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diff --git a/old/66623-h/66623-h.htm b/old/66623-h/66623-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index d41d70f..0000000 --- a/old/66623-h/66623-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7978 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Road to Bunker Hill, by Shirley Barker—A Project Gutenberg eBook - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -div.titlepage {text-align: center; page-break-before: always; page-break-after: always;} -div.titlepage p {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: 2em;} - - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } - - -div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} -h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} - -table { - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; -} - -.tdr {text-align: right;} - -.pagenum { - position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - font-style: normal; - font-weight: normal; - font-variant: normal; -} - - -.poetry-container {text-align: center;} -.poetry {display: inline-block; text-align: left;} -.poetry .verse {text-indent: -2.5em; padding-left: 3em;} -.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} -.poetry .indent {text-indent: 3em;} - -.blockquot { - margin-left: 40%; - margin-right: 15%; -} - -p.drop-cap { - text-indent: -0.2em; -} - -p.drop-cap:first-letter -{ - float: left; - margin: 0.1em 0.1em 0em 0em; - font-size: 250%; - line-height:0.85em; - text-indent: 0em; -} -.x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap { - text-indent: 0em; -} -.x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap:first-letter -{ - float: none; - margin: 0; - font-size: 100%; -} - -.center {text-align: center;} - - - -.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - -.xlarge {font-size: 150%;} -.large {font-size: 125%;} -.ph1 {text-align: center; font-size: xx-large; font-weight: bold;} -.ph2 {text-align: center; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;} - -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; - page-break-inside: avoid; - max-width: 100%; -} - -.figleft { - float: left; - clear: left; - margin-left: 0; - margin-bottom: 1em; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-right: 1em; - padding: 0; - text-align: center; - page-break-inside: avoid; - max-width: 100%; -} - -.x-ebookmaker .figleft {float: left;} - -.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; - color: black; - font-size:smaller; - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; - padding: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - font-family:sans-serif, serif; } - - </style> - </head> -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Road to Bunker Hill, by Shirley Barker</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Road to Bunker Hill</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Shirley Barker</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October 27, 2021 [eBook #66623]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" width="40%" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<h1>THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL</h1> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center"><i>Books by</i> SHIRLEY BARKER</p> - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>For Younger Readers</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="indent">THE TROJAN HORSE</div> -<div class="indent">THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> - -<div class="verse"><i>Poetry</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="indent">THE DARK HILLS UNDER</div> -<div class="indent">A LAND AND A PEOPLE</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Novels</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="indent">PEACE, MY DAUGHTERS</div> -<div class="indent">RIVERS PARTING</div> -<div class="indent">FIRE AND THE HAMMER</div> -<div class="indent">TOMORROW THE NEW MOON</div> -<div class="indent">LIZA BOWE</div> -<div class="indent">SWEAR BY APOLLO</div> -<div class="indent">THE LAST GENTLEMAN</div> -<div class="indent">CORNER OF THE MOON</div> -</div></div></div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> -<p><span class="large">SHIRLEY BARKER</span></p> - -<p><span class="xlarge">The Road<br /> -to<br /> -Bunker Hill</span></p> - -<p>DUELL, SLOAN AND PEARCE<br /> -New York</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center">Copyright © 1962 by Shirley Barker</p> - - -<p class="center">All rights reserved. No part of this book in excess of<br /> -five hundred words may be reproduced in any form<br /> -without permission in writing from the publisher.</p> - -<p class="center"><i>First edition</i></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<div class="figleft"><img src="images/i_colophon.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<p> </p> - -<p><i>Affiliate of</i><br /> - -MEREDITH PRESS<br /> - -<i>Des Moines & New York</i></p> -</div> - - - -<p> </p> -<p class="center">Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 62-12175</p> - - -<p class="center">Manufactured in the United States of America for Meredith Press<br /> -Van Rees Press <b>·</b> New York</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center"><i>For</i><br /> - - -<span class="smcap">Esther Doane Osman</span></p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Contents</i></h2> - - - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table"> - - -<tr><td class="tdr">1.</td><td> A Night to Be Young </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3"> 3</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">2.</td><td> In Readiness to March</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13"> 13</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">3.</td><td> Two to Begin</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23"> 23</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">4.</td><td> The Courage to Go and the Feet to Get Him There</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33"> 33</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">5.</td><td> The Great Ipswich Fright</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42"> 42</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">6.</td><td> Fun While It Lasted</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53"> 53</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">7.</td><td> Off to the Wars in Boston</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_63"> 63</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">8.</td><td> Saved by a Pipe-smoking Man</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75"> 75</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">9.</td><td> No Clouds on Bunker Hill</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_87"> 87</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">10.</td><td> A Tryst with the Enemy</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101"> 101</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">11.</td><td> A Great Secret</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113"> 113</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">12.</td><td> Thunder in the Air</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_125"> 125</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">13.</td><td> The World Turned Upside Down</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136"> 136</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">14.</td><td> The Young May Die</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_147"> 147</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">15.</td><td> A Terrible Black Day</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_160"> 160</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">16.</td><td> Hanging and Wiving</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_170"> 170</a></td></tr> -</table> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="ph1">THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL</p> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter One</i><br /> - - -<small>A NIGHT TO BE YOUNG</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“Nothing</span> ever happens in this town,” said Eben Poore, -dangling his long legs over the edge of the wharf, and -looking down river to the open sea. The sky was pale, almost -white above the long sand bar of Plum Island, he noticed, -but the streets were growing dark behind him, and twilight -had begun to gather round the warehouses and tall-masted -ships by the waterside.</p> - -<p>“No,” agreed Dick Moody, “nothing ever happens in -Newburyport. Wish we could have a ‘tea party’ like they had -in Boston a spell back. I’d sure enough be glad to rig up like -an Indian and heave a chest of bohea overside.”</p> - -<p>“I guess all the merchants know better than to bring it -in,” said Johnny Pettengall. “Nobody’d drink the stuff. We -got no name o’ being a Tory town.”</p> - -<p>Johnny was older than the other boys, seventeen past. He -had his own gun and drilled with the militia on muster days.</p> - -<p>“But something has happened in Newburyport,” he went -on, “though I don’t suppose it would mean very much to -either o’ you.”</p> - -<p>“What did happen?” asked Dick lazily. “Somebody’s cat<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span> -kitten, or Indian Joe take too much rum and do a war dance in -Queen Street again?”</p> - -<p>Johnny shook his head and smiled. “Sally Rose Townsend’s -back,” he said.</p> - -<p>The other boys sat up, and their faces brightened.</p> - -<p>“I don’t care much for girls,” said Eben, picking a piece -of long brown seaweed from the dock’s end and shredding it -in his fingers. “But Sally Rose is different. Maybe it’s her -hair.”</p> - -<p>“Having gold-colored hair never hurt a girl none,” declared -Johnny, with the air of a man who knew about such -things, a man grown. “But with Sally Rose—well, it’s the -way she smiles, I think.”</p> - -<p>“I like Kitty better,” said Dick stoutly. “Sally Rose is -always grinning—at everybody. When Kitty smiles, there’s -some sense to it—when she’s pleased, or you tell her a joke.”</p> - -<p>“What’s Sally Rose doing in Newburyport this time o’ -year?” asked Eben. “She comes in the summer to visit -Granny Greenleaf and her cousin Kitty, but it’s still early -spring—April nineteenth, for I took me a look at the almanac -this morning. See, there’s the first log raft from New Hampshire -just tied up today.”</p> - -<p>The other boys looked where he pointed. Through the -gathering darkness they saw that a drift of shaggy logs covered -the whole surface of a little cove nearby. Lanterns -flashed here and there, and a dim shouting echoed among the -narrow lanes and small brick houses beside the river. The -lumbermen who had brought the raft down from the great -forests farther up the Merrimack, were moving about it now, -making everything fast for the night.</p> - -<p>“It’s been a warm spring,” said Johnny, smiling quietly to -himself.</p> - -<p>Dick shivered and turned up the collar of his homespun -jacket. “Maybe it has,” he said, “but it’s cold enough tonight<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span> -to freeze your gizzard. Hope there won’t be a frost, with -the apple trees already budded and most o’ the fields plowed. -But what’s that got to do with Sally Rose? Her father keeps -a tavern in Charlestown, shops and houses all round, and the -seasons don’t matter. Spring don’t mean nothing there.”</p> - -<p>“There’s a lot stirring round Charlestown this spring, -Sally Rose says,” continued Johnny. “Looks like the British -soldiers in Boston might be ’most ready to come out and fight. -We been expecting it, and we got plenty o’ powder laid by, at -Concord and a few places more. Might need to use it any -time now. Sally Rose’s father thought she’d be safer here.”</p> - -<p>“Did she tell you that?” asked Eben quickly. “You’ve -talked with her then?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I talked with her,” said Johnny. He turned his dark -head a little and looked up the hill at the lighted town behind -them, starlight over the dormer windows set high in the -rooftops, the church steeple white against the night sky. He -seemed to be watching for something. He did not say any -more.</p> - -<p>A group of sailors swaggered by, jesting and laughing, on -their way to the Wolfe Tavern after grog. The spring wind -brought a salt smell up from the river, a fish smell, and the -clean scent of pine logs from the raft in the cove. One lone -candle burned in the window of a counting house nearby and -showed them a figure hunched over a tall desk and open -ledger. Dick pointed suddenly toward it.</p> - -<p>“Shiver my jib and start my planks if I’d want to be a -counting-house clerk!” he exclaimed. Dick was apprenticed to -his uncle in the ship-building trade, but what he wanted was -to go to sea. Eben, an orphan, did chores at a boardinghouse -in Chandler’s Lane, and Johnny helped his father on their -farm below the town, a farm known for its poor soil and -salt hay.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>Before anyone could answer him, a girl’s laugh rang out, -somewhere in the shadowy streets above.</p> - -<p>“That’s Sally Rose!” cried Eben. “I’d know her laugh in -Jamaicy—if I was to hear it there! She—she—you knew she -was coming down here, Johnny! You knew!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I knew,” said Johnny. There was a light in his eye, -a reflection from the counting-house candle, perhaps. “She -said she and Kit might take a walk this way, if Granny Greenleaf -would let them out.”</p> - -<p>“Well, Granny did,” cried Dick, “for she’s coming, and -Kitty with her. Look there!”</p> - -<p>Two girls came tripping gaily toward them, their full -skirts sweeping the rutted lane, little white shawls drawn -about their shoulders, their hair brushed back from their faces -and falling in curls behind. One girl’s hair was soft brown, -and the other’s yellow like Indian corn.</p> - -<p>The boys stood up. Johnny went forward. “I been waiting -for you, Sally Rose,” he said.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose walked slowly toward him, her head lifted, her -eyes shining. She put out both her hands. “My, you’re handsome, -Johnny,” she said. “I’d forgotten how handsome you -were. We don’t have lads like you in Charlestown, you know.”