h'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!"

Now while these three rode in seeming security from the south towards
the church, parsonage, country tavern, and great manor-house that
constituted the village then called, sometimes Lower Philipsburgh and
sometimes Younker's, that same hill-varied, forest-set, stream-