say
that you love him just a little."

"Nay, Billy; he is brave and kind, and he is my friend and Betty's
brother, therefore do I wish him naught but good fortune and happiness;
but, laddie, I do not love him."

"You are cruel--heartless!" he cried, flinging her hands away.
"Richard's little finger hath more feeling in it and is worth more than
your whole body."

"Your championship does you credit, Billy, and I shall not quarrel with
you for appraising my value so low. Mayhap Richard thinks differently."

"Ay, that he does--more's the pity!" Then taking her hands again, he
said vehemently: "An you come not to love him, I pray God to curse you
with an ugliness so great that no other man may ever kiss or love you!
For listen; as we lay in the dark that night waiting for the moment to
escape, this is what he said: 'If you get away and I do not, say to
Joscelyn Cheshire that even behind prison bars I am her lover; and that
if death comes, her face, or the blessed memory of it, will outshine
those of the angels of Paradise.' That was his message. I have faced
many dangers to bring it to you. Now that you have it, I shall go back
to my regiment, and if a ball finds me, well and good; Richard will know
somehow and somewhere that I did not fail him."

The girl dropped her head low in the starlight.

"Good-by, Billy; you have filled your mission bravely. Heaven keep you
safe and send you back once more to your mother and us."

He put up his hand and stroked her cheek softly.

"I do not wonder that he loves you, Joscelyn, you are so beautiful, and
you can be so sweet--so sweet," he exclaimed, and then ran away into the
dark, leaving her alone with the words of the love-message ringing in
her ears.

So still she stood that a big moth flying wearily by rested a moment on
her shoulder; across the way her mother was bidding Aunt Clevering good
night with admonitions to sleep well, and from down the street came the
voices of the singers chanting of victory and the home-coming of loved
ones. But above everything the girl on the dark balcony heard a deep,
strong voice saying, "Even behind prison bars I am her lover."

Prison bars!

And suddenly she threw up her arms in the flower-sweet dusk and
whispered vehemently:--

"Set him free, dear God! set him free!"




CHAPTER XIII.

DREAMS.

     "For thoughts, like waves that glide by night,
     Are stillest when they shine."
                         --OLD SONG.


"Rouse up, Richard! Rouse up, man! An you give way like this, you'll
soon be taking the ship-fever and dying. 'Tis no use to wilfully hasten
the end," said Peter Ruffin to the apathetic man beside him.

But Richard sat staring over the waters, saying only in a dogged way,
"'Tis no use to retard it."

"Ay, but it is; something may happen--Washington may drive Clinton from
New York--"

"He cannot, for he hath not the force."

"--Or we may escape."

Richard glanced around the deck where guards, armed to their teeth,
trod in ceaseless vigil, and then looked away to the shore, where a
few cabins marked the station of the shore patrol who took up the
watch where the ship guard left off, thus making assurance doubly
sure.

"With the sea and a double guard against us, the chance is not worth the
counting."

"A resolute man could swim ashore from here."

"Methinks he could most easily, especially with the tide in his favour;
but if he eludes the watch here, the patrol yonder will shoot him like a
rat when he crawls out of the water. No, Peter, I have gone over it all
in my mind, calculated the method of reaching the water, the length of
the swim, and the best place to land. I have even tried to get speech
with Dame Grant when she comes with her wares, to see if she could not
be bribed to aid me; but the warden never takes his eyes from her until
her sales are over and her boat ready to start. She has a solemnly sour
face, but mayhap a gold piece would soften her heart to mercy. It was
for this that I have hoarded Colborn's gold."

"I, too, thought of the bumboat woman, but gave up hope of aid from her,
seeing how she is watched. 'Twere as much as her life is worth to give
us the smallest assistance," answered Peter.

"Yes, we are cut off from every chance, condemned--doomed--and seeing
this, I have given up hope."

"I am some twenty years your senior, Richard, and I say to you that a
sane man never ceases to hope."

"Then mayhap I am insane--sometimes I think it may be so. Surely, it was
the arch-fiend himself who put it into the hearts of the English to turn
these disease-infected hulks into prisons; no mere mortal mind could
have in itself conceived such a thought. The fever or the vermin--which
were worse, 'twere hard to say. To rot here inch by inch, and the fight
going on outside! God, but 'tis hard!"

"Hist! the guard is looking at you suspiciously. 'Tis no use getting his
ill-will; let us talk of something else." And when the sentinel passed
slowly in front of them, the older man was talking of his boy who had
died in childhood, and the younger one had dropped his head again upon
his breast and sat in moody silence. Thus had life crept on for five
weeks, each day of which was a slow-paced agony, each night a long-drawn
horror.

Wallabout Bay, where the prison-ships were anchored, cut into the Long
Island shore on the north, and was protected from the storms that rocked
the outer deep. Most of the prisoners were seamen, but now and then a
squad of land captives, for lack of some other place in which to confine
them, were sent thither to starve and suffer and wait their turn to die.
The wound in Richard's head had healed, thanks to Colborn's salve; but
the confinement, together with the scant and rancid food and the foul
air in the ship's hold where the nights were passed, was slowly
undermining his strength of body and of will. Each morning the inhuman
order, "Rebels, turn out your dead!" which the guard called down through
the opened hatches, sent a shiver of horror to his very soul; and the
feeling was not lessened as he aided in selecting the poor fellows who
had died in the night, and saw them sewed into their blankets and rowed
away to shallow graves upon the shore. Two of the prisoners were made to
act as grave-diggers on these occasions, the guard going merely to
superintend.

