or the love part, major, excepting so far as carrying a message, or, in
case of a runaway, keeping off a gang of pestifarious intermeddlers, or
watching, for a night or so, under a tree, or any thing, indeed, in the
riding and running, or watching, or scrimmaging line--I say, excepting
these, my sarvice moughtn't turn to much account. I can't even play a
fiddle at a wedding, and I've not the best tongue for making headway
amongst the women. Howsomdever, major, you may set me down for a
volunteer on the first forlorn hope you may have occasion for."

"Mr. Lindsay lives on the hill across the river. There are reasons why I
cannot go to his house; and his daughter, Galbraith, is an especial
friend to us and to our cause."

"I begin to see into it," interrupted the sergeant, laughing, "you have
a notion of showing the old gentleman the same trick you played off upon
Lord Howe's provost marshal, when you was lieutenant at Valley Forge,
touching your stealing away his prisoner, Captain Roberts. That was a
night affair, too. Well, the best wife a man can have, major, is the
woman that takes to him through fire and water. There was Colonel
Gardiner, that stole his wife just in that way, against all opposition
of both father and mother, and a better woman never stitched up a seam,
to my knowledge and belief."

"I have no thought of such an enterprise, sergeant," said Butler; "our
purpose, for the present, must be confined to a short visit. We are
houseless adventurers, Galbraith, and have little to offer to sweetheart
or wife that might please a woman's fancy."

"When a woman loves a man, especially a sodger," replied the sergeant,
"she sets as little store by house and home as the best of us. Still, it
is a wise thing to give the creatures the chance of peace, before you
get to tangling them with families. Hark, I hear something like
footsteps on t'other side of the river! Mister Henry must be on his
march."

After an interval, a low whistle issued from the opposite bank, and, in
a moment, Butler was in the skiff, pushing his way through the sparkling
waters.

As the small boat, in which he stood upright, shot from the bright
moonlight into the shade of the opposite side, he could obscurely
discern Mildred Lindsay leaning on her brother's arm, as they both stood
under the thick foliage of a large beech. And scarcely had the bow
struck upon the pebbly margin, before he bounded from it up the bank,
and was, in the next ins