In the early morning, before the family were astir, Joscelyn dressed herself hurriedly and went to the attic door. It was ajar. With a quick premonition of evil, she entered and whispered Richard’s name. No answer came; no one was there. Then the truth flashed upon her—he had gone, risking everything rather than further expose her to discovery and its dire results. How chivalric, and yet how insane! Of course he would be captured, or else he would perish with cold and hunger this bitter winter weather. She looked about carefully; not a scrap of a note had he left to say good-by. She had not dared to wait to speak with him last night, lest Mary discover them; but now she reproached herself, feeling that she might have prevented this mad mistake. She had meant to come back after all was quiet, but Mary talked so long that for very shame she had not dared to do so, dreading his man’s judgment of a visit at such an hour.

She was now in a nervous tremor, and feared to have the maids come in, lest they announce that the spy had been taken; and when they came but said naught of it, she began to look for news from outsiders. Several times during the morning meal she glanced across to Aunt Clevering’s house with such a tempestuous pity for the old lady’s coming sorrow that her eyes shone with tears; and her mother, seeing them, thought that it was sorrow for the estrangement she had wrought between the two families, and resolved to tell Ann Clevering about it.

“Come, Joscelyn,” said Mary, looking up from her plate, “an you eat no breakfast and keep your mouth pulled down at the corners like that, we’ll be thinking Captain Barry left unsaid the things he should have said last night.”

“I know not what you think he should have said—but he was very charming,” the girl said, rousing herself.

“Particularly when you two sat on the stair and whispered so long.”

“The time seemed long to you because just at that time Edward Moore was talking with Pattie Newsom.”

“Well,” answered Mary, tossing her head, “it was quite as long to him, for he said it seemed years while he was from me.”

“Poor Pattie!”

But all the time she jested her heart was full; and she kept her eyes on the opposite house or watched those who passed in the street to guess, if possible, if they carried news to the commander’s quarters. The rain had passed in the night, but toward dawn the wind had crystallized it into sleet, so that in the sun the ice-dight world sparkled like a jewel catching the light upon its many facets and kindling each with a different flame; everywhere was a brilliant silvery glisten with gleams of amethyst and agate, ochre and opal like momentary meteors in the marvellous dazzle. What a day to be hunted across country like a wild animal by human bloodhounds! What a day to die by a bullet, or, worse still, on yonder historic hill as the Regulators died!

The hours wore on, and still no tidings came. Joscelyn went restlessly from room to room, unable to fix her attention upon anything. It was close upon ten o’clock when the thud of hoofs resounded outside, and a minute after Barry entered the room. Evidently the news he brought was of a gloomy character, for his face was clouded.

“The spy—they have caught him!” Joscelyn cried, leaning heavily on her chair.

“The spy? What do you mean—what is the matter that you are so pale?” The solicitude in his voice was not unmixed with a curious surprise. Then when she hesitated over her answer, he said; coming quite close to her, “Why are you so interested in this spy?”

Then in a moment she was herself again. “They say it was he who saved my life on the commons; should I be true to my womanhood if I dismissed him from my thoughts? I tell you frankly I wish him well.”

She returned his gaze quietly, and he took her hand with a deference that was an apology. “And I, too, wish him well for that service, no matter what he may have carried to his general to our undoing—for he has not been taken. I am a soldier and a servant of the king, but in my heart of hearts your safety is more than the safety of Lord Cornwallis’s whole command.”

His reward was a dazzling smile and an invitation to sit with her upon the sofa, which action brought him within a foot of her. He longed to lessen even that distance, but comforted himself with the thought that his hand might creep to hers at the first softening of her manner.

“What made you think I brought news of the spy?”

“You were so grave I thought naught but an execution could be in progress.”

“It is indeed a kind of execution, for this is to be my good-by,” he said sadly. “We march in two hours; already camp is broken, and preparations are being made.”

“And this decision was reached—?”

“Late last night at a council of officers. This spy has carried away information about our position that Greene could use to our defeat; that, with other reasons, brought about the decision. I did not sleep one moment for thinking of leaving you.”

“And the search for the spy is given over?”

“Yes.”

She could not repress a sigh of relief, but he did not so interpret it. Mary had withdrawn to the window, and her mother had left the room; they two might as well have been alone.

“My God, how I shall miss you!” cried the young fellow at last, desperately. “You see I never loved a woman before, and so I know not how to bear this parting.”

“You are a soldier,” she said gently. “A soldier endures any pain manfully.”

“Yes, but no sword thrust ever hurt like this. You are glad you have met me?”

“Very glad.”

“And you will miss me and think of me sometimes?”

“Many times.”

“And when the war is over, I may come back and—and claim your love?”

He had taken her hand, and she could not at once draw it away, for a strange hesitation was upon her. “I cannot promise,” she said at last. “Ten days ago I did not know you.”

“Yes, but ten hours taught my heart its lesson for life, and war makes quick wooing.”

She slowly but firmly drew her hand away. “I cannot promise; but I love no one else.”

“Then I will wait and hope.”

A few minutes later a bugle sent its shrill call down the wind. He sprang up and hastily shook hands with Mary and Mistress Cheshire, who had just returned to the room; but, answering his pleading glance, Joscelyn followed him into the hall that the others might not witness the emotion of his parting with herself.