</p> - -<p>Johnny gripped both her hands against the front of his -jacket and took a deep breath. The other boys looked embarrassed. -Eben stared down at his feet. He suddenly realized -that they were bare, bare and not very clean. He owned a pair -of shoes, of course, but he only wore them on Sundays and -in the wintertime.</p> - -<p>“Glad you came back, Sally Rose,” he said, not looking at -her.</p> - -<p>“Oh, thank you, Eben,” she answered sweetly. “I’m so -glad that you’re glad.”</p> - -<p>Johnny opened his eyes wide and gave Eben an unfriendly -stare.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>“Hey, Kit,” said Dick, “I haven’t seen you since—”</p> - -<p>The brown-haired girl smiled. “You’d have seen me if -you’d looked,” she said. “I passed you by the ropewalk last -Friday afternoon. I was going to Polly Little’s to bring home -some tulip bulbs for Granny. I waved to you, but you -wouldn’t see me. You were too busy cleaning a tar barrel.”</p> - -<p>Dick looked down at the worn planks of Somerby’s Wharf. -It was dark beside the river now, and the only light came -from the windowpanes of the small houses along the street.</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry, Kitty,” he said.</p> - -<p>“It doesn’t matter, Dick,” she answered. Her blue eyes -smiled at him. Her voice sounded soothing and kind.</p> - -<p>The five of them stood there, silent in the spring night -and the sharp sea wind. Johnny shifted his feet uneasily. -Even Sally Rose did not know what to do or say.</p> - -<p>Finally Eben spoke. His voice quavered a little, harsh, -and self-conscious, and high. “If I had a shilling,” he said, -“I’d ask you all to come up to the Wolfe Tavern and have -a glass of beer.”</p> - -<p>Dick snorted. “Lot of good a shilling would do you there!” -he said. “Ma’am Davenport’s real strict. She won’t sell drink -to lads of thirteen.”</p> - -<p>Eben wilted for a moment. Then Sally Rose smiled at him, -and he squared his shoulders and stood up taller than before.</p> - -<p>“I don’t care for the taste of beer,” she said. “Perhaps I -see too much of it in Father’s tavern as it passes over the -board. But thank you, Eben. It was a kind thought.”</p> - -<p>She turned to Johnny, and her voice grew low and soft. -“Will there be a moon?” she asked.</p> - -<p>He answered her gruffly. “Not till later. Much later, after -the bells have rung curfew; after you girls are home abed.”</p> - -<p>“Oh—?” answered Sally Rose provocatively.</p> - -<p>“Well, here we are, Sally Rose,” said Kitty in a brisk tone, -“You said you wanted to come down to the river.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>She looked out at the dark flowing stream with the river -barges and fishing smacks and deep-sea-going ships moored -on its quiet surface, lanterns in their rigging, their tall masts -reared against the sky, and their sails furled tight. Ships home -from Virginia and the Barbados, from all over the world, -maybe; their holds full of sugar and rice and wine, silks and -laces and oil, India muslins, and French knickknacks, and -gunpowder out of Holland—even if they carried no tea. Try -as they would, the King’s laws hadn’t been able to interfere -too much with trade.</p> - -<p>“Now that you’re here,” she went on, “what do you want -to do?”</p> - -<p>“We could go for a walk through the marshes, Plum Island -way,” said Sally Rose, looking at Johnny.</p> - -<p>“All of us?” he asked her. Kitty and Eben and Dick ought -to know that he meant for them to go away and leave him -alone with Sally Rose. But they didn’t go.</p> - -<p>“We could all go back to our house and have plum cake -and buttermilk,” suggested Kitty. “Granny cut a new plum -cake yesterday.”</p> - -<p>Eben’s voice rose high and shrill again. “We could play -hide-and-seek,” he announced boldly.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose giggled. Then she clapped a hand over her -mouth.</p> - -<p>“That’s only for young ’uns,” muttered Dick. “I be too -big for that now.”</p> - -<p>But suddenly Kitty defended the idea.</p> - -<p>“You’re right, of course, Dick,” she said wistfully. “But -then, don’t you sometimes hate to feel you’re getting too big -for the things that used to be fun? Eben’s the youngest of us, -and he finished school more than a year ago. Soon we’ll be -grown and married, with houses and children, and we won’t -be able to run out after dark like this, and walk by the river, -and watch for the moon. We’ll have to stay in, and rock babies,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span> -and split firewood, and see that the doors are locked and the -table set for breakfast. It’ll come on us all so soon now.” She -looked at Johnny appealingly. “Let’s have one last play -night—one night to be young—before we grow too old.”</p> - -<p>Johnny’s eyes widened suddenly, and his mouth curved in -a smile. Sally Rose had a cluster of apple buds pinned on her -bodice, and their sweetness hovered all about. It made him -feel sad, and happy, and unsettled as a girl, ready to agree to -anything, even Kitty’s daft notion.</p> - -<p>“Right enough, Kit,” he said. “For one more night, we’ll -be young. We’ll play hide-and-seek, if we never do again. -I’ll count first, and the rest of you hide. This’ll be goal, this -empty rum keg here.”</p> - -<p>He sat down on the rum keg and buried his face in his -hands. “Ten—fifteen—twenty—” he began slowly.</p> - -<p>With a little squeal, Sally Rose picked up her skirts and ran -to hide behind a pile of lobster crates in a far corner. The -others hesitated a moment.</p> - -<p>“Forty-five—fifty—” went on Johnny, still very slow.</p> - -<p>They scattered then. Eben crawled under a ship’s boat, -broken and lying sideways on the wharf. Dick ran into a -doorway across the lane. Kitty waited until she had barely -time to crouch down behind a pile of wooden boxes marked -with a black “W. I.”—West India goods.</p> - -<p>“Ninety-five—one hundred—here I come!” Johnny -shouted. He stood up and peered around him, but only for a -moment. In almost no time at all he found Sally Rose, but it -was a little longer before he pulled her out from behind the -lobster crates. Perhaps he had peeked through his fingers, -Kitty thought, so that he knew where to look. Perhaps he -kissed Sally Rose before they were in plain sight again.</p> - -<p>Anyway, it was now Sally Rose’s turn to count, and she -found Dick with little trouble.</p> - -<p>But after that they really did seem to be young again, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span> -entered into the spirit of the game. Gradually the counting -got slower, and the hiding places farther and farther away. -Then Sally Rose and Kitty hid together behind a heap of -mackerel nets, and Eben found them both at the same time.</p> - -<p>“Tie find! Now which of you’s to count and go seek?” -asked Dick, putting up his head in the sharp wind. “Just about -once more, and ’twill be curfew time, and we’ll have to go -home.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll count,” offered Kitty.</p> - -<p>“No, let me,” said Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>“How about me having a turn?”</p> - -<p>It was a strange voice that spoke, a boy’s voice, quiet and -cool, but with a mocking note of laughter in it.</p> - -<p>They turned around suddenly and stared. There on the -wharf behind them stood a tall fellow not much older than -Johnny, with a lean face, sharp gray eyes, and sun-bleached -hair. He wore cowhide boots and a loose hunting shirt over -moosehide breeches. He carried a long pole with an iron barb -on the end, such as the lumbermen used to break up log jams -and herd the great rafts down the river.</p> - -<p>“I’m know I’m a stranger here,” he went on, “but I ain’t -poison. I been watching you awhile. I’d like a hand in the -game.”</p> - -<p>“You came down river with the logs?” asked Dick slowly.</p> - -<p>The stranger nodded. “Aye, clear from the falls at Derryfield. -A fellow can be lonely—away from his own town at -night—first time away.” The sharpness went out of his eyes, -and he looked younger, almost like a little boy.</p> - -<p>“Of course you can play,” cried Kitty, sympathy in her -voice. “I’ve been lonely, too, sometimes, when I went to visit -Sally Rose in Charlestown, and I know what it’s like. He can -count this time, can’t he, Sally Rose?”</p> - -<p>“Of course he can,” said Sally Rose, smiling at the strange -lad, flicking her lashes.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>Dick and Eben looked crestfallen. Johnny kicked the side -of the rum keg. “Didn’t know backwoodsmen could count,” -he sneered. “Tell us what your name is, if you want to play.”</p> - -<p>The stranger narrowed his eyes, then he opened them wide -and smiled innocently. “My name’s Tom Trask,” he said, -“and I can count.” He put his head down in the crook of his -arm, but they did not hear the familiar “Ten—fifteen—twenty—”</p> - -<p>After a moment, thinking he might be counting to himself, -they started to straggle away. Kitty did not watch where the -others went to. Seconds mattered at a time like this. She -slipped behind a row of tar barrels at the corner of the counting -house and stood there, listening to the water as it sucked -at the piles underneath, to the sound of singing and fiddle -music where the sailors were making merry on the deck of a -ship moored a hundred yards off shore.</p> - -<p>Suddenly the voice of the young logger from up the -Merrimack whipped out like the command of the captain to -the volunteers who drilled on Frog Pond green come muster -day.</p> - -<p>“Ten—ten—double ten—forty-five—fifteen!”</p> - -<p>He reached his hundred all at once, leaped from the keg, -and ran straight toward her, toward her, Kitty Greenleaf, of -the High Street in Newburyport, who had never seen him -before tonight. He ran to her, around the tar barrels, around -the corner of the counting house. In a moment he had put his -arms about her and kissed her on the mouth, kissed her hard.</p> - -<p>Not used to such sudden attack, not used to kissing any lad -at all, except in kissing games where everybody looked on -and laughed, or when Dick bade her a shy good night sometimes -by the garden wall, she struggled, and sputtered, and -pulled away.</p> - -<p>She wiped her mouth and looked up. “What—what did -you do that for?” she gasped.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>The gray eyes were smiling down at her, there in the chilly -spring dark, the thin mouth crooked upward in a smile.</p> - -<p>“Like I said, a lad’s lonely in a strange town at night.”</p> - -<p>Before she could answer, she heard a soft little laugh -beside them. She turned about. There stood Sally Rose. Sally -Rose flickered her long lashes and opened her hazel eyes -very wide.</p> - -<p>“There’s no need for you to be lonely,” she trilled. “My, -but you’re a handsome lad! We’ve none such handsome lads -in Charlestown.”</p> - -<p>Tom Trask eyed her coldly. His mouth was still smiling, -but his eyes looked sharp and unfriendly in the candlelight -that shone through the dusty panes of the counting-house -window behind his head.</p> - -<p>“Charlestown can’t be much of a place,” he retorted, -“though I wouldn’t know, for my business never took me -there, and ’tisn’t likely to. But—” He paused a moment, and -his head lifted a little. “Up the Merrimack we got prettier -girls than you. Maybe a score.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose’s eyes flashed, and she tossed her curls. “I don’t -care what’s up the Merrimack. I look pretty enough in -Charlestown! Pretty enough to please Captain Gerald -Malory of the Twenty-third!”</p> - -<p>The logger did not answer her. He turned around and -walked slowly down the wharf. Kitty could hear the ring of -the iron nails in the soles of his country boots as he strode -away.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Two</i><br /> - - -<small>IN READINESS TO MARCH</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“Insolent</span> plowboy!” exclaimed Sally Rose haughtily. She -stood in front of the mirror wreathed with gilt cupids, -her palms flat on the mahogany dressing table, and stared -at her own reflection, curls loosened and falling over the -shoulders of her white cambric night robe, her eyes narrowed -and glinting coldly in the candlelight. Then the coldness -dissolved away, and she giggled.</p> - -<p>Kitty, lying sprawled on the patchwork counterpane that -covered the great four-poster bed, giggled too, uncertainly. -Sally Rose had moods that changed so fast she was never able -to keep up with them. So, as usual, she didn’t try, but spoke -her mind in her turn.</p> - -<p>“He wasn’t a plowboy, he was a logger,” she said. “Maybe -the owner of a whole forest as big as this parish. Some of -them are, you know, those up-country lads. And he was too -smart for you, Sally Rose. He knew you were making fun -of him.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose sat down on the counterpane and hugged her -knees. She looked thoughtful. “Yes, he knew,” she said. “But -when I said the same thing to Johnny Pettengall, Johnny<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span> -thought I meant it. Inside, I almost laughed myself to death. -I wonder why I couldn’t fool that backwoods boy, when I -could fool Johnny.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe because he’s older,” suggested Kitty. “He looked -older, anyway.” She got up, went to the chest, and blew the -candle out.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” reflected Sally Rose, “older, but not really a man—not -so much as twenty.”</p> - -<p>“Is that how old he is?” Kitty demanded. “Come on now, -Sally Rose. Tell me all about him.”</p> - -<p>“About who?” asked Sally Rose. “The logger? Tom -Trask was his name, he said. I don’t know anything about -Tom Trask, except that I caught him kissing you. I wonder -why you didn’t stop him. If Granny finds out—”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t have time to stop him,” retorted Kitty severely. -“And don’t try to change the subject. The ‘him’ I want to -know about is that British officer. Captain Malory of the -Twenty-third.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” exclaimed Sally Rose uneasily. She, too, left the -bed, and went to stand between the patchwork curtains at the -window. It was nearly midnight. Late moonrise silvered the -sky over Plum Island, and the young leaves stirred restlessly -in the sea wind, hiding the quiet darkness of Granny’s crocus -and daffodil beds in the garden below.