TOWARD THE END of January 1778, General Slocum appeared at Liberty Tavern early on a weekday morning. There was no one in the taproom. Slocum ordered his usual pint of stonewall, sat down before the fire, and asked to see Kemble.

Jonathan Gifford sent Barney up to his son’s room. Since his return from the saltworks, Kemble had been avoiding his father, agonizing over what he should do about Slocum. He refused to ask his father’s advice, which meant that Jonathan Gifford kept a wary distance while trying to find out what was troubling his son. He got little more than monosyllables from attempts to converse and sadly concluded that Kemble’s sullen isolation was aimed at him.

Barney returned to the taproom alone. “The lad says he’s busy and has no time to see you.”

“What the devil,” said Slocum, “he’s not going to let that little misunderstanding we had a month ago set him down now, is he? Tell him I’m here to make him a fair offer.”

“What would that be, General?” Jonathan Gifford asked. “Why, to buy out his share of Kemble Manor, in advance of sale. And his sister’s too.”

“If you want to make an offer, make it to me. I’m still Kate’s legal guardian. She won’t be twenty-one until June.”

Slocum hesitated. He had not expected to deal with Jonathan Gifford. “I ain’t no lawyer. But I understand they have some share in the place, since old Skinner never managed to sire nothing off his wife - ”

“As far as I know, General, the manor isn’t for sale.”

“It will be soon enough. The honorable Provincial Congress has appointed commissioners to take charge of confiscated estates, and ordered local courts to begin condemnation proceedings without the waste Of a day. As I hear it, the manor will be condemned. at the first sitting of our court of general sessions next week.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Mrs. Skinner has hired a good lawyer, and intends to plead her dowry rights to prevent the con-’ demnation. I believe Kemble and Kate will join her in the suit, declaring themselves ready to yield their rights to her.”

Jonathan Gifford did not bother to tell Slocum that he was the architect of this strategy. His surprise at the news of the manor’s condemnation was also pretense. He had been expecting this crisis ever since Charles and Anthony Skinner fled to New York. None of this concern was visible in the cool gambler’s face he showed to General Slocum. But Slocum was not easily intimidated. “Gifford, don’t be a damn fool. What chance have you got? She can quote the Declaration of Independence until doomsday, she’s still the wife of the second worst Tory in the state and mother of the worst one. And your daughter ain’t exactly a living endorsement of patriotism. If I want to go to the trouble, I can find some hard things to say about your boy’s loyalty too. After all, he lives in this damn tavern, which was thick with your fellow British officers for the best part of eight months. He conducted himself as a damn spy when he visited my saltworks, and only my friendship prevented them Yankees from hanging him.”

“I don’t know what the hell you are talking about, Slocum.”

“I’m telling you to sell now, at a good price, and drop that stupid suit. If you let things go on, I will get the whole farm without paying them a cent for it. Do you think there is a judge in this county who don’t take orders from me? Ain’t they sitting at my appointment? Don’t my Continental troops protect them? Wake up, Gifford.”

“Maybe the confiscation commissioners will take a different approach.”

Slocum laughed heartily: “Do you know who they are? There is Matt Leary as chief, my cousin Joe as the second, and honest George Winston as the third.”

Leary was the owner of the grog shop to which Slocum kept directing customers, largely in vain. His cousin Joseph Slocum was an illiterate drunk, one of the few who could tolerate Leary’s liquors. George Winston was the major of our militia regiment, a total Slocum toady.

“I see what you mean,” Jonathan Gifford said. “In that case, you won’t be the only bidder on the manor, General Slocum.”

“Oh, who is going to join? Old George Kemble? From what I hear, he will be pawning his plate to repair what is left of his house, after the Yankees paid him a visit.”

“I’m going to buy it. I don’t see any other way to protect my children’s property.”

“What the devil, Gifford . . . ?” Slocum added some choice obscenities to this opening curse and then tried threats. “Stay out of Slocum’s way, Gifford. There will be a time when you need him - a time when he won’t be there.”

“The way your brave Yankees are protecting us, I will take my chances with Barney here and Black Sam for a garrison.”

Slocum finished his drink and rose for a farewell salute. “Goddamn you, Gifford, you don’t want that place for those brats. You want it to hold far that Tory bastard Skinner. He has slipped you the money. At the very least he will have the laugh by forcing Slocum to pay three times what it’s worth. You are a goddamn Tory stalking-horse.”

Slocum departed, roaring. Jonathan Gifford went upstairs and told Kemble what had just transpired in the taproom. “You are over twenty-one,” he said stiffly. “I probably should have consulted you. But since you said you didn’t want to see him - ”

“You told him exactly what I would have told him.”

“You no longer are - enthusiastic about General Slocum?”

“I will not put up with your sarcasm, Father. That is just what I thought you’d say.”

“I had no intention of being sarcastic. I – ”

“No, it just comes out that way. You can’t help it. You must tell little Kemble he is wrong as usual.”

