And eventually we found the name of
Captain Winwood in a list of rebel prisoners who were to be exchanged;
from which, as a long time had passed, we inferred that he was now
recovered of his injuries; whereupon Margaret, who had never spoken of
him, or shown her solicitude other than by an occasional dispirited
self-abstraction, regained all her gaiety and was soon her old,
charming self again. In due course, we learned that the exchange of
prisoners had been effected, and that a number of officers (among whom
was Captain Winwood) had departed from Quebec, bound whither we were
not informed; and after that we lost track of him for many and many a
month.

Meanwhile, the war had made itself manifest in New York: at first
distantly, as by the passage of a few rebel companies from
Pennsylvania and Virginia through the town on their way to Cambridge;
by continued enlistments for the rebel cause; by the presence of a
small rebel force of occupation; and by quiet enrolments of us
loyalists for service when our time should come. But in the beginning
of the warm weather of 1776, the war became apparent in its own shape.
The king's troops under Sir William Howe had at last evacuated Boston
and sailed to Halifax, taking with them a host of loyalists, whose
flight was held up to us New York Tories as prophetic of our own fate.
Washington now supposed, rightly, that General Howe intended presently
to occupy New York; and so down upon our town, and the island on which
it was, and upon Long Island, came the rebel main army from Cambridge;
and brought some very bad manners with it, for all that there never
was a finer gentleman in the world than was at its head, and that I am
bound to own some of his officers and men to have been worthy of him
in good breeding. Here the army was reinforced by regiments from the
middle and Southern provinces; and for awhile we loyalists kept close
mouths. Margaret, indeed, for the time, ceased altogether to be a
loyalist, in consequence of the gallantry of certain officers in blue
and buff, and several Virginia dragoons in blue and red, with whom she
was brought into acquaintance through her father's attachment to the
rebel interest. She expanded and grew brilliant in the sunshine of
admiration (she had even a smile and compliment from Washington
himself, at a ball in honour of the rebel declaration of independence)
in which she lived during the time when New York abounded with rebel
troops.

But th