</p> - -<p>“You know you really want to tell me about him,” continued -Kitty. “You always want to tell me about the lads -you’ve taken a fancy to.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose did not turn, and when she answered, her voice -was very quiet, with none of the usual merry undertones that -made it so charming. “Oh, but this is different, Kitty. You -guessed right—he is twenty. And Father says he’s an enemy.” -She laughed ruefully. “In fact, Father says he’s a damned -lobsterback, and I mustn’t see him again. But I sent him a -note to tell him where I was going, and maybe.... But how<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span> -did you know he was British? You only heard me say his -name.”</p> - -<p>Kitty could feel her face burn in the darkness. She still -felt ashamed, though it hadn’t been her fault, really.</p> - -<p>“I read it in a letter,” she said with some stiffness, “the -letter your father wrote to Granny, telling her why he was -sending you here. I went down to meet the postrider, and -when he handed me a letter addressed to C. Greenleaf, I -never thought that it was for Granny instead of me, and so I -read it. Of course she’s Catherine, too.”</p> - -<p>“What did Father say?” asked Sally Rose. Her voice had -a worried sound.</p> - -<p>“It began, ‘My dear,’ instead of ‘Dear Mother’—that’s -why I didn’t know it was for Gran, and I kept on reading. He -said ‘I’m worried about our little girl.’”</p> - -<p>Kitty paused, and Sally Rose did not question her any -further just then. Both girls looked through the window, -over the roofs of the town, at the wide dark waters of the -Merrimack flowing seaward.</p> - -<p>Fifteen years ago, about this time of the year, Caleb Greenleaf -had taken his wife, Becky, and his married sister, Anne -Townsend, for a little jaunt on the river in the April sunshine. -The young mothers had left their baby girls with -Granny Greenleaf, and gone happily aboard his small fishing -boat, and no one had foreseen the sudden mad wind, the -squall of snow that would engulf them. Afterwards, Granny -had brought up orphan Kitty, but Job Townsend had taken -his motherless daughter back to Charlestown to his own -people. The tragedy had brought him close to his mother-in-law, -however, so that he still addressed her as ‘My dear,’ -and spoke of ‘our little girl,’ and there had been much going -back and forth between them.</p> - -<p>For a long moment now, the girls stared at the dark river.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span> -Kitty was the first to take her eyes away. She did not refer to -the old, sad loss, of which she knew they were both thinking.</p> - -<p>“Your father wrote that he was sending you to stay with -us for a while,” she said quietly, “to get you away from that -British officer you’ve been stealing out with. He said this—this -enemy—puts on a homespun shirt and leather breeches, -pretends to be one of our lads, and goes wherever he likes, -on all the roads round Boston.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose gave a soft little laugh. “Yes,” she said, “Gerry -does that sometimes. But I like him better when he wears his -scarlet coat and his sword. He’s sure handsome enough to -make any girl forget about Johnny Pettengall.”</p> - -<p>There was a prideful note in Sally Rose’s voice as she -shook back her yellow hair.</p> - -<p>“But he’s British, Sally Rose! He’s one of the King’s men -who’ve captured Boston, and closed the port, and made so -much trouble for the people who live there. Dick says they’ll -march out and start shooting at us any day now. You’d be -better off with a New England lad—even that logger.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose sighed. “I know,” she said. “Wars are hard on -a girl, Kit. I know I’m supposed to hate the British, but how -can I, when they are so handsome—when they have such -gallant manners! I’ll bet wars don’t mean a thing to those -cupids round the mirror. Love doesn’t know Whig from -Tory. But why does he have to be—”</p> - -<p>Three sharp taps sounded on the other side of the bedroom -wall.</p> - -<p>“Granny’s cane!” cried Kit softly, lowering her voice to a -whisper. “That means we’re keeping her awake. But there’s -so much I want to hear. How you met this Gerry, and—”</p> - -<p>“Hush!” breathed Sally Rose, remembering Granny’s -outbursts of short-lived peppery wrath. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”</p> - -<p>They slipped into bed and lay quiet, side by side, arms<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span> -relaxed on the counterpane, watching the moonlight along -the wall. First Kitty turned over and sighed. A few minutes -later Sally Rose did the same. Finally Kitty sat up and -punched her pillow. “I can’t sleep,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Neither can I,” said Sally Rose. “I feel as if something -were going to happen.”</p> - -<p>Below them in the town the church bells began to ring.</p> - -<p>They rang and rang, and kept on ringing. Kitty could see -them in her mind, tossing wildly in their belfry, high over -Market Square. She sat up higher in bed. Sally Rose sat up, -too, and reached out for her cousin’s hand.</p> - -<p>“It must be a house afire,” said Kitty. “Can’t be a ship in -trouble. The wind isn’t that strong.”</p> - -<p>She jumped out of bed and ran to the window, but no hot -glare lit the sky, only the cold pale light of the April moon. -Now a noise of shouting broke out in Fish Street, growing -louder every minute. Lights flickered behind the windowpanes -of the small wooden houses all about, and went on -burning, steady and strong. Shadows moved across them. -People were getting up.</p> - -<p>Kitty turned from the window. “Let’s get dressed!” she -cried. “Maybe Granny will let us go and see what it’s all -about.” But Sally Rose was already fastening her petticoat.</p> - -<p>Pulling large winter shawls about them to hide half-buttoned -bodices and yawning plackets, they tiptoed into the -hall, but Granny had got there ahead of them. She stood at -the top of the stairs, small, and neat, and wizened, looking as -if she were ready to go to church on a Sunday morning, her -costume complete, even to gold eardrops and a chip bonnet -with ostrich plumes. She had a lighted candle in one hand, -and her cane, which she carried but seldom used, in the other. -She opened her mouth to speak to them, but was interrupted -by a heavy knocking on the front door and a man’s voice -shouting for Timothy.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>Timothy Coffin, Granny’s hired man who tended the garden -and split the firewood, came tumbling down from his -tiny attic chamber. Gnarled and weathered, not much -younger than his employer, his arms were half in, half out -of his woolen jacket, and he carried an old flintlock, like himself, -a veteran of the siege of Louisburg thirty years ago.</p> - -<p>“Git out o’ my way, women,” he shouted, as he tore past -them. “I’ll bet it’s them varmints. I knowed they was about -to strike!”</p> - -<p>Granny peered after him in bewilderment, as he fumbled -with the lock of the heavy front door.</p> - -<p>“Does he mean the Indians?” she asked. “When I was a -girl I used to hear stories—but it seems they’re too scarce -hereabout to cause any trouble now.”</p> - -<p>Timothy finally got the door open and stood there, listening -to a hoarse excited voice that spoke in the dark outside. -Suddenly he turned around.</p> - -<p>“I’m off, Ma’am Greenleaf!” he called to Granny. “Them -British dogs has struck at last. I signed the pledge for a -Minuteman. I swore to hold myself in readiness to march -whenever I be ordered. An’ I be ordered now.”</p> - -<p>“If you’re going far, you’d better take some food with -you,” said Granny smartly. “Take all the bread in the cupboard, -and the cold chicken—”</p> - -<p>“And the plum cake,” interrupted Kitty. “We cut a plum -cake yesterday.”</p> - -<p>“Where are you going, Timothy? Where did the ‘British -dogs’ strike?” asked Sally Rose, her eyes looking large in her -white face.</p> - -<p>Timothy did not answer her. Instead he ducked into the -kitchen. The front door yawned open, and through it they -could hear the terrible clamor of the bells, the lift of excited -voices as the townspeople hastened by.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>“Come, girls,” said Granny. “I aim to learn what this commotion -is all about.”</p> - -<p>They followed her out of the house and along High -Street, past the Frog Pond and the new training green laid -out where the windmill used to be.</p> - -<p>A crowd had gathered in front of the Wolfe Tavern, and -they paused at the outskirts of it. Torches flared all about, -lighting up the portrait of General Wolfe that hung on a pole -near the tavern door, flickering on the windowpanes along -Fish Street and on the startled faces of the Newburyport folk. -Fashionable flounced ladies stood side by side with barefooted -fishwives from Flatiron Point, while toddlers clung -to their skirts, and urchins raced here and there, shouting with -shrill voices, as if they played some sort of exciting game. -Most of the men were gathered round the tavern’s high front -steps, and new arrivals kept elbowing their way forward -every minute. The throng bristled everywhere with gun barrels; -a flintlock, a fowling piece, an old queen’s arm.</p> - -<p>“There’s Johnny,” said Sally Rose suddenly, and sure -enough, Kitty craned her neck and saw him standing with -the other men, his hands gripping a heavy musket. He was -watching the tavern door intently. He did not look their -way.</p> - -<p>“What’s going on here?” demanded Granny in a querulous -tone. Everybody seemed to be talking at once, but nobody -answered her.</p> - -<p>A man wearing a blue coat and carrying a sword came out -of the tavern and stood still at the top of the steps, looking -round him. He held up his hand. The urchins stopped shouting. -The bells down the street pealed a time or two and then -were silent. The voices of the crowd died away. A sudden -burst of spring wind lifted a heap of dead leaves from the -gutter and swirled it high in the face of the round white -moon.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>The man on the steps began to speak. “Men o’ the Port,” -he called out, in a voice that was low and deep, a voice that -without lifting or straining itself could be heard in all the -streets and lanes nearby, “New England blood’s been spilt, -as some o’ you know. But for them that don’t, I’ll read the -word the postrider brought.” He waved a paper aloft, then -held it square in front of him.</p> - -<p>“‘To all friends of American Liberty, let it be known! -This morning before break of day, a brigade consisting of -some twelve hundred redcoats ... marched to Lexington ... -and on to Concord Bridge. Many were slain both sides, and -the roads are bloody. Another brigade is now upon the march -from Boston!’”</p> - -<p>He put the paper down. “Men o’ the Port, such as signed -the pledge, ‘We do enlist ourselves as Minutemen and do -engage that we will hold ourselves in readiness to march!’ -All such men to the training green! Fall in by companies! -Come, lads! Up the hill!”</p> - -<p>With a cheer the men surged up Fish Street, shoulders -hunched and heads thrust forward, their guns gripped in -their hands. With cries of dismay and alarm the women -began to trail after them. Granny stood still, leaning on her -cane.</p> - -<p>“There’s Dick and Eben,” cried Kitty. “Dick!” She lifted -her voice. “Dick, come here and tell me where they are -going. Dick, are you going too?”</p> - -<p>But Dick and Eben were hurrying after the Minutemen. -They looked at the girls and waved, and then ran on.</p> - -<p>“Ah, here’s Mr. Cary,” Granny exclaimed. “Now we’ll -see what all this uproar is likely to lead to.” She trotted over -to the minister who was moving swiftly up the street, his wig -not quite straight, and the linen bands at his throat somewhat -disordered. “Mr. Cary, tell me now, what does all this -mean?”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>The minister paused, adjusted his wig, and mopped his -brow with a lawn handkerchief. “I’m afraid it means war, -Madame Greenleaf. It was bound to come. They’ve oppressed -us too far. But about this latest outrage—I myself -talked with the postrider, and he was there and saw it all. A -frightful slaughter!” He looked at the girls and lowered his -voice, but they heard him all the same.</p> - -<p>“He says that when he left, the whole rout was fleeing -back towards Boston, but he heard Captain Parker say that if -they mean to have a war, let it begin here. ’Twould seem -they so mean, and that it has begun.”</p> - -<p>“Who were the redcoats?” asked Sally Rose in a small -tremulous voice. “Did he say if it was the Twenty-third?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Cary looked at her sharply. “Who knows one redcoat -from another, and what does it matter?” he demanded. “But -I believe he did mention the Twenty-third. It seems they -were not in the thickest of the engagement, but posted out to -help their fellow scoundrels home to Boston.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose let her breath escape in a little sigh of relief. -Granny tapped her cane on a granite horse block nearby to -get Mr. Carey’s attention again.</p> - -<p>“Well, what do our lads think to do about it? Why get -folks out of bed in the middle of the night? Must we fortify -the Port and barricade ourselves in our houses because there’s -been a fuss in Lexington? Are the British headed for Frog -Pond Green?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Cary started to smile and then bit his lip. “Hardly -that, but our companies will assemble and march from there. -The word’s been passed for such men as are able to bear arms -to make their way to Cambridge with all speed.”</p> - -<p>“Huh!” said Granny. “Cambridge is a good ways off. I -hope Timothy took the plum cake. Come, girls! Now that -I’ve satisfied my mind, I’m going home.”</p> - -<p>“Oh no, Gran,” pleaded Sally Rose, composed and sure<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span> -of herself again, now that she felt reasonably certain her -British Gerry had come to no harm. “I want to go up to the -green and see them off. It’ll hearten them to have us there, -to have us wave them good luck as they march away.”