For one awful minute neither man moved; then the patrol, with the horror in his face as of one who looks upon a thing of another world, gave a hoarse scream which was swallowed up in the roar of the sea. Richard did not know what an uncanny sight he made rising up from that grave with his hair unkempt, his face like ashes, and a burial cloth still bound about his jaws. He comprehended only that detection threatened, and detection meant death. With one bound he cleared the grave between them, and grappled with the guard. Under other circumstances he would have been no match for the man, starved and weak as he was; but desperation—that fierce, mad desire to live—gave him strength. It was not so much he as that aroused demon within him that gave back the patrol’s blows, struck the gun from his hands, and finally gripped him about the throat. Not a word was said, not a cry was uttered, as they tossed and swayed backward and forward, to the right or left, sank on one knee and rose again to stagger and struggle anew. If Richard could keep that strangling hold, the fight was his, and with it the liberty for which he longed; if the other man could break it, then life would pay the forfeit. Doggedly he hung on, though his fingers strained and his head reeled, while the other beat him about the body and shoulders with blows that began to lose their force, for that iron grip upon his windpipe was telling at last. Richard was literally choking the life out of him. Backward he went—backward—until the muscles in his chest swelled, and the joints of his back and shoulders cracked—still backward, with everything dark before him. Then suddenly his knees collapsed, and he went down to the sand in a shapeless huddle. But even then Richard did not let go his hold; deeper, and yet deeper his fingers sank into the flesh under them, until not a quiver was left in the insensible limbs. Then finally he stood up and looked upon his work.

God! he had committed murder.

For a long minute he stood there, trembling, horror-stricken; then the self within him cried out, and he roused up to thought and action. That dead body would tell its own disastrous tale when the relief watch came; should he bury it here in his own grave? Yes, that cheated sepulchre should have its inmate; and he reached for the board. But no; there would not be time; it would take hours to hide it, trembling and weak as he was, something else must be done, something quick. Should he run for the dunes and leave it where it lay? If found thus, search would be made for the slayer; he would be setting the watch upon his own track. He pressed his hands helplessly to his temples, staring meanwhile upon the horror there at his feet. Then suddenly the explanation came: the man’s beat ended on a rock that dropped sharply into the water; he knew, for he had noticed when he came ashore before with the funeral boat. If he could throw the body down there, it would be thought the man had walked off in the fog and gloom; no suspicion would be aroused, and he would be free from pursuit.

Shivering at the contact, he seized the body and dragged it along over the shells and pebbles. Once or twice he lost his bearings in the short journey, but a rising wind blew out trailing lengths of fog before him and, aided thus, in a little while he reached his goal. But he could not see the body enter the water; it would be like a second murder, and so with eyes close shut he pushed it off and groaned in his soul to hear the splash that came from below.

“God bear witness that I did not want his blood upon my hands!”

Then he looked away to the dunes and took one step toward them. But the gun—it lay yonder by the graves; he might as well have left the body itself there. Hastily he returned, smoothed over the sand where the struggle had fallen, and seizing the man’s gun and hat, he sped again to the rock, placing them near the ledge, that they might seem to have been dropped there in an attempt at self-preservation. Then he was free to go. Into the fog he plunged, making for where the sand-dunes rose; and as he tottered down into the underbrush beyond, he heard the sunset gun from the station boom out through the mist. He had lived a whole lifetime in the last half hour.

It had been his plan to cross the island and seek some means of escaping to the Jersey coast from the south-side villages, but the fog hid everything, and he seemed walking in a circle. He was weak from excitement and lack of food, and after stumbling blindly onward for a while, he turned to the left and kept on a parallel with the coast, the boom of the surf being his guide; but always he kept the sound far enough away to avoid the sentinels from the patrol. The fog had turned into a rain, cold and depressing, and so after walking an hour or two he was willing to risk something of danger for food and rest. He had passed several houses but had kept aloof through fear; now, however, he bent his steps to a tiny light burning ahead.

It was a fisherman’s cottage close to an inlet that jutted in from the bay, and as good fortune would have it the old man, detained by the storm, was just getting home. Even in the little harbour the swell was unusually strong, and the man was having much difficulty in beaching his boat, so that Richard’s aid was most timely.

“Who are you, my friend?” the fisherman asked, when everything was snug and taut.

“A traveller who has lost his way.”

The old fellow squinted his eyes for a closer look. “A traveller? Well, ’tis enough; we never ask names, my old woman and I, for in such days as these a man’s name is ofttimes his most secret possession. We know not the rights of this war, and so we take no sides, but pray that justice may conquer. Now, how can I pay you for your help?”

“By giving me food and shelter.”

“That will I, for without you I should have lost my whole day’s take and that had been a terrible mishap. Fry an extra fish, mother,” he called into the cottage.

“Ay, two of them, good mother. I pray you; for I am as a ravening wolf seeking what I may devour,” Richard said, putting his head in at the door; and his voice was so bonny that the old woman filled the skillet with a lavish hand. And in that firelit hut he ate the first palatable meal he had had since Monmouth day. Then he set himself artfully to persuade the fisherman to take him down the Sound in his boat.

“Nay, I never go now, the journey is too much for me; and besides I must go to-morrow to the camp to sell my fish. But the soldiers go and come between here and New York every day; if you will come with me to the camp, I will get you company.”

