E-text prepared by David Edwards, Katherine Ward, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from
digital material generously made available by Internet Archive
(http://www.archive.org)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 30589-h.htm or 30589-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30589/pg30589-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30589/30589-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
http://www.archive.org/details/continentaldrago00stepiala
Transcriber's note:
Hyphenation has been made consistent.
Archaic and variable spellings are preserved.
The author's punctuation style is preserved, except quotation
marks, which have been standardized.
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
Text in bold face is enclosed by equal signs (=bold=).
THE CONTINENTAL DRAGOON.
by
R. N. STEPHENS.
* * * * *
Works of R. N. STEPHENS.
An Enemy to the King.
The Continental Dragoon.
_In Press_:
The Road to Paris.
L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY, Publishers,
(INCORPORATED)
196 Summer St., Boston, Mass.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "_'Take that rebel alive!' ordered Colden._"
Photogravure from original drawing by H. C. Edwards.]
THE CONTINENTAL DRAGOON
A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778
by
ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS
Author of
"An Enemy to the King"
Illustrated by H. C. Edwards
"Love's born of a glance, I say"
Boston
L. C. Page and Company
(Incorporated)
1898
Copyright, 1898
By L. C. Page and Company
(Incorporated)
Entered at Stationer's Hall, London
FIFTH THOUSAND
Colonial Press:
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U. S. A.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. The Riders 11
II. The Manor-house 32
III. The Sound of Galloping 50
IV. The Continental Dragoon 65
V. The Black Horse 87
VI. The One Chance 116
VII. The Flight of the Minutes 140
VIII. The Secret Passage 156
IX. The Confession 180
X. The Plan of Retaliation 197
XI. The Conquest 214
XII. The Challenge 236
XIII. The Unexpected 252
XIV. The Broken Sword 267
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
"'Take that rebel alive!' ordered Colden." Frontispiece
"'Give it to the Colonel.'" 82
"Leaned forward on the horse's neck." 111
"'You are too late, Jack!'" 154
"'Go, I say!'" 196
"'I take my leave of this house!'" 248
CHAPTER I.
THE RIDERS.
"I dare say 'tis a wild, foolish, dangerous thing; but I do it,
nevertheless! As for my reasons, they are the strongest. First, I wish
to do it. Second, you've all opposed my doing it. So there's an end of
the matter!"
It was, of course, a woman that spoke,--moreover, a young one.
And she added:
"Drat the wind! Can't we ride faster? 'Twill be dark before we reach
the manor-house. Get along, Cato!"
She was one of three on horseback, who went northward on the Albany
post-road late in the afternoon of a gray, chill, blowy day in
November, in the war-scourged year 1778. Beside the girl rode a young
gentleman, wrapped in a dark cloak. The third horse, which plodded a
short distance in the rear, carried a small negro youth and two large
portmanteaus. The three riders made a group that was, as far as could
be seen from their view-point, alone on the highway.
There were reasons why such a group, on that road at that time, was an
unusual sight,--reasons familiar to any one who is well informed in
the history of the Revolution. Unfortunately, most good Americans are
better acquainted with the French Revolution than with our own, know
more about the state of affairs in Rome during the reign of Nero than
about the condition of things in New York City during the British
occupation, and compensate for their knowledge of Scotch-English
border warfare in remote times by their ignorance of the border
warfare that ravaged the vicinity of the island of Manhattan, for six
years, little more than a century ago.
Our Revolutionary War had reached the respectable age of three and a
half years. Lexington, Bunker Hill, Brooklyn, Harlem Heights, White
Plains, Trenton, Princeton, the Brandywine, German-town, Bennington,
Saratoga, and Monmouth--not to mention events in the South and in
Canada and on the water--had taken their place in history. The army of
the King of England had successively occupied Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia; had been driven out of Boston by siege, and had left
Philadelphia to return to the town more pivotal and nearer the
sea,--New York. One British commander-in-chief had been recalled by
the British ministry to explain why he had not crushed the rebellion,
and one British major-general had surrendered an army, and was now
back in England defending his course and pleading in Parliament the
cause of the Americans, to whom he was still a prisoner on parole. Our
Continental army--called Continental because, like the general
Congress, it served the whole union of British-settled Colonies or
States on this continent, and was thus distinguished from the militia,
which served in each case its particular Colony or State only--had
experienced both defeats and victories in encounters with the King's
troops and his allies, German, Hessian, and American Tory. It had
endured the winter at Valley Forge while the British had fed, drunk,
gambled, danced, flirted, and wenched in Philadelphia. The French
alliance had been sanctioned. Steuben, Lafayette, DeKalb, Pulaski,
Kosciusko, Armand, and other Europeans, had taken service with us. One
plot had been made in Congress and the army to supplant Washington in
the chief command, and had failed. The treason of General Charles Lee
had come to naught,--but was to wait for disclosure till many years
after every person concerned should be graveyard dust. We had
celebrated two anniversaries of the Fourth of July. The new free and
independent States had organized local governments. The King's
appointees still made a pretence of maintaining the royal provincial
governments, but mostly abode under the protection of the King's
troops in New York. There also many of those Americans in the North
took refuge who distinctly professed loyalty to the King. New York was
thus the chief lodging-place of all that embodied British sovereignty
in America. Naturally the material tokens of British rule radiated
from the town, covering all of the island of Manhattan, most of Long
Island, and all of Staten Island, and retaining a clutch here and
there on the mainland of New Jersey.
