The great trees I loved were falling fast under the axes of the pioneers, whom I thought very awkward at the business. Farm-houses were being torn down, and orchards and hedges levelled, while the unhappy owners looked on in mute despair, aiding one another to remove their furniture. The object was to leave a broad space to north of the forts, that an attacking force might find no shelter. About an hundred feet from the blockhouses was to be an abatis of sharpened logs, and a mass of brush and trees, through which to move would be difficult. I took it all in, and greedily. The colonel no doubt thought me an intelligent young fellow, and was kind enough to answer all my questions. He may later have repented his freedom of speech. And now I saw the reason for all this piteous ruin. Compensation was promised and given, I heard, but it seemed to me hard to be thus in a day thrust out of homes no doubt dear to these simple folk. We went past gardens and fields, over broken fences, all in the way of destruction. Tape-lines pegged to the earth guided the engineers, and hundreds of negroes were here at work. Near to Cohocsink Creek we met the second Miss Chew, riding with her father. He was handsome in dark velvet, his hair clubbed and powdered beneath a flat beaver with three rolls, and at his back a queue tied with a red ribbon. He had remained quietly inactive and prudent, and, being liked, had been let alone by our own party. It is to be feared that neither he nor the ribbon was quite as neutral as they had been. Miss Margaret looked her best. I much dislike “Peggy,” by which name she was known almost to the loss of that fine, full “Margaret,” which suited better her handsome, uptilted head and well-bred look. On the right side rode that other Margaret, Miss Shippen, of whom awhile back I spoke, but then only as in pretty bud, at the Woodlands. It was a fair young rose I now saw bowing in the saddle, a woman with both charm and beauty. Long after, in London, and in less merry days, she was described by Colonel Tarleton as past question the handsomest woman in all England. I fear, too, she was the saddest. “And where have you kept yourself, Mr. Wynne?” she asked. “You are a favourite of my father’s, you know. I had half a mind not to speak to you.” I bowed, and made some gay answer. I could not well explain that the officers who filled their houses were not to my taste. “Let me present you to Mr. Andre,” said Mr. Shippen, who brought up the rear. “I have the honour to know Mr. Wynne,” said the officer. “We met at Lancaster when I was a prisoner in ‘76; in March, was it not? Mr. Wynne did me a most kind service, Montresor. I owe it to him that I came to know that loyal gentleman, Mr. Cope, and the Yeates people, who at least were loyal to me, I have not forgotten it, nor ever shall.” I said it was a very small service, and he was kind to remember it.