But Richard evaded the invitation. After a while the old woman said: “There is Dame Grant who lives just over the inlet, she goes down the Sound day after to-morrow to see her people,—she hath recently heard that her niece hath a new baby (a fine girl weighing ten pounds in its skin and to be named for the dame), mayhap you could find passage with her.”

But again Richard shook his head, shuddering inwardly at the thought that the old woman might recognize him and be tempted by the standing reward for escaped prisoners to give him again into captivity. He would find some other way, he said, and talked of the fishing in the Sound. When the old man’s pipe was smoked out they went to bed, and in spite of that haunting scene beside the wind-swept graves, Richard slept profoundly through the night hours. Waking before the old couple in the gray morning, he crept down from the loft, and raking together the coals upon the hearth, he breakfasted on the remains of last night’s supper, then stole out into the wet and sombre world.

How sweet it was to breathe the early air and feel the earth beneath his feet, and have the weeds and underbrush rap him about the knees as he pushed away to the interior! The fisherman’s hut was a league behind him when he saw the east redden with the rising sun, for the besom of the storm had swept the heavens clear. What a wonderful light threaded the woods and glorified the tree-tops, sparkling and changing with every motion of the boughs! Often he had seen it among his native Carolina hills, this opaline opening of the morn, but never before with such a thrill of appreciation, such a rush of exquisite joy.

“Good morning, Joscelyn; I am a free man to-day.” And he bowed as though he had been in a ball-room, and picking a bit of blossom that nodded at him, he stuck it jauntily in his ragged coat.

If it had not been for that dead face playing hide-and-seek always among the bushes about him, he could have whistled as he walked. Now and then he sighted houses and cultivated fields, but he kept to the woods; not until he reached the sea on the other side of the island would he venture to show his face at a door. There were wild grapes in the thickets and sweet beach mass to eat; and a little past noon he found a late melon in the weeds of a fence corner, and feasted like a lord.

But half a mile farther on, his pleasure was forgotten in a keen excitement, for from a slight eminence, he saw the plain stretching to the right and left white with the tents of soldiery; and not ten paces from him a sentinel, with his back this way, sat on a fallen tree and read a letter. A few more steps, and he would have been in the hornets’ nest,—a helpless captive. Instantly he dropped upon his knees, and crawled into the brush as stealthily as a creature of the jungle. He had evidently come too far west in his flight, for this was a part of Clinton’s army, quartered here within easy reach of New York. Far away to either side the tents reached, dotting the whole expanse of country. To turn either wing looked like an impossibility; it would take him days to skirt those picket posts to the east; and on the west, he knew from what the fisherman had said that they must reach even to the hamlet whence the boats went daily to New York. To take that route meant a sure and swift destruction, since he would be thrusting himself into the very toils he longed to avoid. His one chance seemed to be a retreat the way he came, and then to beat his way to the northeast along the coast of the Sound, and get over to the Connecticut side on some fishing-boat. He would be weeks—perhaps months—longer in reaching Washington or home, but better that a thousand times than certain capture. He reasoned it all out carefully, lying under the thicket, and then lingered a few minutes to envy the unconscious sentinel his letter, for of course it was from home. How long it had been since he had heard aught of his loved ones—three weary months!

Downcast and disheartened, he returned along his own trail, and in the early twilight heard the boom of the surf ahead of him. But he had missed his way somewhat, and came out of the brush on the side of the inlet across from the fisherman’s hut. He found he would have to walk an extra mile or two to get back to that shelter for the night. He sighed and turned, but just at that moment there flashed upon his sight a light from a window some fifty yards down the inlet, and on the same side with himself.

Stay; this was Dame Grant’s hut, and she went to-morrow to the Jersey shore to visit her kin.

He did not go back around the head of the cove, but turned instead into the field before this other hut, whose friendly light was winking at him through the dusk. His resolution was taken, for good or ill.

Evidently the dame had company, for there was the sound of voices and laughter on the water front of the little house; and Richard stood still with a tingling sense of pleasure,—it had been so long since he had heard people laugh joyously and heartily, that the sound came like the echo of something loved but almost forgotten. Between a hayrick and the fence he finally lay down to wait; and while he waited he slept, for when he awoke the hut was silent, although the light still burned at the window. The chill of autumn was in the air, and he shivered as he crossed the enclosure and stood looking into the lighted room. It was a pleasant scene: the two boys slept upon a wooden bench, but the dame sat by the table, busy with a piece of bright-hued patchwork, and Richard took heart of grace that she smiled as she sewed. From his ragged boot-leg he had taken Colborn’s gold piece, and now he used it to tap lightly on the small, diamond-shaped pane. The dame looked up in surprise to see a hatless man at her window; but he smiled cheerily and beckoned, holding the gold piece against the glass that she might see it. For a moment she looked at him frowningly, then the glitter of the gold won her, and she got up and opened the door.

“What want you at this hour of the night at an honest woman’s house?”

“I want an honest conversation with an honest woman, therefore came I to your door, knowing where to find both. In all true faith and respect I am here; so come, good mother, ask me in. Without your bidding I will not enter, for I would not wilfully intrude upon the privacy of a lady.” He bowed low, clicking his heels as neatly as though he were her partner in a minuet.

“Go along with your fine ways,” she said, but she laughed.

“No ways can be too fine for a lady.” And he took her hand and kissed it with the air of a prince, clicking his heels again in that military salute.

“You young impudence! leave go my hand—you’ll find it heavy enough on your ear presently. I’ll warrant you have it in mind to fleece me out of something, so say your say and be done with it,” but there was no real anger in her voice.

