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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thankful Blossom, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Thankful Blossom
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2177]
+Release Date: May, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THANKFUL BLOSSOM ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THANKFUL BLOSSOM
+
+
+by
+
+BRET HARTE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+The time was the year of grace 1779; the locality, Morristown, New
+Jersey.
+
+It was bitterly cold.  A northeasterly wind had been stiffening the mud
+of the morning's thaw into a rigid record of that day's wayfaring on
+the Baskingridge road.  The hoof-prints of cavalry, the deep ruts left
+by baggage-wagons, and the deeper channels worn by artillery, lay stark
+and cold in the waning light of an April day.  There were icicles on
+the fences, a rime of silver on the windward bark of maples, and
+occasional bare spots on the rocky protuberances of the road, as if
+Nature had worn herself out at the knees and elbows through long
+waiting for the tardy spring.  A few leaves disinterred by the thaw
+became crisp again, and rustled in the wind, making the summer a thing
+so remote that all human hope and conjecture fled before them.
+
+Here and there the wayside fences and walls were broken down or
+dismantled; and beyond them fields of snow downtrodden and discolored,
+and strewn with fragments of leather, camp equipage, harness, and
+cast-off clothing, showed traces of the recent encampment and
+congregation of men.  On some there were still standing the ruins of
+rudely constructed cabins, or the semblance of fortification equally
+rude and incomplete.  A fox stealing along a half-filled ditch, a wolf
+slinking behind an earthwork, typified the human abandonment and
+desolation.
+
+One by one the faint sunset tints faded from the sky; the far-off
+crests of the Orange hills grew darker; the nearer files of pines on
+the Whatnong Mountain became a mere black background; and, with the
+coming-on of night, came too an icy silence that seemed to stiffen and
+arrest the very wind itself.  The crisp leaves no longer rustled; the
+waving whips of alder and willow snapped no longer; the icicles no
+longer dropped a cold fruitage from barren branch and spray; and the
+roadside trees relapsed into stony quiet, so that the sound of horse's
+hoofs breaking through the thin, dull, lustreless films of ice that
+patched the furrowed road, might have been heard by the nearest
+Continental picket a mile away.
+
+Either a knowledge of this, or the difficulties of the road, evidently
+irritated the viewless horseman.  Long before he became visible, his
+voice was heard in half-suppressed objurgation of the road, of his
+beast, of the country folk, and the country generally. "Steady, you
+jade!"  "Jump, you devil, jump!"  "Curse the road, and the beggarly
+farmers that durst not mend it!"  And then the moving bulk of horse and
+rider suddenly arose above the hill, floundered and splashed, and then
+as suddenly disappeared, and the rattling hoof-beats ceased.
+
+The stranger had turned into a deserted lane still cushioned with
+untrodden snow.  A stone wall on one hand--in better keeping and
+condition than the boundary monuments of the outlying fields--bespoke
+protection and exclusiveness.  Half-way up the lane the rider checked
+his speed, and, dismounting, tied his horse to a wayside sapling.  This
+done, he went cautiously forward toward the end of the lane, and a
+farm-house from whose gable window a light twinkled through the
+deepening night.  Suddenly he stopped, hesitated, and uttered an
+impatient ejaculation.  The light had disappeared.  He turned sharply
+on his heel, and retraced his steps until opposite a farm-shed that
+stood a few paces from the wall. Hard by, a large elm cast the gaunt
+shadow of its leafless limbs on the wall and surrounding snow.  The
+stranger stepped into this shadow, and at once seemed to become a part
+of its trembling intricacies.
+
+At the present moment it was certainly a bleak place for a tryst. There
+was snow yet clinging to the trunk of the tree, and a film of ice on
+its bark; the adjacent wall was slippery with frost, and fringed with
+icicles.  Yet in all there was a ludicrous suggestion of some sentiment
+past and unseasonable: several dislodged stones of the wall were so
+disposed as to form a bench and seats, and under the elm-tree's film of
+ice could still be seen carved on its bark the effigy of a heart,
+divers initials, and the legend, "Thine Forever."
+
+The stranger, however, kept his eyes fixed only on the farm-shed and
+the open field beside it.  Five minutes passed in fruitless expectancy.
+Ten minutes!  And then the rising moon slowly lifted herself over the
+black range of the Orange hills, and looked at him, blushing a little,
+as if the appointment were her own.
+
+The face and figure thus illuminated were those of a strongly built,
+handsome man of thirty, so soldierly in bearing that it needed not the
+buff epaulets and facings to show his captain's rank in the Continental
+army.  Yet there was something in his facial expression that
+contradicted the manliness of his presence,--an irritation and
+querulousness that were inconsistent with his size and strength.  This
+fretfulness increased as the moments went by without sign or motion in
+the faintly lit field beyond, until, in peevish exasperation, he began
+to kick the nearer stones against the wall.
+
+"Moo-oo-w!"
+
+The soldier started.  Not that he was frightened, nor that he had
+failed to recognize in these prolonged syllables the deep-chested,
+half-drowsy low of a cow, but that it was so near him--evidently just
+beside the wall.  If an object so bulky could have approached him so
+near without his knowledge, might not she--
+
+"Moo-oo!"
+
+He drew nearer the wall cautiously.  "So, Cushy!  Mooly!  Come up,
+Bossy!" he said persuasively.  "Moo"--but here the low unexpectedly
+broke down, and ended in a very human and rather musical little laugh.
+
+"Thankful!" exclaimed the soldier, echoing the laugh a trifle uneasily
+and affectedly as a hooded little head arose above the wall.
+
+"Well," replied the figure, supporting a prettily rounded chin on her
+hands, as she laid her elbows complacently on the wall,--"well, what
+did you expect?  Did you want me to stand here all night, while you
+skulked moonstruck under a tree?  Or did you look for me to call you by
+name? did you expect me to shout out, 'Capt. Allan Brewster--'"
+
+"Thankful, hush!"
+
+"Capt. Allan Brewster of the Connecticut Contingent," continued the
+girl, with an affected raising of a low, pathetic voice that was,
+however, inaudible beyond the tree.  "Capt. Brewster, behold me,--your
+obleeged and humble servant and sweetheart to command."
+
+Capt. Brewster succeeded, after a slight skirmish at the wall, in
+possessing himself of the girl's hand; at which; although still
+struggling, she relented slightly.
+
+"It isn't every lad that I'd low for," she said, with an affected pout,
+"and there may be others that would not take it amiss; though there be
+fine ladies enough at the assembly halls at Morristown as might think
+it hoydenish?"
+
+"Nonsense, love," said the captain, who had by this time mounted the
+wall, and encircled the girl's waist with his arm.  "Nonsense! you
+startled me only.  But," he added, suddenly taking her round chin in
+his hand, and turning her face toward the moon with an uneasy
+half-suspicion, "why did you take that light from the window?  What has
+happened?"
+
+"We had unexpected guests, sweetheart," said Thankful: "the count just
+arrived."
+
+"That infernal Hessian!"  He stopped, and gazed questioningly into her
+face.  The moon looked upon her at the same time: the face was as
+sweet, as placid, as truthful, as her own.  Possibly these two
+inconstants understood each other.
+
+"Nay, Allan, he is not a Hessian, but an exiled gentleman from
+abroad,--a nobleman--"
+
+"There are no noblemen now," sniffed the trooper contemptuously.
+"Congress has so decreed it.  All men are born free and equal."
+
+"But they are not, Allan," said Thankful, with a pretty trouble in her
+brows: "even cows are not born equal.  Is yon calf that was dropped
+last night by Brindle the equal of my red heifer whose mother come by
+herself in a ship from Surrey?  Do they look equal?"
+
+"Titles are but breath," said Capt. Brewster doggedly.  There was an
+ominous pause.
+
+"Nay, there is one nobleman left," said Thankful; "and he is my
+own,--my nature's nobleman!"
+
+Capt. Brewster did not reply.  From certain arch gestures and wreathed
+smiles with which this forward young woman accompanied her statement,
+it would seem to be implied that the gentleman who stood before her was
+the nobleman alluded to.  At least, he so accepted it, and embraced her
+closely, her arms and part of her mantle clinging around his neck.  In
+this attitude they remained quiet for some moments, slightly rocking
+from side to side like a metronome; a movement, I fancy, peculiarly
+bucolic, pastoral, and idyllic, and as such, I wot, observed by
+Theocritus and Virgil.
+
+At these supreme moments weak woman usually keeps her wits about her
+much better than your superior reasoning masculine animal; and, while
+the gallant captain was losing himself upon her perfect lips, Miss
+Thankful distinctly heard the farm-gate click, and otherwise noticed
+that the moon was getting high and obtrusive.  She half released
+herself from the captain's arms, thoughtfully and tenderly--but firmly.
+"Tell me all about yourself, Allan dear," she said quietly, making room
+for him on the wall,--"all, everything."
+
+She turned upon him her beautiful eyes,--eyes habitually earnest and
+even grave in expression, yet holding in their brave brown depths a
+sweet, childlike reliance and dependency; eyes with a certain tender,
+deprecating droop in the brown-fringed lids, and yet eyes that seemed
+to say to every man who looked upon them, "I am truthful: be frank with
+me."  Indeed, I am convinced there is not one of my impressible sex,
+who, looking in those pleading eyes, would not have perjured himself on
+the spot rather than have disappointed their fair owner.
+
+Capt. Brewster's mouth resumed its old expression of discontent.
+
+"Everything is growing worse, Thankful, and the cause is lost. Congress
+does nothing, and Washington is not the man for the crisis.  Instead of
+marching to Philadelphia, and forcing that wretched rabble of Hancock
+and Adams at the point of the bayonet, he writes letters."
+
+"A dignified, formal old fool," interrupted Mistress Thankful
+indignantly; "and look at his wife!  Didn't Mistress Ford and Mistress
+Baily, ay, and the best blood of Morris County, go down to his
+Excellency's in their finest bibs and tuckers, and didn't they find my
+lady in a pinafore doing chores?  Vastly polite treatment, indeed!  As
+if the whole world didn't know that the general was taken by surprise
+when my lady came riding up from Virginia with all those fine
+cavaliers, just to see what his Excellency was doing at these assembly
+balls.  And fine doings, I dare say."
+
+"This is but idle gossip, Thankful," said Capt. Brewster with the
+faintest appearance of self-consciousness; "the assembly balls are
+conceived by the general to strengthen the confidence of the townsfolk,
+and mitigate the rigors of the winter encampment.  I go there myself
+rarely: I have but little taste for junketing and gavotting, with my
+country in such need.  No, Thankful!  What we want is a leader; and the
+men of Connecticut feel it keenly.  If I have been spoken of in that
+regard," added the captain with a slight inflation of his manly breast,
+"it is because they know of my sacrifices,--because as New England
+yeomen they know my devotion to the cause.  They know of my suffering--"
+
+The bright face that looked into his was suddenly afire with womanly
+sympathy, the pretty brow was knit, the sweet eyes overflowed with
+tenderness.  "Forgive me, Allan.  I forgot--perhaps, love--perhaps,
+dearest, you are hungry now."
+
+"No, not now," replied Captain Brewster, with gloomy stoicism; "yet,"
+he added, "it is nearly a week since I have tasted meat."
+
+"I--I--brought a few things with me," continued the girl, with a
+certain hesitating timidity.  She reached down, and produced a basket
+from the shadow of the wall.  "These chickens"--she held up a pair of
+pullets--"the commander-in-chief himself could not buy: I kept them for
+MY commander!  And this pot of marmalade, which I know my Allan loves,
+is the same I put up last summer.  I thought [very tenderly] you might
+like a piece of that bacon you liked so once, dear.  Ah, sweetheart,
+shall we ever sit down to our little board?  Shall we ever see the end
+of this awful war?  Don't you think, dear [very pleadingly], it would
+be best to give it up? King George is not such a very bad man, is he?
+I've thought, sweetheart [very confidently], that mayhap you and he
+might make it all up without the aid of those Washingtons, who do
+nothing but starve one to death.  And if the king only knew you,
+Allan,--should see you as I do, sweetheart,--he'd do just as you say."
+
+During this speech she handed him the several articles alluded to; and
+he received them, storing them away in such receptacles of his clothing
+as were convenient--with this notable difference, that with HER the act
+was graceful and picturesque: with him there was a ludicrousness of
+suggestion that his broad shoulders and uniform only heightened.
+
+"I think not of myself, lass," he said, putting the eggs in his pocket,
+and buttoning the chickens within his martial breast.  "I think not of
+myself, and perhaps I often spare that counsel which is but little
+heeded.  But I have a duty to my men--to Connecticut. [He here tied the
+marmalade up in his handkerchief.]  I confess I have sometimes thought
+I might, under provocation, be driven to extreme measures for the good
+of the cause.  I make no pretence to leadership, but--"
+
+"With you at the head of the army," broke in Thankful enthusiastically,
+"peace would be declared within a fortnight."