“Try to love me,” he said, and was gone; and watching him as he passed out of sight, she felt that her hands were wet with the boyish tears that had fallen on them as he carried them to his lips in a fervid farewell. And suddenly she asked herself what happier fate awaited her than to accept this love poured out so prodigally at her feet. The question brought serious thoughts, so Mary found her but dull company until other visitors arrived to say also their farewells. One of these brought a note from Lord Cornwallis. Would she not come and witness their departure?

“Mother,” she said, coming downstairs in her habit, “I shall not be at home this afternoon; call Betty over to sort her wools out of my knitting-bag; she will find it on the spinet. And while she works over it, go you once more to Aunt Clevering’s, if you please, and intercede for me; Betty will not mind being left.”

Thus did she plan to leave the way open to Eustace for a hasty farewell to his sweetheart.

A little past noon the drums rolled out their hoarse commands, and the British army was on the move. An unrestrained excitement ran riot in the town. There were blaring bugles and flaunting flags, and everywhere glimmers of red as the corps passed onward. At the head of the British columns rode Lord Cornwallis, and at his bridle-rein went Mistress Joscelyn, the picture of good humour and coquetry, with a scarlet cockade in her hat, and an officer’s sash tied jauntily across her breast from shoulder to waist. The rich colour of the silk brought out by contrast the sea-blue lights in her eyes and the glossy gleams of her hair. Men forgot the martial pageant to look at her; and when at the home pier of the river bridge the staff paused, the salutes from the passing soldiers were as much for her as for the general beside her. There the parting came, the officers falling in at the rear of the troops when the last company had passed over. As Eustace passed Joscelyn, he lifted the lapel of his coat, on which was a purple aster,—the like of which grew nowhere save in Betty’s dormer window,—and said with a happy smile:—

“Your plan worked well, sweet Joscelyn. Ten minutes of heaven compensate a man for hours of purgatory. May the fates be as kind to your own heart.”

But it was Barry who lingered behind the others for one last look and word, and then went clattering over the bridge, and left the girl to return to the town with the few Tory women who had dared to share her ride. They had been bold enough at the start, with all the king’s army at their backs, but to go back unprotected by martial power was quite another thing; anti-Toryism would now hold sway, and they knew what that meant; so at the entrance of the town the others turned aside to find their homes, which fortunately were near at hand. But Joscelyn lived at the far end of the town, and must needs pass the whole length of King Street ere she gained her door.

The street, which for the past week had been almost deserted by the patriotic townspeople, now swarmed with eager men and women; but Joscelyn’s thoughts were too full of Richard’s escape and Barry’s wooing for her to note the angry glances directed toward her. It was not until she was passing the wooden building that had served Cornwallis as headquarters for his staff, that she became aware of the hostility she was exciting. Then a voice called out to her to take off that hated insignia she wore; and ere she realized what was happening, four or five boys had surrounded her horse and were snatching at the sash ends that dangled from her waist. Her anger flamed up to a white heat at this insult, and she laid about her with her riding-whip until they let her be. A volley of light missiles followed her as she went on her way, her horse curbed to a walk because she was too proud to seem to fly. The same pride kept her from dodging the paper balls and bits of soft mud that rained around her, and now and then struck her skirts and shoulders. Thus, looking neither to the right nor the left, she went slowly onward until a little urchin, springing to the middle of the road in front of her, shouted insolently:—

“Out upon you for a Tory jade!”

His companions screamed their encouragement, thinking to see her discomforted; but leaning out of her saddle she said, with that smile that had played havoc with so many older hearts:—

“Thank you, Jamie, for calling me such a beautiful name. Were the examples I helped you to work last week quite right? You must come again when you get in trouble over them, that I may save you from another flogging.”

The boy, remembering her timely aid, drew back abashed, dropping the mud he had been wadding together in his grimy hand; and taking advantage of the momentary cessation of hostilities, Joscelyn waved them a laughing salute and cantered away to her own door. But in the privacy of her room she broke down and sobbed out the excitement and suspense of the past two days. The courage which had defied and cheated Tarleton and put the riotous urchins to shame melted away in that burst of tears, and a woman-like longing for protection and safety surged through her. If she might only go away, or if there were but some one to stand between her and this weary persecution!

The first object upon which her eyes rested as she lifted her head when the weeping was past, was that ill-fated scarf with which Barry had decorated her that morning at headquarters. What a world of meaning there was in it! Perhaps nothing could so have drawn her heart to the absent officer as this silent messenger of his love. She folded it away carefully, lingering a moment ere she shut it from sight to recall those last words he had whispered in her ear ere he followed his comrades over the river. All the rest of the day they echoed in her thoughts, calming her by their earnest tenderness.

“Betty came for her wools?” she asked her mother at bedtime.

“Yes. And I forgot to tell you that after I had gone from the house Eustace Singleton came to say good-by to you. When I returned from Ann’s, I found him in the parlour, where his presence must greatly have annoyed Betty, for she was red and flustered. I am sure I was sorry, but I was in no way to blame for her disturbance.” And then tearfully she went on to tell how her mission with Aunt Clevering had again failed.

