“Hundreds of feet?” echoed Miss Moppet.  “Oh, Betty, do I live to hear you tell a fairy tale as if it were real?”

“Read your primer, and you will learn many wonderful things,” quoth Betty, snatching up the child in her arms.  “I shall take you straightway to bed, for we must be up betimes in the morning, you know.”

Very carefully and tenderly did Betty bathe Moppet’s sweet little face, comb and smooth the pretty curling hair, so like her own save in color, and then run the brass warming-pan, heated by live coals, through the sheets lest her tender body suffer even a slight chill.  And when Moppet was safely lodged in bed Betty sat down beside her to hold her hand until she dropped asleep.  But between excitement and grief the child’s eyes would not close, and she asked question after question, until Betty finally announced she should answer no more.

Moppet lay still for some moments, and just as Betty was beginning to fancy that the long, dark eyelashes worn curling downward in sleepy comfort the dark blue eyes opened, and a dancing imp of mischief gleamed from their depths in Betty’s face.

“When you meet Captain Yorke, Betty,” whispered Moppet, “be sure you tell him how Oliver and Josiah hunted and hunted that morning, and how I never, never told”—­

“Moppet,” said Betty, turning a vivid pink in the firelight, “how can you!”—­

“Yes,” pursued Moppet relentlessly, “and you give him my love—­heaps of it—­and I just hope he may never get taken a prisoner during the whole war again.”

“Go to sleep, dear,” answered Betty, biting her lip; but her cheeks did not grow cool until long after the soft, regular breathing told that her little sister had gone into the land of dreams.

The Wolcott household was up early that cold winter morning, when Mrs. Seymour’s coach, with its pair of sturdy, strong gray horses, drew up at the front door.  It took some twenty minutes to bestow Betty’s trunk and boxes on the rumble behind, during which time Mrs. Seymour alighted and received all manner of charges and advice from Miss Euphemia, who, now that Betty was fairly on the wing, felt much sinking of heart over her departure.  Mrs. Seymour, a pretty young matron, whose natural gayety of spirit was only subdued by the anxiety she was suffering in regard to her only brother, now a prisoner in New York (and for whose exchange she was bringing great influence to bear in all directions), listened with much outward deference and inward impatience to the stately dame, and turned with an air of relief to General Wolcott when he announced that all was ready for their departure, and with much courtliness offered his hand to conduct her to her coach.

“That you will take the best care of my daughter I am assured, madam,” said the gallant gentleman.  “It is our great good fortune to have found this opportunity and your kind escort, for owing to the shortness of time I have not been able to notify my son-in-law of Betty’s coming.  But as you are going into the city yourself, I depend upon you to keep her with you until you can place her safely in Gulian Verplanck’s hands.  I trust that you have General Washington’s pass close by you?  It is quite possible that you may need it even before you reach White Plains; there are many marauding parties who infest the country beyond us.”