"Good-bye! Good-bye!" he cried. "We are marching with the left wing to Balston. I'll write you, cousin, when we take Burgoyne--I'll write you all about it and exactly how I conducted!" I felt the parting clasp of their hands, but scarcely saw them through the tears of sheer weakness that filled my eyes. The capacity for deep emotion was deadened in me; the strain had been too great; the reaction had left me scarcely capable of realizing the instant portent of events. The mellow trampling of horses came from below. I hobbled to the window and looked down where the troopers were riding in fours, falling in behind a train of artillery which passed jolting and bumping along the stockade. A young girl, superbly mounted, came galloping by, and behind her spurred Sir George Covert and Ruyven. At full speed she turned her head and looked up at my window, and I think I never saw such radiant happiness in any woman's face as in Magdalen Brant's when she swept past with a gesture of adieu and swung her horse out into the road. A general's escort and staff checked their horses to make way for her. The officers lifted their black cockaded hats; a slim, boyish officer, in a white-and-gold uniform, rode forward to receive her, with a low salute that only a Frenchman could imitate. So, escorted by prancing, clattering cavalry, and surrounded by a brilliant staff, Magdalen Brant rode away from Varicks'; and beside her, alert, upright, transfigured, rode Sir George Covert, whose life she had accepted only after she had paid her debt to Dorothy by offering her own life to rescue mine. Dim-eyed, I stared at the passing troops, the blurred colors of their uniforms ever changing as the regiments succeeded each other, now brown and red, now green and red, now gray and yellow, as Massachusetts infantry, New York line, and Morgan's Rifles poured steadily by in unbroken columns. Wrapped in my chamber-robe, head supported on my hand, I sat by the window, dully content, striving to think, to realize all that had befallen me. The glitter of the passing rifles, the constantly changing hues and colors, the movement, the noise, set my head swimming. Yet I must prepare to leave within the hour, for the stable bells were ringing for eight o'clock. Cato scratched at the door and entered, bringing me hot water, and hovering around me with napkin, salve, and basin, till my battered body had been bathed, my face shaved, and my bruised head washed where the Seneca castete had glanced, tearing the skin. Clothed in fresh linen and a new uniform, sent by Schuyler, I bade him call Sir Lupus; who came presently, his mouth full of toast, a mug of cooled ale in one hand, clay pipe in the other. He laid his pipe on the mantel, set his mug on a chair, and embraced me, shaking his head in solemn silence; and we sat for a space, considering one another, while Cato filled my bowl with chocolate and removed the cover from my smoking porridge-dish.