“Oh!” said the girl, starting to her feet.  “I’d give anything if—­”

“Now we’re talking,” interjected the captain, quite as eagerly.  “Only say that you’ll be Mrs. Bagby, and back he is before sundown, and I’ll see to it that he is n’t troubled no more.”

Janice had stepped forward impulsively, but she shrank back at his words as if he had struck her; then without a word she walked from the room, went to where the cart was being got ready, and rested a trembling hand upon it, as if in need of support, while her swift breathing bespoke the intensity of her emotion.

At Greenwood she found her mother still suffering from the fright and the blow too much to allow the girl to tell her own troubles, or to ask counsel for the future, and the occupation of trying to make the sufferer more comfortable was in fact a good diversion, exhausted though she was with her fruitless journey.

Before Mrs. Meredith was entirely recovered, or any news of the squire had reached the household, fresh trouble was upon them.  Captain Bagby and two other men drove up the third morning after the incursion, and, without going through the. form of knocking, came into the parlour.

“You’ll get ready straight off to go to Philadelphia,” the officer announced.

“For what?” demanded Mrs. Meredith.

“The Congress’s orders is that any one guilty of seeking to communicate with the enemy is to be put under arrest, and sent to Philadelphia to be examined.”

“But we have n’t made the slightest attempt, nor so much as thought of it,” protested the matron.

“Oh, no!” sneered Joe; “but, all the same, we intercepted a letter last night written to you by your old Tory husband, and—­”

“Oh, prithee,” broke in Janice, without a thought of anything but her father, “was he well, and where is he?”

“He was smarting a bit when he wrote,” Bagby remarked with evident enjoyment, “but he’s got safe to his friends on Staten Island, so we are n’t going to let you stay where you can be sneaking news to the British through him.  I’ll give you just half an hour to pack, and if you are n’t done then, off you goes.”

Protests and pleadings were wholly useless, though Joe yielded so far as to suggestively remark in an aside to the girl, that “there was one way that you know of, for fixing this thing.”  Getting together what they could in the brief time accorded to them, and with vague directions to Peg and Sukey as to the care of all they were forced to leave behind, the two women took their places in the waggon, and with only one man to drive them, set out for their enforced destination.

How little of public welfare and how much of private spite there was in their arrest was proven upon their arrival the following day in the city of brotherly love.  The escort, or captor, first took them to the headquarters of the general in command of the Continental forces of the town, only to find that he was inspecting the forts down the Delaware.  Leaving the papers, he took his charges to the Indian King Tavern, and after telling them that they ’d hear from the general “like as not to-morrow,” he departed on his return to Brunswick.