"But how could he send a letter from the rebel camp to her in New York?"[[5]]
"Why, that's not the strangest part of it. There's no doubt Washington has spies in the town, and ways of communicating with the rebel sympathisers here; I've sometimes thought my father—but no matter for that. The fact is, there the letter was, as certainly from Ned as I'm looking at you; and we know he's in the rebel army. But the wonder, the incredible thing, is that he should write to Margaret."
"'Tis a mystery, in truth."
"Well, 'tis none of ours, after all, and of course this will go no further—but let me tell you, the devil's in it when those two are in correspondence. There's crookedness of some kind afoot, when such haters combine together!"
"You didn't ask her, of course?"
"No. But I knocked at her chamber door, and getting no answer I went down-stairs again. This time she was in the parlour. She had been in the library before, it seemed; 'twas warmer there."
But, as I narrowly watched the poor lad, I questioned whether he was really convinced that she had been in the library before. He had said nothing of Captain Falconer's sitting-room, of which the door was that of the transformed large parlour, and was directly across the hall from the Faringfields' ordinary parlour, wherein Tom had first sought and eventually found her.
'Twas our practice thus to ride back to our posts when we had been off duty, although our rank did not allow us to go mounted in the service. For despite the needs of the army, the Faringfields and I contrived to retain our horses for private use. All of that family were good riders, particularly Margaret. She often rode out for a morning's canter, going alone because it was her will thereto, which was not opposed, for she had so accustomed us to her aloofness that solitary excursions seemed in place with her. One day, a little later in that same December, Tom and I had taken the road by way of General De Lancey's country mansion at Bloomingdale, rather than our usual course, which lay past the Murray house of Incledon. As I rode Northward at a slow walk, some distance ahead of my comrade, I distinctly heard through a thicket that veiled the road from a little glade at the right, the voice of Captain Falconer, saying playfully:
"Nay, how can you doubt me? Would not gratitude alone, for the reparation of my fortunes, bind me as your slave, if you had not chains more powerful?"
And then I caught this answer, in a voice that gave me a start, and sent the blood into my face—the voice of Margaret: