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:

"But will those chains hold, if this design upon your gratitude fail?"

She spoke as in jest, but with a perceptible undercurrent of
earnestness. This was a new attitude for her, and what a revelation to
me! In a flash I saw her infatuation for this fine fellow, some fear
of losing him, a pursuit of some plan by which she might repair his
fortunes and so bind him by obligation. Had Margaret, the invincible,
the disdainful, fallen to so abject a posture? And how long had these
secret meetings been going on?

There was new-fallen snow upon the road, and this had deadened the
sound of our horses' feet to those beyond the thicket. Tom was not yet
so near as to have heard th