+
+There is no flattery, however outrageous, that a man will not accept
+from the woman whom he believes loves him.  He will perhaps doubt its
+influence in the colder judgment of mankind; but he will consider that
+this poor creature, at least, understands him, and in some vague way
+represents the eternal but unrecognized verities. And when this is
+voiced by lips that are young and warm and red, it is somehow quite as
+convincing as the bloodless, remoter utterance of posterity.
+
+Wherefore the trooper complacently buttoned the compliment over his
+chest with the pullets.
+
+"I think you must go now, Allan," she said, looking at him with that
+pseudo-maternal air which the youngest of women sometimes assume to
+their lovers, as if the doll had suddenly changed sex, and grown to
+man's estate.  "You must go now, dear; for it may so chance that father
+is considering my absence overmuch.  You will come again a' Wednesday,
+sweetheart; and you will not go to the assemblies, nor visit Mistress
+Judith, nor take any girl pick-a-back again on your black horse; and
+you will let me know when you are hungry?"
+
+She turned her brown eyes lovingly, yet with a certain pretty trouble
+in the brow, and such a searching, pleading inquiry in her glance, that
+the captain kissed her at once.  Then came the final embrace, performed
+by the captain in a half-perfunctory, quiet manner, with a due regard
+for the friable nature of part of his provisions.  Satisfying himself
+of the integrity of the eggs by feeling for them in his pocket, he
+waved a military salute with the other hand to Miss Thankful, and was
+gone.  A few minutes later the sound of his horse's hoofs rang sharply
+from the icy hillside.
+
+But, as he reached the summit, two horsemen wheeled suddenly from the
+shadow of the roadside, and bade him halt.
+
+"Capt. Brewster, if this moon does not deceive me?" queried the
+foremost stranger with grave civility.
+
+"The same.  Major Van Zandt, I calculate?" returned Brewster
+querulously.
+
+"Your calculation is quite right.  I regret Capt. Brewster, that it is
+my duty to inform you that you are under arrest."
+
+"By whose orders?"
+
+"The commander-in-chief's."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Mutinous conduct, and disrespect of your superior officers."
+
+The sword that Capt. Brewster had drawn at the sudden appearance of the
+strangers quivered for a moment in his strong hand.  Then, sharply
+striking it across the pommel of his saddle, he snapped it in twain,
+and cast the pieces at the feet of the speaker.
+
+"Go on," he said doggedly.
+
+"Capt. Brewster," said Major Van Zandt, with infinite gravity, "it is
+not for me to point out the danger to you of this outspoken emotion,
+except practically in its effect upon the rations you have in your
+pocket.  If I mistake not, they have suffered equally with your steel.
+Forward, march!"
+
+Capt. Brewster looked down, and then dropped to the rear, as the
+discased yolks of Mistress Thankful's most precious gift slid slowly
+and pensively over his horse's flanks to the ground.
+
+
+
+II
+
+Mistress Thankful remained at the wall until her lover had disappeared.
+Then she turned, a mere lissom shadow in that uncertain light, and
+glided under the eaves of the shed, and thence from tree to tree of the
+orchard, lingering a moment under each as a trout lingers in the shadow
+of the bank in passing a shallow, and so reached the farmhouse and the
+kitchen door, where she entered. Thence by a back staircase she slipped
+to her own bower, from whose window half an hour before she had taken
+the signalling light. This she lit again and placed upon a chest of
+drawers; and, taking off her hood and a shapeless sleeveless mantle she
+had worn, went to the mirror, and proceeded to re-adjust a high horn
+comb that had been somewhat displaced by the captain's arm, and
+otherwise after the fashion of her sex to remove all traces of a
+previous lover. It may be here observed that a man is very apt to come
+from the smallest encounter with his dulcinea distrait, bored, or
+shame-faced; to forget that his cravat is awry, or that a long blond
+hair is adhering to his button.  But as to Mademoiselle--well, looking
+at Miss Pussy's sleek paws and spotless face, would you ever know that
+she had been at the cream-jug?
+
+Thankful was, I think, satisfied with her appearance.  Small doubt but
+she had reason for it.  And yet her gown was a mere slip of flowered
+chintz, gathered at the neck, and falling at an angle of fifteen
+degrees to within an inch of a short petticoat of gray flannel.  But so
+surely is the complete mould of symmetry indicated in the poise or line
+of any single member, that looking at the erect carriage of her
+graceful brown head, or below to the curves that were lost in her
+shapely ankles, or the little feet that hid themselves in the
+broad-buckled shoes, you knew that the rest was as genuine and
+beautiful.
+
+Mistress Thankful, after a pause, opened the door, and listened. Then
+she softly slipped down the back staircase to the front hall. It was
+dark; but the door of the "company-room," or parlor, was faintly
+indicated by the light that streamed beneath it.  She stood still for a
+moment hesitatingly, when suddenly a hand grasped her own, and half
+led, half dragged her, into the sitting-room opposite.  It was dark.
+There was a momentary fumbling for the tinder-box and flint, a muttered
+oath over one or two impeding articles of furniture, and Thankful
+laughed.  And then the light was lit; and her father, a gray wrinkled
+man of sixty, still holding her hand, stood before her.
+
+"You have been out, mistress!"
+
+"I have," said Thankful.
+
+"And not alone," growled the old man angrily.
+
+"No," said Mistress Thankful, with a smile that began in the corners of
+her brown eyes, ran down into the dimpled curves of her mouth, and
+finally ended in the sudden revelation of her white teeth,--"no, not
+alone."
+
+"With whom?" asked the old man, gradually weakening under her strong,
+saucy presence.
+
+"Well, father," said Thankful, taking a seat on a table, and swinging
+her little feet somewhat ostentatiously toward him, "I was with Capt.
+Allan Brewster of the Connecticut Contingent."
+
+"That man?"
+
+"That man!"
+
+"I forbid you seeing him again."
+
+Thankful gripped the table with a hand on each side of her, to
+emphasize the statement, and swinging her feet replied,--
+
+"I shall see him as often as I like, father."
+
+"Thankful Blossom!"
+
+"Abner Blossom!"
+
+"I see you know not," said Mr. Blossom, abandoning the severely
+paternal mandatory air for one of confidential disclosure, "I see you
+know not his reputation.  He is accused of inciting his regiment to
+revolt,--of being a traitor to the cause."
+
+"And since when, Abner Blossom, have YOU felt such concern for the
+cause?  Since you refused to sell supplies to the Continental
+commissary, except at double profits? since you told me you were glad I
+had not polities like Mistress Ford--"
+
+"Hush!" said the father, motioning to the parlor.
+
+"Hush," echoed Thankful indignantly.  "I won't be hushed! Everybody
+says 'Hush' to me.  The count says 'Hush!'  Allan says 'Hush!'  You say
+'Hush!'  I'm a-weary of this hushing.  Ah, if there was a man who
+didn't say it to me!" and Mistress Thankful lifted her fine eyes to the
+ceiling.
+
+"You are unwise, Thankful,--foolish, indiscreet.  That is why you
+require much monition."
+
+Thankful swung her feet in silence for a few moments, then suddenly
+leaped from the table, and, seizing the old man by the lapels of his
+coat, fixed her eyes upon him, and said suspiciously.  "Why did you
+keep me from going in the company-room?  Why did you bring me in here?"
+
+Blossom senior was staggered for a moment.  "Because, you know, the
+count--"
+
+"And you were afraid the count should know I had a sweetheart? Well,
+I'll go in and tell him now," she said, marching toward the door.
+
+"Then, why did you not tell him when you slipped out an hour ago? eh,
+lass?" queried the old man, grasping her hand.  "But 'tis all one,
+Thankful: 'twas not for him I stopped you.  There is a young spark with
+him,--ay, came even as you left, lass,--a likely young gallant; and he
+and the count are jabbering away in their own lingo, a kind of Italian,
+belike; eh, Thankful?"
+
+"I know not," she said thoughtfully.  "Which way came the other?" In
+fact, a fear that this young stranger might have witnessed the
+captain's embrace began to creep over her.
+
+"From town, my lass."
+
+Thankful turned to her father as if she had been waiting a reply to a
+long-asked question: "Well?"
+
+"Were it not well to put on a few furbelows and a tucker?" queried the
+old man.  "'Tis a gallant young spark; none of your country folk."
+
+"No," said Thankful, with the promptness of a woman who was looking her
+best, and knew it.  And the old man, looking at her, accepted her
+judgment, and without another word led her to the parlor door, and,
+opening it, said briefly, "My daughter, Mistress Thankful Blossom."
+
+With the opening of the door came the sound of earnest voices that
+instantly ceased upon the appearance of Mistress Thankful.  Two
+gentlemen lolling before the fire arose instantly, and one came forward
+with an air of familiar yet respectful recognition.
+
+"Nay, this is far too great happiness, Mistress Thankful," he said,
+with a strongly marked foreign accent, and a still more strongly marked
+foreign manner.  "I have been in despair, and my friend here, the Baron
+Pomposo, likewise."
+
+The slightest trace of a smile, and the swiftest of reproachful
+glances, lit up the dark face of the baron as he bowed low in the
+introduction.  Thankful dropped the courtesy of the period,--i. e., a
+duck, with semicircular sweep of the right foot forward.  But the right
+foot was so pretty, and the grace of the little figure so perfect, that
+the baron raised his eyes from the foot to the face in serious
+admiration.  In the one rapid feminine glance she had given him, she
+had seen that he was handsome; in the second, which she could not help
+from his protracted silence, she saw that his beauty centred in his
+girlish, half fawn-like dark eyes.
+
+"The baron," explained Mr. Blossom, rubbing his hands together as if
+through mere friction he was trying to impart a warmth to the reception
+which his hard face discountenanced,--"the baron visits us under
+discouragement.  He comes from far countries.  It is the custom of
+gentlefolk of--of foreign extraction to wander through strange lands,
+commenting upon the habits and doings of the peoples.  He will find in
+Jersey," continued Mr. Blossom, apparently appealing to Thankful, yet
+really evading her contemptuous glance, "a hard-working yeomanry, ever
+ready to welcome the stranger, and account to him, penny for penny, for
+all his necessary expenditure; for which purpose, in these troublous
+times, he will provide for himself gold or other moneys not affected by
+these local disturbances."
+
+"He will find, good friend Blossom," said the baron in a rapid, voluble
+way, utterly at variance with the soft, quiet gravity of his eyes,
+"Beauty, Grace, Accomplishment, and--eh--Santa Maria, what shall I
+say?"  He turned appealingly to the count.
+
+"Virtue," nodded the count.
+
+"Truly, Birtoo! all in the fair lady of thees countries.  Ah, believe
+me, honest friend Blossom, there is mooch more in thees than in thoss!"
+
+So much of this speech was addressed to Mistress Thankful, that she had
+to show at least one dimple in reply, albeit her brows were slightly
+knit, and she had turned upon the speaker her honest, questioning eyes.
+
+"And then the General Washington has been kind enough to offer his
+protection," added the count.
+
+"Any fool--any one," supplemented Thankful hastily, with a slight
+blush--"may have the general's pass, ay, and his good word.  But what
+of Mistress Prudence Bookstaver?--she that has a sweetheart in
+Knyphausen's brigade, ay,--I warrant a Hessian, but of gentle blood, as
+Mistress Prudence has often told me,--and, look you, all her letters
+stopped by the general, ay, I warrant, read by my Lady Washington too,
+as if 'twere HER fault that her lad was in arms against Congress.
+Riddle me that, now!"
+
+"'Tis but prudence, lass," said Blossom, frowning on the girl. "'Tis
+that she might disclose some movement of the army, tending to defeat
+the enemy."
+
+"And why should she not try to save her lad from capture or ambuscade
+such as befell the Hessian commissary with the provisions that you--"
+
+Mr. Blossom, in an ostensible fatherly embrace, managed to pinch
+Mistress Thankful sharply.  "Hush, lass," he said with simulated
+playfulness; "your tongue clacks like the Whippany mill.--My daughter
+has small concern--'tis the manner of womenfolk--in politics," he
+explained to his guests.  "These dangersome days have given her sore
+affliction by way of parting comrades of her childhood, and others whom
+she has much affected.  It has in some sort soured her."
+
+Mr. Blossom would have recalled this speech as soon as it escaped him,
+lest it should lead to a revelation from the truthful Mistress Thankful
+of her relations with the Continental captain.  But to his
+astonishment, and, I may add, to my own, she showed nothing of that
+disposition she had exhibited a few moments before.  On the contrary,
+she blushed slightly, and said nothing.
