The sun left the tree-tops and sank into a misty grave. Gray vapors stole over the meadows. The day was dying sadly. The dew came suddenly upon the countryside and drenched all its varicolored beauty in tears. The wings of a storm could be heard in the distance. André seized his companion's hand and they ran laughingly with the wind. The girl paused for breath. Her face changed. "Major André," she said, "what do you think the woman meant?" "'Twas her fish," he said, to comfort her. Nature's swift transition coming upon them so silently gave him a strange foreboding of impending trouble. They were entering the street; the storm was at their backs. The day was stifled in a sable pall. There was a roll of thunder and a swift flash of lightning illumined the sky. Then out of the sullen blackness loomed the house, a sheet of fire, candles glowing in every room. A group of townspeople were about the door. Sally ran from André's side. Old Miss Townsend sat on the doorstep weeping, with her head in her apron. Sally looked at her and then at the faces about her. Most of the people were Tories, and there was little in their eyes but curiosity. Two or three neighbors glanced at her tenderly, and one stepped forward as if to speak, then checked herself. Inside there was the murmur of many voices. One that lived ever in her heart now came to her ears like an evil dream. Her face blanched. André was by her side in an instant. "'Tis Jack," she whispered. In the hall she saw him bound and bleeding. His face was thin and haggard. There were bayonets all about him. "You cannot enter here yet a while," a sentinel called out; but her ears were heedless. In André's arms she had swooned. The few who remained by the door were bending over her; about them roared the storm. Sally's lover had been captured that afternoon in a rye field a mile from his home. He was dressed in a cheap, soiled homespun, and would have passed as a farmer's lad if a townsman vigilant in the service of King George had not recognized him. The youth was free after a long incarceration in a British warehouse prison in New York City. Many a weary mile he had skirted homeward bound. His one thought was to reach his mother's cool little cot again. The fever was still in his veins. He was nearing the road to rest when the soldiers ran out upon him. To his distraught fancy they seemed like red devils eager to drag him back to hades. Off over the fields he could see the roof of Sally's home. How glad she would be to see him again! Farther on was the little house he loved so well. The storm-clouds were beginning to form over it. His mother was no doubt bringing in the birds now from the willow garden house. Hark! was that the faint call of Rollin, his own pet bluewing?