“Nay, I am no highwayman nor money beggar; for that which you do for me I will pay you well,” he answered, again holding up the gold piece. “But would you not be more comfortable sitting?” He waved his hand toward the chair she had quitted, and the fine courtesy of his tone again called forth her laugh; but she took the hint and, turning, bade him enter.

“Well, where do we begin?” she said, when they were seated.

“My mother always begins by asking a stranger to have something to eat—and you have bonny blue eyes like hers,” he answered, with boyish audacity, pushing back her loose sleeve and patting the fat arm.

“’Tis a good place to start,” she answered, shoving him off; and would have called the boys to serve him, but he held her back.

“I wish no one but you to hear what I have to say. You may trust me—I swear it.” So she opened the cupboard herself and brought out plenty of cold food. Richard ate ravenously, praising everything (for in truth it had a heavenly taste), and telling her how blue her eyes were, and how pretty her patchwork—just like what his own mother used to make.

“A bit of a quilt for a bairn just born,” she said, and smoothed it with her great hands.

And Richard asked the child’s name, and said it had a sweet sound, and hoped it would have blue eyes with a twinkle in them like her own. And while he ate and talked she watched him narrowly. He knew it, but he did not care. Presently she said, as one asserting a fact:—

“You are from one of the prison-ships.”

He nodded, smiling; and his frankness evidently pleased her, for she nodded back. “That’s right; no use to lie about it. I knew I had seen your face somewhere. How did you get away?”

“That is the one thing I cannot tell you, good mother, for it would implicate the man who helped me, and not even for your favour—though God knows I want it bad enough—will I betray my friend.”

“Right again; hold fast to the man who holds to you; I like to see folk grateful.”

Then he told her how he wanted to go in her boat to the Jersey shore, and how it was he happened to know her plans. But she shook her head; the risk was too great.

“There will be no risk at all. You are so well known to the soldiers at the different posts that you will never be questioned. It would be but natural for you to take some one stronger than your boys to help you in making so long a voyage. Find me but a coat and hat, and no one will give me a thought, for I know how to hold my tongue when occasion calls.”

But still she refused. Her passport called but for three, and she was not going to run her head into a noose for all his fine speeches and petting ways—for he had squeezed her hand and patted her gray hair while he talked.

He would not listen to her refusal; if she did not take him, he was lost. And he got hold of her other hand, and in pathetic words described to her the agony he had suffered on the vessel; and then he dropped his head on the table and almost sobbed as he told her of Joscelyn and his yearning to see her.

“Oho, a sweetheart, is it?” asked the old woman, with aroused interest.

“Yes, as bonny a girl as you ever set eyes upon. And think you, good dame, of your own young days, of the time when the lads were at your beck and call,—for I warrant me those blue eyes broke many hearts,—would you not have been grateful if your lover had been in peril and some one had saved him for you?”

The dame chuckled. “Ay, ay, I had my fling with the lads, I did.”

“It goes without the saying. And there was one among them whom you loved?” The brown face grew suddenly very tender as with the shadow of a memory. “Then for the sake of him save Joscelyn’s sweetheart for her.”

But still she shook her head, and for a minute Richard was in despair. Then he began all over again, adding the gold piece to his argument. Thus for half an hour the plea went on, and just as he felt that he had failed, she suddenly nodded her head decisively, that softened light again shining in her face.

“One of the boys shall bide at home, and you may go in his stead, since you are so set on it; but mind, you help with the boat, and I have the gold.”

“That and Joscelyn’s love shall be yours, you dear, bonny dame!” he cried rapturously, seizing her about the shoulders and kissing her heartily on either red cheek.

“Get out! Of all the lads I ever saw, you have the freest manners.” But the shove she gave him had in it no roughness. He had set her to thinking of her own youth and of a lad who had gone to sea one morning, kissing his hand to her, but had never come home again, though she had waited for him for many a day through shine of sun and wail of storm. Through all her life a woman’s first love is a touchstone to her sympathy, an open sesame to her tenderness; neither as maid, nor yet as wife, does she ever quite forget that first sweet spell upon her heart. Dame Grant scarcely saw the man beside her, but for sake of that other lad, whom nobody had been able to help far back in the years that were dead, she would save this other girl’s lover.

In an hour their preparations were made. From the loft of her hut the dame brought down a leather jerkin and a battered hat, and after her scissors had gone over Richard’s head, he was metamorphosed so that even she herself would scarcely have recognized him.

“You’d be a fine figure of a man if those wretches on the ship had not starved the shape out of you.”

“My mother always said that in the way of beauty Providence had done more for my legs than for my face,” Richard laughed.

“Well, the warden hath undone the job, for thy breeches hang like a scarecrow’s. Now up into the loft with you, and find some straw whereon to sleep. ’Tis close upon midnight, and we start with the sun.”

But Richard was too full of joy and excitement to sleep much, and so when the dame and her boys came out the next morning, they found him sitting beside the boat, pulling on his boots after a plunge into the cold salt water. The feeling in his breast was indescribable when at last, after many injunctions to the boy who was left, they drew out of the cove into the open bay, in the pearl and purple morning, and he knew his journey was begun.