</p> - -<p>“Nonsense!” snapped Granny. “The lads will have other -things on their minds. They got no time now for yellow hair.”</p> - -<p>The squeal of a fife and the solemn throb of a beating -drum broke through the shouts of the crowd on the training -green.</p> - -<p>“But I don’t want to go back to bed,” pouted Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>“And why did you think you were going back to bed, -miss?” Granny demanded. “Parson Cary says there’s a war -begun. That means we’ll into the attic and try to find those -bullet molds I put away when I hoped we wouldn’t need -them any more. They haven’t been used since your grandfather’s -time, but I think likely they’re still there.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Three</i><br /> - - -<small>TWO TO BEGIN</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“I told</span> you they’d fight,” said the young man grimly, -biting the end of a cartridge and letting a thin stream of -black powder dribble into the pan of his flintlock. He knelt at -the tail gate of the farm wagon that rattled and swayed from -side to side as Sergeant Higgs of the Twenty-third drove it -pell-mell down the Charlestown Road.</p> - -<p>His hat was gone and his red coat in tatters. His white -breeches were stained with gunpowder and the blood of the -wounded men who lay on the floor of the wagon; stained, -too, with the gray earth of this unfamiliar country, so unlike -the ruddy loam of his native Devonshire.</p> - -<p>“I told you they’d fight,” he repeated. “I been amongst -’em, and I know.”</p> - -<p>Nobody answered him, but he heard the roar of musket -fire back in the hills, the roar of flames from a burning house -in a grove of crooked trees a few yards away. He thought -impatiently that it had never taken him so long to load -before.</p> - -<p>“Shut your pan. Charge with your cartridge. Draw your -hammer,” he muttered, as his fingers moved swiftly along<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span> -the reeking barrel. No old hand at this business of soldiering, -he felt reassured to find the phrases of the British Arms -Manual fall so readily from his tongue.</p> - -<p>The cart rocked and rumbled down a narrow track at the -edge of the salt marshes. Moors, clay pits, and scrubby oak -trees stretched to the foot of the hillside on his left. To his -right, in the middle of the river, he could see the lights on -board the man-o’-war <i>Somerset</i>, and beyond them, the low -roofs and steeples of Boston. Would he ever present arms on -Boston Common again, or offer his own arms in another sort -of way to the pretty girls who went walking there? He began -to doubt it now.</p> - -<p>“Run down your cartridge. Withdraw your rammer.” He -was ready at last. He lifted the gun and pointed it horizontally, -pointed it, pulled the ten-pound trigger, and at the -same instant stiffened his body against the powerful recoil.</p> - -<p>Then he heard a triumphant roar as the gun went off, -sending its charge of powder and ball in the direction of the -pursuing Yankees. Hooray! Sometimes it merely sparked -and fizzled in the pan. God send he had hit somebody!</p> - -<p>“The Yankees don’t fire like that, lad,” he heard a voice -mutter.</p> - -<p>Turning his head in surprise, he looked down at a battered -veteran who crouched a few feet away, dabbing at a shoulder -wound.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” he demanded. There wasn’t enough -of the man’s uniform left to tell whether he was an officer -or not. Best be safe and address him so. His voice had a ring -of authority, for all it came so weakly from his throat.</p> - -<p>“I know.” The older man smiled through bluish lips. -“You fire as you were taught, and so do I. Did you ever engage -with the Rebels before?”</p> - -<p>“Not exactly, sir,” said Gerry Malory of the Twenty-third.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> -“I’ve gone amongst them somewhat—‘incognito,’ one -might say.”</p> - -<p>“Ah! Detailed for spy duty, perhaps?”</p> - -<p>Gerry felt his face flush. I talk too much, he thought.</p> - -<p>The dusk was drawing in thickly now, with a little fog -winding up from the river. Flashes of light burst out on the -road behind him, like fireflies in a hawthorn thicket, all the -way back towards Cambridge where the relief regiments -under Lord Percy were trying to cover the rout of the troops -that had charged so proudly that morning on Lexington -Green.</p> - -<p>He heard a whoosh in the dull air behind them. “Duck, -lads,” he cried, and flung himself down on the floor of the -cart. The whoosh turned to a shrill whistle and then to a -scream as it passed overhead. Then came a thud and a splash -as the heavy ball fell harmlessly on the sludgy ground.</p> - -<p>Gerry lifted his head. “Drive like the devil, Sergeant,” he -shouted. “Once we get over Charlestown Neck, we’re as safe -as the Tower of London. They’ll never follow us under the -guns of our own ships.”</p> - -<p>“Causeway’s just ahead!” shouted back Sergeant Higgs, -whipping the horses.</p> - -<p>Gerry stood up and looked around him. They were well -down on the narrow neck of wasteland now, between the -wide, sea-flowing mouths of the Charles and the Mystic. He -could smell the salt air and feel the cool wind on his hot face. -Groups of weary red-coated men straggled into the marsh -grass to let them drive through. How many had preceded -him into safety, how many were left in the running fight -behind, he couldn’t tell. But he saw campfires on the smooth -green hills above Charlestown village, and he thought longingly -of the farms and orchards there, a little more longingly -of the Bay and Beagle Tavern and a girl called Sally Rose.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>“Not detailed for spy duty?” asked the veteran persistently.</p> - -<p>Gerry looked down at him, and he was enough of a soldier -to realize that the wounded man wanted to engage in conversation -in order to forget his pain. He seated himself on the -floor of the wagon and answered evasively.</p> - -<p>“No, but I go about sometimes. I like to know what kind -of men the Rebels are, and what their country is like. Maybe -walk out with a girl and play a prank or two. I be West -Country-bred, and not too fond o’ towns and barracks life.” -Then he thought of a way to shift the attention to another -matter. “But what were you saying about the way I shoot?”</p> - -<p>The man grinned. A bit of color had come back into his -face now, and the dark stain was no longer spreading on the -shoulder of his coat.</p> - -<p>“Why, you load and prime your piece and blast away, -hoping the shot will tell. The Yankees sight and aim. I saw -the man who hit me. Stood up behind a stone wall, looked me -over, head to toe, and marked me down. We fire line to line, -and they fire man to man. We shoot in the direction of the -enemy. They pick a target. That’s why they’ve got us running -away.”</p> - -<p>You mean they shoot like poachers, thought Gerry. Like -poachers after pheasants in the squire’s bit o’ woodland. But -he did not say it out loud. Every man’s past was his own, but -to keep it so, he had to be wary.</p> - -<p>They had crossed the Neck by this time, and the road -veered away to the right, circling the foot of Bunker Hill and -heading for Charlestown village.</p> - -<p>“Don’t hear them firing after us any more,” said Gerry, -peering back the way they had come. Some of the sunset red -was still left in the sky, and enough daylight for him to see -that the road behind them was choked with carts and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span> -stragglers, but the whole pace of the retreat seemed to have -slowed.</p> - -<p>“No, and you won’t hear them again tonight. They won’t -dare follow us into Charlestown. Could you hold me up, -lad? I do not breathe as easily as I am wont to do.”</p> - -<p>Gerry knelt down, got his hands under the limp elbows of -the fallen officer, and hoisted him into a sitting position -against the side of the cart. The man drew a few painful -breaths and then spoke again.</p> - -<p>“Thank you for your trouble. I am Captain Blakeslee of -the King’s Own.”</p> - -<p>“’Twas no trouble, sir,” muttered Gerry uneasily. “I be -Private Malory of the Twenty-third.”</p> - -<p>The captain’s face relaxed in a smile. “A fine regiment—the -Welsh Fusileers. I was a guest when they made merry on -last St. David’s day. Ah—it comes to me now. I knew I had -seen your face before. Were you not the lad who led forth -the goat with the gilded horns? He ran wild, I remember, -leaped on the table, and up-ended our wine glasses just as -we were going to drink to the Prince of Wales! A ludicrous -scene!”</p> - -<p>Gerry’s cheeks grew hot in the darkness, and he clenched -his fists to keep his shame and resentment down. Yes, he had -led the damn goat that according to army tradition preceded -the Welsh Fusileers whenever they passed in review. Led, -and cleaned it, and curried it, and bedded it down every -night in a stable near Long Wharf, and twisted garlands -about its horns on parade days. He still remembered the -hideous embarrassment of the moment when the beast had -escaped him.</p> - -<p>Signed up for a soldier, he had, reluctantly, but expecting -his share of excitement and glory. Until today he had done -nothing save tend that black-tempered goat. No wonder he -had fallen into the habit of “borrowing” a captain’s uniform<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span> -or an American’s homespun breeches and tow shirt, and gone -swaggering out amongst the girls in the Yankee villages now -and then! A man had to have his pride and sweetness and a -bit of sport in life. He had learned to imitate the officers’ -pompous speech and attitudes, or to talk with a New England -twang. Maybe he’d go for a strolling player when he got -home again. Maybe he’d be good at it, he thought. But of -course, it was in his blood, and no wonder if he should turn -out that way.</p> - -<p>The farm cart ground to a stop just as Gerry was about to -mutter that it was indeed he who led the goat. Sergeant -Higgs leaned over to confer with an officer in fresh white -trousers and trim jacket, a man who had obviously taken no -part in the fighting that day. Then the officer stood aside, the -sergeant pulled sharply on the reins, and Gerry felt the -wagon leave the road and go lurching across a field at the foot -of Bunker Hill. One of the wounded men sat up. The others -began to moan and swear.</p> - -<p>“You’re off course, Higgs!” shouted Gerry, forgetting -that his barracks-mate outranked him and was entitled to a -more respectful salute.</p> - -<p>Higgs turned around, his broad face a white blur in the -darkness. “I be following orders, Private Malory. We’re to -wait by yon hill till the troops clears a way through the town -so the boats can take us off. By midnight we’ll all be back in -Boston.”</p> - -<p>“Thank God,” murmured Captain Blakeslee, and then as -Higgs drew up the cart in a little grove of locust trees, he -turned to the younger man. “Will you help me down on the -grass for a bit, lad? I’ve taken a notion to feel the earth under -me. Better under than over.” He gave a weak smile.</p> - -<p>“Give us a hand, Higgs,” called Gerry, trying to lift the -captain, almost a dead weight this time.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>Jack Higgs was six years older than Gerry. This was not -his first battle, nor the first wounded man he had seen. The -moment he joined them in the bed of the wagon, he thrust -his hand inside the tattered coat. Then he pulled it out again -and muttered under his breath. For a long moment he stared -at Gerry.</p> - -<p>“Is—is it bad?” faltered the young private, feeling suddenly -afraid, as he had not felt all that afternoon when the -Yankees were shooting at him as he retreated down the -Charlestown Road.</p> - -<p>Captain Blakeslee gave a hoarse cough.</p> - -<p>“Bad enough,” said Higgs. “Tell you what, Gerry. Go -down into Charlestown and see if you can find a surgeon. Tell -him we got need of him here.”</p> - -<p>“Put—me—on the ground,” whispered Captain Blakeslee. -He lay slumped against the side of the wagon and tried to lift -his head, but he was not strong enough.</p> - -<p>Together Gerry and Sergeant Higgs got him out of the -cart and stretched the limp body on the young grass under a -locust tree.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go quickly,” Gerry promised. “I’ll come back with -the surgeon. I hope ’twill be in time.”</p> - -<p>“Good luck to you, lad,” said the sergeant. He was still -bending over the wounded man when Gerry hastened off.</p> - -<p>The journey proved not to be a long one, but over all too -soon. Ten minutes hard running across the fields, a brief -encounter, and he came pounding back. Jack Higgs stood -leaning against the wagon. He had lighted a little fire of -dead boughs, and in its light his usually pleasant face looked -somber, his eyes a little sick. He was in his shirt sleeves now.</p> - -<p>“They told me I was a fool,” panted Gerry. “Told me no -surgeon would come out this far to save one man, or three, -or four, when so many lies bleeding there in the town. How -is the Captain? Jack—where is your coat?”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>Sergeant Higgs motioned toward a dark heap under the -locust tree. For a moment he stood silent, then he spoke.</p> - -<p>“Surgeons couldn’t ha’ saved him, Gerry—not a whole -regiment of ’em marched out here two and two. When I put -my hand to him, his flesh was already cold. He was about -gone. I knew they wouldn’t come. I only sent you to get you -away. You never been in battle, never seen men die before.”</p> - -<p>“Your coat—?” faltered Gerry. Not that the coat mattered, -but he felt he could not talk of anything that did.</p> - -<p>“I laid it across his face,” said Higgs, clearing his throat. -“Afterwards. It seemed more decent-like, somehow.”</p> - -<p>Gerry sat down on the grass beside the little fire, there -being nothing else to do. The moon had risen and was shining -wanly down on the hills and pastures, on the roofs of Charlestown -village. It made a path of silver across the black bay, a -path to the lighted shores of Boston. Lanterns flashed in the -midst of it, lanterns on the prows of the boats that were carrying -the badly defeated British back to the town they had left -so proudly the night before.