At Greenwood she found her mother still suffering from the fright and the blow too much to allow the girl to tell her own troubles, or to ask counsel for the future, and the occupation of trying to make the sufferer more comfortable was in fact a good diversion, exhausted though she was with her fruitless journey.
Before Mrs. Meredith was entirely recovered, or any news of the squire had reached the household, fresh trouble was upon them. Captain Bagby and two other men drove up the third morning after the incursion, and, without going through the. form of knocking, came into the parlour.
“You’ll get ready straight off to go to Philadelphia,” the officer announced.
“For what?” demanded Mrs. Meredith.
“The Congress’s orders is that any one guilty of seeking to communicate with the enemy is to be put under arrest, and sent to Philadelphia to be examined.”
“But we have n’t made the slightest attempt, nor so much as thought of it,” protested the matron.
“Oh, no!” sneered Joe; “but, all the same, we intercepted a letter last night written to you by your old Tory husband, and—”
“Oh, prithee,” broke in Janice, without a thought of anything but her father, “was he well, and where is he?”
“He was smarting a bit when he wrote,” Bagby remarked with evident enjoyment, “but he’s got safe to his friends on Staten Island, so we are n’t going to let you stay where you can be sneaking news to the British through him. I’ll give you just half an hour to pack, and if you are n’t done then, off you goes.”
Protests and pleadings were wholly useless, though Joe yielded so far as to suggestively remark in an aside to the girl, that “there was one way that you know of, for fixing this thing.” Getting together what they could in the brief time accorded to them, and with vague directions to Peg and Sukey as to the care of all they were forced to leave behind, the two women took their places in the waggon, and with only one man to drive them, set out for their enforced destination.