The change that came upon Hillsboro’ with the going of the British was as swift as it was pronounced. Where before had been sullen repression among the people, all was now animation and exuberance of spirits; the Tories were intimidated, and the place bristled with patriotic evidences. It was as though a slide had been slipped in a stereopticon, and a new picture projected upon the canvas. All the talk now ran on Greene, who had moved down from the Dan and lay upon the heights of Troublesome Creek, only thirteen miles from where Cornwallis had pitched his own camp. For nearly two weeks the entire country watched with panting interest these two generals play their advance-guards and reconnoitring parties against each other as though they were so many ivory figures upon a chessboard. Then came the meeting at Guildford Court-house, the fame of which blew through the land like a sirocco’s breath.

“Lord Cornwallis has won the game at Guildford,” cried Joscelyn.

“Ay, won it so hard and fast that he has had to run away to hold the stakes,” retorted Mistress Strudwick, equally rejoiced over the British retreat to Wilmington.

And, truth to say, Joscelyn herself sorrowed never a bit over the short colonel’s discomfiture. Later on came another letter:—

As the weeks passed and the spring advanced, Joscelyn’s position in the community grew more irksome, for Tory supremacy was at an end and the patriotic spirit was dominant. “Only the rudeness of some excited boys,” the older folk had said of the incident of her homeward ride the day the British withdrew; but it was rather the true index of the public temper against her, and not a day went by but she was made to feel it keenly. Never was an occasion to annoy her neglected, until between her and her neighbours was a bloodless but harassing feud that destroyed utterly the old harmony and good will. She felt the change bitterly; every neglect or retort rankled in her thoughts until it became as a fester corrupting her happiness. But she kept a brave face to the world, and sang her Tory ballads on the veranda in the soft spring twilights, or as she worked through the sunny hours in the side yard where no flowers but those that blossomed red were permitted to blow. And Mistress Strudwick said to her cronies, with genuine admiration, that twenty Guildfords could not break the spirit of a girl like that.

But necessarily the thing that hurt Joscelyn most was Aunt Clevering’s treatment. Not content to be a spectator, she often took the initiative in the persecution the girl was made to suffer, ignoring her in public or noticing her only to taunt her with some uncivil word or look. A few sentences from Joscelyn might have swept away the barriers and restored the old friendship, but she would not buy her pardon thus. She possibly might not be believed without the proof of Richard’s letter, that first short, fervid missive he had sent her on the eve of the great battle; and that she could not show, not even to his own mother, such a heroine did it make of her, such an ardent, grateful lover of him. Then, too, if this quarrel with Aunt Clevering should be healed, people would ask questions, and when the truth should be known she would be in no better plight—a Tory maid risking everything, even life itself, to hide a Continental spy! Neither friends nor foes would understand; her motives would be misinterpreted, her loyalty questioned; and so her last estate would be no better than her first. Thus did she hold her peace and hide her tears under cover of darkness, the while by day she sang her daring little ditties among the growing things of her garden.

Having been the arch-Royalist of the town, it was but natural that public resentment should be most pronounced against her. The Singletons and Moores were less outspoken, and so drew upon themselves less of contumely. Her caustic speeches, on the contrary, were not forgotten, until Mistress Strudwick threatened half tearfully, half playfully to clip her tongue with her sharp scissors. But the chief thing that kept alive the animosity against her were the letters that came to her now and then from Cornwallis’s camp. She did not deny their reception, but steadily refused to divulge their contents; and as it was believed that in one way or another she contrived to answer them, the idea got abroad that she was in the employ of the British general to keep him posted as to the state of things in Hillsboro’-town. Nothing else could so have set the people against her as this supposed espionage, and all through the advancing summer she felt the weight of their displeasure. Mistress Bryce openly denounced her, boys shouted disrespectful things under her window at night, and the shopkeepers so neglected or refused her orders that, had it not been for Mistress Strudwick, she and her mother would have suffered; but that good friend stood stanchly by her. So loud were the outcries against her when she rode abroad that out of deference to her mother’s wishes, and also to save herself from needless mortification, she never had the saddle put upon her horse.

And yet innocent enough were those letters that caused so much of trouble, filled as they were, not with army news, but with a man’s tender love throes,—the vehement pleadings of a heart swayed by its first grand passion.

CHAPTER XXVI.

And in each of those far-away armies on the York was a man who watched the sun go westward every eve, and sent a silent message to a girl with dark hair and sea-blue eyes who pruned her roses in a new garden of the Hesperides beside the Eno. Unknown to each other, their thoughts had yet a common Mecca. But fate was not content that they should stand thus forever apart.

In Yorktown, Cornwallis had thought to be safe either to escape to Clinton or be rescued by that general’s fleet sailing down the Atlantic from New York. But instead to the east, in Lynn Haven Bay, De Grasse’s ships held the passes to the sea; while on the land side—one wing on York and one on Wormley creek—in two great crescents stretched the lines of the allied armies, with Warwick creek running darkly between. Over the tents that gleamed in the autumn sunshine there flew, side by side, the stars and stripes of the Republic and the fleur-de-lys of France. And there were sallies and repulses, and daily encroachments and skirmishes between the allies without and the British within.