“Let’s try starting over. What happened between you and Slocum down at the saltworks?”

Kemble told his father the story. His language was full of halting, disconnected phrases. But his anger drove him to the grisly final scene, when Slocum almost shot him.

“The son of a bitch!” Jonathan Gifford said. “He has overreached himself this time, by God. I think we can bring him down, Kemble.”

“It will ruin the Cause in this part of the state.”

“I hope the Cause is larger than General Slocum. If it isn’t we are all in trouble. We’ll beat him at the polls, Kemble. We’ll tie that saltworks and that Continental regiment around his neck, like a pair of lead anchors.”

Those were brave words, but for the time being, General Slocum remained in charge of our political and military affairs. As he predicted, the court of general sessions, meeting with the courthouse surrounded by Major Yates and his regulars, condemned Kemble Manor and a dozen other estates as the property of “virulent enemies of this country” and ordered them sold at public auction. The court also issued an order, putting the Kemble Manor gristmill in immediate control of “the military power of this county” - i.e., General Slocum - in order to assure its continued operation. All fees were to be paid to the General, who would pass them on to the government, after deducting his “expenses.” He promptly appointed one of his cousins as his deputy and threw out Samson Tucker, whom Caroline Skinner had hired to run the mill.

That lady did not accept the news of General Slocum’s preliminary victory with philosophic resignation. “I will burn this house to the ground before I let that man get his hands on it,” she said.

“I hope it won’t come to that,” Jonathan Gifford said with a smile. He did not stop to analyze it, but he liked her most when she was angry. She was so small and fragile, and her defiance was so large.

“Why are you smiling, Captain Gifford?”

“I’m imagining the expression on Slocum’s face if he laid out twenty or so thousand dollars for the manor and then learned you had burned it down.”

“It would be amusing if it were not so serious,” Caroline said. “Isn’t it outrageous, Captain Gifford, that a woman forfeits her property rights the moment she signs a marriage contract? If this country is serious about those opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, they ought to correct that inequality as the first act of the legislature. They ought to correct it now.”

Jonathan Gifford nodded wearily. He had had this conversation before. “I told you I would write to Governor Livingston about it. I got his answer yesterday. Every county is practically slavering over loyalists’ lands, and a lot of the saliva is coming from the legislators themselves. They are not going to let anyone introduce novel ideas that might complicate things.”

“In the eyes of the law I do not exist as a person. Do you think that is fair or honest or even sensible, Captain Gifford, especially when I have proved I can run this place at a profit?”

Captain Gifford felt a need to separate himself from that part of the male sex on which her indignation was being so righteously poured. “I am no lawyer,” he said. “Let me assure you, Mrs. Skinner, you exist as a person for me.”

“I - I hope so,” she said, her anger dwindling into feelings so different, and so visible, he could only avoid naming them with an effort of the will.

“I’ve brought you the latest newspapers,” he said, trying to change the subject. He took a sheaf of them from the inside pocket of his cloak. At her request, he had been bringing her periodic collections of American papers for several months now. He had plenty of them, left by travelers passing from east and west, north and south. Soon they were spending several pleasant hours together each week discussing them. He was amazed by her knowledge of English and Continental European politics. She knew all the factions at the court of France and all the party leaders in the English Parliament. Politics had always fascinated Jonathan Gifford and before he realized what was happening, a whole afternoon often slipped away. But when she asked him to stay for supper, he invariably refused, pleading business at the tavern. Much as he enjoyed her company, he obviously feared enjoying it too much.

“Is there any news in them?” she asked, picking up the first few papers and scanning them.

“Rumors of a French alliance, not much else.”

“I dislike that idea. I would rather sec us win this war with no help from Europe. Then we could begin a real revolution in this country. We would have the authority to root out all the Old World’s hypocrisies and prejudices that afflict us.”

She was as fanatic as Kemble about the Revolution, Jonathan Gifford thought. But when Kemble talked this way he inevitably felt hackles of disagreement rising. He had never had much faith in changing the world for the better, having grown up in Ireland, where things had changed steadily for the worse for generations. Here he was for some mysterious reason inclined to do the opposite - agree with almost anything Mrs. Skinner said.

“You may be right. I’m sure you are,” he said. “But we can’t do much about the big war. We must fight our own little battles as best we can. Let’s concentrate on keeping Kemble Manor out of Daniel Slocum’s hands. If you hear anything about a public sale or receive any notice of one, let me know immediately. Send Sukey on your horse.”

“Do you think he will try some trick? The law very clearly specifies a public sale.”

“General Slocum has shown very little interest in obeying the law since I’ve known him. But at the very least, a notice will have to be posted somewhere. I don’t see how they could skip the taverns. I’ve asked every innkeeper in this part of the state to be on the watch for me.”

We still lacked a newspaper in our part of New Jersey. The New York papers that we read before the war were now all royalist - and notices in taverns, churches, and other public places were the only way the government could communicate with the people.