Twice in the past weeks Richard and Peter had gone in the funeral-boat,
and on each occasion thoughts of making a break for liberty had haunted
them. But the futility of such an attempt was made apparent by the
proximity of the shore patrol, within range of whose guns the graves
were dug. The nearest cover was a line of sand-dunes and stunted
brush-growth fifty yards up the level beach, before reaching which a man
could be pierced by twenty bullets. Regretfully and angrily the two men
noted this; and later on had it all doubly impressed upon them by the
shooting of a prisoner who, one day, when the grave was half-filled,
made the mad attempt to get away. Only one of the two impressed
grave-diggers came back in the boat that day, for the other was buried
where he fell; and the harshness of the ship-jailers increased toward
those who remained.

"Look," said Richard, shuddering, the second time he and Peter were
detailed to take a corpse to the sandy burying-ground; "already the
waves have opened some of the graves and left the poor fellows but the
scantest covering. Before long their bones will whiten to the sun."

"It is a sickening certainty! And all of this you and I might escape
if so we would but go back yonder to the warden and take the oath of
allegiance to the king, and change these tattered coats for gay uniforms
of scarlet," answered Peter.

"True; but like those who have gone before us, we will die in the ship
yonder and fester here in the sand first. Between death and English
slavery there is a quick choice, and we made it long ago. But promise
me, Peter, that if I die first you will ask to come as my sexton, and
dig me a grave deep enough to keep me from the sea for at least a little
while."

"I will; and you will do a like thing for me. But as I told you the
other day, you will go before me, and soon at that, if so you keep up
this dreary moping."

But Richard could not bring himself to hope. The absolute helplessness
of their position, the powerlessness of action of any sort took from
him the ability to reason normally. Everything twisted itself backward
to the wretched and relentless present, turn where he would for
consolation. And so after the morning tasks of airing blankets and
scrubbing decks were performed, he sat all day looking sullenly out over
the water, studying the changing moods of the sea, watching the gulls as
they flapped past or went soaring upward with the glancing sunlight on
their wings. And all this while there was but one clear thought in his
mind--Joscelyn. Plainer than the faces about him he saw her features,
and above the ship noises and the restless wash of the waves, he heard
the sweet accents of her voice. Incessantly he brooded over each memory
of her, recalling the chestnut tints of her hair, the blue lights in her
eyes, and the rose hues of cheeks and lips. Her beauty had never before
appeared to him so great or so much to be desired as now.

"Even behind prison bars I am her lover;" often he said the words to
himself, wondering morbidly if Billy carried her the message, and what
she said in answer. He would never know, of course, for his career must
end yonder in the sand with his unfortunate fellows; but liberty itself
would not be sweeter than some token, it mattered not how small, of her
sorrow and her favour. How he longed for her, body and soul! Always
in fancy he kissed her good night, holding the sweet face between his
palms and watching to see the eyes droop under his ardent gaze, and the
delicate lips quiver with the passion of his caress. He told himself it
was only such fleeting fancies as these that kept him sane. For in these
moments she was tender and loving, and she was all his; and the unknown
husband--he who would one day claim her in reality when he himself, with
his idle dreams, should be dead and gone--he hated with a jealous rage
as vital as though the man stood before him in the flesh; and he looked
at his fingers with a dull sense of their strangling powers, and longed
to feel them tighten over a purpling throat. Peter talked of heaven, of
its rest and peace; but how could there be for him either joy or peace,
even in Paradise, while another man held Joscelyn in his arms? Often in
his cloying misery he tried to make out who this other lover would be;
but no one, not even Eustace Singleton, seemed to fill the place. Once,
and his heart had been hot with jealousy at the thought, he had imagined
that under hers and Eustace's frank friendship there lingered a warmer
feeling; but this fancy stood no test of observation, for in no
act of Joscelyn's was there a trace of that air, indescribable yet
unmistakable, that marks the beginnings of love; and of late months
Eustace had a way of looking at Betty that put strange fancies into
Richard's head. No, Joscelyn and Eustace were not lovers; it would be
some one else, some stranger who would claim all the sweetness of her
love. And at the thought the murderous fingers writhed upon each other,
and the sweat of agony was on his brow. Then his fancy would take
another turn. There was no other lover, there never would be any other;
by strength of his love she belonged to him here and would be his
through all eternity. In heaven there is no marrying nor giving in
marriage, so the Bible said; but surely God would be merciful to him,
knowing how he had missed his happiness here.

This was the dream-palace in which he dwelt, while he gazed vacantly
over the sunlit sea and waited to be sewed into his blanket and carried
across to the white sands by those who, in their turn, one after
another, should follow to the same end.

And then, one morning when August was well on the wane, something
happened that broke the spell of deadening despair that held him in its
grasp.




CHAPTER XIV.