It was the present object of Washington to keep those visible signs of
English authority penned up within this circle around New York. The
Continental posts, therefore, formed a vast arc, extending from the
interior of New Jersey through Southeastern New York State to Long
Island Sound and into Connecticut. This had been the situation since
midsummer of 1778. It was but a detachment from our main army that had
cooperated with the French fleet in the futile attempt to dislodge a
British force from Newport in August of that year.
The British commander-in-chief and most of the superior officers had
their quarters in the best residences of New York. That town was
packed snugly into the southern angle of the island of Manhattan, like
a gift in the toe of a Christmas stocking. Southward, some of its
finest houses looked across the Battery to the bay. Northward the town
extended little beyond the common fields, of which the City Hall
Square of 1898 is a reduced survival. The island of Manhattan--with
its hills, woods, swamps, ponds, brooks, roads, farms, sightly
estates, gardens, and orchards--was dotted with the cantonments and
garrisoned forts of the British. The outposts were, largely, entrusted
to bodies of Tory allies organized in this country. Thus was much of
Long Island guarded by the three Loyalist battalions of General Oliver
De Lancey, himself a native of New York. On Staten Island was
quartered General Van Cortlandt Skinner's brigade of New Jersey
Volunteers, a troop which seems to have had such difficulty in finding
officers in its own State that it had to go to New York for many of
them,--or was it that so many more rich New York Loyalists had to be
provided with commissions than the New York Loyalist brigades required
as officers?
But the most important British posts were those which guarded the
northern entrance to the island of Manhattan, where it was separated
from the mainland by Spuyten Duyvel Kill, flowing westward into the
Hudson, and the Harlem, flowing southward into the East River. King's
Bridge and the Farmers' Bridge, not far apart, joined the island to
the main; and just before the Revolution a traveller might have made
his choice of these two bridges, whether he wished to take the Boston
road or the road to Albany. In 1778 the British "barrier" was King's
Bridge, the northern one of the two, the watch-house being the tavern
at the mainland end of the bridge. Not only the bridge, but the
Hudson, the Spuyten Duyvel, and the Harlem, as well, were commanded by
British forts on the island of Manhattan. Yet there were defences
still further out. On the mainland was a line of forts extending from
the Hudson, first eastward, then southward, to the East River. Further
north, between the Albany road and the Hudson, was a camp of German
and Hessian allies, foot and horse. Northeast, on Valentine's Hill,
were the Seventy-first Highlanders. Near the mainland bank of the
Harlem were the quarters of various troops of dragoons, most of them
American Tory corps with English commanders, but one, at least, native
to the soil, not only in rank and file, but in officers also,--and
with no less dash and daring than by Tarleton, Simcoe, and the rest,
was King George III. served by Captain James De Lancey, of the county
of West Chester, with his "cowboys," officially known as the West
Chester Light Horse.
Thus the outer northern lines of the British were just above King's
Bridge. The principal camp of the Americans was far to the north. Each
army was affected by conditions that called for a wide space of
territory between the two forces, between the outer rim of the British
circle, and the inner face of the American arc. Of this space the
portion that lay bounded on the west by the Hudson, on the southeast
by Long Island Sound, and cut in two by the southward-flowing Bronx,
was the most interesting. It was called the Neutral Ground, and
neutral it was in that it had the protection of neither side, while it
was ravaged by both. Foraged by the two armies, under the approved
rules of war, it underwent further a constant, irregular pillage by
gangs of mounted rascals who claimed attachment, some to the British,
some to the Americans, but were not owned by either. It was, too,
overridden by the cavalry of both sides in attempts to surprise
outposts, cut off supplies, and otherwise harass and sting. Unexpected
forays by the rangers and dragoons from King's Bridge and the Harlem
were reciprocated by sudden visitations of American horse and light
infantry from the Greenburg Hills and thereabove. The Whig militia of
the county also took a hand against British Tories and marauders. Of
the residents, many Tories fled to New York, some Americans went to
the interior of the country, but numbers of each party held their
ground, at risk of personal harm as well as of robbery. Many of the
best houses were, at different times during the war, occupied as
quarters by officers of either side. Little was raised on the farms
save what the farmers could immediately use or easily conceal. The
Hudson was watched by British war-vessels, while the Americans on
their side patrolled it with whale-boats, long and canoe-like, swift
and elusive. For the drama of partisan warfare, Nature had provided,
in lower West Chester County,--picturesquely hilly, beautifully
wooded, pleasantly watered, bounded in part by the matchless Hudson
and the peerless Sound,--a setting unsurpassed.