Jonathan Gifford seriously underestimated General Slocum’s capacity for chicanery. On a cold wet day toward the end of March 1778, we sat around the fireplace in Liberty Tavern’s taproom worrying over the alarming rumors about General Washington’s army starving at Valley Forge. We were roundly damning the greedy Pennsylvania farmers, who had had their best harvest in years, for refusing to take paper money for their produce. Kemble declared that if he were General Washington, he would seize food from these crypto-traitors at the point of the bayonet. Jonathan Gifford disagreed. One of the things that impressed him most about the way the Americans were fighting the war was Washington’s steady adherence to the civilian control of Congress. “Once you give soldiers the right to take anything with a bayonet, it is hard to draw a line. You’re on your way to a military dictatorship.”

“When you have legislatures that let men like Slocum make fortunes, maybe the only way you can set things right is with bayonets,” Kemble said.

A traveler, soaked and shivering from the weather, came in. We made room for him at the fireplace. He was an inspector from the Commissary Department headquarters in Trenton, touring New Jersey to spur the deputy commissaries and quartermasters into activity. We began damning these characters as a disgrace to the Revolution. Our local pair, Beebe and Beatty, were typical of the breed. They had gotten into politics with Slocum and bought only from farmers who sided with him. Beebe was drunk much of the time and let Beatty buy for both of them. He had been a plasterer in Philadelphia and barely knew wheat from barley. With Slocum’s help they had lately gotten into speculating with the government’s money. Jonathan Gifford told the inspector how it worked.

“They have resold a lot of the corn they bought to John Barrows, down on Middletown Point. He’s got eight or ten barns practically exploding with corn that he’s holding for a jump in price.”

“What can I do?” the inspector said. “They have friends, do you know what I mean? I just left them an hour ago at Leary’s tavern, witnessing General Slocum’s buying of Kemble Manor.”

“What?” said Jonathan Gifford, leaping to his feet.

“Aye, Leary is commissioner of Tory estates, haven’t you heard? They’re having the first sale today.”

“Kemble,” said Jonathan Gifford, “tell Sam to saddle three horses. You and Barney be ready to ride with me in five minutes. And bring your guns.”

He limped to the bar, took two beautifully embossed pistols from their box on the bottom shelf, and stuffed them into the waistband of his breeches. In five minutes he and Kemble and Barney were pounding down the muddy road toward Amboy like the leaders of a cavalry charge. They maintained the pace, although Kemble was sure it would kill either them or the horses, until they sloshed to a stop in front of Leary’s tavern. Inside they found General Slocum, the three confiscation commissioners, and several followers sitting around the otherwise empty taproom clinking glasses. Deputy Commissary Beebe and Deputy Quartermaster Beatty were in the midst of congratulatory gulps. Slocum and his scrawny Scottish partner McIntosh were presiding over the merry party, looking as smug as a pair of pirates who had just captured a Manila galleon.

“Well,” Slocum boomed, “if it ain’t my old friend Gifford and his patriot son. How goes the Revolution at Liberty Tavern?”

“I just heard - by accident - that confiscated estates were being sold here today.”

“They were,” Slocum said, “but the business is done. You’re too late, friend Gifford.”

“The hell you say,” Jonathan Gifford snarled. “What kind of a public sale do you call it when no one in our part of the county has even heard about it?”

“Why, the commissioner here sent a crier along the roads a week or two ago. You must have been busy when he came by Liberty Tavern.”

“Mr. Leary,” Captain Gifford said to the snub-nosed, slack-mouthed Irishman, “I’m here to bid on Kemble Manor.”

“You heard what the General said,” replied Leary, “‘tis sold. The sale is over. Here’s the new owners.”

He pointed to Slocum and McIntosh.

“This is a goddamned fraud,” Jonathan Gifford said. “What was the sale price?”

“Two thousand six hundred dollars.”

About one fifth of what the manor was worth. Kemble had seen his father almost lose his temper in the past. It had been a frightening sight. But nothing in his previous experience compared to the rage that was suffusing Jonathan Gifford’s face now.

“We know why you’re here, Gifford,” Slocum said. “You’re playing a little game with your friend the Squire in New York. You protect his property over here in case the Americans win, he protects your neck in case the British win.”

“That is a damn lie. It is Mrs. Skinner I am trying to protect.”

There were several guffaws. “Why, that’s one piece of old Skinner’s property you can have, Gifford. Maybe you’ve already got it. You spend a lot of time with her, from what I hear.”

Another explosion of guffaws. Jonathan Gifford stood, head slightly lowered, enduring the derision. In a low strangled voice he asked Commissioner Leary to let him examine the papers covering the sale of Kemble Manor. Leary’s eyes darted uneasily to Slocum, who gave him permission with a nod.

“They are all in order, Gifford,” Slocum said. “Perfectly legal. There ain’t a damn thing you can do about it.”

