When the vital resources called forth by excitement were used up, and Dick fell back to his weakened and wounded condition, his gait became a walk. Fortunately, until that time, his way had been mainly through a deserted street, so that his running had attracted no attention. Reaching a more populous thoroughfare, on which he saw more soldiers than citizens, he proceeded southwestwardly in a preoccupied manner, his coatless condition being easily accounted for by the heat of the season. At last he sat down to rest on the steps of a large brick church, at a corner where the street opened to a great, green, hilly, partly wooded space, which he knew, from previous description and from the military tents now upon it, to be the Common.
While he was viewing the scene, and gaining breath, and wondering how he should ever get out of the town, he became conscious of a hurried movement of men, at some distance back on his own route. Standing on the highest church step to look, he saw a squad of soldiers led by an officer whom he took to be the Irishman. Other people about had noticed this movement, which was rapidly nearing.
To get out of the way inconspicuously, Dick descended from the church steps, and started at a walk up the steep street that ran by the side of the church and which bounded the end of the Common. As he tugged up the hill, he knew by cries and footsteps that the soldiers were making good speed towards the corner he had left; and just as he reached the top of the hill he heard a shout from the foot of it.
"Stop that rebel!" were the words, and the voice was that of the Irish officer. Dick turned into the street that went along the upper side of the Common, and thence he bounded through the first open gate on the right-hand side, into a flowery garden before a broad residence whose wide door, flanked by glass panels and surmounted by a great fan-light, gaped hospitably from a spacious vine-embowered porch. As he made for this porch, for the time hidden from his pursuers on the up-hill street by the trees at the corner of the Common, a young lady came idly from the door. She first halted at the approaching cry, "Stop that rebel," and then stepped back in surprise as Dick, tripping on the steps that led up to the porch, fell prone at her feet.
"Dear me, what's the matter?" she said, breathlessly; then quickly stooped and picked up something from near Dick's head.
"That belongs to me!" he said, hoarsely, rising to his knees, and reaching out for it greedily. It was the precious miniature, which had in some manner worked from its fastenings in Dick's queue.
"Who are you?" asked the girl, who was slender, blue-eyed, and fair, still retaining the portrait.
"Stop that rebel!" came the cry from around the corner of the Common.
Dick's mind worked quickly. "I'm the man they're hunting," he said.
The girl frowned, murmured the word "rebel," and looked down at him with an expression of dislike. From this he knew she was a Tory, hence friendly to his pursuers and at bitter enmity with his cause.