“Is it a spy?” whispered Peggy shudderingly.
“Yes, Mistress Peggy. I knew not that the execution would take place on this road, else I would have chosen another for the ride. ’Tis not a pleasing sight.”
“Is thee ill, Harriet?” cried Peggy, all at once happening to glance at her cousin who had no color in her face.
“Ill? No,” answered Harriet with an attempt at carelessness. “I am chilled; that is all. Then, too, as the ensign says, yon sight is not a pretty one. Methinks such service must be extremely hazardous.”
“It is, mistress,” said Drayton sternly. “So perilous is it that the man, woman, or girl even who enters upon it does so at the risk of life. No mercy is shown a spy. Nor should there be.”
“And yet,” she said growing paler still, “spies are used by your own general, sir. It is a parlous mission, but he who enters upon it serves his country as truly as though”—she laughed, flung up her head and looked him straight in the face—“as though he were an ensign,” she finished mockingly.
“She has thee, John,” cried Peggy gaily. “But a truce to such talk. ’Tis gruesome, is it not? Let us converse upon more pleasing subjects.”
“Methinks,” said Drayton briefly, “’twould be as well to return, Mistress Peggy. The ride hath been spoiled for the day.”
But a shadow seemed over them, and neither girl recovered her accustomed spirits until some hours later when they went into dinner.
“Now by my life, David,” cried William Livingston, the great war governor of New Jersey, as the maidens were presented. “Now by my life, these girls take not after you, else they would not be such beauties. They must meet with my daughters. I had three,” he said turning to Peggy. “The Livingston Graces, some called them, but one grew tired of being a nymph and so became a bird. Nay; be not alarmed,” he added as a puzzled look flashed across Peggy’s face, “she but married John Jay. ’Tis a joke of mine. And this is the cousin from across the sea who bids fair to become our more than sympathizer? Wilt pardon me if I say that were I British I’d never relinquished to the rebels so fair a compatriot?”