So chiding herself she quickened her steps and assumed an aggressively cheerful manner. Just as she turned from Fifth Street into High she heard a great clamor. She stopped in alarm as a rabble of men and boys suddenly swept around a corner and flooded the street toward her. The girl stood for but a moment, and then ran back into Fifth Street, where she stopped so frightened that she did not notice a coach drawn by four horses driving rapidly down the street.
“Careful, my little maid! careful!” called a voice, and Peggy looked up to find General Arnold himself leaning out of the coach regarding her anxiously. “Why, ’tis Miss Peggy Owen,” he exclaimed. “Know you not that you but escaped being run down by my horses?”
“I—I—’tis plain to be seen,” stammered the maiden trembling.
“Sam, assist the young lady into the coach,” he commanded the coachman. Then, as Peggy was seated by his side: “I cry you pardon, Miss Peggy, for not getting out myself. I am not so nimble as I was. What is it? What hath frightened you?”
“Does thee not hear the noise?” cried Peggy.
Before he could reply the mob swept by. In the midst of it was a cart in which lay a rude pine coffin which the crowd was showering with stones.
“’Tis the body of James Molesworth, the spy,” he told her. “When he was executed ’twas first interred in the Potter’s Field; then when the British held possession of the city ’twas exhumed and buried with honors. Since the Whigs have the town again ’tis thought fitting to restore it to its old resting place in the Potter’s Field.”
“’Tis a shame not to let the poor man be,” she exclaimed, every drop of blood leaving her face. “Why do they not let him rest? He paid the debt of his guilt. It were sin to maltreat his bones.”
“’Tis best not to give utterance to those sentiments, Miss Peggy,” he cautioned. “They do honor to your heart, but the public temper is such that no mercy is shown toward those miscreants who serve as spies.”
“But it hath been so long since he was executed,” she said with quivering lips. “And is it not strange? When I came into the city to seek my father ’twas the very day that they had exhumed his body and were burying it with honors. Oh, doth it portend some dire disaster to us?”