Through woods and fields Winwood proceeded, skirted swamps and ponds, and waded streams, traversing old familiar ground, the sight of which brought back memories of countless holiday rambles in the happy early days.  Margaret’s bright face and merry voice, her smiles, and her little displays of partiality for him, were foremost in each recollection; and that he was so soon to see her again, appeared too wonderful for belief.  He went forward in the intoxication of joy, singing to himself as a boy would have done.

He knew where there were houses and barns to avoid, and where there were most like to be British cantonments.  At length he was so near the town, that he was surprised to have come upon no inner line of sentries.  Even as he wondered, he emerged from a copse into a field, and received the usual challenge—­spoken this time in so quick, machine-like a manner, and accompanied by so prompt and precise a levelling of the musket, that he knew ’twas a British regular he had to deal with.

He made a pretence of raising a pistol to shoot down the sentry.  This brought the sentry’s fire, which—­as it too was of a British regular of those days—­Philip felt safe in risking.  But though the shot went far wide, he gave a cry as if he had been hit, and staggered back into the woods.  He was no sooner within its cover, than he ran swiftly Eastward with all possible silence.  He had noted that the sentry had been pacing in that direction; hence the first of the sentry’s comrades to run up would be the one approaching therefrom.  This would leave a break in the line, at that part of it East of the scene of the alarm.  Philip stopped presently; peered forth from the woods, saw the second sentry hasten with long steps Westward; and then made a dash across the latter’s tracks, bending low his body as he went.  He thus reached a cover of thicket, through which he forced his way in time to emerge toward the town ere any results of the alarming gun-shot were manifest.

Unless he were willing to attempt crossing what British defences he knew not, or other impediments that might bar passage to the town elsewhere than at the Bowery lane entrance, he must now pass the guard there, which served for the town itself as the outer barriers at Kingsbridge served for the whole island of Manhattan.  He chose the less tedious, though more audacious alternative of facing the guard.

He could not employ in this case the method used in passing the shore patrol, or that adopted in crossing the line of sentinels above the town; for here the road was the only open way through, it was flanked by a guardhouse, it was lighted by a lantern that hung above the door, and the sentinels were disciplined men.  Philip gathered these facts in a single glance, as he approached by slinking along the side of the road, into which he had crawled, through a rail fence, from an adjoining field.

He was close upon the sentinels who paced before the guardhouse, ere he was discovered.  For the third time that night, he heard the challenge and saw the threatening movement.