They went somewhat out of their way that Dame Grant might leave some parcels at the patrol station, their course taking them within a hundred yards of the three prison-ships rocking in the bay. At first Richard turned his eyes away with a sickening sense of pain and rage, then looked eagerly to see if he might recognize Peter on the deck. Yes, there he was, near the stern; Richard knew him from his height and from the cap he wore, and he had to hold his teeth clenched to keep from crying out to him. How dismal and condemned the three hulks looked, despite the transfiguring touch of the morning! And over there on the strand was his grave, the spot to which his mother’s thoughts would make many a sorrowful pilgrimage if so the news of his death should outrun him to the Carolina hills.

At the station one of the guards remarked on the fact that the dame had a new hand aboard.

“Yes; Henry’s stomach’s apt to go back on him in rough weather, and at this season o’ the year we are like to get into a blow any time, so I left him and brought a stronger man. It turns my blood to see Henry heaving and gagging when he ought to be shortening sail.”

“Well, yon fellow hasn’t much the look of a sailor,” said the man, eying Richard suspiciously as he was making awkward attempts to pull in a flapping sail.

“Oh, he isn’t showing off, but he suits me well enough,” the dame answered, with a warning side look at Richard, who instantly gave better heed to his task. Nothing but her coolness saved him, for the guard’s word, coming so suddenly, had made him go very white.

Then a pæan of praise went singing itself through his heart, for the parcels were delivered, and pushing off from shore the boat sailed out of the bay and turned her nose to the west. Down the narrow waterway between Long Island and the city of New York they sailed all the morning, stopping here and there at signals from patrol stations to show their passports. But at none of these places were they detained very long, for Dame Grant had looked carefully to such matters, and so noon found them in a wide bay to the south of the city. No misfortune had befallen Richard, for he had kept a still tongue at every stopping place. In the afternoon the breeze quickened, and they went racing away before it toward the ever growing shore-line ahead, and in the gloaming they landed at a little hamlet on the Jersey side of the bay.

High up on the beach the boat was pulled and tied to a stake, and then while the boy was gaping about him, Richard went back to the boat side and took the dame’s big hand in his:—

“You have kept your contract, and the gold is yours; God bless you for a good, true woman!” he said, leaving the coin in her palm.

But she thrust it back vigorously: “Nay, I will none of it; I but put it in the bargain to test you. You have paid me twofold by your labour and your good gratitude. Tell your Joscelyn that I send you to her as a gift, and bid her use you well.”

Nothing could prevail upon her to touch the coin, and so at last Richard turned away.

“Hist!” she said, holding him a moment, “’tis said there is a Continental force near Brunswick; keep to the southwest.”

“Thank you, and God keep you!” And the gathering shadows swallowed him up.

At that very moment, on board the prison-ship Good Hope, Eustace Singleton was listening to the story of his death from the obsequious warden, and wondering how he was to write it to Betty.

And far away in Hillsboro’ Joscelyn and Betty were going slowly home in bitter disappointment, after seeing the post-rider distribute his few letters, and finding there was nothing for them. How many and how long had been the weeks since they wrote to Eustace; for then it was summer-time, and now the red and ochre tints of the autumn flamed in the woodlands. And still Betty cried, and still Joscelyn counselled patience.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Joscelyn and Betty sat over their embroidery frames in the latter’s parlour, talking over the events of the past two months—the long wait between their letter to Eustace and his sorrowful reply; the grief that clouded the two houses for four days following, before they knew that Richard had escaped and was not dead, and the intense relief and joy his short message had brought them.

“It was like a hundred candles suddenly brought into a dark room,” Betty said, snipping off her thread. “But do you know, Joscelyn, that you acted so queerly, scolding because you had cried so much, and cocking your head before the mirror to count the wrinkles your grieving had made,—though for the life of me I could never see one of them,—that I half believed you were angry that Richard had not died in truth.”

“You give me credit for much feeling, I am sure,” quizzed Joscelyn. “But in sooth, Betty, when a woman gets circles under her eyes, and crow’s feet at the corners of her mouth, and a dismal whine to her voice through over-much sighing, she likes to know it has not been all in vain. Wasted grief is like wasted sweets—useless.”

“I would to heaven all grief were useless and in vain.”

Joscelyn shook her head. “That would not do; for without grief there would be no pity, and without pity there would be no love, and life without love were not worth the living.”

“Love? What do you know of love?” Betty asked, looking up quickly.

“You vain little minx! do you think Cupid wasted all his arrows on you and Eustace?”

“N-o; but Joscelyn—”

“‘But, Joscelyn,’” mimicked the other, still laughing; “from the doubt in your voice one would think you were own daughter to that biblical Thomas whose faith was so small. Trust me, Cupid has saved a shaft in his quiver for me.”

“You are such a queer girl, Joscelyn; one never knows how to take you. You sorrowed for Richard so vehemently at first—do you—can you mean that you care just a little for him?”

“My dear, I was much more in love with Richard dead than I am ever like to be with Richard alive. You see, Death is not unlike charity: it covers a multitude of faults.”

“You heartless creature!”

And Betty got up and took her frame to another window. But she could never stay angry long, partly because of her gentle disposition, and partly because she knew that much of Joscelyn’s seeming heartlessness was in truth but mischievous banter; and so their heads were close together again very soon, while their needles wrought silken poppies or blue-eyed violets into the meshes of canvas on their frames.

And while they thus talked and sewed, a horseman came galloping down the streets. A great commotion followed in his wake; for he rode with a free rein and so rapidly withal that his horse’s hoofs struck sparks from the loose stones of the street. Straight to Mistress Clevering’s door he went, and springing down stayed not to knock or parley, but entering without ceremony and meeting the astonished lady in the hall, hugged her with a will.