+
+And then the conversation changed,--upon the weather, the hard winter,
+the prospects of the Cause, a criticism upon the commander-in-chief's
+management of affairs, the attitude of Congress, etc., between Mr.
+Blossom and the count; characterized, I hardly need say, by that
+positiveness of opinion that distinguishes the unprofessional.  In
+another part of the room, it so chanced that Mistress Thankful and the
+baron were talking about themselves; the assembly balls; who was the
+prettiest woman in Morristown; and whether Gen. Washington's attentions
+to Mistress Pyne were only perfunctory gallantry, or what; and if Lady
+Washington's hair was really gray; and if that young aide-de-camp,
+Major Van Zandt were really in love with Lady or whether his attentions
+were only the zeal of a subaltern,--in the midst of which a sudden gust
+of wind shook the house; and Mr. Blossom, going to the front door, came
+back with the announcement that it was snowing heavily.
+
+And indeed, within that past hour, to their astonished eyes the whole
+face of nature had changed.  The moon was gone, the sky hidden in a
+blinding, whirling swarm of stinging flakes.  The wind, bitter and
+strong, had already fashioned white feathery drifts upon the threshold,
+over the painted benches on the porch, and against the door-posts.
+
+Mistress Thankful and the baron had walked to the rear door--the baron
+with a slight tropical shudder--to view this meteorological change.  As
+Mistress Thankful looked over the snowy landscape, it seemed to her
+that all record of her past experience had been effaced: her very
+footprints of an hour before were lost; the gray wall on which she
+leaned was white and spotless now; even the familiar farm-shed looked
+dim and strange and ghostly.  Had she been there? had she seen the
+captain? was it all a fancy?  She scarcely knew.
+
+A sudden gust of wind closed the door behind them with a crash, and
+sent Mistress Thankful, with a slight feminine scream, forward into the
+outer darkness.  But the baron caught her by the waist, and saved her
+from Heaven knows what imaginable disaster; and the scene ended in a
+half-hysterical laugh.  But the wind then set upon them both with a
+malevolent fury; and the baron was, I presume, obliged to draw her
+closer to his side.
+
+They were alone, save for the presence of those mischievous
+confederates, Nature and Opportunity.  In the half-obscurity of the
+storm she could not help turning her mischievous eyes on his.  But she
+was perhaps surprised to find them luminous, soft, and, as it seemed to
+her at that moment, grave beyond the occasion.  An embarrassment
+utterly new and singular seized upon her; and when, as she half feared
+yet half expected, he bent down and pressed his lips to hers, she was
+for a moment powerless.  But in the next instant she boxed his ears
+sharply, and vanished in the darkness. When Mr. Blossom opened the door
+to the baron he was surprised to find that gentleman alone, and still
+more surprised to find, when they re-entered the house, to see Mistress
+Thankful enter at the same moment, demurely, from the front door.
+
+When Mr. Blossom knocked at his daughter's door the next morning it
+opened upon her completely dressed, but withal somewhat pale, and, if
+the truth must be told, a little surly.
+
+"And you were stirring so early, Thankful," he said: "'twould have been
+but decent to have bidden God-speed to the guests, especially the
+baron, who seemed much concerned at your absence."
+
+Miss Thankful blushed slightly, but answered with savage celerity, "And
+since when is it necessary that I should dance attendance upon every
+foreign jack-in-the-box that may lie at the house?"
+
+"He has shown great courtesy to you, mistress, and is a gentleman."
+
+"Courtesy, indeed!" said Mistress Thankful.
+
+"He has not presumed?" said Mr. Blossom suddenly, bringing his cold
+gray eyes to bear upon his daughter's.
+
+"No, no," said Thankful hurriedly, flaming a bright scarlet;
+"but--nothing. But what have you there? a letter?"
+
+"Ay,--from the captain, I warrant," said Mr. Blossom, handing her a
+three-cornered bit of paper: "'twas left here by a camp-follower.
+Thankful," he continued, with a meaning glance, "you will heed my
+counsel in season.  The captain is not meet for such as you."
+
+Thankful suddenly grew pale and contemptuous again as she snatched the
+letter from his hand.  When his retiring footsteps were lost on the
+stairs she regained her color, and opened the letter.  It was slovenly
+written, grievously misspelled, and read as follows:--
+
+
+"SWEETHEART: A tyranous Act, begotten in Envy and Jealousie, keeps me
+here a prisoner.  Last night I was Basely arrested by Servile Hands for
+that Freedom of Thought and Expression for which I have already
+Sacrifized so much--aye all that Man hath but Love and Honour.  But the
+End is Near.  When for the Maintenance of Power, the Liberties of the
+Peoples are subdued by Martial Supremacy and the Dictates of Ambition
+the State is Lost.  I lie in Vile Bondage here in Morristown under
+charge of Disrespeck--me that a twelvemonth past left a home and
+Respectable Connexions to serve my Country.  Believe me still your own
+Love, albeit in the Power of Tyrants and condemned it may be to the
+scaffold.
+
+"The Messenger is Trustworthy and will speed safely to me such as you
+may deliver unto him.  The Provender sanktified by your Hands and made
+precious by yr. Love was wrested from me by Servil Hands and the Eggs,
+Sweetheart, were somewhat Addled.  The Bacon is, methinks by this time
+on the Table of the Comr-in-Chief.  Such is Tyranny and Ambition.
+Sweetheart, farewell, for the present.
+
+ALLAN."
+
+
+Mistress Thankful read this composition once, twice, and then tore it
+up.  Then, reflecting that it was the first letter of her lover's that
+she had not kept, she tried to put together again the torn fragments,
+but vainly, and then in a pet, new to her, cast them from the window.
+During the rest of the day she was considerably distraite, and even
+manifested more temper than she was wont to do; and later, when her
+father rode away on his daily visit to Morristown, she felt strangely
+relieved.  By noon the snow ceased, or rather turned into a driving
+sleet that again in turn gave way to rain.  By this time she became
+absorbed in her household duties,--in which she was usually
+skilful,--and in her own thoughts that to-day had a novelty in their
+meaning.  In the midst of this, at about dark, her room being in the
+rear of the house, she was perhaps unmindful of the trampling of horse
+without, or the sound of voices in the hall below.  Neither was
+uncommon at that time.  Although protected by the Continental army from
+forage or the rudeness of soldiery, the Blossom farm had always been a
+halting-place for passing troopers, commissary teamsters, and
+reconnoitring officers.  Gen. Sullivan and Col. Hamilton had watered
+their horses at its broad, substantial wayside trough, and sat in the
+shade of its porch.  Miss Thankful was only awakened from her daydream
+by the entrance of the negro farm-hand, Caesar.
+
+"Fo' God, Missy Thankful, them sogers is g'wine into camp in the road,
+I reckon, for they's jest makin' theysevs free afo' the house, and
+they's an officer in the company-room with his spurs cocked on the
+table, readin' a book."
+
+A quick flame leaped into Thankful's cheek, and her pretty brows knit
+themselves over darkening eyes.  She arose from her work no longer the
+moody girl, but an indignant goddess, and, pushing the servant aside,
+swept down the stairs, and threw open the door.
+
+An officer sitting by the fire in an easy, lounging attitude that
+justified the servant's criticism, arose instantly with an air of
+evident embarrassment and surprise that was, however, as quickly
+dominated and controlled by a gentleman's breeding.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, with a deep inclination of his handsome
+head, "but I had no idea that there was any member of this household at
+home--at least, a lady."  He hesitated a moment, catching in the
+raising of her brown-fringed lids a sudden revelation of her beauty,
+and partly losing his composure.  "I am Major Van Zandt: I have the
+honor of addressing--"
+
+"Thankful Blossom," said Thankful a little proudly, divining with a
+woman's swift instinct the cause of the major's hesitation.  But her
+triumph was checked by a new embarrassment visible in the face of the
+officer at the mention of her name.
+
+"Thankful Blossom," repeated the officer quickly.  "You are, then, the
+daughter of Abner Blossom?"
+
+"Certainly," said Thankful, turning her inquiring eyes upon him. "He
+will be here betimes.  He has gone only to Morristown."  In a new fear
+that had taken possession of her, her questioning eyes asked, "Has he
+not?"
+
+The officer, answering her eyes rather than her lips, came toward her
+gravely.  "He will not return to-day, Mistress Thankful, nor perhaps
+even to-morrow.  He is--a prisoner."
+
+Thankful opened her brown eyes aggressively on the major.  "A
+prisoner--for what?"
+
+"For aiding and giving comfort to the enemy, and for harboring spies,"
+replied the major with military curtness.
+
+Mistress Thankful's cheek flushed slightly at the last sentence: a
+recollection of the scene on the porch and the baron's stolen kiss
+flashed across her, and for a moment she looked as guilty as if the man
+before her had been a witness to the deed.  He saw it, and
+misinterpreted her confusion.
+
+"Belike, then," said Mistress Thankful, slightly raising her voice, and
+standing squarely before the major, "belike, then, I should be a
+prisoner too; for the guests of this house, if they be spies, were MY
+guests, and, as my father's daughter, I was their hostess; ay, man, and
+right glad to be the hostess of such gallant gentlemen,--gentlemen, I
+warrant, too fine to insult a defenceless girl; gentlemen spies that
+did not cock their boots on the table, or turn an honest farmer's house
+into a tap-room."
+
+An expression of half pain, half amusement, covered the face of the
+major, but he made no other reply than by a profound and graceful bow.
+Courteous and deprecatory as it was, it apparently exasperated Mistress
+Thankful only the more.
+
+"And pray who are these spies, and who is the informer?" said Mistress
+Thankful, facing the soldier, with one hand truculently placed on her
+flexible hip, and the other slipped behind her. "Methinks 'tis only
+honest we should know when and how we have entertained both."
+
+"Your father, Mistress Thankful," said Major Van Zandt gravely, "has
+long been suspected of favoring the enemy; but it has been the policy
+of the commander-in-chief to overlook the political preferences of
+non-combatants, and to strive to win their allegiance to the good cause
+by liberal privileges.  But when it was lately discovered that two
+strangers, although bearing a pass from him, have been frequenters of
+this house under fictitious names--"
+
+"You mean Count Ferdinand and the Baron Pomposo," said Thankful
+quickly,--"two honest gentlefolk; and if they choose to pay their
+devoirs to a lass--although, perhaps, not a quality lady, yet an honest
+girl--"
+
+"Dear Mistress Thankful," said the major with a profound bow and smile,
+that, spite of its courtesy, drove Thankful to the verge of wrathful
+hysterics, "if you establish that fact,--and, from this slight
+acquaintance with your charms, I doubt not you will,--your father is
+safe from further inquiry or detention.  The commander-in-chief is a
+gentleman who has never underrated the influence of your sex, nor held
+himself averse to its fascinations."
+
+"What is the name of this informer?" broke in Mistress Thankful
+angrily.  "Who is it that has dared--"
+
+"It is but king's evidence, mayhap, Mistress Thankful; for the informer
+is himself under arrest.  It is on the information of Capt. Allan
+Brewster of the Connecticut Contingent."
+
+Mistress Thankful whitened, then flushed, and then whitened again. Then
+she stood up to the major.
+
+"It's a lie,--a cowardly lie!"
+
+Major Van Zandt bowed.  Mistress Thankful flew up stairs, and in
+another moment swept back again into the room in riding hat and habit.
+
+"I suppose I can go and see--my father," she said, without lifting her
+eyes to the officer.
+
+"You are free as air, Mistress Thankful.  My orders and instructions,
+far from implicating you in your father's offences, do not even suggest
+your existence.  Let me help you to your horse."
+
+The girl did not reply.  During that brief interval, however, Caesar
+had saddled her white mare, and brought it to the door. Mistress
+Thankful, disdaining the offered hand of the major, sprang to the
+saddle.
+
+The major still held the reins.  "One moment, Mistress Thankful."
+
+"Let me go!" she said, with suppressed passion.
+
+"One moment, I beg."
+
+His hand still held her bridle-rein.  The mare reared, nearly upsetting
+her.  Crimson with rage and mortification, she raised her riding-whip,
+and laid it smartly over the face of the man before her.
+
+He dropped the rein instantly.  Then he raised to her a face calm and
+colorless, but for a red line extending from his eyebrow to his chin,
+and said quietly,--
+
+"I had no desire to detain you.  I only wished to say that when you see
+Gen. Washington I know you will be just enough to tell him that Major
+Van Zandt knew nothing of your wrongs, or even your presence here,
+until you presented them, and that since then he has treated you as
+became an officer and a gentleman."
+
+Yet even as he spoke she was gone.  At the moment that her fluttering
+skirt swept in a furious gallop down the hillside, the major turned,
+and re-entered the house.  The few lounging troopers who were witnesses
+of the scene prudently turned their eyes from the white face and
+blazing eyes of their officer as he strode by them.  Nevertheless, when
+the door closed behind him, contemporary criticism broke out:--
+
+"'Tis a Tory jade, vexed that she cannot befool the major as she has
+the captain," muttered Sergeant Tibbitts.
