FullReads

This room had but a single window, the shutters of which were kept closed when it was not in use, and there was no entrance to it except through the door which opened from the parlor. The door was quickly closed, and Tempe stood with her horse in the darkness.

When the soldiers reached the farm, they went to the barn. They examined the outhouses, visited the pasture fields, and made a thorough search, high and low, near and far; but no sign of a horse could they find. Of course, the notion that the animal was concealed in the house did not enter their minds, and the only way in which they could account for the total disappearance of the horse was, that Tempe had ridden off with him–where they knew not. We do not know how long they waited for the sight of a hungry horse coming home to his supper, but we do know that while there was the slightest danger of her dear horse being taken away from her, that animal remained a carefully attended guest in the spare room of the Wick house; and the tradition is, that he staid there three weeks. There Tempe waited on him as if he had been a visitor of high degree; and if she was afraid to go to the barn to bring him hay and oats, she doubtless gave him biscuit and soft bread,–dainties of which a horse is very fond, especially when they are brought to him by such a kind mistress as Tempe.

When the cavalry moved away from their camp near Morristown, no one of them rode on that fine horse on which they had seen a girl gayly cantering, and which, when they had been about to put their hands upon it, had flown away, like a butterfly from under the straw hat of a schoolboy. When the troops were gone, the horse came out of the guest chamber and went back to his stall in the stable; and that room in which he passed so many quiet days, and the door through which the horse timidly stepped under the shadow of that hospitable roof, are still to be seen at the old Wick house, which stands now, as it stood then, with its shaded yard and the great willow tree behind it, on the pleasant country road by which we may drive from Morristown to Mendham by the way of Washington Corner.