Leary opened a small battered trunk beneath his chair and fished out a sheaf of documents. Jonathan Gifford paged through them carefully. Then with grim deliberation he ripped them into ten or twenty pieces and threw them into the air.

Slocum was on his feet roaring, his followers likewise. But they stopped in mid-lunge. Jonathan Gifford had a pistol in each hand. “This is the only language a swine like you understands, Slocum.”

With his left-hand pistol, he gestured to Leary. “Get behind your bar, Commissioner, and reopen this meeting. I want to make a bid on Kemble Manor.”

Leary looked as though be might faint. His feet remained glued to the floor. Jonathan Gifford placed the muzzle of the pistol under his nose. “This gun has a hair trigger, Leary. It could go off by accident any second.”

With a gasp of terror, Leary scuttled behind the long plank table that served as his bar.

“Where is the secretary?” Jonathan Gifford asked Slocum. Not a man spoke.

“Kemble, you will act as secretary.”

Kemble took a seat at a table. He found fresh paper and ink in Leary’s trunk.

“Open the sale, Commissioner.”

With a gulp, Leary obeyed. Jonathan Gifford bid ten thousand dollars for Kemble Manor. McIntosh offered fifteen. Jonathan Gifford offered twenty. McIntosh offered twenty-five. Jonathan Gifford offered thirty.

Whining mightily, the Scotsman quit the contest. Jonathan Gifford posted bonds for thirty thousand dollars, giving Liberty Tavern and its surrounding acres as surety. He was risking everything he owned in the world. Kemble and Barney were looking at him with disbelief on their faces. How could he explain it to them? It was impossible. A prudent man did not risk everything he had spent his life painfully saving and building because a woman once said to him: I am for independence. True, he was protecting Kate and Kemble’s inheritance, too, but that could be regained in the courts. He was not thinking about them. It was the pride and the loneliness and the courage of that small straight-backed woman whom he could never touch, it was for her and no one else that he was risking everything.

He was also making a powerful enemy. But any anxiety on that score vanished in the rage that engulfed him when. Slocum began shouting. “You’ll hang for this, Gifford. Everyone swears you’re a British agent. We’ll hang you for it.”

“Slocum, you keep trying to insult me. You can’t do it. A gentleman cannot be insulted by a swine. But you have also insulted the reputation of a lady whom I happen to admire. For that, you will answer to one of these pistols. The other is ready for your hand, wherever and whenever you are ready to meet me.”

Slocum looked around the room. It was a test of his courage that he could not dodge, if he wanted to keep his reputation as a soldier. “I am ready whenever you are, Gifford. One of these gentlemen will inform you where and when,” he growled.

With another wave of his pistol, Jonathan Gifford persuaded Commissioner Leary to sign the papers, confirming the sale of Kemble Manor. “We will take these with us,” he said, stuffing the documents in the inner pocket of his cloak, “and return copies to the commissioner in a day or two. In the meantime, General Slocum, I will look forward to hearing from you.”

“You shall, Gifford. And I hope every man here will resolve if I fall to take proper revenge on this British assassin.”

The news that Jonathan Gifford and General Slocum were to fight a duel spread through our district as rapidly as a battle report. Only Caroline Skinner in her isolation at the manor house failed to hear of it. Jonathan Gifford did not mention it when he visited her the following day and told her she no longer needed to fear eviction. “I am your landlord now,” he said with a smile.

He gave her a much laundered version of his clash with Slocum and his crew. He did not even bother to mention the astronomical price he had been forced to pay. But Caroline’s first question was the cost. She was hoping she could pay off the debt with the profits from the next harvest, if all went well. When she heard $30,000, she cried out in shock.

“Mr. Gifford, that is three times what the place is worth.”

“We only have to pay fifty per cent in cash,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “I can easily raise the money in Philadelphia. If you do as well with your hired hands next year and the year after, we should be able to pay it off.”

“But if I don’t - if the weather - ”

“Land values will boom after the war. We could sell off part of the farm.”

“But if prices fall and the state demands the money you would be forced to sell everything you own.”

Her voice dwindled away as she grasped the full meaning of those words.

“Life is a risky business,” Jonathan Gifford said. “We can only do what we think is right and abide the consequences.”

As usual, she begged him to stay for supper. Also as usual he pleaded business at the tavern and retreated. Upstairs in her bedroom, Caroline Skinner gazed into her mirror. Two dark red spots of color glowed in her cheeks. “He did it for you,” she whispered wonderingly to that face which had always seemed plain and uninteresting to her, “he did it for you. He loves you.”

For a moment she danced about the room, hugging herself in wild exultation. But in another moment she plummeted from this height to the deepest despair she had yet known. He loved her. But he would never admit it. He would never speak the words as long as Charles Skinner was alive.