+
+"And going to try her tricks on the general," added Private Hicks.
+
+Howbeit both these critics may have been wrong.  For as Mistress
+Thankful thundered down the Morristown road she thought of many things.
+She thought of her sweetheart Allan, a prisoner, and pining for HER
+help and HER solicitude; and yet--how dared he--if he HAD really
+betrayed or misjudged her!  And then she thought bitterly of the count
+and the baron, and burned to face the latter, and in some vague way
+charge the stolen kiss upon him as the cause of all her shame and
+mortification.  And lastly she thought of her father, and began to hate
+everybody.  But above all and through all, in her vague fears for her
+father, in her passionate indignation against the baron, in her fretful
+impatience of Allan, one thing was ever dominant and obtrusive; one
+thing she tried to put away, but could not,--the handsome, colorless
+face of Major Van Zandt, with the red welt of her riding-whip overlying
+its cold outlines.
+
+
+
+III
+
+The rising wind, which had ridden much faster than Mistress Thankful,
+had increased to a gale by the time it reached Morristown.  It swept
+through the leafless maples, and rattled the dry bones of the elms.  It
+whistled through the quiet Presbyterian churchyard, as if trying to
+arouse the sleepers it had known in days gone by.  It shook the blank,
+lustreless windows of the Assembly Rooms over the Freemasons' Tavern,
+and wrought in their gusty curtains moving shadows of those amply
+petticoated dames and tightly hosed cavaliers who had swung in "Sir
+Roger," or jigged in "Money Musk," the night before.
+
+But I fancy it was around the isolated "Ford Mansion," better known as
+the "headquarters," that the wind wreaked its grotesque rage. It howled
+under its scant eaves, it sang under its bleak porch, it tweaked the
+peak of its front gable, it whistled through every chink and cranny of
+its square, solid, unpicturesque structure. Situated on a hillside that
+descended rapidly to the Whippany River, every summer zephyr that
+whispered through the porches of the Morristown farm-houses charged as
+a stiff breeze upon the swinging half doors and windows of the "Ford
+Mansion"; every wintry wind became a gale that threatened its security.
+The sentry who paced before its front porch knew from experience when
+to linger under its lee, and adjust his threadbare outer coat to the
+bitter north wind.
+
+Within the house something of this cheerlessness prevailed.  It had an
+ascetic gloom, which the scant firelight of the reception-room, and the
+dying embers on the dining-room hearth, failed to dissipate.  The
+central hall was broad, and furnished plainly with a few rush-bottomed
+chairs, on one of which half dozed a black body-servant of the
+commander-in-chief.  Two officers in the dining-room, drawn close by
+the chimney-corner, chatted in undertones, as if mindful that the door
+of the drawing-room was open, and their voices might break in upon its
+sacred privacy.  The swinging light in the hall partly illuminated it,
+or rather glanced gloomily from the black polished furniture, the
+lustreless chairs, the quaint cabinet, the silent spinet, the
+skeleton-legged centre-table, and finally upon the motionless figure of
+a man seated by the fire.
+
+It was a figure since so well known to the civilized world, since so
+celebrated in print and painting, as to need no description here.  Its
+rare combination of gentle dignity with profound force, of a set
+resoluteness of purpose with a philosophical patience, have been so
+frequently delivered to a people not particularly remarkable for these
+qualities, that I fear it has too often provoked a spirit of playful
+aggression, in which the deeper underlying meaning was forgotten.  So
+let me add that in manner, physical equipoise, and even in the mere
+details of dress, this figure indicated a certain aristocratic
+exclusiveness.  It was the presentment of a king,--a king who by the
+irony of circumstances was just then waging war against all kingship; a
+ruler of men, who just then was fighting for the right of these men to
+govern themselves, but whom by his own inherent right he dominated.
+From the crown of his powdered head to the silver buckle of his shoe he
+was so royal that it was not strange that his brother George of England
+and Hanover--ruling by accident, otherwise impiously known as the
+"grace of God"--could find no better way of resisting his power than by
+calling him "Mr. Washington."
+
+The sound of horses' hoofs, the formal challenge of sentry, the grave
+questioning of the officer of the guard, followed by footsteps upon the
+porch, did not apparently disturb his meditation.  Nor did the opening
+of the outer door, and a charge of cold air into the hall that invaded
+even the privacy of the reception-room, and brightened the dying embers
+on the hearth, stir his calm pre-occupation.  But an instant later
+there was the distinct rustle of a feminine skirt in the hall, a
+hurried whispering of men's voices, and then the sudden apparition of a
+smooth, fresh-faced young officer over the shoulder of the unconscious
+figure.
+
+"I beg your pardon, general," said the officer doubtingly, "but--"
+
+"You are not intruding, Col. Hamilton," said the general quietly.
+
+"There is a young lady without who wishes an audience of your
+Excellency.  'Tis Mistress Thankful Blossom,--the daughter of Abner
+Blossom, charged with treasonous practice and favoring the enemy, now
+in the guard-house at Morristown."
+
+"Thankful Blossom?" repeated the general interrogatively.
+
+"Your Excellency doubtless remembers a little provincial beauty and a
+famous toast of the country-side,--the Cressida of our Morristown epic,
+who led our gallant.  Connecticut captain astray--"
+
+"You have the advantages, besides the better memory of a younger man,
+colonel," said Washington, with a playful smile that slightly reddened
+the cheek of his aide-de-camp.  "Yet I think I HAVE heard of this
+phenomenon.  By all means, admit her--and her escort."
+
+"She is alone, general," responded the subordinate.
+
+"Then the more reason why we should be polite," returned Washington,
+for the first time altering his easy posture, rising to his feet, and
+lightly clasping his ruffled hands before him.  "We must not keep her
+waiting.  Give her access, my dear colonel, at once; and even as she
+came,--ALONE."
+
+The aide-de-camp bowed and withdrew.  In another moment the half-opened
+door swung wide to Mistress Thankful Blossom.
+
+She was so beautiful in her simple riding-dress, so quaint and original
+in that very beauty, and, above all, so teeming with a certain vital
+earnestness of purpose just positive and audacious enough to set off
+that beauty, that the grave gentleman before her did not content
+himself with the usual formal inclination of courtesy, but actually
+advanced, and, taking her cold little hand in his, graciously led her
+to the chair he had just vacated.
+
+"Even if your name were not known to me, Mistress Thankful," said the
+commander-in-chief, looking down upon her with grave politeness,
+"nature has, methinks, spared you the necessity of any introduction to
+the courtesy of a gentleman.  But how can I especially serve you?"
+
+Alack! the blaze of Mistress Thankful's brown eyes had become somewhat
+dimmed in the grave half-lights of the room, in the graver, deeper
+dignity of the erect, soldier-like figure before her.  The bright color
+born of the tempest within and without had somehow faded from her
+cheek; the sauciness begotten from bullying her horse in the last
+half-hour's rapid ride was so subdued by the actual presence of the man
+she had come to bully, that I fear she had to use all her self-control
+to keep down her inclination to whimper, and to keep back the tears,
+that, oddly enough, rose to her sweet eyes as she lifted them to the
+quietly critical yet placid glance of her interlocutor.
+
+"I can readily conceive the motive of this visit, Miss Thankful,"
+continued Washington, with a certain dignified kindliness that was more
+reassuring than the formal gallantry of the period; "and it is, I
+protest, to your credit.  A father's welfare, however erring and weak
+that father may be, is most seemly in a maiden--"
+
+Thankful's eyes flashed again as she rose to her feet.  Her upper lip,
+that had a moment before trembled in a pretty infantine distress, now
+stiffened and curled as she confronted the dignified figure before her.
+"It is not of my father I would speak," she said saucily: "I did not
+ride here alone to-night, in this weather, to talk of HIM; I warrant HE
+can speak for himself.  I came here to speak of myself, of lies--ay,
+LIES told of me, a poor girl; ay, of cowardly gossip about me and my
+sweetheart, Capt. Brewster, now confined in prison because he hath
+loved me, a lass without polities or adherence to the cause--as if
+'twere necessary every lad should ask the confidence or permission of
+yourself or, belike, my Lady Washington, in his preferences."
+
+She paused a moment, out of breath.  With a woman's quickness of
+intuition she saw the change in Washington's face,--saw a certain cold
+severity overshadowing it.  With a woman's fateful persistency--a
+persistency which I humbly suggest might, on occasion, be honorably
+copied by our more politic sex--she went on to say what was in her,
+even if she were obliged, with a woman's honorable inconsistency, to
+unsay it an hour or two later; an inconsistency which I also humbly
+protest might be as honorably imitated by us--on occasion.
+
+"It has been said," said Thankful Blossom quickly, "that my father has
+given entertainment knowingly to two spies,--two spies that, begging
+your Excellency's pardon, and the pardon of Congress, I know only as
+two honorable gentlemen who have as honorably tendered me their
+affections.  It is said, and basely and most falsely too, that my
+sweetheart, Capt. Allan Brewster, has lodged this information.  I have
+ridden here to deny it.  I have ridden here to demand of you that an
+honest woman's reputation shall not be sacrificed to the interests of
+politics; that a prying mob of ragamuffins shall not be sent to an
+honest farmer's house to spy and spy--and turn a poor girl out of doors
+that they might do it. 'Tis shameful, so it is; there! 'tis most
+scandalous, so it is: there, now!  Spies, indeed! what are THEY, pray?"
+
+In the indignation which the recollection of her wrongs had slowly
+gathered in her, from the beginning of this speech, she had advanced
+her face, rosy with courage, and beautiful in its impertinence, within
+a few inches of the dignified features and quiet gray eyes of the great
+commander.  To her utter stupefaction, he bent his head and kissed her,
+with a grave benignity, full on the centre of her audacious forehead.
+
+"Be seated, I beg, Mistress Blossom," he said, taking her cold hand in
+his, and quietly replacing her in the unoccupied chair.  "Be seated, I
+beg, and give me, if you can, your attention for a moment.  The officer
+intrusted with the ungracious task of occupying your father's house is
+a member of my military family, and a gentleman.  If he has so far
+forgotten himself--if he has so far disgraced himself and me as--"
+
+"No! no!" uttered Thankful, with feverish alacrity, "the gentleman was
+most considerate.  On the contrary--mayhap--I"--she hesitated, and then
+came to a full stop, with a heightened color, as a vivid recollection
+of that gentleman's face, with the mark of her riding-whip lying across
+it, rose before her.
+
+"I was about to say that Major Van Zandt, as a gentleman, has known how
+to fully excuse the natural impulses of a daughter," continued
+Washington, with a look of perfect understanding; "but let me now
+satisfy you on another point, where it would seem we greatly differ."
+
+He walked to the door, and summoned his servant, to whom he gave an
+order.  In another moment the fresh-faced young officer who had at
+first admitted her re-appeared with a file of official papers.  He
+glanced slyly at Thankful Blossom's face with an amused look, as if he
+had already heard the colloquy between her and his superior officer,
+and had appreciated that which neither of the earnest actors in the
+scene had themselves felt,--a certain sense of humor in the situation.
+
+Howbeit, standing before them, Col. Hamilton gravely turned over the
+file of papers.  Thankful bit her lips in embarrassment.  A slight
+feeling of awe, and a presentiment of some fast-coming shame; a new and
+strange consciousness of herself, her surroundings, of the dignity of
+the two men before her; an uneasy feeling of the presence of two ladies
+who had in some mysterious way entered the room from another door, and
+who seemed to be intently regarding her from afar with a curiosity as
+if she were some strange animal; and a wild premonition that her whole
+future life and happiness depended upon the events of the next few
+moments,--so took possession of her, that the brave girl trembled for a
+moment in her isolation and loneliness.  In another instant Col.
+Hamilton, speaking to his superior, but looking obviously at one of the
+ladies who had entered, handed a paper to Washington, and said, "Here
+are the charges."
+
+"Read them," said the general coldly.
+
+Col. Hamilton, with a manifest consciousness of another hearer than
+Mistress Blossom and his general, read the paper.  It was couched in
+phrases of military and legal precision, and related briefly, that upon
+the certain and personal knowledge of the writer, Abner Blossom of the
+"Blossom Farm" was in the habit of entertaining two gentlemen, namely,
+the "Count Ferdinand" and the "Baron Pomposo," suspected enemies of the
+cause, and possible traitors to the Continental army.  It was signed by
+Allan Brewster, late captain in the Connecticut Contingent.
+
+As Col. Hamilton exhibited the signature, Thankful Blossom had no
+difficulty in recognizing the familiar bad hand and equally familiar
+mis-spelling of her lover.