</p> - -<p>Gerry thought how he himself and the rest of the Twenty-third -had marched out that morning, fifers playing “Yankee -Doodle,” and colors lifting on the spring wind. They had -marched inland by way of the Neck, through Roxbury to -Cambridge, and so far, it was all a game. But the sport ceased -near Lexington where they met their fleeing comrades who -had gone to Concord to raid the Yankees’ powder magazine. -Powerful grenadiers dropped exhausted and lay like dogs -after a hunt, panting, their tongues hanging out. The Marines -and Light Infantry scattered helter-skelter across the countryside, -while the farmers fired at them from behind every wall -and tree.</p> - -<p>“Cover the retreat,” his regiment had been ordered, and -they had done so, in a running battle all the way back to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span> -Cambridge. It was there that an officer had detailed him and -his sergeant to help get the wounded away.</p> - -<p>And now one of those wounded was dead, Captain Blakeslee. -Why should it matter to him, when he had known the -captain such a little time? But it did matter. A lump swelled -and stiffened inside his throat. Then he looked down towards -Charlestown and thought of Sally Rose. But she wouldn’t be -there, of course. She had gone to visit her kin in a town called -Newburyport, a town in the country somewhere. Her father -had sent her away because he thought she was too good for -a captain of the Welsh Fusileers. And if he felt that way -about a captain, how would he feel about the private who -tended a goat in stable and led it out on muster day? How -would Sally Rose feel if she knew the truth about him? And -then somehow Sally Rose began to dwindle in his mind, and -for the moment she did not matter any more. He remembered -that he had fought his first battle and come out alive, -but Captain Blakeslee was dead, and maybe tomorrow there -would be another battle, and he would be the one to lie under -the locust tree, under some comrade’s tattered coat.</p> - -<p>“Open your haversack, lad,” said Sergeant Higgs, his voice -cheery again. “I found a spring on the hillside a bit of a ways -off, and I’ve been fetching water to the men in the wagon -there. They be all somewhat easier now, and the boats will -have us in Boston before long.” He threw another armful of -dry branches on the fire. “You’ve salt pork and bread, like -the rest of us, so eat up your supper. ’Twill taste little worse -for the fact that good men be dead, and we lost the day.”</p> - -<p>“I know we were driven back,” murmured Gerry, obeying -the sergeant and taking out his small parcel of food. “But -didn’t the troops get the Rebel stores they went for? Didn’t -they get to Concord before...?”</p> - -<p>Higgs nodded. He had run the point of his bayonet through -a lump of thick, greasy-looking meat and held it over the fire.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> -“Oh, they got there, all right,” he said. “But they’d been -better off if they’d stayed in barracks, according to the way I -heard. They broke up a couple of cannon, rolled some powder -kegs into a millpond, and burnt a house or two. Then they -was routed. But ’twould be a different story if the Yankees -would come out in the open and fight like men.”</p> - -<p>“They seemed to be in an almighty rage about something,” -said Gerry, beginning to toast his own meat, keeping his eyes -away from the shadow under the locust tree. “And they had -no sort of uniformed army. Men in shirts and leather breeches, -just as they’d come from the plow or workshop. Well, all -spring we’ve been sure there was fighting ahead of us. Now -it’s begun.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Jack Higgs, looking out at the dark shapes of -the rescue boats that crossed and recrossed the moonlit water. -“It’s begun, and it took two to begin it—we and they. But at -the end—there’ll be left only one.”</p> - -<p>“And it better be we!” Gerry felt his own features soften -in a smile.</p> - -<p>He put up his head in the sharp night air and heard the -bugles sounding on the peaceful green crest of Bunker Hill. -They were British bugles, and they reassured him. For the -last hour or so, he had been sure he would never have the -heart to go forth disguised and playing pranks about the -countryside again. But now it seemed to him that perhaps he -might.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Four</i><br /> - - -<small>THE COURAGE TO GO AND THE -FEET TO GET HIM THERE</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“Not</span> that way, child!” cried Granny warningly. “Lord -o’ mercy, Sally Rose, take care!”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose stood by the huge brick fireplace in the raftered -kitchen and stared desperately about her. In her hands she -held a hot iron kettle full of molten silver-gray lead. It was -too heavy for her to hold any longer, and she saw no place -to set it safely down. Kitty would have figured out ahead of -time what she meant to do with it, but not Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>“Let me help you,” cried Kitty, jumping up from her -place at the heavy oak table where she had been preparing -the bullet molds while Sally Rose heated the lead. She -reached her cousin’s side a second too late. The kettle tilted -dangerously and fell from Sally Rose’s loosened fingers, -just missing the yellow flames beneath. It lay on its side at -the edge of the wide hearth, its contents spilling out harmlessly -in a gray film over the rosy old bricks, sinking into the -cracks between them.</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry, Gran,” said Sally Rose contritely.</p> - -<p>Granny sniffed. “Sorrow butters no parsnips,” she retorted. -“Well, it’s no use crying over spilt lead, I suppose. That’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span> -one batch of bullets will do no harm to the British. But it’s -a mercy you didn’t burn yourself or set the house afire.” She -straightened her muslin cap and smoothed her plaid apron -with thin, blue-veined hands.</p> - -<p>Kitty let her glance rove out of the window, at the gooseberry -bushes in the kitchen garden and the moist brown -seedbeds where Timothy had been spading yesterday. His -old hickory-handled spade still leaned against the garden -wall. No telling when he would use it again. Timothy had -taken his gun and gone to Cambridge, and it seemed like half -the town had gone with him. Even boys not much older than -herself, boys like Johnny Pettengall. She still didn’t know -about Dick, but then, Dick didn’t have a gun, so he’d probably -be down at the shipyard, just as he always was. She’d make -some excuse to go by there, later in the day. She wondered -about the strange lad from up the Merrimack. Maybe, since -the war was in Massachusetts Colony, the New Hampshire -men would think they had no call to go. Still, with his keen -eyes and sharp jaw, he looked like he’d be wherever there -was a fight going on. She heard Granny’s brisk voice calling -her attention back to the kitchen.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you’d better run down to the gunsmith’s, Kitty, -and fetch me some more pig lead—all he can spare. Sally -Rose, you and me’ll get the bake ovens going. Uncle Moses -Chase came by here awhile back, and he says they’re gathering -supplies to send by oxcart—enough to feed the lads for -a few days: hams, flour, meal, salt fish and cooked victuals; -lint and medicines, too, in case—who told you to take your -apron off, Sally Rose?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you think I’d better go with Kitty?” asked Sally -Rose eagerly. “Lead’s apt to be heavy, you know, and—”</p> - -<p>“What she can’t carry, the shop will send after her, I don’t -doubt,” replied Granny. “Sally Rose, you start yourself for -the flour barrels. Take half rye and half cornmeal....”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>Sally Rose pouted. Kitty knew she was pouting, although -she did not look at her. She tied on her new chip hat with the -velvet roses, and hastened through the garden, into the street.</p> - -<p>“Kitty, take off that hat and put on your old serge hood!” -Granny called after her. “It looks like there’ll be a shower -any minute.” Kitty pretended not to hear her.</p> - -<p>She walked down the hill into the town, past Mr. Dalton’s -mansion house and the Wolfe Tavern. People still loitered -about in little groups, but last night’s excitement seemed to -have given place to a quieter mood, uneasiness, anxiety, perhaps -fear. The shoemaker stood in front of his gabled shop, -a wooden last in one hand and a strip of purple kid in the -other, talking to a grizzled old man who peddled clams in -Water Street.</p> - -<p>“No, we’ve heard no more,” he was saying. “No more o’ -the Concord Fight, or our lads that marched away. Whole -colony’s up, though. Half Essex County’s gone, the stage -driver says, and the men way out west beyond Boston are -moving in from their side. Hope to squeeze the British in -between.”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said the peddler. “The Hampshire lads has started -across the river, too. Some by ferry, and some with smacks -and dories, and they say there’ll be more. The word’s gone -inland, way beyond Rockingham.”</p> - -<p>“You mean they’re going to make cause with us and fight -the King’s men?” asked the shoemaker, twisting the strip of -purple kid in his hand.</p> - -<p>The peddler nodded. “They’ve long been sworn to. And -everywheres now, them as was undecided whether to go -Whig or Tory has got to make up their minds. You’ll find -things’ll be different, now blood’s been spilt.”</p> - -<p>Kitty walked on, and the words echoed disturbingly in her -head. The street sloped sharply down to the water, with shops -along both sides—the milliner’s, the baker’s, the butcher’s—shutters<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span> -down and doors wide open, just as on other days, but -nobody seemed to be buying anything. Most of the shopkeepers, -like the shoemaker, had joined the uneasy groups -in the street outside.</p> - -<p>The gunsmith’s shop was in a narrow lane behind the -church, and when she reached it, she found its door tightly -barred and a crude sign dangling from the latch. <i>Gorn to -Cambridj till further notiz</i>, the sign said.</p> - -<p>She stood there uncertainly for a moment, and looked -about her. The soft gray sky seemed to match her own mood, -uncertain whether to pour down rain or let the sun shine -through. Between the houses she could see the waters of the -river, a darker gray. Not all the men had followed the gunsmith’s -example, for busy crews were working about the -wharves and slips, hammers rang from the shipyards, and -the tall chimneys of the distillery lifted their plumes of -smoke, just as if it were an ordinary morning. Somehow the -sight reassured her. She’d go and look for Dick, she thought, -and make sure that he hadn’t run off with the Minutemen. -Then she’d go home and tell Gran about the gunsmith, take -off her hat, and get ready to help with the baking.</p> - -<p>As she passed the sailors’ boardinghouse in Chandler’s -Lane, she noticed Eben in the backyard chopping wood, and -she called to him. He straightened up, looked at her for a -minute, then put his ax down and came over to the board -fence.</p> - -<p>“What are you after, Kitty? ’Tisn’t no use looking for -Dick,” he said.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know that I was looking for Dick,” said Kitty -tartly, chagrined because Eben had read her mind so plain. -“But now that you speak of him, I don’t suppose he’s off -for Cambridge, too?”</p> - -<p>Eben nodded solemnly. “Ye-a, Dick’s gone.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>Kitty felt shocked in spite of herself. “But how could he? -He doesn’t have a gun.”</p> - -<p>“He’s got a tomahawk,” said Eben. “Tomahawk they -took out o’ his great-grandmother’s head when the Indian -tried to scalp her up in Haverhill in ’96.”</p> - -<p>“Why, I know that old thing,” cried Kitty. “It’s duller’n -a hoe. We played with it when we were children. Might as -well try to fight with a warming pan!”</p> - -<p>Eben shrugged. “Colonel told him to come along,” he -said. “Told him there’d be men there was poorer armed, he -didn’t doubt. Said the courage to go and the feet to get him -there was all he’d really need.” Suddenly he fell silent. He -looked down at his own bare feet and stubbed one great toe -in the moist earth.</p> - -<p>Kitty felt a little shaken. So Dick had gone off to fight -the British. Dick, that she’d played with when they were -toddlers and he lived in an adjoining house on High Street. -How excited they had been, that day when they first found -out they were big enough to scramble back and forth over -the low fence. And now he had taken his old tomahawk and -marched away, a man with other men! And she was left here -to do Gran’s bidding, just as if she were still a little girl. But -she did not feel like a little girl. She felt sad and tremulous -and excited, as if she had the weight of the world on her -shoulders, and still, a little happy in spite of it all. Maybe -this was the feel of growing up. Maybe last night when they -played hide-and-seek had really been their last night to -be young, though they hadn’t known it then. Mostly, she -thought, we never know when we do anything the last time.</p> - -<p>She suddenly realized that a soft rain had begun to fall, -cooling her checks and gathering mistily in her hair.</p> - -<p>“Eb—en!” shouted a buxom woman from the back steps -of the boardinghouse. “Take in my washing off the line! -Step lively there!”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>Eben muttered, and his face burned crimson as he walked -away.</p> - -<p>Kitty looked after him for a moment, and her heart stirred -with quick sympathy. It must be hard for Eben to be left -behind to do such humble chores while his friend had gone -off to war and been accepted as a man. The soft drizzle -turned into a downpour. She thought, belatedly and with -some alarm, of the roses on her hat. She turned and hurried -back to Market Square and up the hill, walking with her head -bent because of the rain, trying to shield her finery with one -lifted hand. So it was that she did not see him until they -almost collided under the tavern sign that hung on a long -pole high over the sloping street. Then she caught her breath -and stepped back, and looked up into the eyes of Tom Trask, -the logger from Derryfield.