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