“Why—it is—Richard—Richard!”

Her voice was half choked with giving back his kisses, but it reached the two girls in the parlour who, startled at first into silence, threw down their needles and rushed headlong into the hall, and, before they realized it, were kissed by the newcomer in a rapturous greeting.

Joscelyn’s cheek burnt scarlet under his lips, but so glad was she to see him safe after all their anxiety that she submitted without protest. In faith, it was over so quickly, there had been no time for resistance. Devouring her with his eyes, he tried to retain her hand when the greeting was over, but after a moment she slipped it, not unkindly, from his grasp, and presently when he had told them briefly of his marvellous escape, she ran over to give her mother the news and to see if there was not a piece of his favourite cake in the cupboard. A warm tingle was in her veins, and she put her hand up to the cheek he had kissed. How pleasant it was to hear his voice in the house. If he would only leave the war alone, and—and quit making love to her, she would be so fond of him; they used to be excellent comrades before these two things came between them.

Thinking thus, she put a napkin over the cake and turned to leave the pantry; but Richard, under pretext of speaking to her mother, had followed her, and now stood in the door barring her exit.

“Joscelyn, how good it is to see you again! Have you thought of me?”

“’Twould have been impossible not to think of you with nothing else being talked of in the house these two months past.”

“But have you missed me?”

“Why, we miss anything to which we have been accustomed.”

“And you sorrowed for me?”

“Truly, Richard, I should be a most hard-hearted girl not to sorrow over such suffering as has been yours.”

“God bless you!” He was so full of joy over the meeting that he did not notice the lack of love-warmth in her voice, but when he would have put his arm about her, she pushed him off with quiet decision.

“Nay, Richard, do not begin that. You told your mother just now that you had but three hours to stay with us; let us not waste a single moment of the time in a useless love-making.”

“But you kissed me for greeting.”

“Nay, sir, ’twas you kissed me,” she said, with a shimmer of laughter over her face like sunlight upon dancing water.

“Listen, sweetheart,” he said, coming very close to her, his head swimming with the soft intoxication of her presence; “we may have but these few minutes together, but I want you to know that it was the thought of you that kept me alive in that vile prison and finally nerved me to escape. But for you,—for the fierce longing to see you, to touch you,—I should have stayed there and died like a rat.”

“Eustace did all he could,” she broke in, “but our letter was long in reaching him, for General Clinton had sent him to help repel the attack on Rhode Island, and he did not return to New York for more than a month.”

“I know, and some day I shall thank him; but he could not have effected my release or exchange, only bought a little favour from my hard jailers, and I cared not for that kind of obligation from one of his name. It was you—the memory of your dear face—that steeled my nerves and broke my bonds. There is a species of numbing despair that comes upon a man sometimes over which a great love alone can triumph.”

She put her hand upon his arm, for there was a pathos in his voice that touched her deeply; “Richard, I wish I loved you.”

“And so you shall, and do,” he cried; and instantly the tender spell upon her was broken, for in his tone and manner was the old arrogance and sureness that she so much resented. He felt the change, and said pleadingly, “The fisherwoman who rescued me said at parting, ‘Tell your Joscelyn to use you well.’ Are you so soon forgetting her injunction?”

“Nay; she was a good woman, and I shall pray for her.”

“Love me instead—’twill be truer gratitude.”

But his mother and Mistress Cheshire were in the hall, and so for answer Joscelyn pushed him through the door; and he went out to the older women, munching a bit of sweet cake like a boy.

By this time the neighbours were all collected about the door, eager to hear of absent sons and husbands; and he went out to them and answered questions, and took messages and told anew the story of his escape, but with such omissions of names as to throw no suspicion on Dame Grant, if so the story found its way back to the north.

“And in writing to Peter,” he said to Patience and her mother, who were grief stricken at his story, “say only that Dick Clevering told you where he was; he will understand, and anything else might arouse the warden’s suspicions and bring punishment upon him.”

He thought they would never have done with their inquiries and their bemoanings, so short was his time and so eager was he for one more word with Joscelyn. At last he said:—

“And now, my friends, I will carry as many letters as my pockets can hold, but they must be writ in short shift, for in an hour I go on my journey and shall not return this way when once I set my face northward.”

And so they went away,—some to prepare their missives, others out of delicacy, feeling his own people must have him to themselves.

“Tell us all about your journey’s purpose, Richard,” said Betty.

“No, sister; a soldier’s mission is not his property. Suffice it for you to know that another man, Dunn by name, and I go through the Carolinas, perhaps so far south as Savannah, on business for the commander-in-chief. He cannot weaken his present force by detaching any number of men to aid the southerners, but he wants to put them on their guard against the force Clinton is sending by sea from New York; and also to learn accurately the strength of the cause in these parts.”

“And where is Master Dunn?”

“He stopped for a few hours over the Virginia line to see his wife, and I rode the livelong night that I might have this glimpse of you. Methinks I should almost have deserted to come back for a look at you all, had I not persuaded Dunn to choose me on this expedition.”

“And where are you to meet him?”

“At Charlotte, three days hence.”

“When Eustace—when Master Singleton,”—Betty corrected herself, with a vivid blush, “wrote, saying you were dead, mother and I were like to go crazy with grief. He wrote it kindly, but for two days mother did not leave her bed.”

“And what did Joscelyn say?”

