CHAPTER XIII.

_Wherein Captain Winwood Declines a Promotion._

Philip assumed that the greatest risk would lie in departing the town by the route over which he had made his entrance, and in which he had left a trail of alarm. His best course would be in the opposite direction.

Therefore, having leaped across the fence to the alley behind the Faringfield grounds, he turned to the right and ran; for he had bethought him, while fleeing through the garden, that he might probably find a row-boat at the Faringfield wharves. He guessed that, as the port of New York was open to all but the rebel Americans and their allies the French, Mr. Faringfield would have continued his trade in the small way possible, under the British flag, that his loss by the war might be the less, and his means of secretly aiding the rebel cause might be the more. So there would still be some little shipping, and its accessories, at the wharves.

Though the British occupation had greatly changed the aspect of the town by daylight, it had not altered the topography of that part which Philip had to traverse, and the darkness that served as his shield was to him no impediment. Many a time, in the old days, we had chased and fled through those streets and alleys, in make-believe deer-hunts or mimic Indian warfare. So, without a collision or a stumble, he made his way swiftly to the mouth of a street that gave upon the water-front, by the Faringfield warehouse where so many busy days of his boyhood and youth had passed, and opposite the wharves.

He paused here, lacking knowledge whether the river front was guarded or not. He saw no human being, but could not be sure whether or not some dark form might emerge from the dimness when he should cross to the wharves. These, like the street and the roofs, were snow-covered. Aloft beyond them, but close, two or three faint lights, tiny yellow islets in a sea of gloom, revealed the presence of the shipping on which he had counted. He could hear the slap of the inky water against the piles, but scarce another sound, save his own breathing.

He formed the intention of making a noiseless dash across the waterside street, with body bent low, to the part of the wharf where a small boat was most like to be. He was standing close to one side of a wooden building that fronted toward the wharf.

He sprang forward, and, just as he passed the corner of the edifice, his head struck something heavy but yielding, which toppled over sidewise with a grunt, and upon which Philip fell prone, forcing from it a second grunt a little less vigorous than the first. 'Twas a human body, that had come from the front of the house at the same instant in which Philip had darted from along the side.

"Shall I choke him to assure silence?" Phil hurriedly asked himself, and instinctively made to put his hands to the man's neck. But the body under him began to wriggle, to kick out with its legs, and to lay about with its hands.

"What the hell d'yuh mean?" it gasped. "Git off o' me!"

Philip scrambled promptly to his feet, having recognised the voice.

"I'll stake my life, it's Meadows!"

"Yes, it is, and who in the name of hellfire an' brimstone--?"

"Hush, Bill! Don't you know my voice? Let me help you up. There you are. I'm Philip Winwood!"

"Why, so y'are, boy! Excuse the way I spoke. But what on airth--?"

"No matter what I'm doing here. The thing is to get back to camp. Come! Is the wharf a safe place for me?"

"Yes, at this hour of a dark night. But I'd like to know--"

"Keep with me, then," whispered Philip, and made for the wharf, holding the old watchman's arm. "Show me where there's a small boat. I must row to the Jersey side at once, and then ride--by heaven, I wish I might get a horse, over there, without going as far as Dan Ellis's! I left mine with him."

"Mebbe I can get you a hoss, yonder," said Meadows. "An' I reckon I can row you round an' acrost, 'thout their plaguey ships a-spyin' us."

"Then, by the Lord," said Philip, while Meadows began letting himself down the side of the wharf to the skiff which he knew rode there upon the black water, "'tis enough to make one believe in miracles, my running into you! What were you doing out so late?"

"Mum, sir! I was jest back from the same camp you're bound fur. 'Tain't five minutes since I crawled up out o' this yer skift."

"What! And did you meet a party going the other way--toward our camp, I mean?"

"Ay," replied Meadows, standing up in the boat and guiding the legs of Philip as the latter descended from the wharf. "I watched 'em from the patch o' woods beyont Westervelt's. I took 'em to be Major Lee's men, or mebbe yours, from their caps and plumes; but I dunno: I couldn't see well. But if they was goin' to the Morristown camp, they was goin' by a roundabout way, fur they took the road to the right, at the fork t'other side o' them woods!"

"Good, if 'twas a British troop indeed! If I take the short road, I may beat 'em. Caps and plumes like ours, eh! Here, I'll pull an oar, too; and for God's sake keep clear of the British ships."

"Trust me, cap'n. I guess they ain't shifted none since I come acrost awhile ago. I'll land yuh nearest where we can get the hoss I spoke of. 'Tis the beast 'ut brung me from the camp--but mum about that." The two men moved at the oars, and the boat shot out from the sluggish dock-water to the live current, down which it headed. "Don't you consarn yerse'f about them ships--'tis the dark o' the moon an' a cloudy night, an' as fur our course, I could _smell_ it out, if it come to that!"

