For long years afterward, the girl remembered that strange night trip across the two ferries on the Passaic and the Hackensack rivers—obtained through the influence of Parson Chapman, for it was a stern rule of the ferryman to make daylight trips only—across the great swamps, with their salt-marsh odors and their gloomy cedar woods, up over Bergen Heights and down to Paulus Hook and the ferry there. When at last they reached the inn at Paulus Hook and discovered that the ferryman was out fishing and would not return for another hour or so, according to his wife. Parson Chapman left them and went back to Newark; and Sally, gazing up into his kind face, knew that she was saying good-bye to one of her best friends. Suddenly she gathered courage to ask him something which she had been mulling over in her mind, wondering if she dared mention the subject.
"Oh, sir," she whispered, glancing cautiously toward Mistress Van Houten, whose back was turned as she stared out across the dark water of the mighty Hudson River, "oh, sir, an ye ever meet the—the red-coat concerning whom Uzal Ball did tell o' this night, will ye—wilt write me o't?"
Parson Chapman slapped his thigh. "Why, Sally, I did forget!" he exclaimed with a rueful laugh. "Had ye not mentioned the subject, I would ne'er ha' told ye that, as I was leaving Master Hedden's, when ye rode on, this even, a post rider did arrive
