“I’ll lay to it that there’ll be no more starvation now that you ’re back home,” cried the squire, “though betwixt your cheating old sire, who’ll pay no interest on his mortgages, and the merchants gone bankrupt in York, and now this loss of harvest and stock, ’t is like Greenwood will show but a lean larder for a time.  But mayhaps now that ye’ve gone up in the world, ye’d like to cry off from the bargain?”

“But let me finish the campaign by capturin’ Philadelphia, and dispersin’ Washington’s pack of peddlers and jail-birds, which won’t take mor’n a fortnight, and then you can’t name a day too soon for me, an’ I hope not for your daughter.  You can’t call me gawk any longer, I reckon, Janice?”

“Thou camst nigh to losing her, Phil,” declared Mrs. Meredith.

“Ay,” added the squire.  “Hast heard of how that scoundrel Evatt schemed

“Oh, dadda!” moaned Janice, imploringly.

“No scoundrel is he, squire, nor farmer neither; he bein’ Lord Clowes,” asserted Phil.  “He joined our army at New York, and is Sir William’s commissary-general an’ right-hand man.”

A more effectual interruption than that of the girl’s prevented Mr. Meredith from enlarging upon the theme, for the bugle sounded in quick succession the “assembly” and “boots and saddles.”

“That calls me,” announced Phil, with an air of importance.  “We ain’t goin’ ter give the runaways no rest, you see.”

“But Phil,” cried the squire, “ye’ll not leave us to be again—­And they’ve stole Joggles and Jumper, and all my hams and sides.  Ye must—­”

“I can’t bide now,” called back the cornet, hurriedly taking his position just as the bugle called the marching order, and the squadron moved off after the retreating Continentals.

Helpless to move, the Merediths sat on their coach while an officer, accompanied by a file of soldiers and half a dozen drummers, took station at the Town Hall.  First a broadside was posted on the bulletin-board, and the drums beat the “parley” long and loudly.  Then the drummers and the file split into two parties, and marching down the village street in opposite directions, the non-commissioned officers, to the beat of drum, shouted summons to all the population to assemble at the hall to take the oath of allegiance to “King George the Third, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, and so forth.”

The first man to step forward to take the oath, sign the submission, and receive his pardon was the Hon. Joseph Bagby, erstwhile member of the Assembly of New Jersey, but now loudly declaring his loyalty to the crown, and his joy that “things were to be put in order again.”  The second signer was the publican; the third was Esquire Hennion; and after him came all the townsmen, save those who had thrown in their lot along with the parson that morning by marching off with Washington.