They rounded the end of the town, and turned into the Hudson, gliding black over the surface of blackness. They pulled for some distance against the stream, so as to land far enough above our post at Paulus Hook. Going ashore in a little cove apparently well-known to Meadows, they drew up the boat, and hastened inland. Meadows had led the way about half a mile, when a dark mass composed of farmhouse and outbuildings loomed up before them.

"Here's where the hoss is; Pete Westervelt takes keer of him," whispered the watchman, and strode, not to the stables, but to the door of what appeared to be an outer kitchen, which he opened with a key of his own. A friendly whinny greeted him from the narrow dark space into which he disappeared. He soon came out, leading the horse he used in his journeys to and from the American camp, and bearing saddle and bridle on his arm. The two men speedily adjusted these, whereupon Philip mounted.

"Bring or send the beast back by night," said Meadows, handing over the key, with which he had meanwhile relocked the door of his improvised stable. "Hoss-flesh is damn' skeerce these times." This was the truth, the needs of the armies having raised the price of a horse to a fabulous sum.

Philip promised to return the horse or its equivalent; gave a swift acknowledgment of thanks, and a curt good-night; and made off, leaving old Meadows to foot it, and row it, once more back to New York.

'Twas now, till he should reach the camp, but a matter of steady galloping, with ears alert for the sound of other hoof-beats, eyes watchful at crossroads and open stretches for the party he hoped to forestall. While he had had ways and means to think of, and had been in peril of detection by the British, or in doubt of obtaining a horse without a long trudge to Ellis's hut, his mind had been diverted from the unhappy interview with Margaret. But now that swept back into his thoughts, inundating his soul with grief and shame, of the utmost degree of bitterness. These were the more complete from the recollection of the joyous anticipations with which he had gone to meet her.

Contemplation of this contrast, sense of his desertion, overcame his habitual resistance to self-pity, a feeling against which he was usually on the stronger guard for his knowledge that it was a concomitant of his inherent sensibility. He quite yielded to it for a time; and though 'twas sharpened by his comparison of the Margaret he had just left, with the pretty, soft-smiling Madge of other days, that comparison eventually supplanted self-pity with pity for her, a feeling no less laden with sorrow.

He dared not think of what her perverseness might yet lead her to. For himself he saw nothing but hopeless sorrow, unless she could be brought back to her better self. But, alas, he by whose influence that end might be achieved--for he could not believe that her heart had quite cast him out--was flying from her, and years might pass ere he should see her again: meanwhile, how intolerable would life be to him! His heart, with the instinct of self-protection, sought some interest in which it might find relief.

He thought of the cause for which he was fighting. That must suffice; it must take the place of wife and love. Cold, impersonal, inadequate as it seemed now, he knew that in the end it would suffice to fill great part of that inner heart which she had occupied. He turned to it with the kindling affection which a man ever has for the resource that is left him when he is scorned elsewhere. And he felt his ardour for it fanned by his deepened hate for the opposing cause, a hate intensified by the circumstance that his rival was of that cause. For that rival's sake, he hated with a fresh implacability the whole royal side and everything pertaining to it. He pressed his teeth together, and resolved to make that side pay as dearly as lay in him to make it, for what he had lost of his wife's love, and for what she had lost of her probity.

And the man himself, Falconer! 'Twas he that commanded this night's wild attempt, if she had spoken truly. Well, Falconer should not succeed this night, and Philip, with a kind of bitter elation, thanked God 'twas through him that the attempt should be the more utterly defeated. He patted his horse--a faithful beast that had known but a short rest since it had travelled over the same road in the opposite direction--and used all means to keep it at the best pace compatible with its endurance. Forward it sped, in long, unvarying bounds, seeing the road in the dark, or rather in the strange dusky light yielded by the snow-covered earth and seeming rather to originate there than to be reflected from the impenetrable obscurity overhead.

From the attempt which he was bent upon turning into a ridiculous abortion, if it lay in the power of man and horse to do so, Philip's thoughts went to the object of that attempt, Washington himself. He was thrilled at once with a greater love and admiration for that firm soul maintaining always its serenity against the onslaughts of men and circumstance, that soul so unshakable as to seem in the care of Fate itself. Capture Washington! Philip laughed at the thought.

And yet a British troop had seized General Charles Lee when he was the rebels' second in command, and, in turn, a party of Yankees had taken the British General Prescott from his quarters in Rhode Island. True, neither of these officers was at the time of his seizure as safely quartered and well guarded as Washington was now; but, on the other hand, Margaret had spoken of treachery in the American camp. Who were the traitors? Philip hoped he might find out their chief, at least.