“Oh, Joscelyn cried till her eyes were all red and puffed, and reminded us how you and she used to ride and read and walk together without even so much as a sharp word until the war talk came on. She did much to comfort mother.”

“God bless her! But you were not long in suspense?”

“No; but mother had already prepared to have a service in your memory, and Janet and Patience had practised the hymns.”

“Well, there was at least a grave to sing over,” laughed Richard; but his mother was crying, even to think of those sad hours.

“How thin you are!” she said, feeling his arms tenderly.

“Well, mother, when a man has been in his grave, ’tis not to be expected that he will look like one of the fatted kine. But I am plump as a rosy Cupid compared with what I have been; and this reminds me that I am hungry for some of your good cooking; do you and Betty get me up a bit of dinner while I look to my horse.”

But he knew his horse had been cared for, and instead of the stable, it was Joscelyn’s door he sought.

“I have but a little while left,” he said; “come and sit with us, that I may not lose sight of you for one of those blessed minutes. I am as a thirsty man with the cup held ever out of his reach.”

“I thought you would wish to talk with your mother and sister alone.”

“There is nothing I tell them that I would not quite as willingly trust to you; for though you are a Loyalist, yet you are loyal to your friends,” he said, smiling at his own pleasantry, and she laughed too. Long afterward those words came back to him with a pang.

As they crossed the street Mistress Strudwick hailed them from the sidewalk. “Hey, there, Richard! you are keeping bad company and will fall under suspicion, consorting with that young Tory,” she cried. “Are your despatches in the pocket next to her?—if so, beware!”

“I have them in my heart, Mistress Strudwick.”

“Then in faith are they already Joscelyn’s,” laughed the old lady, teasingly pinching the girl’s cheek as the two came up to her.

“Come, Mistress Strudwick, Richard wears not his heart on his sleeve.”

“But he pins it instead upon yours—which is quite as public. Ah, Richard, she is a sad dare-devil!” and she went on to tell him of some of the scenes of the past months. He had feared for her from the first, and in his mother’s parlour he caught her arm almost fiercely:—

“Are you mad that you jeopardize yourself in this way?”

“Mistress Strudwick is over-alarmed; I can take care of myself,” she answered, a trifle hotly.

But he was not satisfied; one word brought on another, and they were nearly quarrelling when Betty came to say his dinner was ready.

“Joscelyn,” he whispered, with a sudden softening of manner as they went down the hall, and he took her hand and laid in it a shining gold piece, “this is all the gold I have in the world; it was to have paid the price of my flight, but the fisherwoman would not have it. Keep it for me till the war is done—I have a special purpose for it.”

After dinner the neighbours came with their letters and farewells, and he had no further talk alone with Joscelyn. She bade him a very gentle good-by, however, and ran across to her own balcony opposite, while he comforted his mother and Betty and said farewell to the assembled friends. When he was mounted and had waved them a last adieu, he made his horse curvet as though loath to start, and so brought up close to the rail of the opposite balcony.

“Joscelyn, keep the gold piece safe and in some hallowed place, for when the war is done it shall be made into our wedding ring—’tis for that I saved it. Good-by, sweetheart.”

And then he was gone as he had come, with a free rein and a ringing hoof beat; and the crowd behind broke into small groups to discuss the news he had brought, while the girl leaning on the veranda across the way, turned a shining coin in her hand, looking at it pensively, with a curious light in her eyes.

CHAPTER XIX.

The winter that followed was a quiet one in Hillsboro’. Joscelyn sewed at the flaming poppies of her embroidery during the mornings, rode with Betty or Mary Singleton over the commons in the afternoons when the snow was not too deep, and in the evenings played cribbage with her mother or sang to the sound of her spinet in the fire-lighted parlour. Now and then news of the outside strife came over the mountains or out of the far reaches to the north and east; but the red wave of war spent itself before it reached the inland town. Washington was jealously watching the British in New York, and in the south the fate of Charleston was rapidly being sealed, while now and then a soldier, coming home on furlough or sick leave, brought tidings of the partisan warfare, ceaselessly waged through the Carolinas and Georgia by Sumter and Marion and other bold leaders; but Hillsboro’, upon the Eno, dozed through the long winter months.

“This war is worse than tiresome; it’s perfectly hateful,” Janet Cameron said, twisting her yellow curls about her fingers and pouting disconsolately; “it is making old maids of us whether the men wish it or not. Here I am, eighteen this coming Whitsuntide, and not a genuine suitor have I had.”

“Fie, Janet! Where is Billy Bryce?” asked Joscelyn, in whose room the two sat. “Billy has loved you from your pinafore days.”

“That baby?” with a scornful accent.

“You did not use to think him such a baby.”

“Perchance not; for he is a whole six months older than I, and that is a mighty age!”

“What manner of lover do you want now?”

“Oh, a grown man—a big strong fellow with a will of his own, who never asks for a kiss, but just takes it.”

“You little minx! what know you of kissing menfolk?”

“Nothing—that is just it—”

“Janet!”

“—for when Billy blushes like a peony, and politely and decorously begs to kiss my cheek, I am in duty bound to look shocked, and blush back, and say no; nothing else would satisfy my dignity, though I could pinch him for it! That is why I call him a baby,” stoutly maintained the girl, her lips curling, and her voice full of mockery.

“He does not wish to forget his manners.”

“To say always ‘if you please’ for tender favours is not the manners for a lover.”

“Since you are so wise, tell me what sort of manners a lover should have.”