NEWS OF LOVE AND WAR.

     "Hidden perfumes and secret loves betray themselves."
                         --JOUBERT.


"Joscelyn, from my upper window I have seen a rider turn into the next
street and make for the tavern. Perchance he brings news or letters.
Will you come with me and see?" It was Betty's voice under her window,
and Joscelyn put her head out a moment to say she would go; then ran
downstairs. And go she did in spite of her mother's vehement protest.

"'Tis scarce three weeks gone since you were reviled in the streets as a
Tory, and now you will go thrust yourself in place to receive the same
treatment again. 'Tis folly--ay, worse than folly!"

But Joscelyn scarcely heard, for in the street Betty was pulling her
along at such a pace.

"Methought you would be glad to get a letter from--well, from--It is
something over three weeks since you last heard from--" a shy little
laugh finished the sentence, and she gave Joscelyn an extra pull which
set them into a run.

"How glad somebody would be to see you in such haste to get a letter
written to me," panted Joscelyn, laughing.

"Whither away so fast?" cried Mistress Strudwick from her door; but they
did not stop to answer, only calling back merrily that a man, grown, yet
not old, nor crippled, nor blind, had ridden into the square, and they
were going to have a look at so wonderful a curiosity.

As they turned into the open space before the court-house, the town-bell
struck a few resonant notes, a signal from the decrepit old ringer that
there was news for somebody. In a few minutes the place was thronged
with eager wives and mothers and sweethearts crying out for tidings of
their loved ones. Did the man bring any? Yes, he was but now out of the
north; whither he went mattered not to them, a man's mission was his own
secret, but in his pouch were letters for towns along the route, and he
brought, besides, news of the dreadful massacre in Pennsylvania. And
when the few letters were distributed he stood upon the steps and told
the pitiful story of Wyoming Valley.

"The able-bodied men were away fighting with Washington; only the old
men and women and children remained. Upon this helpless band hundreds of
British and Indians, led by Butler, fell, driving them to the fort.
Thence the men, shaking with age, but not with fear, sallied to the
attack, were defeated and captured, and in sight of those within were
tortured with every fiendish device the savages could invent. Then the
fort surrendered, and in spite of Butler's efforts tomahawk and
scalping-knife did their deadly work among the helpless captives.
Outraged women, spitted upon rails, saw their tender babes brained
against rocks and trees. The yells of the captors were mingled with the
cries for mercy and the shrieks of the dying, and night was turned into
day by the light of burning villages. In all the beautiful valley not a
house was spared; and where had been prosperity is now but a desolate
wilderness strewn with graves and ruins."

When he finished, women were weeping upon each other's necks, thinking
of their own little ones and those other murdered babies. And fierce was
the denunciation of Butler for enlisting in his army savages whose
brutality could not be controlled. This was not war; it was
assassination, as cowardly as it was cruel.

So bitter was the feeling aroused, that for a while the fact that the
courier had brought some letters was quite overlooked, until Mistress
Nash and Janet Cameron came forward with epistles which contained
messages for many of those present. Then it was remembered that the
other two letters had both been for Joscelyn Cheshire, and immediately a
dozen voices demanded her. But she was already well down the street, her
arm linked in Betty Clevering's.

"Come away, Aunt Cheshire will be wretched about you," the latter had
whispered to her, remembering the scene in this very place a few weeks
before and dreading a repetition of it, and in her secret heart wishing
that at least one of the letters in Joscelyn's hand should not be read
aloud to the public, knowing well that in it was some love-message for
herself, for was not that why Eustace wrote so often to Joscelyn? And so
she dragged her companion back the way they had come; but as they walked
Joscelyn tore open the letter with the familiar seal, exclaiming
gayly:--

"Paper is not scarce with Eustace, since he sends me three whole sheets.
Let me see--Betty--Betty--Betty--just in a fleeting glance I see your
name some eight times. What a fondness he hath for writing the word!"

"Let me read with you, Joscelyn," cried Betty, her cheeks very bright;
and drawing close together the two girls held the sheet between them and
slackened their pace. But they were not left long to their privacy, for
by the time they reached the Cheshire door a dozen neighbours were upon
them.

"So, so, Joscelyn, be not running away with your tidings. Tell us what
Clinton is doing in New York," exclaimed Mistress Strudwick, who had
come with the others to give the girl countenance, if so she should need
it.

"Ay, do not be playing the selfish, but give us the news," cried several
voices.

"I am as ignorant as you of General Clinton's doings," the girl said,
smiling at the first speaker; "for, as far as I have got, the letter is
full of questions about somebody here at home."

"Yes, a spying letter for information, no doubt," sneered Amanda Bryce.
"The courier said they were both from some one in New York. Who writes
to you from Clinton's army?"

"Eustace Singleton, a handsome lad whom you know right well, Mistress
Bryce."

"He sends you two letters by the same hand? Faith! he is an ardent
correspondent."

"Nay, this other letter is in a strange writing. I know not yet who hath
sent it."

"Break the wafer and read it to us."

"I do not choose, Mistress Bryce, to give my letters to the public."

"Do not choose, because you do not dare."

"Do not dare?"

