“When first, as at Thermopylae,
The battle shout of freemen rose;
Firm as their mountains, and as free,
They nobly braved encountering foes.”
And in the following autumn, they, in the same company, in which Woodburn, for bravery and good conduct, had been made a subaltern officer, marched with that division of the army which Arnold, with almost unequalled energy and fortitude, and amidst privation and suffering untold, led through the snow-clad wilderness of morass and mountain, to the distant Quebec. And there, in the onset, in which the high-souled Montgomery fell, they were together cut off from their company and made prisoners; when, after having, for nearly a year and a half, endured the sufferings of a British prison-ship, they together escaped at Halifax, wandered, half naked and starving, through the seemingly interminable forests of Brunswick and Maine, to the American settlemens, and finally reached home; not there, however, long to repose, but soon to repair, with yet unbroken spirit, to the new scene of action, at which their countrymen were beginning to rally to meet the formidable invasion of the hitherto victorious Burgoyne.
We will now resume the thread of our narrative. A walk of twenty or thirty minutes brought Bart to the log tenement of Howard, who was a soldier in the continental service, now absent on duty, having left his house and business in charge of his wife a woman no less noted, in her neighborhood, for energy in conducting her domestic affairs, than for the patriotic spirit with which she espoused the American cause. She and her daughter, a rustic beauty of eighteen, of keen perceptions, and even rare good sense, when her frolicsome disposition would allow her to exercise it, were now the only permanent inmates of this secluded cabin, which consisted of but two rooms, with a front entrance leading through an entry into either of them, and another door at the end of the house opening into the one usually occupied by the family as both sitting-room and kitchen.
“A light in both rooms, by the pipers!” exclaimed Bart, as, after having cautiously approached, he paused to reconnoitre the house. “The fellow is there at his traps, as sure as a gun! Now what's to be done, Bart? 'Twon't do to go in and show yourself, and have that torified scamp carry away word that you are mousing round the country nights, will it? No, but I'll tell you what, if it want for the name of sneaking and evesdropping, we would creep round back of the room where they be, and hark through the cracks; like enough get a peep, and so learn something. But such things they expected of you, didn't they, Bart? Must be so, I think. Then suppose we throw the name and blame of it on the council, and try it, mister?”
Taking a wide sweep round the house, Bart soon approached that part of it, on the back side, in which he rightly conjectured the young people were sitting; and gliding up to the wall with steps as noiseless as those of a mousing fox, he discovered a crevice between the logs, from which the moss calking had fallen out so as to permit a small pencil of light to escape. Guided by this, he quickly gained, after applying his eye to the aperture, a distinct view of the couple within, and was enabled, at the same time, to catch every word of their variously modulated conversation. They were seated at different sides of a light-stand, on which a candle was burning, she assiduously engaged, to all appearance, with her needle on some light sewing work, and he diligently, with his penknife, on a pine chip, which he was essaying to shape into a human profile, that of his mistress, it might be surmised from the sly glances with which he seemed occasionally to scan her features. Though now dressed in his smartest fustian, he yet appeared awkward and ill at ease; while the timid and hesitating air, with which he seemed to regard his fair companion, indicated much conscious uncertainty respecting the place he might hold in her affections. She, on the contrary, seemed quite self-possessed, and wore the air of one not particularly solicitous about pleasing, which gave her as much advantage over him in her manner as she obviously possessed in her person; for, besides a good form and a wholesome roseate bloom, she had one of those polyglot countenances which seem almost to supersede the necessity of speaking—a trait she very prettily exhibited while listening to the forced hints and innuendoes of her lover's conversation, as she occasionally lifted her head, now with a blush, now with a smile, and now with a frown, that caused his eyes to drop to the floor as quick as those of a rebuked schoolboy. Thus far, she had not opened her lips; but now, as her suitor, turning in his chair, brought a hitherto shaded arm into view, and displayed upon his sleeve a common brass pin, (usually denominated in those days the Canada pin, as this article, then almost excluded from the toilet by the war, rarely found its way into this section except through the intercourse of the tories with that province,) her attention was suddenly excited; and turning a sharp and searching look upon him, she said,—
“Where have you been lately, Josh?”
“Why?” he replied, evidently surprised at the question and manner of the girl.
“That, sir,” she responded, significantly pointing to the pin. “Such articles don't get here but in one way, in these hard times, which compel us to put up with thorns for pins, and half tories for beaux,” she added, with a meaning and roguish look.
“Won't you accept it, Vine?” he said, obviously disconcerted but pretending not to understand her allusions.
“Not unless you tell me honestly how you got it, sir,” she replied, decisively.