That evening she sat down to supper at the table loaned to her by Jonathan Gifford. Charles Skinner had taken with him to New York the ormolu clock, the red and blue china vases, the fretted Chippendale mahogany sideboards and cabinets which had once made theirs the most opulent dining room in New Jersey. Caroline was so dazed by the shock she had just received, she paid no attention to the meal, which was one of Sukey’s better efforts, a fish chowder full of succulent lobster and crab meat, clams, oysters, eels, and other denizens of the deep.

“Didn’t you like it, mistress?” Sukey asked, as she removed Caroline’s almost untouched plate.

“It was very good, Sukey. But I have no appetite today.”

“I suppose you are worried about Captain Gifford.”

“How - how did you know?” Caroline asked.

“I was over at the Talbots’ today, teaching their people to read. One of them - the one I told you I liked - George, was just back from the tavern. Everybody’s talking about the duel.”

“The duel?”

Numbly, Caroline sat there while Sukey told her that Captain Gifford was meeting General Slocum at dawn tomorrow in a field off the Amboy road. “They say the General insulted you when Captain Gifford bought the manor. George asked me if it was true. I told him if he even thought such a thing again I would scratch his eyes out.”

In anguish Caroline fled to her room and sank to her knees. She had never been devout. Again it was a reaction against Sarah, who would sin extravagantly one day and repent even more extravagantly the next. Caroline’s mastery of herself had extinguished those wild yearnings far the absolute which have become the fashion - and disgrace - of our age. But now love was loose in her soul, awakening a fervor she never knew she possessed. She prayed wildly for Jonathan Gifford’s safety. A moment later she was asking herself how she could pray for such a thing when the reason for her plea was a desire to sin - there was no other word for it in the eyes of religion - with the man for whom she prayed.

Dear God, I cannot help it. Please accept both the sin and the prayer in the name of love.

Until midnight, Caroline paced the floor repeating this strangest of prayers. Then, with an inner certainty that transcended all other realities she knew what to do.

She went swiftly to the back bedroom and knocked on Sukey’s door. She was awake in an instant. “Sukey,” Caroline said, “I want you to take the horse and ride to Liberty Tavern. Ask for Captain Gifford, no one else, and tell him someone is trying to break into the house.”

Sukey was devoted to Caroline. But this command was too strange to obey without question. “How can I get to the barn, mistress?”

“There is no one there. I have to see Captain Gifford, I want to tell him something that - that could save his life. This is the only way I can be sure he’ll come.”

The March wind howled through the bare trees on the drive. Caroline rushed back to her room and took a pair of fur-lined gloves and an ermine-trimmed scarlet cloak from her clothes press. She gave them to Sukey.

“Wear these. They will keep out some of the cold. You can have them.”

Sukey put them on but declined to accept them as a gift. “If it is as important as you say, mistress, I am glad to go.”

A half-hour later hoofbeats came up the drive at a furious pace. In a moment Jonathan Gifford burst into the hall, a pistol in his hand. “Where is he, where did you hear the noise?” he asked.

“There is no one - there was no one, Captain Gifford,” Caroline said. She was wearing her best night robe, light blue lamb’s wool with appliquéd dark red roses.

The winter wind prowled the grounds outside the house. Jonathan Gifford’s face darkened. “Then why - ”

“Because - because I had to see you Captain Gifford - I had to be sure you would come. I told Sukey - that lie.”

“Why . . .”

“Because I just learned that you will be risking your life at sunrise.”

“Mrs. Skinner, please don’t – ”

“ - for another lie.”

“A lie?” Jonathan Gifford said.

“You are defending - my honor, such as it is. And your own because of insults you received while acting on my behalf. You wish to prove to all the world that you acted from the purest - most disinterested motives. Captain Gifford, I think - I hope - that is a lie.”

“Mrs. Skinner, are you out of your senses? There’s no reason - ”

“I love you, Captain Gifford. For the first time in my life, I am in love. With you. I think - you love me too. I brought you here to confess my love - and to claim yours before you deny it - wipe it out - with blood. If you kill Daniel Slocum tomorrow in my name, we shall never be able to look each other in the eyes again. It will be Mrs. Skinner and Captain Gifford to our miserable lonely graves.”

Explosions of disbelief, of refusal thundered in Jonathan Gifford’s soul. Memory smashed like a river in spring flood against his rock-hard will. This woman in the sunlit garden saying I am for independence; this same small woman in this hall defying her huge angry husband, saying with tears in her eyes, if you turn against me, too. Her husband’s savage words, a dry bitch with a barren womb; her bitter summary of her marriage as a business arrangement now gone bankrupt. Fighting these images was a lifetime of denial, of discipline. He heard himself, a disembodied voice in the echoing hall.

“I have felt - ”

The Captain was no wordsman. He took the lady in his arms. No, that is utterly inadequate. He enveloped her in a swooping, annihilating embrace that was both a capture by storm and a surrender on his part - and on the lady’s part.

