A letter was dispatched to Mistress Dulaney, but the distance to Boston was so great that a man might die before the stage went and returned to Burlington. At last when the coach rattled up, with a great noise and hurly-burly, to the officer’s quarters and stopped, all knew that Mistress Dulaney was inside, and it chanced that Morgan stood hitched near-by. The steps were quickly let down and right quickly did she descend. Morgan recognized her at once; he whinneyed a note of welcome, but she neither saw nor heard him; she was in such stress of anxiety. She was all his memory held her: not so young, but more sweet, more beautiful and a light as of a halo surrounded her face as they told her the Captain was better. Morgan saw all before she put her little foot to the ground. But as she hurried into the house the horse felt old, a sudden darkness fell upon the world, as if a cloud had obscured the sun. She had not even _seen_ him! He hung his head and tears filled his dear, longing eyes. After all these years of waiting and loving--and she had not even seen him! CHAPTER XIX. MORGAN MEETS HIS LADY AGAIN. But Captain Dulaney did not die of the “lung fever,” as so many did. He was made for a nobler end and had work yet to do. The mutterings of war came ever nearer and nearer to Lake Champlain and crowded out all other thoughts and interests. Morgan waited two weeks for a sight of his Lady. Nobody came to tell him the news, so he could only hope the Captain would recover and need to go for an airing after a while. One day the orderly, a mannerly youth whom horses liked, groomed him so carefully that the old horse guessed the airing he had looked forward to was about to take place. He was scarcely able to control his impatience as he stood at the step waiting. He was sure she would see him this time, and he trembled with longing, and the hope that she had not forgotten him. * * * * * She came down the steps slowly, the Captain, a little weak still, leaning on her arm, yet not entirely for support--a little for the joy of laying his thin, white hand on her strong, steady one. At last, as her husband spoke, she raised her eyes. “This is the horse I’ve written you so much about, my Hollyhock!” She knew him at once! “Why, my dear! ’Tis the very horse that won you for me!” she cried, joyfully; she might forget a person--his lady--but never a horse. “Why did you not tell me so before? I have asked so often about him, and ’twould have brought me to Vermont before this!” The Captain smiled. “I shall be jealous of my charger,” he said, tenderly. Morgan rubbed his muzzle on Mistress Dulaney’s sleeve and in the laces at her neck, thinking her soft Southern voice the sweetest he had ever heard, even more sweet than when she was a maid.