“Fudge! Hear me through. The girl has always hated the match, which was one of her old fool of a father’s conceiving, and will thank any one who saves her from the fellow. Let her say nay to us both, and it please her, but don’t force her to a marriage of compulsion by needless blabbing.”
“I will hold my peace, if that seems best for Miss Meredith; not otherwise, my Lord,” answered Mobray, flinging from the room.
The baronet mounted his horse, and, stabbing his spurs into him, galloped madly down Market Street, and then up Second Street to where it forked into two country roads. Here the lines of British fortifications intersected it, and a picket of cavalry forced the rider to draw rein and show his pass. This done, he rode on, though at a more easy pace, and an hour later entered the village of Germantown. In front of the Roebuck Inn a guidon, from which depended a white flag, had been thrust into the ground, and grouped about the door of the tavern was a small party of Continental light horse. Trotting up to them, Mobray dismounted, and, after an inquiry and a request to one of them to take his horse, he entered the public room. To its one occupant, who was seated before the fire, he said: “The dragoons outside told me the reb—the Continental commissioners were here. Canst tell me where they are to be found, fellow?”
The person addressed rose from his seat, revealing clothes so soiled and tattered, and a pair of long boots of such shabby appearance, as to give him the semblance of some runaway prentice or bond-servant, but over his shoulder passed a green ribbon and sword sash which marked their wearer as a field officer; and as the baronet realised this he removed his hat and bowed.
“Since when did you take to calling your superior officers ‘fellows,’ Sir Frederick?” asked the other, laughing.
With a cry of recognition, Mobray sprang forward, his hand outstretched. “Charlie!” he exclaimed. “Heavens, man, we have made a joke in the army of the appearance of thy troops, but I never thought to see the exquisite of the Mall in clothes not fit for a tinker.”
“My name, Fred, is John Brereton,” corrected the officer, “which is a change for the better, I think you will own. As for my clothes, I’ll better them, too, if Congress ever gives us enough pay to do more than keep life in us. Owing to depreciation, a leftenant-colonel is allowed to starve at present on the equivalent of twenty-five dollars, specie, a month.”
“And yet you go on serving such masters,” burst out Mobray. “Come over to us, Charl—John. Sir William would give you—”
“Enough,” interrupted Brereton, angrily. “For how long, Sir Frederick, have you deemed me capable of treachery?”
“’T is no treachery to leave this unnatural rebellion and take sides with our good king.”