It so happened one day that Richard’s company was detailed to guard the ditchers who were making a new trench, and throwing up a fresh line of breastworks that would enable them to draw yet nearer to the red-coated pickets. Already these latter had been forced—by the horns of that ever encroaching crescent—to withdraw twice, and now a third retreat seemed imminent. But not without a struggle would they yield their posts; and so presently, on that mellow autumn day, a flash of scarlet came in the sun as an assaulting column swept out toward the projected line where the shovels were at work; and the Continental guard, after discharging their guns with signal success, waited with fixed bayonets to receive the advancing column. It was a fierce contest fought almost hand to hand; then the Redcoats began to fall back, and with a quick rush the Continentals turned their retreat to a rout.

Returning from that fierce charge with the flush of the fight upon him, Richard came upon a man lying prone upon his face in the stubble—the gallant English captain who had led the sally. He had seen him as he fell far in advance of his column. There the retreat had left him inside the new lines of the Continentals, and finding him still alive, Richard turned him over softly so as not to start his wound afresh; and as he did so he caught one word from the pale lips:—

“Joscelyn.”

The name unlocked the floodgates of the young Continental’s sympathies.

“Dunn,” he said to the man in front of him, “give me a hand, that I may get this poor fellow to my tent.”

“The surgeon will find him here directly and have him moved to the field hospital.”

“He could not stand so long a trip; see how near he is already gone with this bullet hole in his side. Come, I have a fancy not to see him die here in the wet grass.”

So Dunn lent his aid, and the wounded man was put down in Richard’s tent, murmuring again that talismanic name.

“He may possibly live till morning,” the surgeon said, when at last he came from attending to his own men, “but he cannot be moved. I will try and send some one to look after him.”

Richard touched his cap, “If you please, I am off duty to-night; I will willingly nurse him, if so you give me directions.”

And the man was left in his care; and during the slow hours, word by word and sentence by sentence, he patched together the fevered ramblings of his patient, until he knew that the Joscelyn of his own hopes and fears and dreams was identical with the girl of this other man’s thoughts.

With the knowledge something seemed to catch at his throat, to tighten about his heart; and he went out and stood awhile at the tent door, gazing up into the clear heavens whose steadfast stars were shining also on the distant Carolina hills, watching a window behind which a girl lay sleeping—dreaming perhaps of the man yonder on the pallet. Had he lost her through this other one? Was his life to miss its one strong purpose, in missing her?

By and by, when he was calmer, he came again to the pallet where the dying man lay, and picked up the sword which, along with his own, was propped against the canvas wall of the tent. It was of beautiful workmanship with a crest on the jewelled scabbard, and below a graven name which, by the light of the tallow dip, Richard at last spelled out:—

“Barry.”

He stood thinking for a moment. Why, this then was the man for whom Ellen Singleton had mistaken him that night he played the squire to her in a borrowed military cloak at the fête in Philadelphia. What strange fate had brought them thus together? “The finest officer who wears the red, and a lady-killer,” Dunn had said. And that tightness gathered again at Richard’s heart, for where else had he heard of the man?

Stay, was not Barry the name—Yes, it was the very name he had heard coupled with Joscelyn’s that night while he lay hiding in the freezing attic. “She is sitting on the stair with Captain Barry.” The very tones of the speaker came back to him, bringing again that thirsty desire to open the door and look for her which he had not been able to resist, though life itself might pay the forfeit.

He went back to the pallet, and bent down that he might see the face of his patient. So this was the man who had won her away from the rest of her company, the man to whom she had bent down so low that from the rear only the dark crown of her hair could be seen as she sat on her steps—this was the man to whose love tale she had listened smilingly, while he himself was a prisoner hiding for his very life. A lady-killer, Dunn had said; and well he could believe it from the traces of manly beauty still lingering in the suffering face. A fierce jealousy tore at his heart. Evidently, from his ramblings, Joscelyn had listened to this other’s wooing, and had written him letters, while she mocked him and sent him never so much as one little line in answer to all the pages he wrote her. He had always known that other men would love her,—it could not be otherwise with her sweetness and her beauty,—but always in his thoughts she had kept herself for him. Had it been a false hope; had she loved this brave Briton who called upon her with such pathos of tenderness? If so, then was his own dream-castle in ruins.

By and by, just before the end, there came a lucid hour. The wounded man turned his eyes questioningly upon his nurse.

“I found you after the fight, so far in our lines that your own men had missed you in their retreat, and the surgeon left you in my care,” Richard said gently.

“To die? Yes, I see it in your eyes.”

“You fell at the head of your men, as a soldier wishes death to find him.”

The other smiled faintly, “My mother will perchance be a little comforted by that. You will write her?”

“Yes—And Joscelyn?”

“Joscelyn?—how do you happen—?”

“You talked of her in your delirium. She lives in the Carolina hill country. I, too, know her and—love her.”

And then each told something of his story to the other; and they clasped hands as brave men can when enmity and prejudice and jealousy are swallowed up in the wide sympathy that lurks forever in the precincts of the Great Shadow.

“And when the war is over, and I tell her again of my love,” said Richard, with that impulsive generosity that was ever one of his characteristics, “I will tell her also of yours—and mayhap she will choose rather to cherish your memory than to give herself to me.”