+
+She rose to her feet.  With eyes that showed her present trouble and
+perplexity as frankly as they had a moment before blazed with her
+indignation, she met, one by one, the glances of the group who now
+seemed to be closing round her.  Yet with a woman's instinct she felt,
+I am constrained to say, more unfriendliness in the silent presence of
+the two women than in the possible outspoken criticism of our
+much-abused sex.
+
+"Of course," said a voice which Thankful at once, by a woman's unerring
+instinct, recognized as the elder of the two ladies, and the legitimate
+keeper of the conscience of some one of the men who were present,--"of
+course Mistress Thankful will be able to elect which of her lovers
+among her country's enemies she will be able to cling to for support in
+her present emergency.  She does not seem to have been so special in
+her favors as to have positively excluded any one."
+
+"At least, dear Lady Washington, she will not give it to the man who
+has proven a traitor to HER," said the younger woman impulsively.
+"That is--I beg your ladyship's pardon"--she hesitated, observing in
+the dead silence that ensued that the two superior male beings present
+looked at each other in lofty astonishment.
+
+"He that is trait'rous to his country," said Lady Washington coldly,
+"is apt to be trait'rous elsewhere."
+
+"'Twere as honest to say that he that was trait'rous to his king was
+trait'rous to his country," said Mistress Thankful with sudden
+audacity, bending her knit brows on Lady Washington.  But that lady
+turned dignifiedly away, and Mistress Thankful again faced the general.
+
+"I ask your pardon," she said proudly, "for troubling you with my
+wrongs.  But it seems to me that even if another and a greater wrong
+were done me by my sweetheart, through jealousy, it would not justify
+this accusation against me, even though," she added, darting a wicked
+glance at the placid brocaded back of Lady Washington, "even though
+that accusation came from one who knows that jealousy may belong to the
+wife of a patriot as well as a traitor."  She was herself again after
+this speech, although her face was white with the blow she had taken
+and returned.
+
+Col. Hamilton passed his hand across his mouth, and coughed slightly.
+Gen. Washington, standing by the fire with an impassive face, turned to
+Thankful gravely:--
+
+"You are forgetting, Mistress Thankful, that you have not told me how I
+can serve you.  It cannot be that you are still concerned in Capt.
+Brewster, who has given evidence against your other--FRIENDS, and
+tacitly against YOU.  Nor can it be on their account, for I regret to
+say they are still free and unknown.  If you come with any information
+exculpating them, and showing they are not spies or hostile to the
+cause, your father's release shall be certain and speedy.  Let me ask
+you a single question:  Why do you believe them honest?"
+
+"Because," said Mistress Thankful, "they were--were--gentlemen."
+
+"Many spies have been of excellent family, good address, and fair
+talents," said Washington gravely; "but you have, mayhap, some other
+reason."
+
+"Because they talked only to ME," said Mistress Thankful, blushing
+mightily; "because they preferred my company to father's; because"--she
+hesitated a moment--"because they spoke not of politics, but--of--that
+which lads mainly talk of--and--and,"--here she broke down a
+little,--"and the baron I only saw once, but he"--here she broke down
+utterly--"I know they weren't spies: there, now!"
+
+"I must ask you something more," said Washington, with grave kindness:
+"whether you give me the information or not, you will consider, that,
+if what you believe is true, it cannot in any way injure the gentlemen
+you speak of; while, on the other hand, it may relieve your father of
+suspicion.  Will you give to Col. Hamilton, my secretary, a full
+description of them,--that fuller description which Capt. Brewster, for
+reasons best known to yourself, was unable to give?"
+
+Mistress Thankful hesitated for a moment, and then, with one of her
+truthful glances at the commander-in-chief, began a detailed account of
+the outward semblance of the count.  Why she began with him, I am
+unable to say; but possibly it was because it was easier, for when she
+came to describe the baron, she was, I regret to say, somewhat vague
+and figurative.  Not so vague, however, but that Col. Hamilton suddenly
+started up with a look at his chief, who instantly checked it with a
+gesture of his ruffled hand.
+
+"I thank you.  Mistress Thankful," he said quite impassively, "but did
+this other gentleman, this baron--"
+
+"Pomposo," said Thankful proudly.  A titter originated in the group of
+ladies by the window, and became visible on the fresh face of Col.
+Hamilton; but the dignified color of Washington's countenance was
+unmoved.
+
+"May I ask if the baron made an honorable tender of his affections to
+you," he continued, with respectful gravity,--"if his attentions were
+known to your father, and were such as honest Mistress Blossom could
+receive?"
+
+"Father introduced him to me, and wanted me to be kind to him. He--he
+kissed me, and I slapped his face," said Thankful quickly, with cheeks
+as red, I warrant, as the baron's might have been.
+
+The moment the words had escaped her truthful lips, she would have
+given her life to recall them.  To her astonishment, however, Col.
+Hamilton laughed outright, and the ladies turned and approached her,
+but were checked by a slight gesture from the otherwise impassive
+figure of the general.
+
+"It is possible, Mistress Thankful," he resumed, with undisturbed
+composure, "that one at least of these gentlemen may be known to us,
+and that your instincts may be correct.  At least rest assured that we
+shall fully inquire into it, and that your father shall have the
+benefit of that inquiry."
+
+"I thank your Excellency," said Thankful, still reddening under the
+contemplation of her own late frankness, and retreating toward the
+door.  "I--think--I--must--go--now.  It is late, and I have far to
+ride."
+
+To her surprise, however, Washington stepped forward, and, again taking
+her hands in his, said with a grave smile, "For that very reason, if
+for none other, you must be our guest to-night, Mistress Thankful
+Blossom.  We still retain our Virginian ideas of hospitality, and are
+tyrannous enough to make strangers conform to them, even though we have
+but perchance the poorest of entertainment to offer them.  Lady
+Washington will not permit Mistress Thankful Blossom to leave her roof
+to-night until she has partaken of her courtesy as well as her counsel."
+
+"Mistress Thankful Blossom will make us believe that she has at least
+in so far trusted our desire to serve her justly, by accepting our poor
+hospitality for a single night," said Lady Washington, with a stately
+courtesy.
+
+Thankful Blossom still stood irresolutely at the door.  But the next
+moment a pair of youthful arms encircled her; and the younger
+gentlewoman, looking into her brown eyes with an honest frankness equal
+to her own, said caressingly, "Dear Mistress Thankful, though I am but
+a guest in her ladyship's house, let me, I pray you, add my voice to
+hers.  I am Mistress Schuyler of Albany, at your service, Mistress
+Thankful, as Col. Hamilton here will bear me witness, did I need any
+interpreter to your honest heart.  Believe me, dear Mistress Thankful,
+I sympathize with you, and only beg you to give me an opportunity
+to-night to serve you.  You will stay, I know, and you will stay with
+me; and we shall talk over the faithlessness of that over-jealous
+Yankee captain who has proved himself, I doubt not, as unworthy of YOU
+as he is of his country."
+
+Hateful to Thankful as was the idea of being commiserated, she
+nevertheless could not resist the gentle courtesy and gracious sympathy
+of Miss Schuyler.  Besides, it must be confessed that for the first
+time in her life she felt a doubt of the power of her own independence,
+and a strange fascination for this young gentlewoman whose arms were
+around her, who could so thoroughly sympathize with her, and yet allow
+herself to be snubbed by Lady Washington.
+
+"You have a mother, I doubt not?" said Thankful, raising her
+questioning eyes to Miss Schuyler.
+
+Irrelevant as this question seemed to the two gentlemen, Miss Schuyler
+answered it with feminine intuition: "And you, dear Mistress Thankful--"
+
+"Have none," said Thankful; and here, I regret to say, she whimpered
+slightly, at which Miss Schuyler, with tears in her own fine eyes, bent
+her head suddenly to Thankful's ear, put her arm about the waist of the
+pretty stranger, and then, to the astonishment of Col. Hamilton,
+quietly swept her out of the august presence.
+
+When the door had closed upon them, Col. Hamilton turned
+half-smilingly, half-inquiringly, to his chief.  Washington returned
+his glance kindly but gravely, and then said quietly,--
+
+"If your suspicions jump with mine, colonel, I need not remind you that
+it is a matter so delicate that it would be as well if you locked it in
+your own breast for the present; at least, that you should not intimate
+to the gentleman whom you may have suspected, aught that has passed
+this evening."
+
+"As you will, general," said the subaltern respectfully; "but may I
+ask"--he hesitated--"if you believe that anything more than a passing
+fancy for a pretty girl--"
+
+"When I asked your silence, colonel," interrupted Washington kindly,
+laying his hand upon the shoulder of the younger man, "it was because I
+thought the matter sufficiently momentous to claim my own private and
+especial attention."
+
+"I ask your Excellency's pardon," said the young man, reddening through
+his fresh complexion like a girl; "I only meant--"
+
+"That you would ask to be relieved to-night," interrupted Washington,
+with a benign smile, "forasmuch as you wished the more to show
+entertainment to our dear friend Miss Schuyler, and her guest; a
+wayward girl, colonel, but, methinks, an honest one. Treat her of your
+own quality, colonel, but discreetly, and not too kindly, lest we have
+Mistress Schuyler, another injured damsel, on our hands;" and with a
+half playful gesture peculiar to the man, and yet not inconsistent with
+his dignity, he half led, half pushed his youthful secretary from the
+room.
+
+When the door had closed upon the colonel, Lady Washington rustled
+toward her husband, who stood still, quiet and passive, on the
+hearthstone.
+
+"You surely see in this escapade nothing of political intrigue--no
+treachery?" she said hastily.
+
+"No," said Washington quietly.
+
+"Nothing more than an idle, wanton intrigue with a foolish, vain
+country girl?"
+
+"Pardon me, my lady," said Washington gravely.  "I doubt not we may
+misjudge her.  'Tis no common rustic lass that can thus stir the
+country side.  'Twere an insult to your sex to believe it.  It is not
+yet sure that she has not captured even so high game as she has named.
+If she has, it would add another interest to a treaty of comity and
+alliance."
+
+"That creature!" said Lady Washington,--"that light-o'-love with her
+Connecticut captain lover!  Pardon me, but this is preposterous;" and
+with a stiff courtesy she swept from the room, leaving the central
+figure of history--as such central figures are apt to be left--alone.
+
+Later in the evening Mistress Schuyler so far subdued the tears and
+emotions of Thankful, that she was enabled to dry her eyes, and
+re-arrange her brown hair in the quaint little mirror in Mistress
+Schuyler's chamber; Mistress Schuyler herself lending a touch and
+suggestion here and there, after the secret freemasonry of her sex.
+"You are well rid of this forsworn captain, dear Mistress Thankful; and
+methinks that with hair as beautiful as yours, the new style of wearing
+it, though a modish frivolity, is most becoming.  I assure you 'tis
+much affected in New York and Philadelphia,--drawn straight back from
+the forehead, after this manner, as you see."
+
+The result was, that an hour later Mistress Schuyler and Mistress
+Blossom presented themselves to Col. Hamilton in the reception-room,
+with a certain freshness and elaboration of toilet that not only quite
+shamed the young officer's affaire negligence, but caused him to open
+his eyes in astonishment.  "Perhaps she would rather be alone, that she
+might indulge her grief," he said doubtingly, in an aside to Miss
+Schuyler, "rather than appear in company."
+
+"Nonsense," quoth Mistress Schuyler.  "Is a young woman to mope and
+sigh because her lover proves false?"
+
+"But her father is a prisoner," said Hamilton in amazement.
+
+"Can you look me in the face," said Mistress Schuyler mischievously,
+"and tell me that you don't know that in twenty-four hours her father
+will be cleared of these charges?  Nonsense!  Do you think I have no
+eyes in my head?  Do you think I misread the general's face and your
+own?"
+
+"But, my dear girl," said the officer in alarm.
+
+"Oh! I told her so, but not WHY," responded Miss Schuyler with a wicked
+look in her dark eyes, "though I had warrant enough to do so, to serve
+you for keeping a secret from ME!"
+
+And with this Parthian shot she returned to Mistress Thankful, who,
+with her face pressed against the window, was looking out on the
+moonlit slope beside the Whippany River.
+
+For, by one of those freaks peculiar to the American springtide, the
+weather had again marvellously changed.  The rain had ceased, and the
+ground was covered with an icing of sleet and snow, that now glittered
+under a clear sky and a brilliant moon.  The northeast wind that shook
+the loose sashes of the windows had transformed each dripping tree and
+shrub to icy stalactites that silvered under the moon's cold touch.