Thus was it that Miss Elizabeth Philipse, Major John Colden, and Miss
Philipse's negro boy, Cuff, all riding northward on the Albany
post-road, a few miles above King's Bridge, but still within territory
patrolled daily by the King's troops, constituted, on that bleak
November evening in 1778, a group unusual to the time and place.
'Twas a wettish wind, concerning which Miss Elizabeth expressed, in
the imperative mood, her will that it be dratted,--a feminine wind,
truly, as was clear from its unexpected flarings up and sudden
calmings down, its illogical whiskings around and eccentric changes of
direction. Now it swept down the slope from the east, as if it meant
to bombard the travellers with all the brown leaves of the hillside.
Now it assailed them from the north, as if to impede their journey;
now rushed on them from the rear as if it had come up from New York to
speed them on their way; now attacked them in the left flank, armed
with a raw chill from the Hudson. It blew Miss Elizabeth'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-divided
place was being approached afar from the north by a company of mounted
troops riding as if the devil was after them. It was not the devil,
but another body of cavalry, riding at equal speed, though at a great
distance behind. The three people from New York as yet neither saw nor
heard anything of these horsemen dashing down from the north. Yet the
major's spirits sank lower and lower, as if he had an omen of coming
evil.
He was a handsome young man, Major John Colden, being not more than
twenty-seven years old, and having the clearly outlined features best
suited to that period of smooth-shaven faces. His dark eyes and his
pensive expression were none the less effective for the white powder
on his cued hair. A slightly petulant, uneasy look rather added to his
countenance. He was of medium height and regular figure. He wore a
civilian's cloak or outer coat over the uniform of his rank and corps,
thus hiding also his sword and pistol. Other externals of his attire
were riding-boots, gloves, and a three-cornered hat without a military
cockade. He was mounted on a sorrel horse a little darker in hue than
the animal ridden by Miss Elizabeth's black boy, Cuff, who wore the
rich livery of the Philipses.
The steed of Miss Elizabeth was a slender black, sensitive and
responsive to her slightest command--a fit mount for this, the most
imperious, though not the oldest, daughter of Colonel Frederick
Philipse, third lord, under the bygone royal regime, of the manor of
Philipsburgh in the Province of New York. They gave classic names to
quadrupeds in those days and Addison's tragedy was highly respected,
so Elizabeth's scholarly father had christened this horse Cato.
Howsoever the others who loved her regarded her present jaunt, no
opposition was shown by Cato. Obedient now as ever, the animal bore
her zealously forward, be it to danger or to what she would.
Elizabeth's resolve to revisit the manor hall on the Hudson, which had
been left closed up in the steward's charge when the family had sought
safety in their New York City residence in 1777, had sprung in part
from a powerful longing for the country and in part from a dream which
had reawakened strongly her love for the old house of her birth and of
most of her girlhood. The peril of her resolve only increased her
determination to carry it out. Her parents, brothers, and sisters
stood aghast at the project, and refused in any way to countenance it.
But there was no other will in the Philipse household able to cope
with Elizabeth's. She held that the thing was most practicable and
simple, inasmuch as the steward, with the aid of two servants, kept
the deserted house in a state of habitation, and as her mother's
sister, Miss Sarah Williams, was living with the widow Babcock in the
parsonage of Lower Philipsburgh and could transfer her abode to the
manor-house for the time of Elizabeth's stay. Major Colden, an unloved
lover,--for Elizabeth, accepting marriage as one of the inevitables,
yet declared that she could never love any man, love being admittedly
a weakness, and she not a weak person,--was ever watchful for the
opportunity of ingratiating himself with the superb girl, and so
fearful of displeasing her that he dared not refuse to ride with her.