And Barry turned his face to the wall and died, whispering his love for her to the last. It was a strange scene, this midnight confessional between two men who, all unknown to each other, had striven for the same heart-goal—who in life would have been bitter and unrelenting rivals, but who met and parted amid the shadows of death as friends and brothers. Richard wrote it all to Joscelyn, eloquently, passionately; portraying faithfully every emotion of the dying man.

And Joscelyn read the letter by the fading sunset, and then sat with wet eyes through the star-haunted gloaming, thinking of the young life that had gone out in the red trail of war. She missed him as it did not seem possible she could have missed any one who had been so short a while in her consciousness.

And sitting thus alone with her sorrow, she felt a hand on hers and an arm slip around her neck.

“Joscelyn, I could not stay away any longer,” whispered Betty’s voice in the dark. “I had both of your notes; I know you are sorry, and I miss you so much!”

“Dear Betty, dear Betty, how glad I am you are come! I cannot tell you how lonely and wretched my life is, and now my—my true friend is gone!” and with her head on the girl’s bosom, she gave way to a nervous sobbing.

“Did you love him?” Betty asked, when at last she understood.

“I—I do not know; but I have so few friends, and he loved me and trusted me, and I shall miss him.”

“Did you wish to marry him?”

“I cannot say. Sometimes when I have been very lonely, and you all turned from me, I have thought I did. To marry him and go away to a new place and new friends seemed best. He was strong and brave, but he was gentle and considerate, and he never hectored me—a girl likes not to be hectored and quarrelled with in her courting.”

“No,” answered Betty, sadly, understanding she had Richard in mind. Often, with a woman’s instinct, she had pleaded with her brother to humour Joscelyn more in her way of looking at things; but he had chosen to attempt to set her right, or, at least, right as he saw it.

“I must be going; mother is at Mistress Strudwick’s and will be angry if she knows I came here,” Betty said at last, rising with a sigh. But Joscelyn held her back with both hands.

“Not yet, Betty, not yet; we can see her far down the street by the lights from the windows. Stay a little longer; it is such a comfort to have you.”

“I wish I could come without this deception.”

“I, too, with all my heart.”

“You had a letter to-day; was it from Master Singleton?”

“No; it was this sad one from Richard, by the same messenger that brought yours. The last letter I had from Eustace was the one I sent you some two weeks ago. Since he was then on the eve of going to New York to carry letters to General Clinton, it is not likely he is among those in the beleaguered city of Yorktown.”

“I have been so glad to think this,” Betty answered, sighing. “Do you know, Joscelyn, I saw him in the parlour yonder for a few minutes the day the British marched?”

“Yes; I told mother to have you here, and then I sent him back from headquarters.”

Betty kissed her gratefully. “I might have guessed it. It was such a happy ten minutes! But, Joscelyn, mother never mentions his name except to remind me that his father and mine were bitter enemies.”

“Wait until Richard comes home; he doubtless will look at matters differently; and as he says, so will your mother do.”

“Not unless you plead for me; and even that may not now avail, for he may share mother’s anger against you.”

“Richard will not be angry with me when he returns,” Joscelyn answered confidently; and Betty kissed her softly.

“Oh, Joscelyn, if it could only have been Richard instead of Captain Barry to win even this much of your heart! But there, I must be going; some one is coming down the street.”

“You will come again sometime?”

“Yes, for I have wanted you so much.”

“And I you.”

They held each other close for a moment, and then Betty ran across the street and dodged into the shadow of her own door. Her visit helped Joscelyn immeasurably, in that it gave her a sense of sympathy. But she could not shake off the depression of Richard’s news; it was a culmination of the long strain upon her nervous system. In the succeeding days she had fits of silent brooding which sometimes, in the sombre twilights, ended in tears. For the first time since the news of Lexington, her neighbours found her grave and preoccupied. The fearless badinage with which she had met every attack upon her partisan creed was suddenly stayed, as though she heard not their thrusts and innuendoes. And Mistress Strudwick watched her with a vague uneasiness, longing to see the old, quick passion flame up now and then.

But this frame of mind was rudely broken by the thrilling news of the fall of Yorktown. She had expected it for days, but the reality roused all of her former spirit, and put her once more upon the defensive.

“Lord Cornwallis has surrendered?” she said calmly to Amanda Bryce and the two gossips, who had run in to tell her the news and to gloat over her discomfiture. “’Tis most courteous of you to bring me the information so swiftly; you are quite out of breath with your race. I shall immediately write my sincere condolences to his lordship that wrong has triumphed over right. Will you not have a cup of tea with me, ladies?—there is no longer any tax. No? Then I have the honour to wish you a very good morning. Pray come again when you have further tidings.”

She set the door open for them with the air of a sovereign condescending to her subjects; and they went away humiliated and furious.

“From the airs she gives herself, one would think Joscelyn Cheshire had royal blood in her veins,” they said angrily. But when Mistress Strudwick heard of the scene, she laughed long and heartily.

“They deserved it, the carping crones! Would I had been there to see them routed. Thank Heaven her spirit has come back; how I love her for it, unreconstructed Tory as she is!”

Never again was Joscelyn to deck herself in her scarlet bodice in honour of an English victory; never again to tease her neighbours with her taunting Tory ballads. The war was over; she had lost her cause; and with her life all out of attune with her surroundings she must face the inevitable. Seeing the relief in her mother’s face, she could not be sorry that peace had come, though the terms were bitter; and so even in her loss was there something of compensation.

