If Mr.
Faringfield received news of Winwood through his surreptitious
messenger, Bill Meadows, he kept it to himself, naturally making a
secret of his being in correspondence with General Washington.
Though Philip knew of Meadows's perilous employment, he would not risk
the fellow's discovery even to Margaret, and so refrained from laying
upon him the task of a message to her. How she found out what Meadows
was engaged in, I cannot guess, unless it was that, unheeded in the
house as she was unheeding, she chanced to overhear some talk between
her father and him, or to detect him in the bringing of some letter
which she afterward took the trouble secretly to peep into. Nor did I
ever press to know by what means she had induced him to serve as
messenger between her and Ned, and to keep this service hidden from
her father and husband and all the world. Maybe she pretended a desire
to hear of her husband without his knowing she had so far softened
toward him, and a fear of her father's wrath if he learned she made
Ned her correspondent in the matter. Perhaps she added to her gentler
means of persuasion a veiled threat of exposing Meadows to the British
if he refused. In any event, she knew that, once enlisted, he could be
relied on for the strictest obedience to her wishes. It needed not, in
his case, the additional motive for secrecy, that a knowledge of his
employment on Margaret's business would compromise him with General
Washington and Mr.
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