ve generously assisted by suggestions and criticisms,
and especially to those who have devoted their valuable moments to the
revision of the proof sheets.
J. F. B.

THE LOYALIST

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

"Please continue, Peggy. You were telling me who were there and what
they wore. Oh, dear! I am so sorry mother would not give me leave to go.
Was it all too gay?"

"It was wonderful!" was the deliberate reply. "We might have danced till
now had not Washington planned that sudden attack. We had to leave
then,--that was early this morning,--and I spent the day abed."

It was now well into the evening and the two girls had been seated for
the longest time, it seemed, on the small sofa which flanked the east
wall of the parlor. The dusk, which had begun to grow thick and fast
when Marjorie had come to visit Peggy, was now quite absorbed into
darkness; still the girls had not lighted the candles, choosing to
remain in the dark until the story of the wonderful experience of the
preceding day had been entirely related.

The grand pageant and mock tournament, the celebrated Mischienza,
arranged in honor of General Howe, who had resigned his office as
Commander-in-chief of His Majesty's forces in America to return to
England, there to defend himself against his enemies in person, as
General Burgoyne was now doing from his seat in Parliament, was an event
long to be remembered not alone from the extravagance of its display,
but from the peculiar prominence it afforded the foremost families of
the city, particularly that of the Shippens.

Edward Shippen was a gentleman of rank, of character, of fortune, a
member of one of the oldest and most respected families in the city of
Philadelphia, whose ancestor, of the same name, had been Mayor of the
city nigh an hundred years before. He belonged to the Society of
Friends, or Quakers, and while he took no active interest on either side
during the years of the war, still he was generally regarded as one of
the sympathizers of the Crown. Because of the social eminence which the
family enjoyed and the brilliance and genial hospitality which
distinguished their affairs, the Shippens were considered the undisputed
leaders of the social set of Philadelphia. The three lovely Misses
Shippen were the belles of the more aristocratic class. They were
toasted frequently by the gay English officers during the days of