“By heaven, I’ll stop you!” she cried.  “Help!  A rebel—­a spy!  Ah, you men yonder—­this way!  A rebel spy!”

Philip looked over her head, out of the window.  Far up the street swaggered five or six figures which, upon coming under a corner lamp whose rays yellowed a small circle of snow, showed to be those of British soldiers.  Their unaltered movements evidenced that they had not heard her cry.  Thereupon she shouted, with an increased voice: 

“Soldiers!  Help!  Surround this house!  A rebel—­”

She got no further, for Philip dragged her away from the window, and, when she essayed to scream the louder, he placed one hand over her mouth, the other about her neck.  Holding her thus, he forced her into the rear chamber, and then toward the window by which he meant to leave.  At its very ledge he let her go, and made to step out to the roof of the veranda.  But she grasped his clothes with the power of rage and desperation, and set up another screaming for help.

In an agony of mind at having to use such painful violence against a woman, and how much more so against the wife he still loved; and at the grievous appearance that she was willing to sacrifice him upon the British gallows rather than let him mar her purpose, he flung her away with all necessary force, so that, with a final shriek of pain and dismay, she fell to the floor exhausted.

He cast an anguished glance upon her, as she lay defeated and half-fainting; and, knowing not to what fate he might be leaving her, he moaned, “God pity her!” and stepped out upon the sloping roof.  He scrambled to the edge, let himself half-way down by the trellis, leaped the rest of the distance, and ran through the back garden from the place he had so well loved.

While his wife, lying weak upon the floor of her chamber, gazed at the window through which he had disappeared, and, as if a new change had occurred within her, sobbed in consternation: 

“Oh, what have I done?  He is a man, indeed!—­and I have lost him!”

CHAPTER XIII.

Wherein Captain Winwood Declines a Promotion.

Philip assumed that the greatest risk would lie in departing the town by the route over which he had made his entrance, and in which he had left a trail of alarm.  His best course would be in the opposite direction.

Therefore, having leaped across the fence to the alley behind the Faringfield grounds, he turned to the right and ran; for he had bethought him, while fleeing through the garden, that he might probably find a row-boat at the Faringfield wharves.  He guessed that, as the port of New York was open to all but the rebel Americans and their allies the French, Mr. Faringfield would have continued his trade in the small way possible, under the British flag, that his loss by the war might be the less, and his means of secretly aiding the rebel cause might be the more.  So there would still be some little shipping, and its accessories, at the wharves.