," she replied.

"How much?" asked the old man, in a matter-of-fact way.

"Oh, I don't know! Long enough for me to make up my mind."

Thus far, this conversation had followed in the exact lines of many
that had preceded it, but now Mr. Valentine made a departure from the
customary form.

"I think," said he, "if my other two wives had taken as long as you to
make up their minds, I shouldn't have been twice a widower by now."

"Oh, Mr. Valentine!" said Miss Sally, in a sweetly reproachful way.
"Now you know--"

But he cut her speech off short. "Very likely," said he. "I don't
know. Well, take your time. Only please remember I haven't so very
much time left! Better take me while I'm here to be had! Good night,
ma'am!" And he went to the dining-room to fortify himself for his long
homeward walk through the snow.

In crossing the hall, he saw Cuff on the settle in Sam's place. In the
dining-room he met Molly, who was clearing the table of the supper
that Colden had disdained. He asked her the whereabouts of Williams,
and she replied that the steward and Sam had gone out on some order of
Miss Elizabeth's. Deciding to await Williams's return, the old man sat
down before the dining-room fire, and was soon peacefully snoring.

Elizabeth had gone up-stairs to watch from her darkened window the
issue of the expedition of Williams and Sam, who had gone out by the
kitchen, equipped respectively with rope and pistol. While they were
in the immediate vicinity of the house, she could not see them from
her elevation, but presently she beheld them glide swiftly across a
white open space in the garden, cross a stile, and disappear among the
trees and bushes between the garden and the post-road. Turning her
eyes to the road itself, that lonely highway now called Broadway,[9]
she made out a solitary figure toiling forward through the whirling
whiteness,--and she gave a sigh, the deepest and longest with which
her frame had ever trembled.

Meanwhile Miss Sally remained in the parlor, thinking it best not to
go to Elizabeth unless sent for; while Colden continued to stand at
the window, showing his impatience for the arrival of his two soldiers
in a tense contracting of the brow, in a restless shifting from foot
to foot, and in intermittent stifled curses.

As he kept his eyes on the place where the branch road left the
highway, he did not see that part of the lawn walk which led from the
garden. But suddenly a slight noise drew h