It was a long and hard ride, and more and more an up-hill one as it neared its end. But Philip's thoughts made him so often unconscious of his progress, and of the passage of the hours, that he finally realised with a momentary surprise that he had reached a fork of the road, near which he should come upon the rebel pickets, and that the night was far spent. He might now take one road, and enter the camp at its nearest point, but at a point far from Washington's headquarters; or he might take the other road and travel around part of the camp, so as to enter it at a place near the general's house. 'Twas at or near the latter place that the enemy would try to enter, as they would surely be so directed by the traitors within the camp.

Heedless of the apparent advantage of alarming the camp at the earliest possible moment, at whatever part of it he could then reach, he felt himself impelled to choose the second road. He ever afterward held that his choice of this seemingly less preferable road was the result of a swift process of unconscious reasoning--for he maintained that what we call intuition is but an instantaneous perception of facts and of their inevitable inferences, too rapid for the reflective part of the mind to record.

He felt the pressure of time relaxed, for a troop of horse going by the circuitous route Meadows had indicated could not have reached the camp in the hours since they had passed the place where Meadows had seen them. So he let his horse breathe wherever the road was broken by ascents. At last he drew up, for a moment, upon an eminence which gave, by daylight, a wide view of country. Much of this expanse being clear of timber, and clad in snow, it yielded something to a night-accustomed eye, despite the darkness. A low, far-off, steady, snow-muffled beating, which had imperceptibly begun to play on Winwood's ear, indicated a particular direction for his gaze. Straining his senses, he looked.

Against the dusky-white background of snow, he could make out an indistinct, irregular, undulating line of moving dark objects. He recognised this appearance as the night aspect of a distant band of horsemen. They were travelling in a line parallel to his own. Presently, he knew, they would turn toward him, and change their linear appearance to that of a compact mass. But he waited not for that. He gently bade his horse go on, and presently he turned straight for the camp, having a good lead of the horsemen.

He was passing a little copse at his right hand, when suddenly a dark figure stepped from behind a tree into the road before him. Thinking this was a soldier on picket duty, he recollected the word of the night, and reined in to give it upon demand. But the man, having viewed him as well as the darkness allowed, seemed to realise having made a mistake, and, as suddenly as he had appeared, stalked back into the wood.

"What does this mean?" thought Philip; and then he remembered what Margaret had said of treachery. Was this mysterious night-walker a traitor posted there to aid the British to their object?

"Stop or I'll shoot you down!" cried Philip, remembering too late that he had parted with both his pistols at the Bowery lane guard-house.

But the noise of the man's retreat through the undergrowth told that he was willing to risk a shot.

Philip knew the importance of obtaining a clue to the traitors. The rebels had suffered considerably from treachery on their own side; had been in much danger from the treason of Doctor Church at Boston; had owed the speedier loss of their Fort Washington to that of Dumont; and (many of them held) the retreat which Washington checked at Monmouth, to the design of their General Charles Lee. So the capture of this man, apart from its possible effect upon the present business, might lead to the unearthing of a nest of traitors likely at some future time, if not to-night, to menace the rebel cause.

Philip leaped from his horse, and, trusting to the animal's manifest habit of awaiting orders, stopped not to tie it, but plunged directly into the wood, drawing his sword as he went.

The sound of the man's flight had ceased, but Philip continued in the direction it had first taken. He was about to cross a row of low bushes, when he unexpectedly felt his ankle caught by a hand, and himself thrown forward on his face. The man had crouched amongst the bushes and tripped him up as he made to pass.

The next moment, the man was on Philip's back, fumbling to grasp his neck, and muttering:

"Tell me who you are, quick! Who are you from? You don't wear the dragoon cap, I see. Now speak the truth, or by God I'll shoot your head off!"

Philip knew, at the first word, the voice of Ned Faringfield. It took him not an instant to perceive who was a chief--if not _the_ chief--traitor in the affair, or to solve what had long been to him also a problem, that of Ned's presence in the rebel army. The recognition of voice had evidently not been mutual; doubtless this was because Philip's few words had been spoken huskily. Retaining his hoarseness, and taking his cue from Ned's allusion to the dragoon cap, he replied:

"'Tis all right. You're our man, I see. Though I don't wear the dragoon cap, I come from New York about Captain Falconer's business."

"Then why the hell didn't you give the word?" said Ned, releasing his pressure upon Philip's body.

"You didn't ask for it. Get up--you're breaking my back."

Ned arose, relieving Philip of all weight, but stood over him with a pistol.

"Then give it now," Ned commanded.