</p> - -<p>He stood there, bareheaded in the rain, and he wore the -same hunting shirt and moosehide breeches, but he was not -smiling now, though his gray eyes lighted with recognition.</p> - -<p>“Playing games on the dock tonight, Miss Kitty?” he asked -her, and in spite of his sober face, his voice had a teasing note -in it.</p> - -<p>She smiled and shook the rain from her lashes. “How did -you know my name was Kitty?” she asked him.</p> - -<p>“Heard ’em call you that times enough—last night, I -mean, whilst I was looking on.” His eyes smiled now, but -his mouth remained a thin line. He seemed to be waiting -for her answer.</p> - -<p>“No,” she said. “We’re not often so silly, and besides, I -doubt if the rain will stop. And even if it did—there are -hardly enough of us left to play.”</p> - -<p>He nodded. “I seen two o’ your friends marching off last -night,” he said. “All our crew was asleep on the raft when -the bells begun to go, but when we got into town and heard -the news, ’twas no surprise. I was over to Johnny Stark’s sawmill<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span> -just before I started down river, and he said he figured -Boston had stood about all they could o’ the British, and the -British had stood about all they could o’ Boston. Said he expected -to be taking his gun down any day. Well, if he’s got -the word, he’s likely there, him and the rest o’ the boys, and -I aim to join them, only—”</p> - -<p>Kitty could feel her hair turning dank and the raindrops -thickening on her lashes. She thought of her sodden hat, and -sighed inwardly, but she made no move to excuse herself and -leave the stranger.</p> - -<p>“—only I left my musket at home in Derryfield, and the -gunsmiths here ain’t doing business today. Has any o’ your -menfolk got a spare gun, Miss Kitty?”</p> - -<p>She hesitated. He held out his lean hard hands with -freckles on the backs of them. “I suppose I could use these -on the varmints,” he muttered. “But powder and ball’s the -quicker way.”</p> - -<p>“There is a gun in the barn loft that belonged to my -father,” she said slowly.</p> - -<p>“You speak like your daddy’s dead,” he answered, not -looking at her.</p> - -<p>“Yes. He drowned in the river just below here, not long -after I was born.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t remember much o’ mine, either. Killed when we -took Quebec in ’59. Shooting shoulder to shoulder with the -British then we was, and now we’re shooting at ’em.” He -shrugged his lean shoulders. “Well, I’d sure like to borrow -your daddy’s gun, if your mother don’t object none to the -idea.”</p> - -<p>“My mother’s dead, too, and Granny would likely make -a fuss, but I don’t think we’ll ask Granny.”</p> - -<p>Kitty had finally made up her mind. “Come on,” she said, -flicking her fingers lightly against his sleeve.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>His fingers were not light when they gripped her arm. -They were sure and steady. Together they walked up Fish -Street and turned right to pass the Frog Pond and the new -training green. He strode proudly along with his head up, -but he did not talk to her. Instead he whistled a plaintive air -she had never heard before.</p> - -<p>When they got to Gran’s neat clapboarded house, she -guided him through the front gate and along the garden -path, half screened by lilac bushes growing thick and tall.</p> - -<p>A small whitewashed barn stood at the rear of the property, -but Granny kept no livestock any more, and the inside of it -smelled clean and musty like an attic, with no scent of dung -or hay. The loft had two tiny windows set high under the -eaves, but no other light, and it took Kitty a few minutes -before she could make out the old gun hanging on the wall -between a moth-eaten lap robe and a long wooden fork for -pitching hay.</p> - -<p>“There it is,” she murmured, pointing, breathless and a -little proud.</p> - -<p>He strode forward and pulled down the short, thick-barreled -gun. When he spoke she caught a note of dismay -in his voice.</p> - -<p>“An old blunderbuss,” he murmured. “An old blunderbuss! -Looks like the one Adam must ha’ carried when they -driv’ him out o’ Eden.” He peered into the flaring muzzle. -“Might shoot, at that. Don’t believe I’ll try it in here.”</p> - -<p>Groping around on a shelf, Kitty found an empty powder -horn, which he took a little more gratefully.</p> - -<p>“There’ll be powder enough where I’m going,” he told -her, “and I better be getting there.”</p> - -<p>The rain tapped steadily on the shingles overhead, but the -tiny window that faced westward showed a streak of blue sky. -Carrying the old blunderbuss carefully, he moved toward -the ladder that led below. Uncertain what to do or say, Kitty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span> -stood and stared at him. He paused and turned toward her.</p> - -<p>“I’ll take good care o’ this,” he said, “and I’ll see you get -it back when I don’t need it any more.” He took a step in -her direction. Suddenly her throat began to hurt, and she felt -as if she were going to cry. He took another step. “I’ll make -sure of it,” he said. “When I get to camp and can set down -for a spell, I’ll cut your name and the town where you live—right -here on the butt.” He tapped the end of the thick gun. -“And then, maybe somebody else will send it home if I don’t—come -back this way.”</p> - -<p>He took her by the shoulders and kissed her quickly on -the mouth.</p> - -<p>She gulped and felt the tears slip down her cheeks. Under -his hands her shoulders were shaking.</p> - -<p>“But I aim to come back,” he said. He scrambled down -the ladder and away. Like Dick, he had the courage to go -and the feet to get him there, and she was left without so -much as a window to wave him good-by from, and how -could he put her name on the gun when he did not know her -name?</p> - -<p>It came to her suddenly that she had to run after him and -tell him her name was Catherine Greenleaf. If he didn’t -know it, he’d never be able to send her father’s gun back to -her, and she wouldn’t want a stranger to keep her father’s -gun. Dashing the tears away, she stumbled down the ladder -and ran through the lilacs where she met him slowly coming -back. He looked down at her and smiled.</p> - -<p>“Come to my mind that a thing you do for luck, you must -do three times,” he said. He bent and kissed her again. Then -he turned and ran through the front gateway.</p> - -<p>“Stop, thief!” yelled Granny, tapping furiously on the -parlor windowpane. “That’s my son’s blunderbuss! Call the -watch! Call the constable! Call the sheriff! Stop, thief, stop! -Come back, come back!”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Five</i><br /> - - -<small>THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“I can’t</span> think whatever put you up to such devilment, -Catherine,” sputtered Granny. “’Twas bad enough for -you to spile your new hat, without giving your father’s gun -away.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve told you over and over again that I didn’t give him -the gun,” sighed Kitty. “I only loaned it to him. He promised -to bring it back. He looked like a lad who’d keep his word.”</p> - -<p>Granny clucked to the raw-boned sorrel horse and tugged -expertly at the reins as the animal plodded round a curve in -the sandy road.</p> - -<p>“Tom, Tom, the piper’s son/He ran away with Father’s -gun!” sang Sally Rose under her breath.</p> - -<p>“Hummp!” snorted Gran.</p> - -<p>Kitty looked across the plowed fields to where the Merrimack -flowed behind a hedge of willows. They dipped their -long green boughs in the flooding stream, and here and there -the water gave back a flash of bright sun. How peaceful everything -looked in the soft April afternoon. How hard it was -to believe that the lads she knew might be facing the redcoats’ -bayonets only a few miles off. But everyone did believe it.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> -Everyone was frightened and apprehensive. Folk turned out -everywhere to shade their eyes and watch the roads that led -southward, Boston way.</p> - -<p>It was more than twenty-four hours since Tom Trask had -made off with the old blunderbuss, but Granny was still scolding -about it. She would have scolded more, probably, if there -hadn’t been so many chores for all of them, getting supplies -ready to send after the Minutemen. All day yesterday they -had baked, and this morning she and Sally Rose had gone -from door to door collecting old linen for bandages. Then -Uncle Moses Chase brought the borrowed wagon and suggested -that the three of them might help by driving into the -country to see what they could procure from the cellars and -smoke houses of the farmers round.</p> - -<p>“If you’d let it go to one o’ the Port lads—say Dick -Moody, now—I could have understood,” Granny rambled -on. “Why, I don’t know how many years that gun has been -in our family! My grandmother told me it was brought from -England in the days of the coming over. Her father got it -in trade for an old horse down in Plymouth County.”</p> - -<p>Kitty gave a sudden giggle. “Tom said it looked old enough -to belong to Adam,” she said. She pulled her bonnet off and -felt the warm sunlight on her brown hair, felt a warmth -inside her when she said his name.</p> - -<p>“Hoity-toity, so we call him ‘Tom’!” cried Granny.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose reached out and caught her grandmother’s -ruffled taffeta sleeve. “Granny,” she said, “there’s a farmhouse -down that cart track under the shagbark trees. Uncle -Moses said to call at every place and not miss a single one.”</p> - -<p>Kitty gave her cousin a grateful glance as Granny turned -the sorrel off the highway and into a rutted lane. Stone walls -bordered the fields on each side of them, and little brooks of -water flowed in the gutters, draining the wet black land. In -one field a plow stood abandoned in mid-furrow, and half a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> -dozen cows waited patiently at the bars, but nobody came to -drive them off to pasture.</p> - -<p>“Can’t be anyone at home,” said Granny, “’Bijah Davis -lives here, and he’d never treat his animals so.”</p> - -<p>As they drove into the yard of the weathered farmhouse, -a young woman came to the door, a pale young woman with -a baby in her arms and two toddlers pulling at the skirts of -her blue calico dress. A half-grown yellow cat ran between -her feet, almost upsetting her.</p> - -<p>“Land’s sakes, Nance,” cried Granny. “You’re looking -poorly this spring. Is ’Bijah round somewhere?”</p> - -<p>The young woman shook her head. “’Bijah took his gun -and put for Cambridge,” she answered. “I wrapped him up -a clean shirt and a hunk o’ corn’ beef. I don’t know when -he’ll be home.”</p> - -<p>Granny tut-tutted. “Many gone from around here?” she -wanted to know.</p> - -<p>“Pretty nigh all the men,” said the young wife sadly. -“Like you say, Ma’am Greenleaf, I been poorly this spring, -but I got both bake ovens going just like other folks, I can -tell you. We’re cooking up victuals to send after the lads. -Two oxcarts has gone already, and by tomorrow we can fill -two more.”</p> - -<p>Granny nodded in agreement. “We’re doing the same at -the Port,” she said. “Don’t suppose you got any foodstuffs -you could spare us, something you don’t need for your own?” -She pulled out a beaded purse and fingered it significantly.</p> - -<p>Nancy Davis put up a hand to smooth back the stray wisps -of hair from her forehead. “Could be some eggs in the -haymow where the hens steal nests sometimes,” she murmured. -“Could be. I ain’t had the gumption to go look.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll go,” cried Sally Rose eagerly. “Come on, Kitty.”</p> - -<p>“You’d better take this basket,” said Gran, reaching under -the wagon seat. “And don’t be gone long. It’s nigh on to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span> -sunset time. When we finish here, we’ll start home.” She -turned again to the farm wife. “I suppose folks is pretty well -stirred up around here.”</p> - -<p>The young woman nodded. “That we be. Nervous and on -edge till we’d run a mile if we was to hear a pin drop. Fear’s -about us on all sides, just the way I’ve heard my grandmother -tell it was down to Salem in the witchcraft time. It’s because -we don’t know what’s happening, I think—nothing since the -first word. Sure, the British was driv’ back to Boston once, -but maybe they’ve marched out again. Maybe our lads -couldn’t stop ’em, and they’re headed this way. And how can -I tell whether ’Bijah be still in the land o’ the living or no!” -She began to cry.</p> - -<p>“Folks is all upset at the Port, too,” said Gran soothingly, -getting out of the cart to go to Nancy.</p> - -<p>The girls scurried into the mossy-roofed rambling barn, -climbed to the loft, and began searching through the hay.</p> - -<p>“Which are you the most worried about, Kit,” asked Sally -Rose. “Dick, or—?” She sneezed violently and wiped her -eyes and nose with a lace handkerchief. “My, this hay dust -makes me think of the time when I was little and got to -playing with Father’s snuffbox. Which one? Tell me, Kitty.”</p> - -<p>“I’m worried about all of them,” said Kitty slowly. “Even -your wretched Gerry. I wish men would keep their guns for -deer and wild ducks. I don’t see why they have to kill each -other.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose shrugged. “I know,” she said. “I don’t understand -it either. But you have to realize, Kitty, some things -about men we’ll never understand.” She pulled a large brown -egg out of the hay and placed it carefully in the basket. “I -wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “if the men on both sides -were all shut up in gaol, just how the women would go to -work to settle the matter.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” said Kitty, adding two more eggs to their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> -collection, “but I’m sure there’d be cups of tea for everybody.”</p> - -<p>“Tea doesn’t have much to do with this war, Father says,” -went on Sally Rose quickly. “And Gerry says the same. They -both say it’s to decide who will rule America—King and -Parliament, or the men who live in this country.”