"Hush, Joscelyn, she does not mean what she says," put in Mistress
Strudwick.

"Yes, I do mean it, Martha, every word of it. She dare not read it,
because it is a spying letter,--asking information, mayhap, which may
give us over to a massacre like to that of Wyoming: that's why she dare
not."

A chorus of cries and hisses arose, but the girl on the step did not
quail. Her delicate lip curled with scorn. "'Tis false! You do all know
I would be incapable of such wickedness."

"Then read us the letter and prove it."

"I will not."

She thrust the letter into her bosom and faced them with flashing eyes,
the very picture of defiance. But a touch from Mistress Strudwick
quelled the storm within her. Turning swiftly, she put her arm around
the old woman's neck. "There, I am going to be good. I would not
distress you and mother again for the world. But you know I have the
right of it."

"Yes," echoed Janet Cameron, taking her place on the other side of
Joscelyn. "We all know that though you are a Tory, you are no traitor;
and I say, Out upon Mistress Bryce for hinting such a thing! I am a
Continental, and my father is in Charleston fighting for the cause, but
I would trust Joscelyn Cheshire to the end of the world!"

Out in the crowd the sentiment against the girl instantly changed, and
all but Amanda Bryce applauded Janet's words.

"Eustace Singleton writes her naught but love-letters--let her keep
them!" cried another girl. "Methinks I should not want the world to be
reading my sweetheart's letters and counting the kisses he sends me."

"No, nor those he gives you," said Martha Strudwick, with a merry wink,
and instantly there was a great laugh, for the girl had been caught
kissing her lover the winter day on which the troops had marched, for
which imprudence her mother had soundly boxed her ears.

"And now," cried Joscelyn, when the laugh had passed, "to prove that
there is no treason in this letter, I shall let Betty Clevering--as good
a Continental as the best of you--sit down yonder on the bench and read
every word of it before I myself have seen it. Here, Betty, be you the
judge whether what is herein writ is of treasonable import; and mind you
skip nothing, particularly the love passages." She laughingly pushed
Betty upon the bench, and leaving Eustace's letter in her hands, came
back to Janet's side.

"My letter was from my brother, Joscelyn; and he said he knew not where
Richard had been sent. He himself is in the old Sugar House in New York;
what he suffers he will not say, but we can guess, since so much has
been said of the place."

Joscelyn kissed the tearful face softly. "Perchance your imagination is
over-vivid. It grieves me to the quick that any of our townsfolk should
suffer."

"It will be a great relief to his mother to know that Richard is not in
the Sugar House."

"Yes, there is only one worse prison in the country, and that is for the
captured seamen."

"Do not let us talk of its horrors."

So the conversation went on until Betty Clevering, her face like a
budding rose, came forward again.

"This letter," she said, holding up the missive, "is one of friendship
merely; in it I find absolutely nothing against our cause, save a curse
on the war that keeps the writer from--from her he loves."

"Dear me, to see her blush one would think it were Betty's love-letter,
not Joscelyn's."

"How shy she looks!"

"Betty, was it writ so tenderly that you, who are but an outsider, are
abashed to read it? Truly, I wish Master Singleton would give lessons in
love writing. My man talks so much of General Washington and his doings
that he quite forgets to put in the love passages."

"And 'tis for those that a woman reads her letters," said Mistress
Strudwick. "The 'I love yous' and 'dears' and 'kisses' scattered through
the pages mean more to her heart than the announcement of a victory. In
faith, old woman as I am, I always read the last sentence first, knowing
it will be the sweetest, if so the writer is in his senses."

"That is why I wanted so much to read Joscelyn's letter. I knew Eustace
would never plot against his own town any more than she would, but an
ardent love-letter makes good reading, no matter to whom it may be
writ," laughed Dorothy Graham, breaking a glowing rose from a nearby
bush, and holding it playfully against Betty's cheek, looking archly at
her companions as she tapped first one and then the other with her
finger, whereupon the laugh again arose, for some had long ago guessed
at Eustace's passion.

Meantime, Joscelyn, drawing somewhat apart, took the strange letter from
her dress and broke the wafer. The missive covered but one scant page,
but those who watched as she read saw her face grow pale and her lip
tremble.

     MISTRESS JOSCELYN CHESHIRE, in Hillsboro'-town:

     Richard Clevering, with ten of his comrades, taken at Monmouth
     field, lies in one of the prison-ships in Wallabout Bay. If he is
     aught to you,--you know best whom _he_ loves,--bestir yourself for
     an exchange, for only that can save him from the sure death that
     lurks in those accursed hulks. I, one of the guard that carried him
     there, promised him that you should know, and at the risk of
     discovery and punishment I thus keep my promise. He is brave and
     generous. It were a pity to let him die.
                         JAMES COLBORN.

     NEW YORK, this tenth day of July, 1778.

Even in the far southern towns the infamy of those prison-ships had been
told, and with a sudden gesture of compassion the girl stretched her
arms toward the opposite house.

"Aunt Clevering, poor Aunt Clevering!" and thrusting the letter into
Mistress Strudwick's hands, she exclaimed: "Here read it--read it aloud,
then take it over yonder--I cannot." And gathering Betty close in her
arms she listened while the letter was read to the sorrowing women.