He was less able even than her own family to combat her purpose. One
day some one had asked him why, since she called him Jack, and he was
on the road to thirty years, while she was yet in her teens, he did
not call her Betty or Bess, as all other Elizabeths were called in
those days. He meditated a moment, then replied, "I never heard any
one, even in her own family, call her so. I can't imagine any one ever
calling her by any more familiar name than Elizabeth."
Now it was not from her father that this regal young creature could
have taken her resoluteness, though she may well have got from him
some of the pride that went with it. There certainly must have been
more pride than determination in Frederick Philipse, third lord of the
manor, colonel in provincial militia before the Revolution, graduate
of King's College, churchman, benefactor, gentleman of literary
tastes; amiable, courtly, and so fat that he and his handsome wife
could not comfortably ride in the same coach at the same time. But
there was surely as much determination as pride in this gentleman's
great-grandfather, Vrederyck Flypse, descendant of a line of viscounts
and keepers of the deer forests of Bohemia, Protestant victim of
religious persecution in his own land, immigrant to New Amsterdam
about 1650, and soon afterward the richest merchant in the province,
dealer with the Indians, ship-owner in the East and West India trade,
importer of slaves, leader in provincial politics and government,
founder of Sleepy Hollow Church, probably a secret trafficker with
Captain Kidd and other pirates, and owner by purchase of the territory
that was erected by royal charter of William and Mary into the
lordship and manor of Philipsburgh. The strength of will probably
declined, while the pride throve, in transmission to Vrederyck's son,
Philip, who sowed wild oats, and went to the Barbadoes for his health
and married the daughter of the English governor of that island.
Philip's son, Frederick, being born in a hot climate, and grandson of
an English governor as well as of the great Flypse, would naturally
have had great quantity of pride, whatever his stock of force,
particularly as he became second lord of the manor at the lordly age
of four. And he could not easily have acquired humility in later life,
as speaker of the provincial Assembly, Baron of the Exchequer, judge
of the Supreme Court, or founder of St. John's Church,--towards which
graceful edifice was the daughter of his son, the third lord,
directing her horse this wintry autumn evening. As for this third
lord, he had been removed by the new Government to Connecticut for
favoring the English rule, but, having received permission to go to
New York for a short time, had evinced his fondness for the sweet and
soft things of life by breaking his parole and staying in the city,
under the British protection, thus risking his vast estate and showing
himself a gentleman of anything but the courage now displayed by his
daughter.
Elizabeth, therefore, must have derived her spirit, with a good
measure of pride and a fair share (or more) of vanity, from her
mother, though, thanks to that appreciation of personal comfort which
comes with middle age, Madam Philipse's high-spiritedness would no
longer have displayed itself in dangerous excursions, nor was it
longer equal to a contest with the fresher energy of Elizabeth. She
was the daughter of Charles Williams, once naval officer of the port
of New York, and his wife, who had been Miss Sarah Olivier. Thus came
Madam Philipse honestly by the description, "imperious woman of
fashion," in which local history preserves her memory. She was a
widow of twenty-four when Colonel Philipse married her, she having
been bereaved two years before of her first husband, Mr. Anthony
Rutgers, the lawyer. She liked display, and her husband indulged her
inclination without stint, receiving in repayment a good nursery-full
of what used, in the good old days, to be called pledges of affection.
Being the daughter of a royal office-holding Englishman, how could she
have helped holding her head mighty high on receiving her elevation to
the ladyship of Philipsburgh, and who shall blame her daughter and
namesake, now within a stone's throw of St. John's parsonage and in
full sight of the tree-bowered manorial home of her fathers, for
holding hers, which was younger, a trifle higher?
Not many high-held heads of this or any other day are or were finer
than that of Elizabeth Philipse was in 1778, or are set on more
graceful figures. For all her haughtiness, she was not a very large
person, nor yet was she a small one. She was neither fragile nor too
ample. Her carriage made her look taller than she was. She was of the
brown-haired, blue-eyed type, but her eyes were not of unusual size or
surpassing lucidity, being merely clear, honest, steady eyes, capable
rather of fearless or disdainful attention than of swift flashes or
coquettish glances. The precision with which her features were
outlined did not lessen the interest that her face had from her
pride, spirit, independence, and intelligence. She was, moreover, an
active, healthy creature, and if she commanded the dratting of the
wind, it was not as much because she was chilled by it as because it
blew her cloak and impeded her progress. In fine, she was a beauty;
else this historian would never have taken the trouble of unearthing
from many places and piecing together the details of this fateful
incident,--for if any one supposes that the people of this narrative
are mere fictions, he or she is radically in error. They lived and
achieved, under the names they herein bear; were as actual as the
places herein mentioned,--as any of the numerous patriotic Americans
who daily visit the genealogical shelves of the public libraries can
easily learn, if they will spare sufficient time from the laudable
task of hunting down their own ancestors. If this story is called a
romance, that term is used here only as it is oft applied to actual
occurrences of a romantic character. So the Elizabeth Philipse who,
before crossing the Neperan to approach the manor-house, stopped in
front of the snug parsonage at the roadside and directed Cuff to knock
at the door, was as real as was then the parsonage itself.