+
+"'Tis a beautiful sight, ladies," said a bluff, hearty, middle-aged
+man, joining the group by the window.  "But God send the spring to us
+quickly, and spare us any more such cruel changes!  My lady moon looks
+fine enough, glittering in yonder treetops; but I doubt not she looks
+down upon many a poor fellow shivering under his tattered blankets in
+the camp beyond.  Had ye seen the Connecticut tatterdemalions file by
+last night, with arms reversed, showing their teeth at his Excellency,
+and yet not daring to bite; had ye watched these faint-hearts, these
+doubting Thomases, ripe for rebellion against his Excellency, against
+the cause, but chiefly against the weather,--ye would pray for a thaw
+that would melt the hearts of these men as it would these stubborn
+fields around us. Two weeks more of such weather would raise up not one
+Allan Brewster, but a dozen such malcontent puppies ripe for a
+drum-head court-martial."
+
+"Yet 'tis a fine night, Gen. Sullivan," said Col. Hamilton, sharply
+nudging the ribs of his superior officer with his elbow.  "There would
+be little trouble on such a night, I fancy, to track our ghostly
+visitant."  Both of the ladies becoming interested, and Col. Hamilton
+having thus adroitly turned the flank of his superior officer, he went
+on, "You should know that the camp, and indeed the whole locality here,
+is said to be haunted by the apparition of a gray-coated figure, whose
+face is muffled and hidden in his collar, but who has the password pat
+to his lips, and whose identity hath baffled the sentries.  This
+figure, it is said, forasmuch as it has been seen just before an
+assault, an attack, or some tribulation of the army, is believed by
+many to be the genius or guardian spirit of the cause, and, as such,
+has incited sentries and guards to greater vigilance, and has to some
+seemed a premonition of disaster.  Before the last outbreak of the
+Connecticut militia, Master Graycoat haunted the outskirts of the
+weather-beaten and bedraggled camp, and, I doubt not, saw much of that
+preparation that sent that regiment of faint-hearted onion-gatherers to
+flaunt their woes and their wrongs in the face of the general himself."
+
+Here Col. Hamilton, in turn, received a slight nudge from Mistress
+Schuyler, and ended his speech somewhat abruptly.
+
+Mistress Thankful was not unmindful of both these allusions to her
+faithless lover, but only a consciousness of mortification and wounded
+pride was awakened by them.  In fact, during the first tempest of her
+indignation at his arrest, still later at the arrest of her father, and
+finally at the discovery of his perfidy to her, she had forgotten that
+he was her lover; she had forgotten her previous tenderness toward him;
+and, now that her fire and indignation were spent, only a sense of
+numbness and vacancy remained.  All that had gone before seemed not
+something to be regretted as her own act, but rather as the act of
+another Thankful Blossom, who had been lost that night in the
+snow-storm: she felt she had become, within the last twenty-four hours,
+not perhaps ANOTHER woman, but for the first time a WOMEN.
+
+Yet it was singular that she felt more confused when, a few moments
+later, the conversation turned upon Major Van Zandt: it was still more
+singular that she even felt considerably frightened at that confusion.
+Finally she found herself listening with alternate irritability, shame,
+and curiosity, to praises of that gentleman, of his courage, his
+devotion, and his personal graces.  For one wild moment Thankful felt
+like throwing herself on the breast of Mistress Schuyler, and
+confessing her rudeness to the major; but a conviction that Mistress
+Schuyler would share that secret with Col. Hamilton, that Major Van
+Zandt might not like that revelation, and, oddly enough associated with
+this, a feeling of unconquerable irritability toward that handsome and
+gentle young officer, kept her mouth closed.  "Besides," she said to
+herself, "he ought to know, if he's such a fine gentleman as they say,
+just how I was feeling, and that I don't mean any rudeness to him;" and
+with this unanswerable feminine logic poor Thankful to some extent
+stilled her own honest little heart.
+
+But not, I fear, entirely.  The night was a restless one to her: like
+all impulsive natures, the season of reflection, and perhaps distrust,
+came to her upon acts that were already committed, and when reason
+seemed to light the way only to despair.  She saw the folly of her
+intrusion at the headquarters, as she thought, only when it was too
+late to remedy it; she saw the gracelessness and discourtesy of her
+conduct to Major Van Zandt, only when distance and time rendered an
+apology weak and ineffectual.  I think she cried a little to herself,
+lying in the strange gloomy chamber of the healthfully sleeping
+Mistress Schuyler, the sweet security of whose manifest goodness and
+kindness she alternately hated and envied; and at last, unable to stand
+it longer, slipped noiselessly from her bed, and stood very wretched
+and disconsolate before the window that looked out upon the slope
+toward the Whippany River. The moon on the new-fallen, frigid, and
+untrodden snow shone brightly.  Far to the left it glittered on the
+bayonet of a sentry pacing beside the river-bank, and gave a sense of
+security to the girl that perhaps strengthened another idea that had
+grown up in her mind.  Since she could not sleep, why should she not
+ramble about until she could?  She had been accustomed to roam about
+the farm in all weathers and at all times and seasons.  She recalled to
+herself the night--a tempestuous one--when she had risen in serious
+concern as to the lying-in of her favorite Alderney heifer, and how she
+had saved the life of the calf, a weakling, dropped apparently from the
+clouds in the tempest, as it lay beside the barn.  With this in her
+mind, she donned her dress again, and, with Mistress Schuyler's mantle
+over her shoulders, noiselessly crept down the narrow staircase, passed
+the sleeping servant on the settee, and, opening the rear door, in
+another moment was inhaling the crisp air, and tripping down the crisp
+snow of the hillside.
+
+But Mistress Thankful had overlooked one difference between her own
+farm and a military encampment.  She had not proceeded a dozen yards
+before a figure apparently started out of the ground beneath her, and,
+levelling a bayoneted musket across her path, called, "Halt!"
+
+The hot blood mounted to the girl's cheek at the first imperative
+command she had ever received in her life: nevertheless she halted
+unconsciously, and without a word confronted the challenger with her
+old audacity.
+
+"Who comes there?" reiterated the sentry, still keeping his bayonet
+level with her breast.
+
+"Thankful Blossom," she responded promptly.
+
+The sentry brought his musket to a "present."  "Pass, Thankful Blossom,
+and God send it soon and the spring with it, and good-night," he said,
+with a strong Milesian accent.  And before the still-amazed girl could
+comprehend the meaning of his abrupt challenge, or his equally abrupt
+departure, he had resumed his monotonous pace in the moonlight.
+Indeed, as she stood looking after him, the whole episode, the odd
+unreality of the moonlit landscape, the novelty of her position, the
+morbid play of her thoughts, seemed to make it part of a dream which
+the morning light might dissipate, but could never fully explain.
+
+With something of this feeling still upon her, she kept her way to the
+river.  Its banks were still fringed with ice, through which its dark
+current flowed noiselessly.  She knew it flowed through the camp where
+lay her faithless lover, and for an instant indulged the thought of
+following it, and facing him with the proof of his guilt; but even at
+the thought she recoiled with a new and sudden doubt in herself, and
+stood dreamily watching the shimmer of the moon on the icy banks, until
+another, and, it seemed to her, equally unreal vision suddenly stayed
+her feet, and drove the blood from her feverish cheeks.
+
+A figure was slowly approaching from the direction of the sleeping
+encampment.  Tall, erect, and habited in a gray surtout, with a hood
+partially concealing its face, it was the counterfeit presentment of
+the ghostly visitant she had heard described. Thankful scarcely
+breathed.  The brave little heart that had not quailed before the
+sentry's levelled musket a moment before now faltered and stood still,
+as the phantom with a slow and majestic tread moved toward her.  She
+had only time to gain the shelter of a tree before the figure,
+majestically unconscious of her presence, passed slowly by.  Through
+all her terror Thankful was still true to a certain rustic habit of
+practical perception to observe that the tread of the phantom was quite
+audible over the crust of snow, and was visible and palpable as the
+imprint of a military boot.
+
+The blood came back to Thankful's cheek, and with it her old audacity.
+In another instant she was out from the tree, and tracking with a light
+feline tread the apparition that now loomed up the hill before her.
+Slipping from tree to tree, she followed until it passed before the
+door of a low hut or farm-shed that stood midway up the hill.  Here it
+entered, and the door closed behind it.  With every sense feverishly
+alert, Thankful, from the secure advantage of a large maple, watched
+the door of the hut.  In a few moments it re-opened to the same figure
+free of its gray enwrappings.  Forgetful of every thing now, but
+detecting the face of the impostor, the fearless girl left the tree,
+and placed herself directly in the path of the figure.  At the same
+moment it turned toward her inquiringly, and the moonlight fell full
+upon the calm, composed features of Gen. Washington.
+
+In her consternation Thankful could only drop an embarrassed courtesy,
+and hang out two lovely signals of distress in her cheeks.  The face of
+the pseudo ghost alone remained unmoved.
+
+"You are wandering late, Mistress Thankful," he said at last, with a
+paternal gravity; "and I fear that the formal restraint of a military
+household has already given you some embarrassment. Yonder sentry, for
+instance, might have stopped you."
+
+"Oh, he did!" said Thankful quickly; "but it's all right, please your
+Excellency.  He asked me 'Who went there,' and I told him; and he was
+vastly polite, I assure you."
+
+The grave features of the commander-in-chief relaxed in a smile. "You
+are more happy than most of your sex in turning a verbal compliment to
+practical account.  For know then, dear young lady, that in honor of
+your visit to the headquarters, the password to-night through this
+encampment was none other than your own pretty patronymic,--'Thankful
+Blossom.'"
+
+The tears glittered in the girl's eyes, and her lip trembled; but, with
+all her readiness of speech, she could only say, "Oh, your Excellency."
+
+"Then you DID pass the sentry?" continued Washington, looking at her
+intently with a certain grave watchfulness in his gray eyes. "And
+doubtless you wandered at the river-bank.  Although I myself, tempted
+by the night, sometimes extend my walk as far as yonder shed, it were a
+hazardous act for a young lady to pass beyond the protection of the
+line."
+
+"Oh! I met no one, your Excellency," said the usually truthful Thankful
+hastily, rushing to her first lie with grateful impetuosity.
+
+"And saw no one?" asked Washington quietly.
+
+"No one," said Thankful, raising her brown eyes to the general's.
+
+They both looked at each other,--the naturally most veracious young
+woman in the colonies, and the subsequent allegorical impersonation of
+truth in America,--and knew each other lied, and, I imagine, respected
+each other for it.
+
+"I am glad to hear you say so, Mistress Thankful," said Washington
+quietly; "for 'twould have been natural for you to have sought an
+interview with your recreant lover in yonder camp, though the attempt
+would have been unwise and impossible."
+
+"I had no such thought, your Excellency," said Thankful, who had really
+quite forgotten her late intention; "yet, if with your permission I
+could hold a few moments' converse with Capt. Brewster, it would
+greatly ease my mind."
+
+"'Twould not be well for the present," said Washington thoughtfully.
+"But in a day or two Capt. Brewster will be tried by court-martial at
+Morristown.  It shall be so ordered that when he is conveyed thither
+his guard shall halt at the Blossom Farm.  I will see that the officer
+in command gives you an opportunity to see him.  And I think I can
+promise also, Mistress Thankful, that your father shall be also present
+under his own roof, a free man."
+
+They had reached the entrance to the mansion, and entered the hall.
+Thankful turned impulsively, and kissed the extended hand of the
+commander.  "You are so good!  I have been so foolish--so very, very
+wrong," she said, with a slight trembling of her lip.  "And your
+Excellency believes my story; and those gentlemen were NOT spies, but
+even as they gave themselves to be."
+
+"I said not that much," replied Washington with a kindly smile, "but no
+matter.  Tell me rather, Mistress Thankful, how far your acquaintance
+with these gentlemen has gone; or did it end with the box on the ear
+that you gave the baron?"
+
+"He had asked me to ride with him to the Baskingridge, and I--had
+said--yes," faltered Mistress Thankful.
+
+"Unless I misjudge you, Mistress Thankful, you can without great
+sacrifice promise me that you will not see him until I give you my
+permission," said Washington, with grave playfulness.
+
+The swinging light shone full in Thankful's truthful eyes as she lifted
+them to his.
+
+"I do," she said quietly.
+
+"Good-night," said the commander, with a formal bow.
+
+"Good-night, your Excellency."
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The sun was high over the Short Hills when Mistress Thankful, the next
+day, drew up her sweating mare beside the Blossom Farm gate. She had
+never looked prettier, she had never felt more embarrassed, as she
+entered her own house.  During her rapid ride she had already framed a
+speech of apology to Major Van Zandt, which, however, utterly fled from
+her lips as that officer showed himself respectfully on the threshold.
+Yet she permitted him to usurp the functions of the grinning Caesar,
+and help her from her horse; albeit she was conscious of exhibiting the
+awkward timidity of a bashful rustic, until at last, with a stammering,
+"Thank ye," she actually ran up stairs to hide her glowing face and far
+too conscious eyelids.
