There was a fire in the middle of the space; and over it, spitted on a ramrod, hung half a dozen medium-sized hornpouts with a savoury-looking white froth edging their crinkled tails. Hunkered down before them was Zelph, black and worried-looking.

In the shade of one of the piles of lumber, so stacked as to leave a wide shelf about two feet from the ground, sat Ellen Phipps, knitting a gray stocking. When she looked up and saw Arnold standing in the rear opening of the tent, she leaned forward to examine the hornpout. “Move them back, Zelph,” she said. “Don’t let them get cold.”

I think perhaps I hadn’t fully known until that moment what had ailed me for so long—why I had felt such a strange restlessness: a restlessness so powerful that I seemed to have had it within me forever. But in that moment I knew, and knew beyond any doubt. I knew there was no one so beautiful as Ellen; knew I would never again have a happy moment unless I could be near her. There was something of suffocation about the feeling for her that suddenly swelled and throbbed within me.

“So you’re the lady!” Arnold said. He whipped off his hat and made her a quick bow. “I had to see for myself when I heard one of my men had been fortunate; but I couldn’t dream how fortunate, ma’am! We seldom find gems of loveliness in these forests.”

Hitherto, I had seen Arnold hard at work, in the company of men. I had found him pleasant and considerate; but it had never occurred to me he could be as courtly as any of the be-ruffled Englishmen Nathaniel and I had seen at Ranelagh. I now saw that he could; and I well understood, later, how he won the heart and hand of such a belle as Peggy Shippen, daughter of the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania.

Ellen’s eyes opened wide at Arnold’s speech. “Why, that’s beautiful! I could listen all day to such talk!” She glanced at the hornpout, at Nathaniel, standing close behind the general: then at those of us who had crowded up on either side of the tent. When her eyes met mine, I felt a singular weakness in my knees.

Arnold went to sit beside her on the shelf of ship timbers. “Well,” he said, “I venture to say you’ll have your share of such talk. I think it would come natural to any man—if you looked at him, ma’am.”

His speech was airy; but his eyes, studying her, were intent. I saw that her quiet self-possession amused and pleased him.

Ellen pulled a needle from the gray stocking, adjusted the stitches carefully on the remaining needles, and glanced thoughtfully at me.