"Who are the others? Called he no names?"

"Oh, mayhap one is my son!"

"And another may be my husband!"

"Even the Sugar House had been easier than this! Mark you what we have
heard of the ferocity of the jailers, the foulness of the food, the
loathsomeness of the ships! They will die, our brave lads will all die
there!"

"Will die?--Nay, perchance they are already dead; 'tis a month since
this letter was writ, and two months since Monmouth fight."

And the letter went the rounds of the town, carrying sorrow everywhere
and a miserable dread and uncertainty into many homes, for all of the
men missing from Monmouth were not yet accounted for. Whose dear ones
were suffering with Richard, mine or thine, or our neighbour's?

All the afternoon, Joscelyn paced her floor, her brows knitted, her
fingers clenched. She knew best whom he loved? Yes, she knew. Every day
for the past year he had let her see his heart; even in their quarrels
over the war, he had not forgotten that he loved her. At first she had
taken it for a passing fancy, and had treated him with laughing
coquetry, fanning his love later on into the white flame of passion with
that groundless jealousy of Eustace. Then it was she realized what it
was with which she was playing.

And now he was lying in that loathsome ship, with the fever on one side
and the harsh keepers on the other. Did she care as he wanted her to
care? No, but her anger against him for his persistent assumption of her
acquiescence in his suit was all forgotten; she remembered only the
happy side of their friendship, and that he was Betty's brother. She
could not put aside the appeal in Colborn's letter, for it was an appeal
from Richard himself; and yet what could she, a mere girl without aid or
influence, do to set him free? That was why her hands were clenched and
she paced her floor with quick steps. Then at last she sat down, and
opening her portfolio she wrote for half an hour, covering sheet after
sheet. When they were done she gathered them up quickly and ran
downstairs and crossed the street to the opposite house. There all was
sadness and tears because of Colborn's news.

"Here, Betty," she said, placing the folded sheets upon the table;
"Eustace Singleton is on Lord Cornwallis's staff and must have influence
with him, and through him, with General Clinton. I have written Eustace
to use all effort and despatch in Richard's behalf, but you must add a
postscript to make the plea effective."

"And why, I pray you, should he heed a postscript from Betty?" asked her
mother, angrily, forgetful for a moment of her grief.

"Because," Joscelyn answered, facing her calmly, "he loves her, and the
few words she writes will outweigh all my pages."

"What! That Loyalist, the son of Joseph Singleton, our old enemy, in
love with my daughter? This is some mockery."

"It is the sober truth."

"I do not believe it; but if it be so, then will Richard and I have a
word to say in the matter. Betty, put down that quill; I will not have
you stoop to ask a favour of that family."

"Not even for Richard's life and freedom, Aunt Clevering?"

"I do not believe he has any influence. In love with my daughter--what
impudence!"

"Rather what good fortune, since it may save your son."

"Mother, it seems our one chance; bid me write." And Joscelyn joined in
the girl's plea.

The older woman's features worked spasmodically, but presently she
nodded slowly. "For Richard's sake, Joscelyn, yes; but mind you, Betty
will set him out in short order if ever he presumes to declare himself.
She knows her duty; no Singleton blood comes into my family."

She could not see Betty's face, for Joscelyn stood between them; but two
weeks later Eustace kissed the blots where the tears had fallen just
under her pleading little postscript:--

     "Because of all you said to me in Joscelyn's parlour, because of
     your red roses which I wore in the privacy of my room until they
     faded, I beseech you, save my brother!"

"But oh, Joscelyn, suppose he can do nothing?"

"Then, dear, we must carry our plea to Lord Cornwallis. My father and he
were friends in England; perhaps we may gain his ear through that
old-time acquaintance."

"And how will you reach Cornwallis?" Mistress Clevering asked
doubtfully.

"If need be, Betty and I will seek him in General Clinton's camp."

Betty put her cheek close to the girl's. "Joscelyn, after all you are
not indifferent to Richard," she whispered, half wistfully, half
joyously.

But Joscelyn's face was almost stern. "This letter from Colborn is in
truth a plea from Richard, since he must have bid the man write. Think
you I could let such a thing pass unanswered--and from your brother,
too?"

"God bless you, Joscelyn, though your heart is as hard as flint."




CHAPTER XV.

AN AWAKENING AND A MUTINY.

     "I can bear scorpion's stings, tread fields of fire,
     In frozen gulfs of cold eternal lie;
     Be tossed aloft through tracts of endless void--
     But cannot live in shame."
                         --JOANNA BAILLIE.


Besides the patrol and the ship's long-boat only one other ever tied up
to the prison-vessels, and that one belonged to Dame Grant, the bumboat
woman, who brought such small luxuries as the prisoners were able to
purchase. She herself seldom came on board, but sent up her tiny parcels
by two boys who made their deliveries under the eye of the warden. This
was the woman Richard had hoped to bribe to aid his escape, but with
whom he had never found the smallest opportunity to speak at close
range. She was corpulent and coarse of feature, and the boys who served
her often felt the weight of her big hand; but Richard had once thrown
her a jest over the rail, and she had laughed good-naturedly, showing
that she had a soft side to her rough exterior. In the lining of his
ragged boot were the few coins Colborn had given him, but not so much as
a letter had he been able to bribe her to take. Often he cursed the
watchfulness of the sentinel, longing to send at least some little
message to those who thought of him in far-off Hillsboro'-town.