+
+During the rest of that day Major Van Zandt quietly kept out of the
+way, without obtrusively seeming to avoid her.  Yet, when they met
+casually in the performance of her household duties, the innocent
+Mistress Thankful noticed, under her downcast penitential eyelids, that
+the eyes of the officer followed her intently.  And thereat she fell
+unconsciously to imitating him; and so they eyed each other furtively
+like cats, and rubbed themselves along the walls of rooms and passages
+when they met, lest they should seem designedly to come near each
+other, and enacted the gravest and most formal of genuflexions,
+courtesies, and bows, when they accidentally DID meet.  And just at the
+close of the second day, as the elegant Major Van Zandt was feeling
+himself fast becoming a drivelling idiot and an awkward country booby,
+the arrival of a courier from headquarters saved that gentleman his
+self-respect forever.
+
+Mistress Thankful was in her sitting-room when he knocked at her door.
+She opened it in sudden, conscious trepidation.
+
+"I ask pardon for intruding, Mistress Thankful Blossom," he said
+gravely; "but I have here"--he held out a pretentious document--"a
+letter for you from headquarters.  May I hope that it contains good
+news,--the release of your father.--and that it relieves you from my
+presence, and an espionage which I assure you cannot be more unpleasant
+to you than it has been to myself."
+
+As he entered the room, Thankful had risen to her feet with the full
+intention of delivering to him her little set apology; but, as he ended
+his speech, she looked at him blankly, and burst out crying.
+
+Of course he was in an instant at her side, and holding her cold little
+hand.  Then she managed to say, between her tears, that she had been
+wanting to make an apology to him; that she had wanted to say ever
+since she arrived that she had been rude, very rude, and that she knew
+he never could forgive her; that she had been trying to say that she
+never could forget his gentle forbearance: "only," she added, suddenly
+raising her tear-fringed brown lids to the astonished man, "YOU
+WOULDN'T EVER LET ME!"
+
+"Dear Mistress Thankful," said the major, in conscience-stricken
+horror, "if I have made myself distant to you, believe me it was only
+because I feared to intrude upon your sorrow.  I really--dear Mistress
+Thankful--I--"
+
+"When you took all the pains to go round the hall instead of through
+the dining-room, lest I should ask you to forgive me," sobbed Mistress
+Thankful, "I thought--you--must--hate me, and preferred to--"
+
+"Perhaps this letter may mitigate your sorrow, Mistress Thankful," said
+the officer, pointing to the letter she still held unconsciously in her
+hand.
+
+With a blush at her pre-occupation, Thankful opened the letter.  It was
+a half-official document, and ran as follows:--
+
+
+"The Commander-in-Chief is glad to inform Mistress Thankful Blossom
+that the charges preferred against her father have, upon fair
+examination, been found groundless and trivial.  The Commander-in-Chief
+further begs to inform Mistress Blossom that the gentleman known to her
+under the name of the 'Baron Pomposo' was his Excellency Don Juan
+Morales, Ambassador and Envoy Extraordinary of the Court of Spain, and
+that the gentleman known to her as the 'Count Ferdinand' was Senor
+Godoy, Secretary to the Embassy.  The Commander-in-Chief wishes to add
+that Mistress Thankful Blossom is relieved of any further obligation of
+hospitality toward these honorable gentlemen, as the Commander-in-Chief
+regrets to record the sudden and deeply-to-be-deplored death of his
+Excellency this morning by typhoid fever, and the possible speedy
+return of the Embassy.
+
+"In conclusion, the Commander-in-Chief wishes to bear testimony to the
+Truthfulness, Intuition, and Discretion of Mistress Thankful Blossom.
+
+"By order of his Excellency,
+  "Gen. GEORGE WASHINGTON.
+
+"ALEX. HAMILTON, Secretary.
+
+"To Mistress THANKFUL BLOSSOM, of Blossom Farm."
+
+
+Thankful Blossom was silent for a few moments, and then raised her
+abashed eyes to Major Van Zandt.  A single glance satisfied her that he
+knew nothing of the imposture that had been practised upon her,--knew
+nothing of the trap into which her vanity and self-will had led her.
+
+"Dear Mistress Thankful," said the major, seeing the distress in her
+face, "I trust the news is not ill.  Surely I gathered from the
+sergeant that--"
+
+"What?" said Thankful, looking at him intently.
+
+"That in twenty-four hours at furthest your father would be free, and
+that I should be relieved--"
+
+"I know that you are a-weary of your task, major," said Thankful
+bitterly: "rejoice, then, to know your information is correct, and that
+my father is exonerated--unless--unless this is a forgery, and Gen.
+Washington should turn out to be somebody else, and YOU should turn out
+to be somebody else--"  And she stopped short, and hid her wet eyes in
+the window-curtains.
+
+"Poor girl!" said Major Van Zandt to himself.  "This trouble has
+undoubtedly frenzied her.  Fool that I was to lay up the insult of one
+that sorrow and excitement had bereft of reason and responsibility!
+'Twere better I should retire at once, and leave her to herself," and
+the young man slowly retreated toward the door.
+
+But at this moment there were alarming symptoms of distress in the
+window-curtain; and the major paused as a voice from its dimity depths
+said plaintively, "And YOU are going without forgiving me!"
+
+"Forgive YOU, Mistress Thankful," said the major, striding to the
+curtain, and seizing a little hand that was obtruded from its
+folds,--"forgive you? rather can you forgive me for the folly--the
+cruelty of mistaking--of--of"--and here the major, hitherto famous for
+facile compliments, utterly broke down.  But the hand he held was no
+longer cold, but warm and intelligent; and in default of coherent
+speech he held fast by that as the thread of his discourse, until
+Mistress Thankful quietly withdrew it, thanked him for his forgiveness,
+and retired deeper behind the curtain.
+
+When he had gone, she threw herself in a chair, and again gave way to a
+passionate flood of tears.  In the last twenty-four hours her pride had
+been utterly humbled: the independent spirit of this self-willed little
+beauty had met for the first time with defeat. When she had got over
+her womanly shock at the news of the sham baron's death, she had, I
+fear, only a selfish regard at his taking off; believing that if living
+he would in some way show the world--which just then consisted of the
+headquarters and Major Van Zandt--that he had really made love to her,
+and possibly did honorably love her still, and might yet give her an
+opportunity to reject him.  And now he was dead, and she was held up to
+the world as the conceited plaything of a fine gentleman's masquerading
+sport.  That her father's cupidity and ambition made him sanction the
+imposture, in her bitterness she never doubted.  No!  Lover, friend,
+father--all had been false to her, and the only kindness she had
+received was from the men she had wantonly insulted.  Poor little
+Blossom! indeed, a most premature Blossom; I fear a most unthankful
+Blossom, sitting there shivering in the first chill wind of adversity,
+rocking backward and forward, with the skirt of her dimity short-gown
+over her shoulders, and her little buckled shoes and clocked stockings
+pathetically crossed before her.
+
+But healthy youth is re-active; and in an hour or two Thankful was down
+at the cow-shed, with her arms around the neck of her favorite heifer,
+to whom she poured out much of her woes, and from whom she won an
+intelligent sort of slobbering sympathy.  And then she sharply scolded
+Caesar for nothing at all, and a moment after returned to the house
+with the air and face of a deeply injured angel, who had been
+disappointed in some celestial idea of setting this world right, but
+was still not above forgiveness,--a spectacle that sunk Major Van Zandt
+into the dark depths of remorse, and eventually sent him to smoke a
+pipe of Virginia with his men in the roadside camp; seeing which,
+Thankful went early to bed, and cried herself to sleep.  And Nature
+possibly followed her example; for at sunset a great thaw set in, and
+by midnight the freed rivers and brooks were gurgling melodiously, and
+tree and shrub and fence were moist and dripping.
+
+The red dawn at last struggled through the vaporous veil that hid the
+landscape.  Then occurred one of those magical changes peculiar to the
+climate, yet perhaps pre-eminently notable during that historic winter
+and spring.  By ten o'clock on that 3d of May, 1780, a fervent
+June-like sun had rent that vaporous veil, and poured its direct rays
+upon the gaunt and haggard profile of the Jersey hills.  The chilled
+soil responded but feebly to that kiss; perhaps a few of the willows
+that yellowed the river-banks took on a deeper color.  But the country
+folk were certain that spring had come at last; and even the correct
+and self-sustained Major Van Zandt came running in to announce to
+Mistress Thankful that one of his men had seen a violet in the meadow.
+In another moment Mistress Thankful had donned her cloak and pattens to
+view this firstling of the laggard summer.  It was quite natural that
+Major Van Zandt should accompany her as she tripped on; and so, without
+a thought of their past differences, they ran like very children down
+the moist and rocky slope that led to the quaggy meadow.  Such was the
+influence of the vernal season.
+
+But the violets were hidden.  Mistress Thankful, regardless of the wet
+leaves and her new gown, groped with her fingers among the withered
+grasses.  Major Van Zandt leaned against a bowlder, and watched her
+with admiring eyes.
+
+"You'll never find flowers that way," she said at last, looking up to
+him impatiently.  "Go down on your knees like an honest man. There are
+some things in this world worth stooping for."
+
+The major instantly dropped on his knees beside her.  But at that
+moment Mistress Thankful found her posies, and rose to her feet. "Stay
+where you are," she said mischievously, as she stooped down, and placed
+a flower in the lapel of his coat.  "That is to make amends for my
+rudeness.  Now get up."
+
+But the major did not rise.  He caught the two little hands that had
+seemed to flutter like birds against his breast, and, looking up into
+the laughing face above him, said, "Dear Mistress Thankful, dare I
+remind you of your own words, that 'there be some things worth stooping
+for'?  Think of my love, Mistress Thankful, as a flower,--mayhap not as
+gracious to you as your violets, but as honest and--and--and--as--"
+
+"Ready to spring up in a single night," laughed Thankful.  "But no; get
+up, major!  What would the fine ladies of Morristown say of your
+kneeling at the feet of a country girl,--the play and sport of every
+fine gentleman?  What if Mistress Bolton should see her own cavalier,
+the modish Major Van Zandt, proffering his affections to the disgraced
+sweetheart of a perjured traitor?  Leave go my hand, I pray you,
+major,--if you respect--"
+
+She was free, yet she faltered a moment beside him, with tears
+quivering on her long brown lashes.  Then she said tremulously, "Rise
+up, major.  Let us think no more of this.  I pray you forgive me, if I
+have again been rude."
+
+The major struggled to rise to his feet.  But he could not.  And then I
+regret to have to record that the fact became obvious that one of his
+shapely legs was in a bog-hole, and that he was perceptibly sinking out
+of sight.  Whereat Mistress Thankful trilled out a three-syllabled
+laugh, looked demure and painfully concerned at his condition, and then
+laughed again.  The major joined in her mirth, albeit his face was
+crimson.  And then, with a little cry of alarm, she flew to his side,
+and put her arms around him.
+
+"Keep away, keep away, for Heaven's sake, Mistress Blossom," he said
+quickly, "or I shall plunge you into my mishap, and make you as
+ridiculous as myself."
+
+But the quick-witted girl had already leaped to an adjacent bowlder.
+"Take off your sash," she said quickly; "fasten it to your belt, and
+throw it to me."  He did so.  She straightened herself back on the
+rock.  "Now, all together," she cried, with a preliminary strain on the
+sash; and then the cords of her well-trained muscles stood out on her
+rounded arms, and, with a long pull and a strong pull and a pull all
+together, she landed the major upon the rock.  And then she laughed;
+and then, inconsistent as it may appear, she became grave, and at once
+proceeded to scrape him off, and rub him down with dried leaves, with
+fern-twigs, with her handkerchief, with the border of her mantle, as if
+he were a child, until he blushed with alternate shame and secret
+satisfaction.
+
+They spoke but little on their return to the farm-house, for Mistress
+Thankful had again become grave.  And yet the sun shone cheerily above
+them; the landscape was filled with the joy of resurrection and new and
+awakened life; the breeze whispered gentle promises of hope, and the
+fruition of their hopes in the summer to come.  And these two fared on
+until they reached the porch, with a half-pleased, half-frightened
+consciousness that they were not the same beings who had left it a
+half-hour before.
+
+Nevertheless at the porch Mistress Thankful regained something of her
+old audacity.  As they stood together in the hall, she handed him back
+the sash she had kept with her.  As she did so, she could not help
+saying, "There are some things worth stooping for, Major Van Zandt."
