Joscelyn Cheshire: A Story of Revolutionary Days in the Carolinas

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 fête! 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 fiancée of Howe’s chief of staff.

CHAPTER VIII.

“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.

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 reënforcements, 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, reënforcements 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!”

CHAPTER X.

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.