CHAPTER XXVII.

The war was over; the drums lay unbeaten, the snarling trumpets sang their songs no more upon the level plains or sloping sides of far blue hills; liberty had triumphed, and the scarlet insignia of kingly rule had gone from the land forever. But peace did not bring the desired order of things. The unstable government of an untrained congress could not control the spirit of maraud and chaos that had so long dominated certain classes of people. Eight years of warfare had left its scar on the whole country, but particularly in those portions where the fighting had fallen. The sanguine among the triumphant contestants had looked for an immediate rehabilitation of affairs, thinking that the taps of war would be the reveille of commerce and order and prosperity. But as yet Americans were better soldiers than statesmen. They had to learn to govern themselves, learn to wield the mighty power they had won; and at first knowledge was slow in coming. Private wrongs were remembered, individual grievances were recalled. The spirit that refrained from shouting over a fallen foe at Yorktown manifested itself at home in many petty ways against the defeated Tories, so that among these latter was a feeling of unprotected helplessness that made them sullen and restive.

“Joscelyn,” Mary Singleton said, coming in one day when the winter was at its fiercest, “father says he is going to Canada to stay until things get settled. We cannot stir from our gate without receiving some rudeness, and our property is threatened with confiscation, piece by piece, on the ground that we used it to aid the king’s cause. Will you come with us? We would love to have you.”

“No, for my mother would not think of such a thing; and where she is, there will I stay.”

“Well, you had no man in the war; but against us the enmity is strong, because Eustace actually bore arms in the king’s service.”

“Will Eustace go with you?”

“No; he writes that as soon as he gets his discharge, he means to return here and accept whatever fate comes to him.”

“I am glad. That is the right way to take his defeat. Your father is old and worn with annoyance, but Eustace is young enough to meet the struggle and win his way. Trust me; all will be well with him in the end,” and Joscelyn’s eyes were on Betty’s window over the way.

“Edward Moore joins us in New York,” Mary said, with a blush.

“And I shall not be there to play the part of bridesmaid! Well, I shall content myself with putting a handful of rice and an old shoe into your trunk.”

After the Singletons were gone, Joscelyn was very lonely, for the only house at which a welcome always met her was Mistress Strudwick’s.

“You may say what you please, Amanda Bryce, but that girl comes here when she likes, and stays as long as she pleases; and if there is anybody I’m gladder to see, I do not know who it is,” said the stanch old lady.

Soundly she lectured Joscelyn at times, but the fault-finding always began and ended with a caress, so there was no sting in it. Here the girl sometimes met Betty; and the older woman, seeing the desire of their hearts shining in their faces, encouraged them to be friends. Here, too, Janet Cameron often came, and after the visit walked home openly with her arm in Joscelyn’s, making merry little mouths at Mistress Bryce as they passed her door. These visits and walks were Joscelyn’s chief pleasure, and she stood sorely in need of recreation, for of late she was thinner and more irritable than her mother had ever seen her.

“You need a course of bitters,” Mistress Strudwick said, opening her medicine-box one day.

“I have been taking such a course for eight years.”

“Yes, Amanda Bryce’s tongue drips not with honey! But I shall talk with your mother, and between us we will take you in hand and get the edge off your nerves.” So Joscelyn dutifully yielded herself to her two physicians, who took much delight in the teas and tonics they brewed for her.

During all these autumn and winter weeks, Richard Clevering had lain in the field hospital at Yorktown, racked with pain and fever from the wound he got when—singing a song of the Carolina hills—his regiment stormed that gun-girt bastion on the British left, and the colonies were free!

Things would have gone better with him had he been content to lie still and let the bones knit; but he could not stay away from that last scene of the surrender, which made all the privations of the past worth while. To miss that was to miss the joy of life, the glory of the fight, the crown of the conqueror; and so he had pretended to be much stronger than he was, and had gone to stand in his place when the British, with silent drums and cased banners, marched from their surrendered fortifications, and stacked arms between the martial lines of French and Continentals. The sight compensated him for the pain the exertion entailed, so that he never complained when, afterwards, the surgeon shook his head gravely over the fever that flushed his veins. He had had his heart’s desire; he would bear its results.

But in the early part of January, seeing a tedious recovery still ahead of him, and the hospital facilities being so limited, he asked to be sent home to be cared for by his own people. There would be no more fighting, and his stay was an unnecessary burden upon the army officials, whose hands were full trying to keep down the spirit of insurrection that was fermenting the camp over the delay in the soldiers’ pay. To relieve the strain upon the moneyless army coffers, many of the men who had been invalided were allowed to return to their homes. Thus it was, that Joscelyn, unconscious of the extent of the hurt that had come to him—for he had written no particulars home—and also of his dismissal, answered a knock at her door one bleak January day, and gave a great cry at sight of the weary man leaning against the veranda railing, with an empty sleeve pinned helplessly to the bandaged arm beneath.

“Richard Clevering!”

“Ay, Richard come back with a crushed arm, but a sound heart to claim you, unworthy though he now knows himself to be of such a prize, Joscelyn, Cornwallis has struck his martial colours, will you surrender to me for love’s dear sake?”