“Oh, you know without the telling! He ought to be headstrong and masterful and a—a bold robber when it comes to claiming favours from his lady; and full of mock repentance after the theft.”

“Well, when Billy comes from the war, I shall give him a hint as to how to mend his behaviour.”

“An you did, I should hate you. Why, he does not even know how to write to a girl. Here is a letter from him in which he sends his duty to his mother—did you ever hear of such idiocy? A love-letter with a message like that! A love letter should be private and confidential, filled full of such sweetness that one pair of eyes alone should read it; and he sends his duty to his mother, forsooth! Why, that prying old creature would insist upon reading every line written here if I gave her the message—and Heaven knows she might, and be none the wiser, for all of sentiment there is in it is this last sentence, ‘I would send you my love, an I dared; but I would not for the world make you angry or hurt your maidenly modesty.’ Now that is a love-letter for you!”

“Well, it is not deliriously passionate,” admitted Joscelyn.

“It is deliriously idiotic. I’d just have him understand that my modesty is not quite so thin-skinned as he imagines.”

Joscelyn fell back in her chair, shrieking with laughter, while the yellow-headed tempest before the glass shook her curls, and emphasized her words with a scouting gesture, “Why, Joscelyn, if I were that boy’s great-grandmother, he could not treat me with more deferential respect.”

“I think it is beautiful in him.”

“Beautiful! Well, I think it is imbecile! Hurt my maidenly modesty, indeed!—one would think my modesty were a sore toe to be stubbed or trod upon. Stop laughing, Joscelyn Cheshire; you are as stupid as Billy.” And when Joscelyn answered with another silvery peal, Janet, in high indignation, flung out of the room and down the steps, her heels clattering as she went; and the next morning her maid carried the offending letter to Mistress Bryce with a sweetly worded note, saying Billy had no doubt made a mistake in the address of his missive. And Billy swore his first oath when he heard of it.

Nor was Janet the only one who came to confessional in Joscelyn’s room. It was there that Betty found the only outlet for her secret joy. In spite of the war and its sad consequences, the year had been such a happy one—the sweetest year she had ever known; for it had been full of dreams and fancies, of thrills and hopes. Even the self-reproach, with which she sometimes tormented herself because of her mother, had in it a touch of sweetness since it was linked with her love. The whole world was as a new place; the winter snows held an unthought of revelation of beauty, and each flower that budded to the spring sunshine was a fresh creation bearing on its petals an unspelled message of love. She would not write to Eustace, for that would be undutiful to her mother; but Joscelyn’s letters were filled with tender messages for her, with now and then a little wafered note that burnt her fingers with a delicious sense of forbidden fruit, and which she read and re-read in the privacy of her white-curtained room, trembling and flushing at the story they told,—the future they painted.

But as the spring advanced, a shade of sadness crept over her happiness, a film like the impalpable dust that gathers on a fine picture hanging always in the light. Eustace had ceased to write. Two months had gone by, and no word had come from him. A strange, new fear was tugging at Betty’s heart.

“Naught of evil has befallen him, or Mary would know; and you said they had no tidings?” she asked wistfully one evening, as she leaned against Joscelyn’s window and watched the pale-petalled stars blossom through the purple gloaming.

“I rode all the way to the Singletons’ yesterday afternoon on purpose to ask, and they know nothing.”

“And his mother feels no uneasiness?”

“None. She says Lord Cornwallis would immediately inform her if he should be killed.”

Betty heaved a deep sigh; and then that latent fear came out, “I suppose he finds the ladies of the city so beautiful and entertaining that he has forgotten his—his friends here.”

“S-o! that is what makes you so long of face these days? Well, I do not believe a word of it. Eustace is no jilt. You will find that you at least are remembered, and that his silence is from reasonable cause.”

“His cousin, Ellen Singleton, is such a beautiful woman—you remember Richard told us of her in his letter about the Philadelphia fête. Like Mary, he said, only more lovely. They must of necessity be much together, for she, too, is in New York.”

“And betrothed to Major Grant, you jealous child.”

“But that need really make no difference so far as Eustace’s admiration goes. Besides, there must be others as lovely.”

“Of course; but you are pretty, too, when your face is not long and your eyes red with weeping.”

Betty went home comforted; and that night, when her mother made some sharp remark about the Singleton household, she plucked up courage to say it was scarcely fair to judge the whole family adversely because of the father’s shortcomings. And then, scared at her own temerity, she ran away to her room, and cried out her trouble to that insensate and inanimate confessor of wronged or sorrowing womanhood,—her pillow.

A week later, Joscelyn, coming from the Singletons’, tied a red ribbon on her shutter as a sign that she had news; and Betty, hastening over, soon learned of Clinton’s long and tempestuous voyage from New York to Charleston, whither he went to subdue that city. Eustace had been badly hurt in the storm that wrecked so many of the transports, and had been laid up in the hospital at Tybee Bay for weeks, while Clinton went on to Charleston to begin the siege.

So the British had come again to the south to teach the people of that section their duty to their king, and the quiet that had reigned at Hillsboro’ was broken by the coming and going of recruiting parties, and by the vacillating reports of victory or failure from the beleaguered city.