That first night they were as cautious, as uncertain with each other as newlyweds of nineteen. But though their bodies had not yet learned the lesson, their spirits sensed a union of enormous intensity and depth. Jonathan Gifford found it difficult to accept this intensity. It threatened a deep, stubborn reserve of selfhood which had enabled him to withstand the destructive spirit of Sarah Kemble Stapleton. Complicating his feelings was the way Caroline threw aside all the sobriety, the self-control that had seemed to him the essence of her character. The Captain’s youthful fondness for wild women had been cured by ten years of marriage to Sarah. He had to learn that the same woman can be both wild and sober, passionate and self-controlled.

“Oh, Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan,” Caroline said. “How I have longed to call you that. So many times I stood by my window and whispered it to myself. Would you call me Caroline? Not once, but a dozen times.”

To his surprise, Jonathan Gifford found it easy to do, twelve times. “And once more for good luck,” he whispered. “Caroline.” Each time the name slipped from his lips, he felt it become a kind of electrical current, a device born of some arcane science, binding him to this woman for the rest of his life. He knew in the same moment that he was putting the thing he treasured most, his philosophic calm, his peace of mind, yes, even his very soul in mortal peril because if her husband returned and reclaimed her, it would plunge him into a torment that would make his agony with Sarah seem almost a benediction.

“When we are alone we must ban ‘Gifford’ and ‘Skinner’ from our vocabularies,” Caroline said.

This sounds commonplace now, but it was a new idea in 1778. Only in the informal, not to say irregular atmosphere of the frontier did husbands and wives call each other by their first names.

“It is American,” she told him with the same awesome intensity. “That perpetual Mr. and Mrs. is a stupid European custom. Oh, Jonathan, I want to love you, I shall love you with all my heart”

“Until tonight, I did not think it was possible for me to do that. I tried once - and failed. I never thought - or hoped - I would try again.”

“You mean with Sarah. We must not flinch from using her name, even here, Jonathan. She haunts us both. But perhaps we can lay her ghost - by laying her sister. Oh, I’ve shocked you - ”

“No,” Jonathan Gifford said, although he was shocked. It was something Sarah might have said. She was as ribald as a Havana whore in bed.

“My, thoughts often run to the obscene. Sometimes when I stood in company with you, I stripped you naked in my mind. It was a game Sarah taught me to play. I pretended to disapprove - you had to do that with Sarah or she devoured you.”

“Yes,” said Jonathan Gifford ruefully, both a confession. and a fact. “I see she treated everyone the same way.”

“Everyone who tried to love her. That filled her soul with horror - that anyone could love her. Because she knew she was a monster. So she set out to destroy that love, all the time protesting that she could not get enough of it.”

“That’s enough about Sarah for the time being.”

“Let’s not regret her, Jonathan, nor mourn her. For all the pain and torment she caused us, she awakened in us both, I think, the idea, the importance of love. So many people go through their whole lives without ever thinking about it.”

“I tried to do that,” Jonathan Gifford said, remembering his army years.

“Without this - this time with you - I could never have said - what I just said. It would have killed me.”

He saw she was forgiving the cruel, reckless woman who had been her sister. How could he do less? For the first time he realized that until he did forgive Sarah, he would never be able to love this woman - or any woman - with his whole heart. It is a strange truism that men are inclined to make one woman become the paradigm of all women in their minds and hearts - and women are equally inclined to do it with men. If that one woman has been a destroyer, a figure of darkness, she can cast a fatal shadow on all the other women in his life, past and future. The strangeness of this is redoubled when we think how readily men accept the fact that some of their own kind are scoundrels or cowards or sadists while others are loyal, honest, generous. Women are equally adept at perusing and judging their own sex without sweeping negative conclusions.

Jonathan Gifford, a man who did not change his mind easily, struggled painfully to accept this, wisdom. From the effort came another insight into himself. “I don’t think I have - ever really believed in happiness,” he said. “A: modest contentment was all I thought a man could hope for in this world, and I had failed to win even that - until tonight.”

He stroked her thick black hair while his other hand found her soft seat of love. “Caroline,” he whispered with no urging needed now. “Caroline.”

They made love and dozed and made love again.

“Oh, what gluttonous flesh-ridden creatures we are, and I am so glad of it,” Caroline said as the first traces of dawn paled the windows. “We have years of unloving and misloving to make up.”

“Is that dawn?” Jonathan Gifford said.

“I am afraid it is.”

“I must go.”

“Where?”

“To meet General Slocum.”

“That’s impossible! I thought - ”

“That I would stay here in bed with you and let him give me the laugh from Amboy to Cape May? I thought, Mrs. - I mean Caroline - you knew me better. What you said downstairs - the words that brought us up here - were true. But they did not eliminate General Slocum from the scheme of things. I have a reputation to uphold - a reputation as a man. You may say it is childish, to rest a reputation on powder and ball, but we cannot completely ignore the ways of the world.”

“If he kills you I will hunt him down and blow his brains out.”