The morning of his awakening from the despairing stupor in which nearly
two months had been passed, it so chanced that Dame Grant brought in her
boat a basket of pears. Very luscious they looked, for sun and dew had
kissed them lavishly; but only the guards could pay their price, so the
prisoners feasted with their eyes only. By and by, however, one of the
sentinels who had purchased some of the fruit went to attend to some
duty below, and left one of the pears on the rail of the deck. So
transparent was his action and so subtle the temptation, that it almost
seemed he had set a delicate trap for some unwary captive. If, indeed,
it was a trap, it caught its prey; for one of the prisoners, a poor old
man, starving, yet too ill to eat the mouldy biscuit and rancid meat
that was their daily portion, saw the tempting fruit and stole it,
hoping the owner would think it had rolled off into the water with the
rocking of the ship. But nothing escaped the argus-eyed watch; one of
the other sentinels saw him as he ravenously devoured it, and collaring
the trembling culprit carried him to the warden. He acknowledged the
theft, excusing himself on the plea of extreme hunger, and begged for
mercy. He might as well have asked for the sun, whose rays whitened the
deck and shimmered on the restless waves.

"I will make an example of him that we may have no more thieving on this
ship. Order the prisoners out that they may see," commanded the warden,
a big-thewed fellow with the face of a bulldog.

The culprit, whose age alone should have protected him, was stripped to
the waist and dragged to the middle of the deck, where he stood weak,
scarred, emaciated,--as pitiful an object as the sun ever shone upon. In
a wide circle about him were crowded the unwilling prisoners, their
faces scowling with a helpless rage; and behind these were posted the
guards with levelled guns. While the warden knotted his lash, Peter and
Richard, after a whispered consultation with those nearest to them,
stepped forward and touched their caps.

"If you please," said Peter, acting as spokesman, "we will all of us
give something toward the price of the fruit, if you will spare this
man."

The warden wheeled suddenly upon them and struck out with his whip,
barely missing Peter's head. "Back with you, an you want not the lash
upon your own backs, hounds that you are! The first man of you who stirs
again shall have his share of this pastime." The ferocity of his look
and voice quelled any further attempt at conciliation, and the prisoners
turned their faces sullenly away.

"So it's delicacies your stomach craves, is it?" sneered the warden to
the trembling man before him. "Well, does that taste like pears--or
that--or that?" and the cruelly knotted lash swirled through the air,
and fell again and again upon the quivering flesh of the helpless
creature. The man staggered, screamed, reeled from place to place, and
finally fell. A harsh laugh answered his cries for mercy, and the lash
went on until the blood spurted from the livid welts upon his body,
while his groans were horrible to hear; and the prisoners groaned in
answer. But the warden's fury was aroused, and the blows fell until
insensibility mercifully came, and the man lay still in a pool of his
own blood.

"So shall it fare with every thief among you!" cried the warden,
throwing the whip down and facing around the scowling circle. But he saw
there no intimidation, but a wrath that needed but a touch to burst into
a storm, and he was quick to take the warning.

"Dismiss the prisoners below," he thundered to the guards, and went
swiftly to his own cabin.

As Richard watched the cruel scene, something had stirred and then
suddenly snapped within him; the inert, despairing stupor was gone, and
in its place was a wild desire for action. Every nerve within him
quivered with a savage impulse to give the brutal warden blow for
blow--nay, two for one; that was what he wanted to do. His fingers
closed in a fierce grip, and only Peter's firm hand held him in his
place.

"The guards would riddle you with bullets before you could get to him,"
the latter whispered, under cover of that other terrible noise of the
flogging.

"I have but once to die. Unhand me!"

"Yes, but death here would be wasted. Wait."

From that hour Richard was a changed man; the dulness of despondency was
gone, and in its place there had come a recklessness, a demon of
desperation, that nothing could still.

"I shall not stay quietly here to be flogged or to rot with the fever
and starvation," he said to Peter, and his jaw was hard and square. "I
shall get away or I shall die in the attempt."

Two days later the flogged man was sewed into his blanket and carried
away in the funeral-boat; and the malcontent of the prisoners broke out
in angry mutterings. Here Richard, who had been brooding over a plan of
escape, believed he saw his chance. By night his plan was laid; and when
the hatches were beaten down and they lay in serried rows in the
stinking hold, he went from man to man and told his scheme. It was to be
a mutiny, a direct revolt. At a given signal they were to rise in a
body, fall upon the guards, over-power them--kill them--and then pulling
up the anchor they were to run the ship to the open sea, beach her
somewhere on the Jersey coast if she gave signs of leaking, and take
their chance to hide along the shore until they could get away into the
interior. Richard was to head them, for in his voice and manner the men
recognized the spirit of a leader. He longed with something akin to
ferocity to strike the first blow at the warden.

