"Well," says Nick, "it's clear that Stevie Watts was there and has spoken with Lady Johnson. But what more is to be done? She's our prisoner. I wish to God they'd sent her to Albany or New York, where she could contrive no mischief. And that other lady, too. Lord! but Major Westfall is in a pother! And I wager Colonel Dayton will be in another, and at his wit's ends." The business distressed me beyond measure, and I remained silent. "By the way," he added, "your yellow-haired inamorata sends you a billet-doux. Here it is." I took the bit of folded paper, stepped aside and read it by the firelight: "Sir: "I venture to entertain a hope that some day it may please you to converse again with one whose offense--if any--remains a mystery to her still. "P. G." I read it again, then crumpled it and dropped it on the coals. I had seen Steve Watts kiss her. That was enough. "There's a devil's nest of Tories gathering in Howell's house tonight to cut our throats," said I coldly. "Should we take them with ten men, or call in the Continentals?" "Who be they?" asked Nick, astounded. "The old pack--Cadys, Helmers, Bowman, Weed, Grinnis. They are ten rifles." He got very red. "This is a domestic business," said I. "Shall we wash our bloody linen for the world to see what filth chokes Fonda's Bush?" "No," said he, slowly, with that faint flare in his eyes I had seen at times, "let us clean our own house o' vermin, and make no brag of what is only our proper shame." CHAPTER XIX OUT OF THE NORTH It lacked still an hour to midnight, which time I had set for our advance upon John Howell's house, and my Oneidas had not yet done painting, when Johnny Silver, who was on guard, whistled from his post, and I ran thither with Nick. A man in leather was coming in through the _chevaux-de-frise_, and Johnny dropped a tamarack log across the ditch for him, over which he ran like a tree-martin, and so climbed up into the flare of Nick's lantern. The man in forest runner's dress was Dave Ellerson, known to us all as a good neighbor and a staunch Whig; but we scarce recognized him in his stringy buckskins and coon-skin cap, with the ringed tail a-bobbing. On his hunting shirt there was a singular device of letters sewed there in white cloth, which composed the stirring phrase, "Liberty or Death." And we knew immediately that he had become a soldier in the 11th Virginia Regiment, which is called Morgan's Rifles. He seemed to have travelled far, though light, for he carried only rifle and knife, ammunition, and a small sack which flapped flat and empty; but his manner was lively and his merry gaze clear and untroubled as we grasped his powerful hands. "Why, Dave!" said I, "how come you here, out o' the North?" "I travel express from Arnold to Schuyler," said he. "Have you a gill of rum, John?" Johnny Silver had not drunk his gill, and poured it into Dave's pannikin.