In crossing the hall, he saw Cuff on the settle in Sam's place. In the dining-room he met Molly, who was clearing the table of the supper that Colden had disdained. He asked her the whereabouts of Williams, and she replied that the steward and Sam had gone out on some order of Miss Elizabeth's. Deciding to await Williams's return, the old man sat down before the dining-room fire, and was soon peacefully snoring. Elizabeth had gone up-stairs to watch from her darkened window the issue of the expedition of Williams and Sam, who had gone out by the kitchen, equipped respectively with rope and pistol. While they were in the immediate vicinity of the house, she could not see them from her elevation, but presently she beheld them glide swiftly across a white open space in the garden, cross a stile, and disappear among the trees and bushes between the garden and the post-road. Turning her eyes to the road itself, that lonely highway now called Broadway,[9] she made out a solitary figure toiling forward through the whirling whiteness,--and she gave a sigh, the deepest and longest with which her frame had ever trembled. Meanwhile Miss Sally remained in the parlor, thinking it best not to go to Elizabeth unless sent for; while Colden continued to stand at the window, showing his impatience for the arrival of his two soldiers in a tense contracting of the brow, in a restless shifting from foot to foot, and in intermittent stifled curses. As he kept his eyes on the place where the branch road left the highway, he did not see that part of the lawn walk which led from the garden. But suddenly a slight noise drew his look towards the portico before the east hall. "Who are these coming?" he cried, startling Miss Sally out of her musings and her chair. "Are they your men?" she asked, hastening to join him at the window. "No, mine are mounted," said he. "Why,--these are Williams and Sam,--and they are bringing,--yes, it is he! They're bringing him back a prisoner! She has done it, after all, without consulting me!" And he strode to the centre of the room, in the utmost elation. Miss Sally weakened at the imminent prospect of a meeting between the two enemies in the changed circumstances, and felt the need of her niece's support. "I must tell Elizabeth they have him," she said, and ran out to the east hall, and thence to the dining-room, just in time to avoid seeing Peyton led in through the outer door, which Cuff had opened at Williams's call. The steward and Sam conducted their prisoner immediately into the parlor. There Colden stood, with a rancorously jubilant smile, to receive him.