"And besides," he said, "since I have proposed the plan it is but meet
that I should assume the first risk. If I fall, Peter will take my
place. Jack Bangs here has been on the sea all his life, and knows the
coast hereabouts as we know our farms at home. What say you to giving
him charge of the ship and letting him choose his own sailing crew?"

"Good; he is the man for the place."

"Very well," said Bangs; "but we cannot go down the Jersey coast, for we
would have to pass too many posts of the enemy, besides the guns in the
New York harbour. We must steer east through the sound, and if the ship
is beached, it must be on the Connecticut or Rhode Island coast."

"Very well; that is not so convenient, since it takes us far from our
army, but anywhere will be better than here."

They counted every risk: the difficulty of disarming the guards, the
proximity of the other two prison-ships, the interference of the shore
patrol in their swift-sailing boat, the disabled and sailless condition
of their own vessel; but nothing turned them from their purpose. Every
detail of the plot was arranged when toward morning the men lay down for
a little rest and sleep.

All the morning Richard scrubbed or cleaned as the guards bade, and then
sat on deck with his eyes alternately upon the sun and the ship.

But toward the middle of the afternoon Richard noticed signs of
dissatisfaction among a few of the men near the stern, where there was
an improvised back-gammon board. They were evidently angry about
something. A quarrel at this spot was a daily occurrence, and occasioned
no surprise among the sentinels; but Richard guessed that some other
cause was at the bottom of this, and gradually made his way to Peter's
side.

"'Tis Henry Crane," Peter whispered, and his close-shut fists showed an
emotion his face concealed. "He is jealous that the ship was given to
Bangs rather than to him, and he and some of his fellows--his old
crew--are threatening mischief."

"Fool, to risk his neck and liberty for a damnable vanity!" Rising,
Richard crossed to the group of players, and sinking down upon the deck
gathered the dice into his hand as though to take part in the sport.

"I play to win; and the man who fouls my game--for any cause
whatsoever--has me to answer to," he said with stern emphasis, his
fearless eyes fixed steadily on Crane's face. The man flushed and began
to mumble an answer, but the guard, passing, said sharply:--

"Since you cannot play without a row, break up the game."

The players got up slowly. "You understand?" Richard said under his
breath, and Crane nodded surlily.

The afternoon wore on and all remained quiet. Crane had evidently
thought better of his foolish jealously. It was growing late, and there
was going to be a high wind, and that was well, for it would set the
tide yet stronger in its outward sweep, and their flight would be all
the swifter.

It lacked only a little while before the drum-tap. Richard got up and
stood with his face to the glowing west to take his last farewell of the
dream-girl with whom he kept his tryst each evening at this hour.

"Good-by, sweetheart," he said in his inner consciousness. "I love you.
On your dear eyes I kiss you--so--"

"Attention! First division carry down their bedding!"

He wheeled; for he was in that first division. A quick glance about the
deck showed everything quiet as usual. Crane and a few others stood at
the far end of the deck awaiting their order to go down with the rest of
the bedding. This would take only ten minutes, then the drum-tap for the
roll-call and--death or liberty.

[Illustration: "... THE PRISONERS LINED UP AND ANSWERED TO THEIR
NAMES."]

Swiftly the first division seized their allotment of the bedding and
passed below. Knowing what was to follow, they did not lose a moment;
but, quick as they were, something happened up above. There was a sound
as of a struggle, a fierce cry, the report of a musket, all so close
together as to seem almost blended into one sound; and then the ship
writhed and quivered with the reverberation of the cannon on the upper
end of the deck. Richard sprang to the ladder, but thrust only his
head above deck when an order to halt, accompanied by a touch of steel
to his temple, brought him up with a pull. But a look showed him what
had happened. Crane and three others lay motionless upon the deck, and
the other two men who had stood with them were covered by the muskets of
the guards, while the warden leaned against the cannon ready to sweep
the deck with another shot should so much as a hand be lifted without
his orders. He was absolute master of the situation. A signal was run
up to the patrol boat, the two mutineers were bound and hurried away;
then the drum tapped for roll-call. But no one made any show of revolt.
With the guards aroused, the patrol alarmed, and that murderous cannon
ready to rake the deck, it had been the act of madmen to resist; so,
scowlingly and surlily the prisoners lined up and answered to their
names, and then marched below, their plans all gone wrong. Richard threw
himself down and sobbed like a child. The plot had failed through the
malice of one man. Crane, thinking everything was ready, and that the
men would all respond to the signal, gave it while Richard was below,
thinking thus to snatch the leadership and gain control of the whole
vessel. But the other men, watching only for Richard's signal, did not
comprehend or respond to this unexpected whistle, only the five who
stood immediately with Crane falling in with his plan. But even they
were not quick enough, for the sentinel upon whom they leaped had time
to cry out the alarm and discharge his gun, while the warden sprang to
the ever-ready cannon.

Although the prisoners felt the warden's anger in many petty ways, no
other arrests were made; for the two captives took their punishment
heroically and told no tales, and inquiry of course failed to elicit any
information from the rest of the prisoners.

"I cannot stay here--I will not!" Richard cried vehemently to Peter. "I
am going, and soon at that."

