He felt the pressure of time relaxed, for a troop of horse going by the circuitous route Meadows had indicated could not have reached the camp in the hours since they had passed the place where Meadows had seen them.  So he let his horse breathe wherever the road was broken by ascents.  At last he drew up, for a moment, upon an eminence which gave, by daylight, a wide view of country.  Much of this expanse being clear of timber, and clad in snow, it yielded something to a night-accustomed eye, despite the darkness.  A low, far-off, steady, snow-muffled beating, which had imperceptibly begun to play on Winwood’s ear, indicated a particular direction for his gaze.  Straining his senses, he looked.

Against the dusky-white background of snow, he could make out an indistinct, irregular, undulating line of moving dark objects.  He recognised this appearance as the night aspect of a distant band of horsemen.  They were travelling in a line parallel to his own.  Presently, he knew, they would turn toward him, and change their linear appearance to that of a compact mass.  But he waited not for that.  He gently bade his horse go on, and presently he turned straight for the camp, having a good lead of the horsemen.

He was passing a little copse at his right hand, when suddenly a dark figure stepped from behind a tree into the road before him.  Thinking this was a soldier on picket duty, he recollected the word of the night, and reined in to give it upon demand.  But the man, having viewed him as well as the darkness allowed, seemed to realise having made a mistake, and, as suddenly as he had appeared, stalked back into the wood.

“What does this mean?” thought Philip; and then he remembered what Margaret had said of treachery.  Was this mysterious night-walker a traitor posted there to aid the British to their object?

“Stop or I’ll shoot you down!” cried Philip, remembering too late that he had parted with both his pistols at the Bowery lane guard-house.

But the noise of the man’s retreat through the undergrowth told that he was willing to risk a shot.

Philip knew the importance of obtaining a clue to the traitors.  The rebels had suffered considerably from treachery on their own side; had been in much danger from the treason of Doctor Church at Boston; had owed the speedier loss of their Fort Washington to that of Dumont; and (many of them held) the retreat which Washington checked at Monmouth, to the design of their General Charles Lee.  So the capture of this man, apart from its possible effect upon the present business, might lead to the unearthing of a nest of traitors likely at some future time, if not to-night, to menace the rebel cause.

Philip leaped from his horse, and, trusting to the animal’s manifest habit of awaiting orders, stopped not to tie it, but plunged directly into the wood, drawing his sword as he went.

The sound of the man’s flight had ceased, but Philip continued in the direction it had first taken.  He was about to cross a row of low bushes, when he unexpectedly felt his ankle caught by a hand, and himself thrown forward on his face.  The man had crouched amongst the bushes and tripped him up as he made to pass.