But it was not until August that the climax came. Then Gates, smarting with the defeat at Camden, halted the remnant of his flying army, scarcely a thousand strong, at the town on the Eno, to rest and sum up the full measure of the disaster that had befallen him. During the short time that he remained, the town was in a ferment. The way to the camp was thronged with sympathizers; kitchen chimneys smoked with the extra cooking, and in every house was a banquet of the best that could be had. Only in the Cheshire house was there no preparation, nor yet upon the door was there the blue and buff cockade that marked the others. There were not lacking those who called official attention to this fact, and so many comments and criticisms crept about among the soldiers that a couple of young officers, bent on a frolic and thinking to teach this wilful Joscelyn a needed lesson, stopped upon her porch and sent word that they would speak with her. And presently she came down to them, dressed fit to dance in a queen’s minuet in silver brocade over a scarlet petticoat, the round whiteness of her neck and arms shining through foamy lace, a red rose in her powdered hair, and a black patch near the corner of her mouth giving a saucy emphasis to her lips. As she stepped out of the door, the young fellows who had been lounging on the porch rail instantly sprang up and uncovered at the sight of so much beauty and dignity. They had thought to find a country maid, mayhap a woman past her youth; and instead, this glowing creature stood before them.

“What is your pleasure, gentlemen?” she asked; but the stiff courtesy of her question was belied by the laugh in her eyes.

They exchanged uneasy glances, and one took a step toward the porch exit; but the other, who was to be spokesman, summing up resolution, stammered and answered:—

“We found no cockade of the nation’s colours on your door, and did but stop to ask the reason.”

“Your general sent you?”

“No, no; we were but passing, and came of our own accord.”

“Oh, a friendly visit, with no official significance? I pray you present each other,” and she courtesied at each name. “And now let us go into the parlour and see what can be done for your entertainment.”

And in the parlour she gave them the best chairs, and set herself with much graciousness of manner to entertain them, plying them with delicate compliments, singing her Tory ballads with such laughing abandon that in the same spirit of fun they applauded her, thinking not a moment of the songs, but of the singer. Later on she brewed them a cup of tea, telling them it was a love potion to win a fair one’s favour; and although they began by protesting vehemently, yet they ended by drinking it, for she first put her own lips to the cups, and then dared them with her eyes. After that they would scarcely have hesitated at hemlock. At the end of an hour she dismissed them, each with a red rose in his coat.

“The colour suits your handsome eyes,” she said softly to one, with a ravishing glance, as she fastened the flower in place. And to the other she murmured, with downcast lids and a sweet similitude of faltering, “This is for memory,” as though for them both this hour was to be a tryst for thought and tender recollection, and the rose its symbol.

Neither of them had the wish nor the will to tear the flower away; and so with a certain crestfallen exhilaration they took their leave, riding slowly down the street, swearing each other to silence. But the story got the rounds within the hour, for Mistress Strudwick, seeing them enter the house and fearing some danger or annoyance to Joscelyn, had followed quickly, and sat in the next room with the door ajar during the entire interview. And she was not slow in publishing it abroad, so that the young officers were twitted unmercifully at mess and headquarters; even General Gates, when told of it, forgot for a moment the humiliation of his late defeat, and laughed long and loud. Under the banter one of the men threw his rose away; but the other held stoutly to his, meeting the raillery with the assertion that it was a lady’s favour and not a king’s colour that he wore.

“It was not kindly of you to take such mean advantage of them, Joscelyn, seeing how irresistible you can make yourself, but it was just the cleverest thing you ever did,” Janet cried, squeezing Joscelyn’s waist. “Mistress Strudwick has near had apoplexy with laughter, and even Mistress Bryce—who hates you like a double dose of senna and was the first to call attention to your undecorated door—could not keep a straight face to hear how neatly you outwitted the young coxcombs. But really, my dear, you deserve no great credit for it; for in that gown you are fit to melt harder hearts than Providence gave our gallant young soldiers.”

“I do not flatter myself their hearts were touched; it was only their vanity that melted like wax in the flame of my flattery.”

“Well, they deserved what they got,—trying to teach you behaviour, indeed!”

The next day the army, refreshed and rested, took up its line of march, passing directly in front of the Cheshire homestead. On the veranda, in her brocade and brilliant petticoat and framed by the riotous rose vine, Joscelyn sat and made pretence to be very busy with her flax wheel; but from under her drooping lids she saw the whole procession.

Beside his company rode a young lieutenant, his eager gaze ahead of him until he reached the undecorated house; then his hat came off, and lifting his lapel on which hung a faded red rose, he cried up to the girl in the balcony:—

“This is for memory!”

And Joscelyn laughed and fluttered her white handkerchief with what might or might not be the suggestion of a kiss. And he, forgetful of military decorum, turned in his saddle and kept his gaze upon her until the troop passed beyond the corner.

“Do you know, Joscelyn,” cried Janet, rushing up the steps, her eyes shining and her yellow curls flying in the wind, “that was Lieutenant Wyley from Halifax—and he is brother to Frederick—and Frederick danced with no one but me last night (you don’t know what you missed in not going to the cotillion!)—and he has been at my house the livelong morning.”

“S-o! You have then a new beau to your string?”

“Oh, yes! and he is strong and masterful, and talks love beautifully, and he does not say ‘by your leave’ like Billy, but is just what a lover should be.”

“Janet, Janet!” cried Joscelyn, reprovingly; but the laughing girl tossed her yellow curls coquettishly, the exhilaration of a new conquest upon her; then suddenly hid her face on Joscelyn’s shoulder:—

“Joscelyn, dearest, did you ever feel a lover’s lips against your cheek for just one little moment?”

And Joscelyn went suddenly as red as she, remembering that November day when Richard came home.

CHAPTER XX.