'Twas a wettish wind, concerning which Miss Elizabeth expressed, in the imperative mood, her will that it be dratted,--a feminine wind, truly, as was clear from its unexpected flarings up and sudden calmings down, its illogical whiskings around and eccentric changes of direction. Now it swept down the slope from the east, as if it meant to bombard the travellers with all the brown leaves of the hillside. Now it assailed them from the north, as if to impede their journey; now rushed on them from the rear as if it had come up from New York to speed them on their way; now attacked them in the left flank, armed with a raw chill from the Hudson. It blew Miss Elizabeth's hair about and additionally reddened her cheeks. It caused the young Tory major to frown, for the protection of his eyes, and thus to look more and more unlike the happy man that Miss Elizabeth's accepted suitor ought to have appeared. "I make no doubt I've brought on me the anger of your whole family by lending myself to this. And yet I am as much against it as they are!" So spake the major, in tones as glum as his looks. "'Twas a choice, then, between their anger and mine," said Miss Elizabeth, serenely. "Don't think I wouldn't have come, even if you had refused your escort. I'd have made the trip alone with Cuff, that's all." "I shall be blamed, none the less." "Why? You couldn't have hindered me. If the excursion is as dangerous as they say it is, your company certainly does not add to my danger. It lessens it. So, as my safety is what they all clamor about, they ought to commend you for escorting me." "If they were like ever to take that view, they would not all have refused you their own company." "They refused because they neither supposed that I would come alone nor that Providence would send me an escort in the shape of a surly major on leave of absence from Staten Island! Come, Jack, you needn't tremble in dread of their wrath. By this time my amiable papa and my solicitous mamma and my anxious brothers and sisters are in such a state of mind about me that, when you return to-night and report I've been safely consigned to Aunt Sally's care, they'll fairly worship you as a messenger of good news. So be as cheerful as the wind and the cold will let you. We are almost there. It seems an age since we passed Van Cortlandt's." Major Colden merely sighed and looked more dismal, as if knowing the futility of speech. "There's the steeple!" presently cried the girl, looking ahead. "We'll be at the parsonage in ten minutes, and safe in the manor-house in five more. Do look relieved, Jack! The journey's end is in sight, and we haven't had sight of a soldier this side of King's Bridge,--except Van Wrumb's Hessians across Tippett's Vale, and they are friends. Br-r-r-r! I'll have Williams make a fire in every room in the manor-house!"