</p> - -<p>“I should think King and Parliament would have enough -to do at home,” answered Kitty. “What’s that? I thought I -heard someone shouting.”</p> - -<p>Both girls sat up in the shadowy mow to listen.</p> - -<p>“Turn out! Turn out! For God’s sake!” thundered a -hoarse voice from the highway.</p> - -<p>“Maybe he’s brought news of the lads,” cried Sally Rose, -upsetting the basket in her haste to scramble down the ladder. -Forgetting the eggs, Kitty followed her. They ran out of the -barn and across the yard under the hickory trees. Granny and -Nance, with the children straggling after them, had already -started up the lane.</p> - -<p>A black-coated rider came spurring toward them from the -direction of the Port, waving his cocked hat with one hand -and whipping his horse with the other.</p> - -<p>“Turn out!” he shouted. “Turn out, or you will all be -killed! The British have landed at Ipswich and have marched -to Old Town Bridge! They are cutting and slashing all -before them!”</p> - -<p>He paid no attention to the huddled group of women, but -galloped past.</p> - -<p>“Turn out! Turn out!” he panted. “The British have -landed at Ipswich!” His voice grew fainter as he rounded -the end of a low hill and swept out of sight.</p> - -<p>They stood looking at one another. “If you ask me, his -wits are addled,” said Gran stoutly. “He had a mad look in -his eyes. I’d want some further word—”</p> - -<p>Then a chaise hurtled down the road, swaying from side<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span> -to side, driven by a lean woman with gray hair streaming -about her shoulders and a swansdown hat hanging on one -ear. “The British!” she choked as the chaise went rocking by.</p> - -<p>After her came a young couple on horseback, and then -three farm wagons loaded with family groups and household -goods. A wooden churn fell off and rolled into the brimming -gutter, but they did not stop to retrieve it; they drove furiously -on.</p> - -<p>Nance stood there, as silent and rooted to earth as one of -her own hickory trees. Kitty and Sally Rose held hands -tightly and looked at each other, uncertain whether to laugh -or be afraid, waiting to see what would happen next.</p> - -<p>Then it seemed as if half the Port went streaming by. Gran -stood at the side of the road and waved her beaded purse at -the mad rout of chaises and wagons, but nobody would stop -for her. Finally a farmer hastened by on foot, leading a plow -horse that had gone lame. She stepped up smartly and caught -him by the front of his tow-colored smock. “Young man, -what is the meaning of this?” she demanded.</p> - -<p>“God Almighty, are ye deaf, Mother?” he growled, spitting -tobacco juice into the dust of the road, just missing her -dainty kid slipper. “The British ha’ come ashore. Come -ashore at Ipswich, and hacked their way past Old Town -Bridge. I rode over twenty dead bodies as I come from there. -They’ll be at the Port now, heading this way.”</p> - -<p>For the first time Kitty began to feel that this was not -some ridiculous mistake. Her throat grew tight, and her -nerves began to tingle with fear.</p> - -<p>“Where is everyone going?” she cried.</p> - -<p>The farmer turned to answer her. “They’re all trying to -get across the river into Hampshire,” he said. “Some’s for -the woods and swamps nearby. Better get along yourselves. -You’ll be the safer, the further you can go.”</p> - -<p>He urged his old horse forward again.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>Gran turned back from the highroad as another half dozen -wagons rattled past. “He looked like an honest lad, and he -saw it with his own eyes, Nancy,” she admitted reluctantly. -“You bundle up the children and whatever food you’ve got -on hand, and come along in our wagon. I’m going to drive -as hard as I can for Haverhill Ferry. I trust we’ll get across.”</p> - -<p>Nance, bewildered and numb with terror, tried to follow -out Granny’s instructions. Back in the kitchen she fumbled -through the bin, brought out a sack of potatoes, and stood -there helplessly, holding it. Gran reached past her. “Take -the apples, instead,” she advised. “They’ll taste better if we -have to eat them raw.”</p> - -<p>Finally the young wife got herself, the two children, and -the shawl-wrapped infant into the wagon. She sat on the seat -with Granny, and Kitty and Sally Rose crouched on a sack -of turnips a farmer had given them early in the afternoon. -How long ago that seemed! In the gathering twilight they -drove swiftly along the winding river road.</p> - -<p>The lower Merrimack Valley above the Port was not -sparsely settled country in those spring days of 1775. There -were farmhouses and parish churches and crossroads villages -scattered all about it, and few dwellers there who could not -see their neighbor’s chimney smoke or the lights of his kitchen -when they looked out at night. But now the peaceful district -was overrun with strangers and refugees streaming through.</p> - -<p>Kitty and Sally Rose huddled together on the turnip sack -for warmth, looking back down the road every now and then, -to see if the British were in sight, if the glare of burning towns -lighted the sky. But all they could see were the frightened -folk of Essex County hurrying for the swamps and the forests, -for the low hills of New Hampshire Colony across the -wide dark stream.</p> - -<p>Women, and a few old or feeble men, were toiling across -the farmyards here and there, carrying favorite gowns, or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span> -chests of silver, or pewter teapots to conceal them in wells -and hollow trees. And from almost every doorstep strong -arms laboriously hoisted old folk and invalids into carts to -haul them away.</p> - -<p>“What do you think’ll come of it, Kit?” asked Sally Rose -in a low worried voice. “Do you think Gran will take us over -the river to Haverhill? I don’t want to go to Haverhill. It’s -a sleepy country town, and it’ll be worse than the Port, with -all the lads away. I’d almost rather get caught by the British, -I think.”</p> - -<p>“But they’re cutting and slashing all before them,” Kitty -reminded her grimly. “That farmer said he rode over twenty -dead bodies on the way.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I do not think they would cut and slash me,” said -Sally Rose, smiling confidently in the dark. “Oh, Kit, look -there!”</p> - -<p>They were passing a tiny cottage half hidden by leafy apple -trees. An armchair had been placed firmly on a scrap of lawn, -and in the chair sat a man with a lantern beside him and a -musket across his knees. He was enormous, and almost perfectly -round. “Let the British come!” he shouted, and waved -his musket. “I be too fat to budge for ’em! I’ll stay here and -shoot the bloody devils down!”</p> - -<p>A little way farther on they came across a group of women -bending over another woman who lay on the ground in the -curve of a stone wall. Granny hesitated, and then drew rein. -“Is the poor critter sick?” she called to them. “Can I help? -Perhaps we could make a place for her.”</p> - -<p>A tall woman in a gray shawl straightened up. “No, -thank’ee, Ma’am,” she called crisply. “It’s only Aunt Hannah. -She wheezes so with the asmaticks, her noise would give -us away to the British. We’re going to cover her over with -leaves and let her rest, all snug and out of sight, here by the -wall.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>At that Nancy Davis began to laugh. She laughed and -laughed, and then she began to cry. Gran slapped her face -hard and drove on. “None o’ that foolishness, Nance,” she -said severely. “Mind your children. ’Bijah would expect you -to. Kitty and Sally Rose”—she lifted her voice—“is all well -with you back there?”</p> - -<p>“Let’s not go any farther, Gran,” pleaded Sally Rose. -“There are lights at the inn we just passed by. If the folks -haven’t run away, maybe they’ll have beds for us. Maybe -if we hide in bed, the British will ride on and never know -we’re there. I don’t want to go to Haverhill, Gran.”</p> - -<p>“When I say you’ll go to Haverhill, to Haverhill you’ll -go,” said Gran, and drove on into the night. “I hope I can -make the ferry in time.”</p> - -<p>Kitty sensed the note of anxiety in Gran’s voice, and that -frightened her more than anything that had gone before it. -Not when the smallpox struck and folk lay dying in every -house in town, not when a great tree crashed through the roof -in the midst of an autumn storm, had she known Gran to feel -afraid. She looked over her shoulder again, and then around -her at the dark fields, the thickets here and there along the -road. Frightened women had come this way in other times, -she knew, when Indians with tomahawks lurked behind every -tree. She had heard, too, of the dreadful times at Salem that -Nancy spoke about, when the devil had walked abroad in -Essex County, or folk thought that he had, though they never -saw the devil. The most terrible fear, she thought, is the fear -of an unseen thing. A British Army marching toward them -with drums and banners and bayonets would not be so terrible -as the shadows that might hold any nameless menace, the -shadows drawing closer in....</p> - -<p>She turned to Sally Rose, but Sally Rose was humming a -little tune. There was boredom rather than terror in her hazel -eyes. Sally Rose had found one redcoat to be a gallant and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> -handsome lover, so she believed they would all be that. But -Kitty had heard tales of their cruelty to Boston folk. She -remembered that blood had been shed at Concord Fight and -on Lexington Green. She crouched on the turnip sack and -shivered with cold fear.</p> - -<p>Somehow the road seemed to be less crowded now. No one -had passed them for half an hour. Then they met a little -group of horsemen slowly riding back. Granny hailed them.</p> - -<p>“Are you headed for Newburyport? Is the battle over? -Where are the British?” she wanted to know.</p> - -<p>The leader took off his cocked hat, and Kitty noticed that -he had a bald head and very black eyes. “We begin to think -the British are in Boston and have been there all along, that -they never stirred from there. We have found no trace of -them, and we scoured the countryside. The whole commotion -is either a sorry jest or a coward’s error, it seems. At least, -we have recovered sufficient courage to ride back toward -Ipswich and see.”</p> - -<p>“I suspected as much,” said Gran, tightening her mouth.</p> - -<p>“Ho hum!” said Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>The men rode off, and Gran pulled the wagon to one side -of the road. They were facing a small common with a white -steepled church at the edge of it. Houses clustered round -about, darkened and deserted, their doors hanging open, their -inhabitants fled away. Overhead the elm boughs tossed eerily -in the light of the cold moon.</p> - -<p>“Get out, girls, and stretch your legs,” Gran ordered. -“Then I’m going to turn around and drive back to my own -house at the Port. You can come with me, Nance, if you’re -afraid to bide at home.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not afraid any more,” said Nance wanly. “Not if the -British are still in Boston. Do you think they are still in -Boston, Ma’am Greenleaf?”</p> - -<p>“I feel sure of it,” declared Gran firmly. “Well, the Bible<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> -says the young men shall dream dreams. That’s what that lad -who said he rode over twenty dead bodies must ha’ done. -Let’s all go over to the church steps and give thanks to God. -Dream, joke, or error, I don’t care which it was. It’s over -now, and high time we went home.”</p> - -<p>The two children were asleep on the seat of the wagon, -but Nance carried the shawl-wrapped baby and held it in her -arms as they knelt on the church steps of gray old stone. Gran -lifted up voluble thanks to the Almighty, and Kitty’s attention -wandered. She watched a husky youth who had been -hiding in the crotch of a pear tree climb sheepishly down and -sidle off, gnawing a piece of salt pork. He had apparently -taken provisions to his refuge, in case the British kept him -treed for a long time. The sight of the pork made her hungry, -and Nance must have seen it, too, and thought of food, but -not for herself. The minute Gran rose from her knees, she -asked if they could wait while she suckled the baby.</p> - -<p>“Why of course,” said Gran heartily. “My, there’s not -been one peep out of the little thing. I trust it hasn’t got -smothered in all this uproar.”</p> - -<p>Nancy sat down on the step, carefully pulled the shawls -away, and bent her head while the others stood looking on.</p> - -<p>Suddenly she screamed. They peered closer.</p> - -<p>“God save our souls alive!” gasped Granny.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose giggled. Kitty swallowed and made no sound -at all.</p> - -<p>In her haste Nance had wrapped up the wrong creature, -and now it was the half-grown yellow cat that slept peacefully -in the crook of her arm.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Six</i><br /> - - -<small>FUN WHILE IT LASTED</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> young man sat on the steps of the tavern by Ipswich -Green and stared about him; at the old brown roofs -with yellow moss growing on their seaward sides, at the little -rocky river that flowed like liquid amber under its stone -bridge, at the steepled church on the rocky hill. Shadows lay -long in the deserted streets of Ipswich, and far to the west -the sun was going down.</p> - -<p>The young man wore a rough woolen shirt and homespun -breeches. He had a cleft chin, deep blue eyes, and black curly -hair. He looked uncommonly pleased about something.</p> - -<p>The landlord came to the open doorway behind him and -stood there, peering into the dusk. He was a short plump -man with a lame leg and a worried expression.</p> - -<p>“Not a sign o’ the British yet, be there, lad?” he asked -anxiously.</p> - -<p>The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Could be they’ve -turned aside and gone another way,” he said in a lilting tone. -“Well, I guess I’ll be taking the road myself, while there’s -a bit o’ the daylight left. How far did you tell me it was to -Newburyport, sir?”