But my mother and I had possessed nothing to lose in America but our house and ground, our money being in the English funds.  Fortunately, and thanks to our insignificance, we had been overlooked in the first act of attainder, and, taking warning by that, my mother had gratefully accepted Mr. Faringfield’s offer to buy our home, for which we had thereafter paid him rent.  Thus we had nothing to confiscate, when the war was over.  As for Mr. Faringfield, he was on the triumphant side of Independence, which he had supported with secret contributions from the first; of course he was not to be held accountable for the treason of his eldest son, and the open service of poor Tom on the king’s side.

My mother feared dreadful things when the victorious rebels should take possession—­imprisonment, trial for treason, and similar horrors; and she was for sailing to England with the British army.  But I flatly refused to go, pretending I was no such coward, and that I would leave when I was quite ready.  I was selfish in this, of course; but I could not bring myself to go so far from Fanny.  Our union was still as uncertain a possibility as ever.  Only one thing was sure:  she would not leave her parents at present.

The close of the war did not bring Philip back to us at once.  On that day when, the last of the British vessels having gone down the bay, with the last British soldier aboard, the strangely empty-looking town took on a holiday humour, and General Washington rode in by the Bowery lane, with a number of his officers, and a few war-worn troops to make up a kind of procession of entry, and the stars and stripes were run up at the Battery—­on that day of sadness, humiliation, and apprehension to those of us loyalists who had dared stay, I would have felt like cheering with the crowd, had Philip been one of those who entered.  But he was still in the South, recovering from a bullet wound in his shoulder.

My mother and I were thereafter the recipients of ominous looks, and some uncomfortable hints and jeers, and our life was made constantly unpleasant thereby.  The sneers cast by one Major Wheeler upon us loyalists, and upon our reasons for standing by the king, got me into a duel with him at Weehawken, wherein I gave him the only wound he ever received through his attachment to the cause of Independence.  Another such affair, which I had a short time afterward, near the Bowery lane, and in which I shot a Captain Appleby’s ear off, was attributed by my mother to the same cause; but the real reason was that the fellow had uttered an atrocious slander of Philip Winwood in connection with the departure of Phil’s wife.  This was but one of the many lies, on both sides of the ocean, that moved me at last to attempt a true account of my friend’s domestic trouble.

My mother foresaw my continual engagement in such affairs if we remained in a place where we were subject to constant offence, and declared she would become distracted unless we removed ourselves.  I resisted until she vowed she would go alone, if I drove her to that.  And then I yielded, with a heart enveloped in a dark mist as to the outcome.  Well, I thought with a sigh, I can always write to Fanny, and some day I shall come back for her.