Thus generously supplied with clothes and other comforts by the good knight, and implicitly relying upon the honor of so kind-hearted a man, Israel cheered up, and in the course of two or three weeks had so fattened his flanks, that he was able completely to fill Sir John’s old buckskin breeches, which at first had hung but loosely about him.

He was assigned to an occupation which removed him from the other workmen.  The strawberry bed was put under his sole charge.  And often, of mild, sunny afternoons, the knight, genial and gentle with dinner, would stroll bare-headed to the pleasant strawberry bed, and have nice little confidential chats with Israel; while Israel, charmed by the patriarchal demeanor of this true Abrahamic gentleman, with a smile on his lip, and tears of gratitude in his eyes, offered him, from time to time, the plumpest berries of the bed.

When the strawberry season was over, other parts of the grounds were assigned him.  And so six months elapsed, when, at the recommendation of Sir John, Israel procured a good berth in the garden of the Princess Amelia.

So completely now had recent events metamorphosed him in all outward things, that few suspected him of being any other than an Englishman.  Not even the knight’s domestics.  But in the princess’s garden, being obliged to work in company with many other laborers, the war was often a topic of discussion among them.  And “the d—­d Yankee rebels” were not seldom the object of scurrilous remark.  Illy could the exile brook in silence such insults upon the country for which he had bled, and for whose honored sake he was that very instant a sufferer.  More than once, his indignation came very nigh getting the better of his prudence.  He longed for the war to end, that he might but speak a little bit of his mind.

Now the superintendent of the garden was a harsh, overbearing man.  The workmen with tame servility endured his worst affronts.  But Israel, bred among mountains, found it impossible to restrain himself when made the undeserved object of pitiless epithets.  Ere two months went by, he quitted the service of the princess, and engaged himself to a farmer in a small village not far from Brentford.  But hardly had he been here three weeks, when a rumor again got afloat that he was a Yankee prisoner of war.  Whence this report arose he could never discover.  No sooner did it reach the ears of the soldiers, than they were on the alert.  Luckily, Israel was apprised of their intentions in time.  But he was hard pushed.  He was hunted after with a perseverance worthy a less ignoble cause.  He had many hairbreadth escapes.  Most assuredly he would have been captured, had it not been for the secret good offices of a few individuals, who, perhaps, were not unfriendly to the American side of the question, though they durst not avow it.

Tracked one night by the soldiers to the house of one of these friends, in whose garret he was concealed, he was obliged to force the skuttle, and running along the roof, passed to those of adjoining houses to the number of ten or twelve, finally succeeding in making his escape.