nkful whitened, then flushed, and then whitened again. Then
she stood up to the major.

"It's a lie,--a cowardly lie!"

Major Van Zandt bowed. Mistress Thankful flew up stairs, and in
another moment swept back again into the room in riding hat and habit.

"I suppose I can go and see--my father," she said, without lifting her
eyes to the officer.

"You are free as air, Mistress Thankful. My orders and instructions,
far from implicating you in your father's offences, do not even suggest
your existence. Let me help you to your horse."

The girl did not reply. During that brief interval, however, Caesar
had saddled her white mare, and brought it to the door. Mistress
Thankful, disdaining the offered hand of the major, sprang to the
saddle.

The major still held the reins. "One moment, Mistress Thankful."

"Let me go!" she said, with suppressed passion.

"One moment, I beg."

His hand still held her bridle-rein. The mare reared, nearly upsetting
her. Crimson with rage and mortification, she raised her riding-whip,
and laid it smartly over the face of the man before her.

He dropped the rein instantly. Then he raised to her a face calm and
colorless, but for a red line extending from his eyebrow to his chin,
and said quietly,--

"I had no desire to detain you. I only wished to say that when you see
Gen. Washington I know you will be just enough to tell him that Major
Van Zandt knew nothing of your wrongs, or even your presence here,
until you presented them, and that since then he has treated you as
became an officer and a gentleman."

Yet even as he spoke she was gone. At the moment that her fluttering
skirt swept in a furious gallop down the hillside, the major turned,
and re-entered the house. The few lounging troopers who were witnesses
of the scene prudently turned their eyes from the white face and
blazing eyes of their officer as he strode by them. Nevertheless, when
the door closed behind him, contemporary criticism broke out:--

"'Tis a Tory jade, vexed that she cannot befool the major as she has
the captain," muttered Sergeant Tibbitts.

"And going to try her tricks on the general," added Private Hicks.

Howbeit both these critics may have been wrong. For as Mistress
Thankful thundered down the Morristown road she thought of many things.
She thought of her sweetheart Allan, a prisoner, and pining for HER
help and HER solicitude; and yet--how dared he--if he HAD really
betrayed or misj