Presently a face appeared furtively at one of the up-stairs windows.
The eyes thereof, having dwelt for an instant on the mounted party
shivering in the road, opened wide in amazement, and a minute later,
after a sound of key-turning and bolt-drawing, the door opened, and a
good-looking lady appeared in the doorway, backed up by a servant and
two pretty children who clung, half-curious, half-frightened, to the
lady's skirts.
"Why, Miss Elizabeth! Is it possible--"
But Elizabeth cut the speech of the astonished lady short.
"Yes, my dear Mrs. Babcock,--and I know how dangerous, and all that!
And, thank you, I'll not come in. I shall see you during the week. I'm
going to the manor-house to stay awhile, and I wish my aunt to stay
there with me, if you can spare her."
"Why, yes,--of course,--but--here comes your aunt."
"Why, Elizabeth, what in the world--"
She was a somewhat stately woman at first sight, was Elizabeth's
mother's sister, Miss Sarah Williams; but on acquaintance soon
conciliated and found to be not at all the formidable and haughty
person she would have had people believe her; not too far gone in
middle age, preserving, despite her spinsterhood, much of her bloom
and many of those little roundnesses of contour which adorn but do not
encumber.
"I haven't time to say what, aunt," broke in Elizabeth. "I want to get
to the manor-house before it is night. You are to stay with me there a
week. So put on a wrap and come over as soon as you can, to be in
time for supper. I'll send a boy for you, if you like."
"Why, no, there's some one here will walk over with me, I dare say.
But, la me, Elizabeth,--"
"Then I'll look for you in five minutes. Good night, Mrs. Babcock! I
trust your little ones are well."
And she rode off, followed by Colden and Cuff, leaving the two women
in the parsonage doorway to exchange what conjectures and what
ejaculations of wonderment the circumstances might require.
Night was falling when the riders crossed the Neperan (then commonly
known as the Saw Mill River) by the post-road bridge, and gazed more
closely on the stone manor-house. Looking westward, from the main
road, across the hedge and paling fence, they saw, first the vast lawn
with its comely trees, then the long east front of the house, with its
two little entrance-porches, the row of windows in each of its two
stories, the dormer windows projecting from the sloping roof, the
balustraded walk on the roof-top; at both ends the green and brown and
yellow hints of what lay north of the house, between it and the
forest, and west of the house, between it and the Hudson,--the
box-hedged gardens, the terraces breaking the slope to the river, the
deer paddock enclosed by high pickets, the great orchard. The Hudson
was nearer to the house then than now, and its lofty further bank,
rich with growth of wood and leaf, was the backing for the westward
view. To the east, which the riders put behind them in facing the
manor-house, were the hills of the interior.
"Not a sign of light from the house, and the shutters all closed, as
if it were a tomb! It looks as cold and empty as one. I'll soon make
it warm and live enough inside at least!" said Elizabeth, and turned
westward from the highway into the short road that ran between the
mansion and the north bank of the Neperan, by the grist-mill and the
gate and the stables, down a picturesque descent to a landing where
that stream entered the Hudson.
She proceeded towards the gate, where, being near the southeast corner
of the house, one could see that the south front was to the east front
as the base to the upright of a capital L turned backward; that the
south front resembled the east in all but in being shorter and having
a single porched entrance, which was in its middle.
As the party neared the gate, there arose far northward a sound of
many horsemen approaching at a fast gallop. Elizabeth at once reined
in, to listen. Major Colden and Cuff followed her example, both
looking at her in apprehension. The galloping was on the Albany road,
but presently deviated eastwardly, then decreased.
"They've turned up the road to Mile Square, whoever they are," said
Elizabeth, and led the way on to the gate, which Cuff, dismounting,
quickly opened, its fastening having been removed and not replaced.
"Lead your horse to the door, Cuff. Then take off the portmanteaus and
knock, and tie the horses to the post."
She rode up to the southern door in the east front, and was there
assisted to dismount by the major, while Cuff followed in obedience.
Colden, as the sound of the distant galloping grew fainter and
fainter, showed more relief than he might have felt had he known that
a second troop was soon to come speeding down in the track of the
first.
Elizabeth, in haste to escape the wind, stepped into the little porch
and stood impatiently before the dark, closed door of the house of her
fathers.