"What is it you propose to do?"

"I do not yet know, but I am going, or they shall kill me with a
rifle-ball instead of by slow starvation," he said doggedly.

Then one night a month later, as they lay gasping for air in the black
hold, he unfolded a plan that made Peter's heart sick with dread and
uncertainty.




CHAPTER XVI.

INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH.

     "Let terror strike slaves mute;
     Much danger makes great hearts most resolute."
                         --MARSTON.

     "Death, when unmasked, shows us a friendly face."
                         --GOLDSMITH.


"Rebels, turn out your dead!"

The inhuman call came down the opened hatches, and the prisoners, stupid
with the foul air they had breathed all night, prepared to obey. So many
times they had heard the cry that they had grown callous to its coarse
brutality.

It was the end of September, and the delayed equinoctial storm would
soon ravage the coast. For a week the sea-faring folk had been expecting
it; and now at last the great gale or the forerunner of it was upon
them, for all night the waves had been rolling in from the outside with
the sound of thunder. The ship had pitched and tossed and strained at
its moorings, while the living freight in its hold prayed that it might
break away entirely. The hatches, when lifted, showed no blue sky, but
gray clouds and scurrying mist wreaths. The men, coming up out of the
hot and fetid air, shivered a little in the stiff breeze on the deck,
then opening their mouths, drank it in like wine. The faces of the
landsmen had an added ghastliness from seasickness, but they were all
bad enough to look upon,--seamen and soldiers alike. In squads of six
they took their breakfast, eating by sheer force of resolution what they
loathed, that the hunger pains might not gnaw so hard.

"How many dead this morning?" demanded the warden.

"Two,--Drake and Cowles," answered Jack Bangs.

"Nay, there are three, Master Warden," said Peter Ruffin, sadly; "I
found Richard Clevering lying stiff and stark beside me when I got up.
The bodies are there beside the capstan."

The three were stretched upon the deck; the corner of Richard's blanket,
as if by accident, fell over the upper part of his face, but the mouth
below was blue and drawn. With an exclamation of surprise and sorrow
Jack Bangs crossed the deck and, lifting the blanket for a moment,
looked at the face beneath. Then, reverently replacing it, he made the
sign of the cross above the body, and speaking a few low words to Peter,
went away. The warden, who had watched the scene satirically, gave each
corpse a shove with his foot, cursing the while.

"D--n 'em! had to die the worst day of the month, that the burial might
be the more troublesome!" He glanced at them again, gave each another
kick, and checked off their names in his book. "Here, fix these hounds
up, and cut your work short so they'll be in the ground before the storm
breaks."

"If you please, may I go in the boat this morning? Clevering was from my
town, and I should like to pay him this last respect."

"No."

Peter knew better than to urge his plea, and so stepped quietly aside.
But the warden, noticing the slow motions of one of the men to whom he
had beckoned, shouted angrily, "Out of the way there, you infernal
snail, or I'll fix you so you'll go in the boat and stay!"

Peter sprang into the man's place. "I will be very quick," he said,
touching his cap; and without another word wrapped one of the bodies
quickly in its coarse covering and took a few stitches with the needle
his comrade held out. He was so deft, and the lightning was so vivid,
that the warden grunted and let him go on. Under other circumstances he
would have been put in irons for insubordination.

The stitches in Richard's blanket were few and slight, just enough to
hold it about the body.

"What was the matter with that fellow? I never heard him say he was
sick," said one of the sentinels, stopping to look on.

Peter's pulse stood still. "He has complained for some time of a pain
about the heart. All last night he tossed and rolled, and just before
the hatches were opened, he said to me that his time had come. He's
hardly cold yet," he added hastily, as the man bent as though to touch a
hand left exposed by a rent in the blanket.

"Well, he'll have time enough to get cold in the ground," the warden
said, coming up behind, and mistaking Peter's words for a plea for more
time before the burial.

"He was a sullen chap to whom I've been looking for trouble. I'll
warrant he gets not cold between this and the devil," the guard said,
giving the stiff body a parting kick.

The waves tossed furiously, but the long-boat was launched, and two of
the guard took their places in it, while the man who was to assist Peter
at the graves followed to receive the bodies; for the sentinels never
touched them, partly through fear of contagion, and partly out of
contempt. The first two were finally lowered, and then came the moment
Peter had dreaded; those other two had been stiff and stark enough, but
he wanted no prying eyes looking on when he lifted this one, and so
before he bent over to Richard, he glanced down the deck and raised his
hand, quite casually, it seemed, to his face. Instantly, as though he
had been on the watch for a signal, Jack Bangs started a funeral hymn,
loud and wailing.

"Stop that devilish howling!" roared the warden, wheeling around.

Quick as a flash Peter, signing to his assistant, lifted the prostrate
figure at his feet and swung it over the side. The ropes grated on the
rail, and when the warden looked again, it was all over. Peter slid
instantly down one of the ropes, and he and his fellow grave-digger
untied the cords from the body and rolled it over beside the other two
in the bottom of the boat, the guards having their hands full to keep
the little craft from swamping in the waves. Then they cast off and
pulled for the shore.

"What makes you look at that 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/35519