Fortunately,
and thanks to our insignificance, we had been overlooked in the first
act of attainder, and, taking warning by that, my mother had
gratefully accepted Mr. Faringfield's offer to buy our home, for which
we had thereafter paid him rent. Thus we had nothing to confiscate,
when the war was over. As for Mr. Faringfield, he was on the
triumphant side of Independence, which he had supported with secret
contributions from the first; of course he was not to be held
accountable for the treason of his eldest son, and the open service of
poor Tom on the king's side.
My mother feared dreadful things when the victorious rebels should
take possession--imprisonment, trial for treason, and similar horrors;
and she was for sailing to England with the British army. But I flatly
refused to go, pretending I was no such coward, and that I would leave
when I was quite ready. I was selfish in this, of course; but I could
not bring myself to go so far from Fanny. Our union was still as
uncertain a possibility as ever. Only one thing was sure: she would
not leave her parents at present.
The close of the war did not bring Philip back to us at once. On that
day when, the last of the British vessels having gone down the bay,
with the last British soldier aboard, the strangely empty-looking town
took on a holiday humour, and General Washington rode in by the Bowery
lane, with a number of his officers, and a few war-worn troops to make
up a kind of procession of entry, and the stars and stripes were run
up at the Battery--on that day of sadness, humiliation, and
apprehension to those of us loyalists who had dared stay, I would have
felt like cheering with the crowd, had Philip been one of those who
entered.
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