“You will do no such thing. You will have to take charge of this property and the tavern, too. If the war lasts, you will have a devil of a time saving either of them. Kate and Kemble don’t have half a business head between them - ”

“Stop! Stop! You are talking as if you were already dead.”

“A duel is an unpredictable thing. The best shot in the world can be killed by a fool with a hand that shakes like a case of palsy. I swore I’d never fight another one - after Havana.”

He had his breeches on and his boots. He began buttoning his shirt. “I - I had wronged, as they put it, the daughter of one of the best families. She had been more than willing. But her brother challenged me. They said he was twenty-one. He looked fifteen. His father, or the girl, or someone had obviously put him up to it. He was terrified. I planned to pink him in the arm. But as we fired he panicked and lunged to one side. I hit him in the heart.”

Beneath her warm quilts, Caroline Skinner felt cold clutch at her. This was not the man she loved, this stranger who talked in that flat somber voice about killing and being killed. She had seen him as the wounded victim of her sister’s cruelty. This man reeked of death. But she vowed that she would love him in spite of it, she would somehow help him triumph over the years of war which had, seemed to end for him not in glory but a kind of grim loathing of it all, a loathing that included himself.

“You see what a noble fellow you’ve fallen in love with. Maybe now you won’t be so sorry if. General Slocum scores a lucky hit.”

“I will die!”

She sprang from the bed naked into the cold to fling her arms around him.

“I promise you - I will do everything I can to prevent it from coming to bullets.”

“Let me fix you some breakfast.”

He shook his head. “A bullet in an empty belly does less damage. I will get a little rum at the tavern.”

He rode away, leaving her in torment. At Liberty Tavern, Barney, Kemble, and Dr. Davie were waiting for him. Barney had the dueling pistols oiled and ready in their ivory case. He was nervous and talkative, Kemble somber and silent.

“Begorra, if it don’t seem like old times, Captain, with half the regiment betting everything but their hats on you. I never had the honor to serve you in this way before, not being a gentleman born.”

“Don’t worry. We’re not dealing with a gentleman.”

Jonathan Gifford turned abruptly to Kemble. “I hope your new country - our new country - will pass a law, making this a crime.”

“Let me second that motion,” Dr. Davie said. “I’ve been on too damn many of these expeditions. I never saw one that made sense.”

Kemble did not agree with them. The College of New Jersey was heavily attended by Southerners and he had imbibed their high ideas about honor. “How else can a gentleman defend himself - or a lady - from men like Slocum?”

“I don’t know. A horsewhip or a fist seems better on the whole. You may get your hands dirty, but you get dirty dealing with swine anyway. I just want you to know - as your father-that I have done this often enough to loathe it. I hope you never do it.”

As usual when Jonathan Gifford and Kemble talked as father and son, the air was charged with suppressed emotion, Also as usual, there was no agreement. “I don’t see how I could refuse if someone called me out,” Kemble said.

General Slocum and two friends were waiting for them in a field beside a burned out farmhouse about midway to Amboy. His seconds turned out to be Deputy Commissary Beebe and Deputy Quartermaster Beatty. They were wearing their buff and blue army uniforms. General Slocum was also wearing his uniform. Jonathan Gifford instantly divined their purpose. They were forcing him to fire at a soldier, a defender of his country, in a time of war.

Dismounting, Captain Gifford took Kemble’s arm. “Inform these gentlemen that if General Slocum will retract what be said about the lady he has injured, I am prepared to disregard his aspersions on my character. I will even admit equal rudeness to him. We were both speaking in a great temper.”

Kemble delivered this message to Deputy Commissary Beebe. He repeated it to General Slocum. His big black head swung to glare at Kemble. “I always knew that goddamn limey had no guts.”

“For your information, General,” Kemble said, “it is common practice for a gentleman to do everything in his power to avoid the fatal moment in these encounters. A gentleman does not wish to spill anyone’s blood.”

Slocum guffawed. “Well, I ain’t no gentleman. I intend to spill that limey’s blood and splash his brains all over this road.”

For the first time, Kemble felt a clutch of fear. Slocum’s animal courage was up, fueled by a canteen of stonewall which Beebe was holding ready. “If he should by a stroke of luck cut me down, lads,” said Slocum, raising his voice even louder, let it be known far and wide that I died defending my country’s rights against this damned insidious agent of the enemy.”

“You can depend on us, General,” said Beebe.

Kemble returned to Jonathan Gifford with an anxious face. “He rejected it with contempt.”

“So I heard,” said Jonathan Gifford,. who had been watching Slocum’s performance. “You had better load the pistols. I’ll take two ounces of rum, Barney, and no more.”

Barney handed the pistols to Kemble and took a flask of ruin from his saddlebag. He poured it into a leather cup and Jonathan Gifford drank it off in one swift gulp.

“There’s only one place a bullet will stop that bugger,” Barney said, studying Slocum. “Between the eyes.”

Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “I don’t want to kill him.”

