"Never again," he went on, "to lead a charge against the enemies of our liberty; not to live to see this fight out, the King's regiments driven from the land, the States take their place among the free nations of the world! _By God, Molly, I don't want to die yet!_" It was not the fear of death, it was the love of life, and what life might have in reserve, that moved him; and it now asserted itself in him with a force tenfold greater than ever before. Death,--or, rather, the ceasing of life,--as he viewed it now, when he was like to meet it without company, with prescribed preliminaries, in an ignominious mode, was a far other thing than as viewed in the exaltation of battle, when a man chances it hot-headed, uplifted, thrilled, in gallant comradeship, to his own fate rendered careless by a sense of his nothingness in comparison with the whole vast drama. Moreover, in going blithely to possible death in open fight, one accomplishes something for his cause; not so, going unwillingly to certain death on an enemy's gallows. It was, too, an exasperating thought that he should die to gratify the vengeful whim of an insolent Tory girl. "Will it really come to that?" asked Molly, in a frightened tone. "As surely as I fall into British hands!" Peyton remembered the case of General Charles Lee, whose resignation of half-pay had not been acknowledged; who was, when captured by the British, long in danger of hanging, and who was finally rated as an ordinary war prisoner only for Washington's threat to retaliate on five Hessian field officers. If a major-general, whose desertion, even if admitted, was from half-pay only, would have been hanged without ceremony but for General Howe's fear of a "law scrape," and had been saved from shipment to England for trial, only by the King's fear that Washington's retaliation would disaffect the Hessian allies, for what could a mere captain look, who had come over from the enemy in action, and whose punishment would entail no official retaliation? "And your mistress expects a troop of British soldiers here in an hour to take me! Damn it, if I could only walk!" And he looked rapidly around the room, in a kind of distraction, as if seeking some means of escape. Realizing the futility of this, he sighed dismally, and drank the remainder of the tea. "You couldn't get away from the house, sir," said Molly. "Williams is watching outside." "I'd take a chance if I could only run!" Peyton muttered. He had no fear that Molly would betray him. "If there were some hiding-place I might crawl to! But the troops would search every cranny about the house." He turned to Molly suddenly, seeing, in his desperate state and his lack of time, but one hope. "I wonder, could Williams be bribed to spirit me away?" Molly's manner underwent a slight chill.