As I entered the room—and no doubt, half-dressed as I was, I looked pale and ill—the women cried out. At that the men would have hustled me through the outer door without giving me an opportunity of speaking; but I managed to gain a moment. Mammy Jacks was blubbering—I called her to me. “My purse and what little money I have,” I said, “is under my pillow. It’s yours, my good woman. If Captain Wilmer will be good enough to let Lord Cornwallis know that Major Craven—Major Craven, can you remember—but he will know what to say. And one moment!” I hung back, as the men would have dragged me on. “There are some letters with the purse from a woman named Simms, who is about the Barracks at Charles Town. I want her to know that her husband is dead—was killed in my presence. I promised him that she should know. She should get a pass on the next Falmouth packet, and—you won’t forget—Major Craven—my address in England is in the purse.” Then, “I am ready,” I said to the men. I would not look again at the girl’s still figure; I went out. Half a dozen horses stood in the darkness before the house, watched by a fifth man. One of these was thrust forward, and from the edge of the porch I was able, though weakly and with pain, to get into the saddle. The men mounted round me. They would have started at a trot, but I told them curtly that I could not sit the horse. On that they moved away, grumbling, at a walk. I cast a backward glance at the long dark line of the house, and especially at the lighted window in which the girl’s figure showed as in a frame. She was watching us go, watching to the last without concern or pity. Certainly she had warned me, certainly she had done her best to persuade me to go while there was time. But in the bitterness of the moment I could not remember this. I could only think of her as unfeeling, unwomanly, cruel. I had read of such women, I had never met one, I had never thought to meet one; and I would think of her no more. I knew that in leaving the house I left my last hope behind me, and that outside in the night, in the power of these men, I must face what was before me without a thought of help. A man dismounted to lower a sliprail, and even while I told myself that there was no hope I wondered if, crippled and weak as I was, I might still find some way to elude them. Clopety-clop, the horses went on again. The night wind rustled across the fields, crickets chirped, the squeal of some animal in its death-throe startled the ear. Clopety-clop!