He had come into the hall and closed the swaying door against the wind, while she retreated backward until she stood close to the wall, her hands behind her.

“I owe you life and all the gratitude that means, but it is out of my love for you, which has grown with every hour of my absence, that I ask this—will you come to me, Joscelyn?”

She did not speak, but slowly she shook her head, her eyes meeting his with a curious compassion. For one long minute he looked at her, searchingly, yearningly; then his outstretched arm fell to his side.

“Then is the war not over for me,” he said sadly.

He went with her into the sitting-room, and, with the luxurious hearth-glow brightening his face and taking that deathly pallor out of it, the while her magnetic presence kindled a tempestuous fire in his veins, he told her the story of that final surrender and of his hurt, softening the former narrative as best he might, remembering how she had wished it otherwise. Then with a half-whimsical, half-pathetic touch upon his bandaged arm, he said:—

“The surgeon said that with time and care this would heal, but the accident has left me but one hand wherewith to begin that other campaign which means so much to me,—for if I win you not, I might as well have perished at the hands of the Redcoats.”

As she listened, while the afternoon wore away, she was conscious of some change in him. Not that his tone showed less of resolution to achieve his purpose; it was rather an absence of the over-weening self-confidence which had so offended her in the past. Five years of warfare and baffled wooing had taught him something of self-distrust, something of humility which became him well. The empty sleeve and the emaciated, listless figure touched her with a quick pity, in such violent contrast were they to his former robust activity and superb proportions, so that she sighed and turned her face aside.

And he, on his part, was studying her, finding again, with a thrill of joy, the same saucy curves about her lips, the same glinting blue lights in her eyes that had held his heart captive in the past; and noting, too, the touch of womanly dignity which had in some wise supplanted the impetuosity of the old days. The girl of eighteen had become a woman of twenty-three since that day she had laughed down upon the Continentals marching away to Valley Forge. But there was not an attraction lost; rather was every charm ripened and perfected by the hallowing touches of growth and development. If he had loved her in the past, a thousand times more did he love her now in her splendid womanhood. Had she cared for Barry? Always the question was a stab; and with it now there came the first quick doubt of the final healing of his arm. Could she ever love him if he should be maimed like this forever?

Looking up suddenly, she found his eyes upon her face in such a wistful gaze that she flushed involuntarily, and a painful silence fell between them. Intuitively she felt that this was not the same Richard who had gone away, this earnest, tender man with not a trace of arrogance in his manner. Had he always been like this, they need not have quarrelled. She had been willing to overlook much had he only left her a right to her own opinions, and treated the views her father had taught her with respect.

“Do you know,” she said, breaking the pause with a little nervous laugh, “that if you are to preserve the good will of your neighbours, you must stay away from me?”

“Then do I this minute forswear their friendship, for to stay from you would be to remain outside of Paradise. Only tell me one thing,—you did not hate me for the news I wrote you of Barry?”

“Nay, it was the one of your letters I felt drawn to answer.”

He took her unresisting hand and kissed it softly. “If you loved him, I would I had died in his place.”

And then again that silence fell between them, while at his heart was biting that most helpless of all jealousy—the jealousy of the dead. Against a living rival one may contend with hope; but when that on which the heart is set has come to be but a memory, incapable of blunder or cruelty, the contest becomes useless, or pitifully unequal. Yearningly Richard’s eyes studied the face before him, and yet he would not ask her the question that burned in his heart. Some day she would tell him the truth of her own accord; until then he must wait and suffer.

His return, she foresaw, was to be to her at once a relief and an embarrassment, for she would not consent to his making public her share in his escape of the winter, lest it look like a plea on her part for a cessation of hostilities.

“I have held my own against them all these years; I will not ask for any terms, now that the end has come, and my side has gone down in defeat,” she said.

“But, Joscelyn, think how they would adore you for such a service to their country! My information was most useful to General Greene.”

“I did it not for sake of their country.”

“Well, then, for sake of their countryman. They love me, if you do not.” He leaned toward her laughing, yet pleading; and she noted how honest and pleasant were his eyes. But she held to her point against all of his arguments; and so he was feign to yield except in regard to his mother; there he was firm.

“I never dreamed but that she knew, for the quick movements of the last campaign left no time for letters to reach me from home. Had I not thought you would tell her as soon as the British were well out of town, I should have asked a furlough, and come home to set you right. To think what you have suffered for saving my poor life!”

And so it was that half an hour later Mistress Clevering came hastily in without the ceremony of knocking, and taking Joscelyn in her arms,—to Mistress Cheshire’s amazement,—said many grateful and affectionate things.

“When I think of what you have done for us, I am bowed down with humiliation for the cruelty with which I have requited you. Oh, my dear, my dear! had you only told me and your mother at the time, things would have been very different.”

“Yes,” answered the girl, demurely, “so different that Master Clevering’s life would have paid the penalty of his daring. Nay, it was a game at which only one could play with safety. You could have done naught but share my anxiety, and that were no help.”

“And to think how I have scolded and blamed you for the quarrel between me and Ann,” said her mother, tearfully; but Joscelyn’s tender answer comforted her.

“And here comes Betty to make her peace with you, too,” Aunt Clevering said, as the breathless girl entered.

