“And did General Washington have to send a squad of soldiers to bring you home again?” she asked him at last. “Not quite,” replied Miles, blushing but laughing at himself at the same time, “although I admit that there was almost necessity for it. I came to the meadow again and yet again, where she would come to meet me. I began to feel—oh, Clotilde, how it does steal upon you unawares!” Poor Clotilde felt a sudden fierce stab at her heart. How it did, to be sure, come unawares and never go away again! “At last our army marched forth from Valley Forge,” he went on, “and she, just as Master Sheffield guessed, was peeping through the window to see us go by. Her father was a prosperous farmer, not averse to our side of the war, but more willing to sell his produce for the English gold than for the worthless paper money that bought our supplies. Had he ever known how many of his good things went into the larder of the American soldiers, I fear it would have gone hard with his daughter.” “It must have been difficult to see her after that,” Clotilde observed. “Most surely it was,” he said with a sigh; “there were but brief visits snatched as our army went back and forth. I was nearly captured more than once, but several times brought back information that was of use to our Commander, so I never received the reprimands that I well deserved. There would have been no Captain Radpath to set me free this time had the enemy laid hands upon me. By the way, have you heard aught of him since he sailed for England?” “No, nothing,” she answered hastily, and turned the subject quickly. “And so now the war is over, you are going to be wedded? Oh, Miles, I am so glad!” “In two short months,” he told her joyfully, “and there will be the end of midnight rides and secret meetings in the meadow. Then she will be here always and nothing to come between us. Oh, if you could but know how happy I am!” She could well measure his happiness, she thought, by her own great loneliness, but of that she could not speak. She was too fond of her old playmate not to feel a glow of pleasure in his joy, and she made him happier yet by the earnestness of her good wishes. He went away through the gate at last, his joyfulness running over for all the world to see, as he beamed delightedly upon every one he passed. In spite of her good share in Miles’ happiness, the world seemed now very empty and forlorn to Clotilde, for Mère Jeanne had slipped away during the dark, stormy days of the winter and had left her adopted child to face life all alone. Only Stephen’s last request, “not to disappoint Master Simon” availed to keep up her failing courage. She had a new task before her this Spring, one to which she could turn unhindered at last, since starvation no longer threatened the poor of Hopewell. And so, with a heavy heart, she bent her energies to the replanting of Master Simon’s garden.