“No,” he answered. “I was only thinking of how I began to tell you of this when I was here before, and of how my unwonted talkativeness betrayed me to Master Sheffield and how he laughed at me. I am glad now that he did guess my secret and that I have the memory of the good wishes that he gave me. No,” he went on, returning to his tale, “if it had not been for a chance happening, I would have had no raptures nor ever known more of the Quaker Lady than that her hens laid most wondrous fresh eggs.” “Most eggs are fresh when laid,” Clotilde reminded him, but he assured her that none could ever be compared to those roasted over the coals of a campfire in the wind-sheltered hollows of Valley Forge. “I was doing sentry duty one night,” he continued, “for officers took their turn as well as privates, so short-handed were we. I had built a little fire, just so that my comrades would not have the sorrow of finding a frozen man at my post when they came to relieve me. Suddenly I thought that I heard, above the crackling of the flames, a sound of footsteps on the frozen snow, and to make sure, I dropped a branch of fat pitch-pine upon the coals. There was a quick flare of light and I could make out, not ten paces from me, a little dark figure in a Quaker bonnet and cloak. For a single second I saw her face plainly before the flame died down. She cried out when she found that she had been discovered, dropped her burden and fled away into the shadows. How the men chided me when I carried the basket into camp and told my story; they feared that she had been too badly frightened to return and besides four of the precious eggs were broken.” “But she did come back?” Clotilde said eagerly. “Yes, but so shyly and secretly that I did not see her again all through the winter. I watched eagerly enough, of that you may be sure, but it was not until Spring that I met her again. I had wandered one day far from our valley, farther indeed than was thought safe, but so frantic was I to see something green after all those months in the barren camp, that I had no thought of where I went. I told you once of the meadow and the little clear stream with its banks blue-grey with the close-growing Quaker Ladies; I did not tell you that, as I was hidden for a moment behind a clump of willows, the little Quaker maid herself, in her blue-grey gown and with her hands full of flowers, came walking along the farther bank. When she saw me she would have run away again, but I—I persuaded her to remain.” Clotilde laughed quietly. It was hard to picture slow-spoken Miles standing on the bank of the stream, trying to beguile the shy Quaker maiden on the other side into waiting to talk to him. But into the life of even the most silent of youths there comes always an instant of eloquence, and this, it seemed, was Miles’ great moment. He sat shaking his head over the wonder and glory of it even now.