“Oh, Betty and I have been friends these many weeks, as dear Mistress Strudwick can testify,” Joscelyn said, putting her arm affectionately around Betty, who with a grateful cry had sprung to her side. And from the doorway, Richard thought he had never seen a more beautiful picture.

Thus was the breach that had yawned between the two families healed; and the sorest ache in Joscelyn’s heart was cured as she witnessed the happiness of her mother who, with a firmness scarcely to be expected, had given up her old friend and held stanchly to her daughter, although she held that daughter to blame. It was touching to see her childish delight in the renewal of the old relations. A dozen times a day she was in and out of the two houses, for Richard’s wound afforded her many pretexts for kindly ministrations. He never left his bed except to lie on the sofa by the window, for his strength seemed suddenly to have failed him after the sustained effort he had made to reach home. Often he wished Joscelyn would come in her mother’s stead; but for her own reasons the girl kept her distance, so that sometimes he did not see her for days together. And every day that she stayed away the jealous pain bit deeper into his heart.

But one day she came of her own accord. There had been a knock and the sound of a man’s voice at the door, followed by the maid making some excuse for Mistress Clevering; and presently, when all had grown silent, Betty came through the sitting-room with a face so white that Richard called out from where he lay to know what was the matter. But she did not stop to answer, and so he waited in a troubled doubt while the clock ticked off a slow twenty minutes. Then the door opened, and Joscelyn came straight up to his couch, a strange light of pleading in her eyes.

“Richard,” she said, and his face brightened, for she had taken to calling him Master Clevering with a formality he hated. “Richard, if a man be true and honest and loves a woman, should he not have the chance to tell her so and win her?”

“Most assuredly.”

“And old feuds and differences of a former generation, with which he had nothing to do, should have no weight to hold him back?”

“Why—what mean you?”

“This; that even as you love me,” and a brilliant colour dyed her cheeks at mention of it, “so does Eustace Singleton love Betty.”

“I had half guessed as much—and I am sorry.”

“And Betty loves him. Nay, lie still and look not so angrily at me. There is no one to blame; a woman’s heart, like a man’s, asks no permission in the giving of itself.”

“But Betty knew—”

“Yes, she knew all the opposition in store for her, and she made her own fight; but love takes no dictation.”

“Right well do I know that.”

“Then you have no room for a quarrel with her; rather should your sympathy be on her side. All her happiness is set on Eustace; he is her true lover, has been for years,—and I have resolved so to aid her, that you and Aunt Clevering shall not break her heart by a cruel and useless separation.” She stepped back and threw up her head; just so had she looked a year ago, when she bade defiance to the short colonel while he himself crouched in her shadowy garret. For a moment they gazed at each other steadily, then she was again beside him, her eyes luminous with a gentle entreaty:—

“Richard, if—if I loved you with all my soul, would you let my mother’s dislike, if she did dislike you, stand between us?”

“My God, no!”

“Eustace is a man like you—and Betty loves him like that.”

He saw the drift of her meaning but he did not answer, and thus for another minute they looked into each other’s eyes unwaveringly; then his gaze fell, and with a sudden delicious softening of manner, she stooped and took his hand.

“Richard, Eustace is yonder in my parlour,—come back like a brave man to begin life all over, and suffer anything to be near Betty. He has been denied entrance at your door. Bid me bring him here to you. If not—then will I take Betty to him, even though I should thus lose yours and Aunt Clevering’s friendship forever.”

“You make hard terms.”

“I am dealing with a hard man.”

“Think you so, sweetheart? Methought I had ever been gentle to you. Betty’s happiness is very dear to me—” he broke off, sighing. She still held his hand, or rather he held hers, for his was the stronger grasp. Suddenly, with that same enchanting gentleness, she bent close to him, and laid her cheek against his tingling fingers:—

“Thank you, Richard, for yielding; I knew when once you understood, you could not be so cruel as to refuse. I will bring Eustace at once.”

“But, Joscelyn, I did not say—”

“Oh, but you looked your consent—and I never saw your eyes so beautiful, such a tender gray.” He flushed with pleasure, still, however, protesting; but she was already at the door, whence she looked back at him with a roguish smile, “I shall give you half an hour to make Aunt Clevering see things as we do. At the end of that time I will be here with Eustace; and if you wish to go on being friends with me, be sure to have on your very best manners and—and that beautiful light in your eyes.”

She kept her word; no one ever knew what passed between Richard and his mother, but an hour later Mistress Clevering, stiff of lip, but courteous of manner, bade Betty take Master Singleton from Richard’s room to the parlour, and find him some refreshment. And when Betty had obeyed, Joscelyn softly closed the door behind them, shutting them into a rose-hued world of their own, where it were sacrilege for another to intrude. Upstairs she heard Richard calling her entreatingly, but remembering by what means her victory over his prejudice had been won, she pretended not to hear, but ran swiftly into the street, and reached Mistress Strudwick’s door with such a glowing face that that lady exclaimed:—

“Hoity-toity, child! still letting your cheeks play the Royalist, although the war is done? Your sweetheart should see you now. In sooth, I think Amanda Bryce would even agree that you are pretty. Come here and tell an old woman what all these blushes mean.”

And Joscelyn’s fibbing tongue said it was only the race she had run in the wind from her door.

CHAPTER XXVIII.