"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 WEARING OF A RED ROSE. "She gives thee a garland woven fair, Take care! It is a fool's-cap for thee to wear, Beware! Beware! Trust her not. She's fooling thee!" --LONGFELLOW. 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.