"But you," she said, and there was new anxiety in her voice; "you are in great danger here. When the soldiers come to remove father they will take you prisoner." "I care not, Mistress Jean," I answered, "for your eyes have held me prisoner for many a long day, and all the prison bars in the world are nothing to me so long as I can look into them." "Nay," she said, "you must not say such things to me." And I, taking this as a confirmation of all my fears and that at last Farquharson had succeeded in his suit, would have bade her good-bye and gone my way. But before I went I told her of my wishes for her happiness, and that I had met Farquharson and knew of his skill and courage. "Farquharson?" and her eyes were wide open in surprise. "I really believe you think I am going to marry him;" and she laughed so softly, bewitchingly, that-- "Jean, Jean," I cried, now that hope and life had come back with a rush, "Jean, do you know that I love you; that I love the very ground on which you walk, the sunbeams in your hair, the very air you breathe? Ah! Jean--" But at that moment came the voice of the Tory calling her and the tramp of feet on the porch. "Let me go," she cried, for I held her hands in mine; "and fly,--that is the guard." "Nay," said I, "not till you give me a kiss. I will stay here and be captured first." There was a moment's hesitation, and then a flash of white arms, and the softest caress--ah, such a caress that the memory of it will go with me to the grave. And then she was gone. And I, not wishing to be captured now, slipped through the rear door to my men, and a short time later, having satisfied ourselves of the retreat of the enemy's forces, we made our way back over the hills to report to the General. We followed the enemy closely the next day, and did not draw off until we saw them beyond our reach at Sandy Hook. Then we took our way to the Jersey hills, and lay there for a time watching the enemy in New York. CHAPTER XXI THE PASSING OF YEARS Then came a long period when it seemed almost as if peace had settled over the land, so seldom did the rattle of musket fire or the angry flash of guns break the quiet repose of the Jersey plains and farms. Far across the marshes lay New York, and behind its walls and the broad sweep of the waters the British army rested safe, while the army of the patriots, scattered among the forests, woods, and hills of Jersey and New York, lived, like Robin Hood's followers of old, and waited while the wheel of fortune turned. A year went by, when at the taking of Paulus Hook I first heard news of the welfare of the Tory and the maid, since the night of the Monmouth retreat. It was after an all-night march through the marshes of Jersey, often breast-high in the water, that we made a silent, deadly charge with the bayonet on the enemy's fort, and carried it before the sun had risen.