“Then you’ll give him a shot at you, sure as I’m here.”

“I will have to take that risk.”

“I’m told he’s been practicing with a pistol three hours a day this whole week.”

“I will shoot for his gun arm,” Jonathan Gifford said.

The sun had risen, but the sky remained a wintry gray. Ground fog swirled in the nearby fields. Kemble and Beebe met between the two antagonists to discuss the rules. Beebe would call off ten paces, then each man would be free to turn and fire. Dr. Davie spread a white cloth on the ground and calmly laid out his surgical instruments on it.

The pistols were inspected by the duelists. Jonathan Gifford added a few grains of powder to his firing pan. Deputy Commissary Beebe was summoned to General Slocum’s side. They conferred and he strutted over to Jonathan Gifford and his party. “The General wishes to be magnanimous,” he said with a smile that revealed his bad teeth. “He is prepared to apologize to the lady - if Mr. Gifford will surrender his illegally gotten title to Kemble Manor.”

“Not interested,” Jonathan Gifford said.

“Oh, kill him, Captain. Kill the bugger,” Barney said.

Jonathan Gifford shook his head. He refused to change his plan. He knew that killing Slocum would arouse an army of enemies. Better than any of us, he knew how fickle men were, how inclined they were to hate a man because of his place of birth or his wealth, however modest, or his associations.

General Slocum said he was ready. Jonathan Gifford agreed with a nod. Both men advanced to the center of the field, turned their backs, and waited for Beebe to begin the count.

“One,” he called, and they began pacing away from each other. “Two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine - ten.”

Kemble’s eyes were on his father. A surge of voiceless regret throbbed through his body, almost strangling him. If he dies believing that I hate him, I won’t be able to bear it.

Jonathan Gifford turned and fired all in one incredibly swift motion. Slocum cried out in agony and his gun fell from his hand. His right arm hung useless at his side, streaming blood. But Barney had been right. Only a bullet between the eyes would have stopped this man. Slowly he bent his knee to pick up the pistol with his left hand.

“I can fire as well with either hand, Captain Gifford,” he-said.

According to the code duello, Jonathan Gifford had no choice but to stand unflinching, while Slocum slowly raised his gun with his left hand. But when he tried to level it, the muzzle wavered. A musket ball does harsh things to any part of the body it strikes. Blood was gushing from Slocum’s wounded right arm. His cheek muscles bulged like knotted whipcord as he struggled to control his pain and nausea. With a guttural gasp, he staggered violently and fired the pistol into the ground at his feet.

Slocum fell to his knees. “Stonewall,” he roared. “Stonewall.” He swung his head back and forth like a beaten boxer.

Deputy Commissary Beebe rushed to give him the benefit of the canteen filled with his favorite drink. Dr. Davie cut open Slocum’s sleeve and began examining the wound. The duel was over.

“Another round,” roared Slocum after a gulp of stonewall. “I demand another round.”

“I am the challenger,” Jonathan Gifford said. “I have the right to decline. I am satisfied with the damage done.”

“You can expect a challenge from me the moment this arm is ready,” Slocum said.

“The next time, Slocum, I will kill you,” Jonathan Gifford said.

The controlled ferocity in these words struck Slocum with the force of a bullet. He was mute. Jonathan Gifford walked to his horse. For a moment Kemble felt a fleeting sympathy for Slocum. He too had flinched before that murderous menace he had always sensed in his father. Kemble approached Slocum. The General was glaring straight ahead, his eyes bright with liquor and hatred, while Dr. Davie worked on his arm.

“Is it possible for us to come to some understanding, General? For the sake of the Cause?”

“You are wasting your time, Kemble,” Jonathan Gifford said from the saddle.

“Your pappy is calling you. Get the hell out of here, little boy,” Slocum said.

Flushed with anger, Kemble walked slowly back to his horse.

“Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with him? Arrange a truce - at least until the war is over?” he said as they rode away.

“He doesn’t understand the meaning of the word negotiate, Kemble.”

“You mean I don’t. I am too stupid.”

“If you had done what I told you in 1776 - supported honest men instead of him and his toadies, it would never have come to this - he wouldn’t be worth shooting.”

“I knew you would throw that up to me,” Kemble said. “I knew I would be reminded for the rest of my life about my failure to follow the great Jonathan Gifford’s advice.”

“I will take the satisfaction of doing it, just this once.”

It was not Jonathan Gifford speaking. It was the tension and danger of the duel, the memory of Slocum’s pistol slowly leveled. By a sad paradox, it was also the memory of what he had experienced last night at Kemble Manor that made death doubly unbearable. This too became part of his anger at this son who seemed indifferent to what he had just risked.

Behind the anger other words fumbled blindly like cattle in a dark wood. My son, my son, I don’t mean - Father, I am sorry. I am proud - But the words remained unspoken, mute as beasts, as father and son rode silently home beneath the gray sky in the cold March wind of the third year of the war.