+
+But she had not calculated upon the audacity of the man; and as she
+turned to fly she was caught by his strong arm, and pinioned to his
+side.  She struggled, honestly I think, and perhaps more frightened at
+her own feelings than at his strength; but it is to be recorded that he
+kissed her in a moment of comparative yielding, and then, frightened
+himself, released her quickly, whereat she fled to her room, and threw
+herself panting and troubled upon her bed.  For an hour or two she lay
+there, with flushed cheeks and conflicting thoughts.  "He must never
+kiss me again," she said softly to herself, "unless"--but the
+interrupting thought said, "I shall die if he kiss me not again; and I
+never can kiss another."  And then she was roused by a footstep upon
+the stair, which in that brief time she had learned to know and look
+for, and a knock at the door. She opened it to Major Van Zandt, white
+and so colorless as to bring out once more the faint red line made by
+her riding-whip two days before, as if it had risen again in
+accusation.  The blood dropped out of her cheeks as she gazed at him in
+silence.
+
+"An escort of dragoons," said Major Van Zandt slowly, and with military
+precision, "has just arrived, bringing with them one Capt. Allan
+Brewster, of the Connecticut Contingent, on his way to Morristown to be
+tried for mutiny and treason.  A private note from Col. Hamilton
+instructs me to allow him to have a private audience with you--if YOU
+so wish it."
+
+With a woman's swift and too often hopeless intuition, Thankful knew
+that this was not the sole contents of the letter, and that her
+relations with Capt. Brewster were known to the man before her. But she
+drew herself up a little proudly, and, turning her truthful eyes upon
+the major, said, "I DO so wish it."
+
+"It shall be done as you desire, Mistress Blossom," returned the
+officer with cold politeness, as he turned upon his heel.
+
+"One moment, Major Van Zandt," said Thankful swiftly.
+
+The major turned quickly; but Thankful's eyes were gazing thoughtfully
+forward, and scarcely glanced at him.  "I would prefer," she said
+timidly and hesitatingly, "that this interview should not take place
+under the roof where--where--where--my father lives.  Half-way down the
+meadow there is a barn, and before it a broken part of the wall,
+fronting on a sycamore-tree.  HE will know where it is.  Tell him I
+will see him there in half an hour."
+
+A smile, which the major had tried to make a careless one, curled his
+lip satirically as he bowed in reply.  "It is the first time," he said
+dryly, "that I believe I have been honored with arranging a tryst for
+two lovers; but believe me, Mistress Thankful, I will do my best.  In
+half an hour I will turn my prisoner over to you."
+
+In half an hour the punctual Mistress Thankful, with a hood hiding her
+pale face, passed the officer in the hall, on the way to her
+rendezvous.  An hour later Caesar came with a message that Mistress
+Thankful would like to see him.  When the major entered the
+sitting-room, he was shocked to find her lying pale and motionless on
+the sofa; but as the door closed she rose to her feet, and confronted
+him.
+
+"I do not know," she said slowly, "whether you are aware that the man I
+just now parted from was for a twelvemonth past my sweetheart, and that
+I believed I loved him, and KNEW I was true to him.  If you have not
+heard it, I tell you now, for the time will come when you will hear
+part of it from the lips of others, and I would rather you should take
+the whole truth from mine.  This man was false to me.  He betrayed two
+friends of mine as spies.  I could have forgiven it, had it been only
+foolish jealousy; but it was, I have since learned from his own lips,
+only that he might gratify his spite against the commander-in-chief by
+procuring their arrest, and making a serious difficulty in the American
+camp, by means of which he hoped to serve his own ends.  He told me
+this, believing that I sympathized with him in his hatred of the
+commander-in-chief, and in his own wrongs and sufferings.  I confess to
+my shame, Major Van Zandt, that two days ago I did believe him, and
+that I looked upon you as a mere catch-poll or bailiff of the tyrant.
+That I found out how I was deceived when I saw the commander-in-chief,
+you, major, who know him so well, need not be told.  Nor was it
+necessary for me to tell this man that he had deceived me: for I felt
+that--that--was--not--the--only reason--why I could no longer
+return--his love."
+
+She paused, as the major approached her earnestly, and waved him back
+with her hand.  "He reproached me bitterly with my want of feeling for
+his misfortunes," she went on again: "he recalled my past
+protestations; he showed me my love-letters; and he told me that if I
+were still his true sweetheart I ought to help him.  I told him if he
+would never call me by that name again; if he would give up all claim
+to me; if he would never speak, write to me, nor see me again; if he
+would hand me back my letters,--I would help him."  She stopped: the
+blood rushed into her pale face.  "You will remember, major, that I
+accepted this man's love as a young, foolish, trustful girl; but when I
+made him this offer--he--he accepted it."
+
+"The dog!" said Major Van Zandt.  "But in what way could you help this
+double traitor?"
+
+"I HAVE helped him," said Thankful quietly.
+
+"But how?" said Major Van Zandt.
+
+"By becoming a traitor myself," she said, turning upon him almost
+fiercely.  "Hear me!  While you were quietly pacing these halls, while
+your men were laughing and talking in the road, Caesar was saddling my
+white mare, the fleetest in the country.  He led her to the lane below.
+That mare is now two miles away, with Capt. Brewster on her back.  Why
+do you not start, major?  Look at me.  I am a traitor, and this is my
+bribe;" and she drew a package of letters from her bosom, and flung
+them on the table.
+
+She had been prepared for an outbreak or exclamation from the man
+before her, but not for his cold silence.  "Speak," she cried at last,
+passionately.  "Speak!  Open your lips, if only to curse me! Order in
+your men to arrest me.  I will proclaim myself guilty, and save your
+honor.  But only speak!"
+
+"May I ask," said Major Van Zandt coldly, "why you have twice honored
+me with a blow?"
+
+"Because I loved you; because, when I first saw you I saw the only man
+that was my master, and I rebelled; because, when I found I could not
+help but love you, I knew I never had loved before, and I would wipe
+out with one stroke all the past that rose in judgment against me;
+because I would not have you ever confronted with one endearing word of
+mine that was not meant for you."
+
+Major Van Zandt turned from the window where he had stood, and faced
+the girl with sad resignation.  "If I have in my foolishness, Mistress
+Thankful, shown you how great was your power over me, when you
+descended to this artifice to spare my feelings by confessing your own
+love for me, you should have remembered that you were doing that which
+forever kept me from wooing or winning you.  If you had really loved me
+your heart, as a woman's, would have warned you against that which my
+heart, as a gentleman's, has made a law of honor; when I tell you, as
+much for the sake of relieving your own conscience as for the sake of
+justifying mine, that if this man, a traitor, my prisoner, and your
+recognized lover, had escaped from my custody without your assistance,
+connivance, or even knowledge, I should have deemed it my duty to
+forsake you until I caught him, even if we had been standing before the
+altar."
+
+Thankful heard him, but only as a strange voice in the distance, as she
+stood with fixed eyes, and breathless, parted lips before him. Yet even
+then I fear that, womanlike, she did not comprehend his rhetoric of
+honor, but only caught here and there a dull, benumbing idea that he
+despised her, and that in her effort to win his love she had killed it,
+and ruined him forever.
+
+"If you think it strange," continued the major, "that, believing as I
+do, I stand here only to utter moral axioms when my duty calls me to
+pursue your lover, I beg you to believe that it is only for your sake.
+I wish to allow a reasonable time between your interview with him, and
+his escape, that shall save you from any suspicion of complicity.  Do
+not think," he added with a sad smile, as the girl made an impatient
+step toward him, "do not think I am running any risk.  The man cannot
+escape.  A cordon of pickets surrounds the camp for many miles.  He has
+not the countersign, and his face and crime are known."
+
+"Yes," said Thankful eagerly, "but a part of his own regiment guards
+the Baskingridge road."
+
+"How know you this?" said the major, seizing her hand.
+
+"He told me."
+
+Before she could fall on her knees, and beg his forgiveness, he had
+darted from the room, given an order, and returned with cheeks and eyes
+blazing.
+
+"Hear me," he said rapidly, taking the girl's two hands, "you know not
+what you've done.  I forgive you.  But this is no longer a matter of
+duty, but my personal honor.  I shall pursue this man alone.  I shall
+return with him, or not at all.  Farewell.  God bless you!"
+
+But before he reached the door she caught him again.  "Only say you
+have forgiven me once more."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Guert!"
+
+There was something in the girl's voice more than this first utterance
+of his Christian name, that made him pause.
+
+"I told--a--lie--just--now.  There is a fleeter horse in the stable
+than my mare; 'tis the roan filly in the second stall."
+
+"God bless you!"
+
+He was gone.  She waited to hear the clatter of his horse's hoofs in
+the roadway.  When Caesar came in a few moments later, to tell the news
+of Capt. Brewster's escape, the room was empty; but it was soon filled
+again by a dozen turbulent troopers.
+
+"Of course she's gone," said Sergeant Tibbitts: "the jade flew with the
+captain."
+
+"Ay, 'tis plain enough.  Two horses are gone from the stable besides
+the major's," said Private Hicks.
+
+Nor was this military criticism entirely a private one.  When the
+courier arrived at headquarters the next morning, it was to bring the
+report that Mistress Thankful Blossom, after assisting her lover to
+escape had fled with him.  "The renegade is well off our hands," said
+Gen. Sullivan gruffly: "he has saved us the public disgrace of a trial.
+But this is bad news of Major Van Zandt."
+
+"What news of the major?" asked Washington quickly.
+
+"He pursued the vagabond as far as Springfield, killing his horse, and
+falling himself insensible before Major Merton's quarters. Here he
+became speedily delirious, fever supervened, and the regimental
+surgeon, after a careful examination, pronounced his case one of
+small-pox."
+
+A whisper of horror and pity went around the room.  "Another gallant
+soldier, who should have died leading a charge, laid by the heels by a
+beggar's filthy distemper," growled Sullivan.  "Where will it end?"
+
+"God knows," said Hamilton.  "Poor Van Zandt!  But whither was he
+sent,--to the hospital?"
+
+"No: a special permit was granted in his case; and 'tis said he was
+removed to the Blossom Farm,--it being remote from neighbors,--and the
+house placed under quarantine.  Abner Blossom has prudently absented
+himself from the chances of infection, and the daughter has fled.  The
+sick man is attended only by a black servant and an ancient crone; so
+that, if the poor major escapes with his life or without disfigurement,
+pretty Mistress Bolton of Morristown need not be scandalized or
+jealous."
+
+
+
+V
+
+The ancient crone alluded to in the last chapter had been standing
+behind the window-curtains of that bedroom which had been Thankful
+Blossom's in the weeks gone by.  She did not move her head, but stood
+looking demurely, after the manner of ancient crones, over the summer
+landscape.  For the summer had come before the tardy spring was scarce
+gone, and the elms before the window no longer lisped, but were
+eloquent in the softest zephyrs.  There was the flash of birds in among
+the bushes, the occasional droning of bees in and out the open window,
+and a perpetually swinging censer of flower incense rising from below.
+The farm had put on its gayest bridal raiment; and looking at the old
+farm-house shadowed with foliage and green with creeping vines, it was
+difficult to conceive that snow had ever lain on its porches, or
+icicles swung from its mossy eaves.
+
+"Thankful!" said a voice still tremulous with weakness.
+
+The ancient crone turned, drew aside the curtains, and showed the sweet
+face of Thankful Blossom, more beautiful even in its paleness.
+
+"Come here, darling," repeated the voice.
+
+Thankful stepped to the sofa whereon lay the convalescent Major Van
+Zandt.
+
+"Tell me, sweetheart," said the major, taking her hand in his, "when
+you married me, as you told the chaplain, that you might have the right
+to nurse me, did you never think that if death spared me I might be so
+disfigured that even you, dear love, would have turned from me with
+loathing?"
+
+"That was why I did it, dear," said Thankful mischievously.  "I knew
+that the pride, and the sense of honor, and self-devotion of some
+people, would have kept them from keeping their promises to a poor
+girl."
+
+"But, darling," continued the major, raising her hand to his lips,
+"suppose the case had been reversed: suppose you had taken the disease,
+that I had recovered without disfigurement, but that this sweet face--"
+
+"I thought of that too," interrupted Thankful.  "Well, what would you
+have done, dear?" said the major, with his old mischievous smile.
+
+"I should have died," said Thankful gravely.
+
+"But how?"
+
+"Somehow.  But you are to go to sleep, and not ask impertinent and
+frivolous questions; for father is coming to-morrow."
+
+"Thankful, dear, do you know what the trees and the birds said to me as
+I lay there tossing with fever?"
+
+"No, dear."
+
+"Thankful Blossom!  Thankful Blossom!  Thankful Blossom is coming!"
+
+"Do you know what I said, sweetheart, as I lifted your dear head from
+the ground when you reeled from your horse just as I overtook you at
+Springfield?"
+
+"No, dear."
+
+"There are some things in life worth stooping for."
+
+And she winged this Parthian arrow home with a kiss.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Thankful Blossom, by Bret Harte
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