"I'll be hanged if you haven't knocked it clean out of my head," replied Philip. "Let me think a moment--I have the cursedest memory."

He rose with a slowness, and an appearance of weakness, both mainly assumed. He still held his sword, which, happily for him, had turned flat under him as he fell. When he was quite erect, he suddenly flung up the sword so as to knock the pistol out of aim, dashed forward with all his weight, and, catching Ned by the throat with both hands, bore him down upon his side among the briars, and planted a knee upon his neck. Instantly shortening his sword, he held the point close above Ned's eye.

"Now," said Phil, "let that pistol fall! Let it fall, I say, or I'll run my sword into your brain. That's well. You traitor, shall I kill you now? or take you into camp and let you hang for your treason?"

Ned wriggled, but finding that Philip held him in too resolved a grasp, gave up.

"Is it you, brother Phil?" he gasped. "Why, then, you lied; you said you came from New York, about Falconer's business. I'd never have thought _you'd_ stoop to a mean deception!"

"I think I'd better take you to hang," continued Philip. "If I kill you now, we sha'n't get the names of the other traitors."

"You wouldn't do such an unbrotherly act, Phil! I know you wouldn't. You've too good a heart. Think of your wife, my sister--"

"Ay, the traitress!"

"Then think of my father; think of the mouth that fed you--I mean the hand that fed you! You'll let me go, Phil--sure you'll let me go. Remember how we played together when we were boys. I'll give you the names of the other traitors. I'm not so much to blame: I was lured into this--lured by your wife--so help me God, I was--and you're responsible for her, you know. _You_ ought to be the last man in the world--"

Philip's mood had changed at thought of Ned's father; the old man's pride of the name, his secret and perilous devotion to the rebel cause: he deserved better of that cause than that his son should die branded as a traitor to it; and better of Phil than that by his hand that son should be slain.

"How can you let me have the names without loss of time, if I let you go, on condition of your giving our army a wide berth the rest of your days?" Philip asked, turning the captive over upon his back.

"I can do it in a minute, I swear," cried Ned. "Will you let me go if I do?"

"If I'm convinced they're the right names and all the names; but if so, and I let you go, remember I'll see you hanged if you ever show your face in our army again."

"Rest easy on that. I take you at your word. The names are all writ down in my pocketbook, with the share of money each man was to get. If I was caught, I was bound the rest should suffer, too. The book is in my waistcoat lining--there; do you feel it? Rip it out."

Philip did so, and, sitting on Ned's chest, with a heel ready to beat in his skull at a treacherous movement, contrived to strike a light and verify by the brief flame of the tow the existence of a list of names. As time was now of ever-increasing value, Philip took it for granted that the list was really what Ned declared it. He then possessed himself of Ned's pistol, and rose, intending to conduct him as far as to the edge of the camp, and to release him only when Philip should have given the alarm, so that Ned could not aid the approach of Falconer's party. But Philip had no sooner communicated this intention than Ned suddenly whipped out a second pistol from his coat pocket, in which his hand had been busy for some time, and aimed at him. Thanks to a spoiled priming, the hammer fell without effect.

"You double traitor!" cried Philip, rushing upon Ned with threatening sword. But Ned, with a curse, bent aside, and, before Philip could bring either of his weapons into use, grappled with him for another fall. The two men swayed together an instant; then Philip once more shortened his sword and plunged the point into Ned's shoulder as both came down together.

"God damn your soul!" cried Ned, and for the time of a breath hugged his enemy the tighter. But for the time of a breath only; the hold then relaxed; and Philip, rising easily from the embrace of the limp form, ran unimpeded to the road, mounted the waiting horse, and galloped to the rebel lines.

When our party, all the fatigue of the ride forgotten in a thrill of expectation, reached the spot where Ned Faringfield was to join us, our leader's low utterance of the signal, and our eager peerings into the wood, met no response. As we stood huddled together, there broke upon us from the front such a musketry, and there forthwith appeared in the open country at our left such a multitude of mounted figures, that we guessed ourselves betrayed, and foresaw ourselves surrounded by a vastly superior force if we stayed for a demonstration.

"'Tis all up, gentlemen!" cried Captain Falconer, in a tone of resignation, and without even an oath; whereupon we wheeled in disappointment and made back upon our tracks; being pursued for some miles, but finally abandoned, by the cavalry we had seen, which, as we did not learn till long afterward, was led by Winwood. We left some dead and wounded near the place where we had been taken by surprise; and some whose horses had been hurt were made prisoners.

For his conduct in all this business, an offer was made to Philip of promotion to a majority; but he firmly declined it, saying that he owed the news of our expedition to such circumstances that he chose not, in his own person, to profit by it.[6]