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>The landlord shifted his feet uneasily. “It’s a piece of a -journey yet, and the roads will doubtless be clogged with -fleeing folk, if one’s to judge by the rout that streamed out -of here; likewise the half o’ Beverly tagging through. Why -not stay the night? I’ll give ye free lodging. It’ll mean there’s -one able-bodied man in town, besides a handful of petticoat -folk.”</p> - -<p>Again the young man shrugged his shoulders. “Well -enough, if ’twill please you—and supper be included in the -offer.” He got to his feet and stood there smiling.</p> - -<p>“Come in, lad, come in,” cried the landlord in relieved -tones. “Come, and I’ll give ye supper, such as ’tis. Cook’s -run off to the hills like all the rest, but my daughter Nanny’s -here, and Nanny can do. Come and bring your box, if ye will. -Where’d ye say ye be from? Have ye traveled far?”</p> - -<p>The young man stooped and lifted a small leather chest -bound with iron. Deep in the lid was burned the name -“G. Malory.” It was a peculiarity of his that although he -often played other men’s parts and wore other men’s clothing, -he would never abandon his own name.</p> - -<p>“Barnstaple,” he said. “Gerry Malory of Barnstaple, shoemaker.”</p> - -<p>“Barnstable? Down Cape Cod, ain’t it? A fair ways from -here.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Barnstaple’s a fair ways off,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>Together they stepped into the dark smoky taproom. It -was deserted except for a little maid, scarce more than a child, -who stood in the doorway of the kitchen.</p> - -<p>The landlord went to the hearth and stirred the dwindling -fire. “What’s in the pot, Nanny?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Dandelions,” said Nanny pertly. “Dandelion greens and -a ham bone. But the ham bone don’t smell like it should, -Father.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>“Warm up the chowder then,” he ordered, and turned to -his guest. “Are ye handy with firearms, Gerry?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve a pistol in my chest here, among my shoemaker’s -tools. Guess I know what to do with it.”</p> - -<p>“No, no,” cried the landlord impatiently. “I got no faith -in such pop guns. I mean a man-sized weapon. Son Rob took -my musket to Cambridge, but there’s a fowling piece hung -up on the kitchen wall. I don’t see as well to aim as I did -once. Who was it spread the word about town? Did ye happen -to hear?”</p> - -<p>The shoemaker shook his head. “I couldn’t say, sir. As I -told you before, I was just passing through here on my way -to Newburyport to see a girl, when all at once a great stir -began, and folks went rushing to the green. Somebody -shouted that the British had landed at Ipswich Bar and were -cutting and slashing all before them. Next thing I knew, the -wagons started rolling out of town, and everyone took to the -highway, afoot and on horseback. I watched them for awhile, -and then came here to catch my breath and maybe have a -bite of supper.”</p> - -<p>Again the landlord went to the door and peered nervously -into the thickening night. “Not a light in town,” he said. -“Folk that hasn’t fled away be keeping their houses dark, -’twould seem. Do ye mind if I don’t light up, lad? Can ye -see by the glow o’ the fire?”</p> - -<p>“’Tis no trick to find a mouth the size of mine,” said the -young man gallantly. Then as Nanny put a steaming bowl -on the table in front of him, his nostrils quivered. “Did the -ham smell stronger than this, my lady?” he asked her.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Nanny flatly, stepping back into the kitchen.</p> - -<p>He sat down on a bench, picked up a ladle, and tasted the -chowder gingerly.</p> - -<p>“None for me, Nanny,” called her father. “I be that -worried about the British, I wouldn’t relish victuals none.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>“Right, sir,” said Gerry, putting down the ladle. “It comes -to me that I, too, am worried about the British. Still, a piece -of bread now—it need not have butter—I could eat it dry.”</p> - -<p>“Slice up a loaf of bread, Nanny,” called the landlord.</p> - -<p>Nanny’s thin piping voice came back from the kitchen. -“The bread’s moldy. All that wasn’t, we sent to Cambridge.”</p> - -<p>Gerry Malory sighed resignedly. “Well, perhaps a glass -of milk then—unless all the cows have fled away. Nothing -stronger. I must keep a clear head on me.”</p> - -<p>The landlord himself brought a pitcher of milk and poured -two glasses full.</p> - -<p>“Be ye just up from the Cape, Gerry? And did ye come -by Cambridge? We’ve had no news from there since the -word o’ Concord Fight come through.”</p> - -<p>The young man shook his head. “I haven’t been near -Cambridge, and it’s a long time since I went Barnstaple way.”</p> - -<p>“Where ye been, then?”</p> - -<p>“Oh—round Charlestown most of the time, I guess. You -know Job Townsend’s tavern there?”</p> - -<p>“Job Townsend? Keeps the Bay and Beagle, don’t he? -In Crooked Lane near Harvard Street. I knowed him when -he was your age. Too bad. He lost his wife young. Got a -right pretty daughter, I’ve heard. Sally Rose, or something -like.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, he’s got a pretty daughter,” said Gerry Malory, -draining his glass. “I been around the Bay and Beagle some.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t get down that way much myself,” said the landlord -thoughtfully. “What’s the news thereabout? Do they -think the British’ll fight? And if they do....”</p> - -<p>The young man shook his head solemnly. “You got no -chance against the British,” he said.</p> - -<p>The landlord looked up sharply. “Ye say ‘you’ and not -‘we,’” he protested. “Does that mean Barnstable don’t intend -to join against the cruel laws o’ the King? That they be not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span> -with the rest o’ Massachusetts? The Hampshire towns be -with us, and I hear that so be the west and south, New York -and Virginia, too.”</p> - -<p>“Oh no, no, I do not mean that at all,” cried the young -shoemaker. “’Twas a slip of the tongue. Of course Barnstable—on -Cape Cod—will join cause with you. I only mean that -the outlook is dark, sir, dark, for those who would fan the -flames of rebellion in America.”</p> - -<p>He put down his empty glass and leaned forward, his -hands clenched before him on the table. “How can <i>we</i> defend -a thousand miles of seacoast with only a few scattered towns, -against a great battle fleet of three hundred ships and armed -men? We can scarce put thirty thousand soldiers in the field. -England has one hundred and fifty thousand, and can summon -more. We lack guns, ammunition, money, and trade. -More than that, we lack the tradition of love of country, a -tradition that will make the meanest man fight and die -bravely. For a thousand years men have been giving their -lives for England. What man has ever given his life for -America before?”</p> - -<p>“Sounds like you been listening to some Tory make -speeches, lad. Happens there was a few gave their lives at -Concord and Lexington the day before yesterday,” retorted -the landlord. “There’s a first time for everything, Gerry.” -His voice was milder than the milk in his half-empty glass, -but his eyes held a sharp look, a look of question. Suddenly -his face went white.</p> - -<p>“Lord in heaven, I’ll fetch the gun for ye! Here they -come!” he cried, dashing from the room, tripping over a -footstool unseen in the light of the fire.</p> - -<p>Gerry Malory lifted his head. He heard a shouting in the -road, the creak of wagons rumbling along. He, too, got up, -went to the door, and stared out into the soft April night. -The moon had not yet risen, but as he turned to look to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span> -north he could see swaying lights and shadowy figures, moving -painfully slow, but drawing closer. He waited, silent, to -see what would emerge out of the dark.</p> - -<p>As the cavalcade became more sharply visible, he saw that -it consisted of three oxcarts piled with boxes, kegs, and -baskets, escorted by some half dozen men. The oxen lumbered -along wearily, and the men seemed weary, too, as they -plodded at the side. They were not young men, but grayish -and old and frail, except for a thin-faced lad with tow-colored -hair and an ancient gun gripped casually in his right hand. -The wagons drew to a halt in front of the tavern, one man -stayed with the oxen, and the others came forward eagerly, -seeking refreshment.</p> - -<p>Gerry stepped back into the taproom and turned to face -the landlord who rushed out of the kitchen with a badly -rusted gun held in front of him. “No British,” he said reassuringly. -“Just some teamsters who want to wet their whistles, -I expect.” He retired to the shadows near the great chimney, -found a stool there, and sat down.</p> - -<p>The landlord bustled forward to welcome the visitors. In -a few moments they were seated at the table, and Nanny was -helping her father to set out food and drink, greens, ham -bone, chowder, and all.</p> - -<p>“Not a fit man amongst us,” sighed the oldster with a face -like a russet apple and a scar across his forehead. “I fought -in too many wars already. But once we get these stores to -Cambridge, likely I’ll stay there and enlist for one more.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t know how we’d ha’ got this far, if this Hampshire -lad hadn’t o’ertaken us,” said another. He turned to the thin-faced -youth who was eating chowder, the old blunderbuss -leaning against the table close to his elbow. “We was sure -glad to see you, Tom Trask, when our cart broke down the -other side of Rowley last night. A proper wheelwright you -turned out to be.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>Tom Trask did not look up from his chowder. “Be a wheelwright -when I have to,” he muttered, “or most any other -sort of thing.”</p> - -<p>“Tell me, lads,” questioned the landlord eagerly, “did ye -see aught of the British that’s supposed to be marching on us, -cutting and slashing all before?”</p> - -<p>“We heard the rumor, o’ course,” went on the russet-cheeked -man, “and saw the rout go past. Didn’t trouble us -none. We kept on our way. Word’s gone about now, that -there be doubts the British ever was nearer than Boston. -Truth to tell, sir, I surmise we been made fools of.”</p> - -<p>The landlord made a clucking sound with his thin lips. -Tom Trask was staring hard at the small iron-bound leather -box on the table in front of him.</p> - -<p>“Who’s that there belong to?” he asked suddenly.</p> - -<p>“That—oh, that belongs to Gerry Malory over in the -corner. Gerry’s a shoemaker from Barnstable—on his way to -Newburyport to see a girl.” The landlord’s voice was gay -and jovial in his relief, now that he had no further cause to -fear the British. After all, he had not fled away at the false -rumor. He had not been made a fool of. He strutted a little -as he walked about the room, filling the glasses, replenishing -the fire. When his shame-faced neighbors came straggling -back, he’d be able to indulge himself in a boast or two. Then -suddenly he pricked up his ears. The tow-headed lad from -New Hampshire Colony was speaking. He held the leather -chest in his hands, turning it about.</p> - -<p>“‘G. Malory,’ it says here. And Landlord says G.’s for -Gerry. Gerry Malory—going to Newburyport to see a girl.” -He sounded thoughtful.</p> - -<p>The landlord noticed that the young shoemaker from -Barnstable had edged his stool further back into the shadows. -He said no word.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>“Seems to me,” went on Tom Trask, “I might know what -girl he’s going to see. A peacock-proud girl named Sally -Rose, I wouldn’t wonder. Seems to me I heard o’ Gerry -Malory.”</p> - -<p>His voice deepened, and there was a sharp edge to it that -caught the attention of everyone in the room and made them -listen.</p> - -<p>“That’s her!” cried the landlord excitedly. “Sally Rose! -Job Townsend’s daughter! He said he hung around the Bay -and Beagle some!”</p> - -<p>Still the young man in the shadows did not speak.</p> - -<p>“The Gerry Malory I heard of,” went on Tom Trask, -“was said to be a captain in the Twenty-third. That’d mean -he’s a British officer.” He waited accusingly.</p> - -<p>The landlord slapped his thigh. “Well, pickle my brains -in rum!” he cried. “I think ye be right, lad. He was talking -like a Britisher just before ye got here. Saying times was dark -for us, and no man would give his life for America. Out o’ -that corner, sir, and answer the charge! Be ye a lobsterback -come in disguise among us?”</p> - -<p>Then indeed Gerry Malory stepped forward. “You’ve -mistaken yourselves,” he said easily. “There may be a man -with the same name as mine in the ranks of the British. I -doubt that I be the first Gerald Malory since the world was -made. I doubt if I be the last. I be a shoemaker of Barnstable, -loyal as any man here.”</p> - -<p>“Loyal to what?” demanded Tom Trask. Then he bent -down, pulled off one crude cowhide boot, and held it out. -“Here. I got a hole clear through my sole leather tramping -these rocky roads of Essex County. If you be a shoemaker, -prove it! Cobble my boot!”</p> - -<p>Gerry Malory took the boot in his hands and examined -it. Then he shook his head. “’Tis scarce worth fixing, my -good man,” he said condescendingly. “Get yourself a new<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span> -pair when you arrive in Cambridge. That is the best advice I -can give you.”</p> - -<p>“You lie,” said Tom Trask steadily. “I can fix it myself, if -you’re unable. All I ask you to do is prove you be a shoemaker.”</p> - -<p>The teamsters, the landlord, even Nanny, were staring in -silence at the two young men. Gerry Malory studied the boot -in his hand. He frowned. “Well enough,” he said. He -opened the small chest and fumbled inside it, took out a -wooden last, hammer, and awl, a packet of pegs and nails. -“Ah, this should do it,” he murmured judiciously. He selected -a strip of leather and tried to fit it over the ragged hole -Tom had pointed out.</p> - -<p>All eyes were upon him. No lips made any comment. He -gripped the boot with one hand under the instep. He fitted -the leather over the hole with the other hand. Then he stood -there, conscious suddenly that he had no third hand to set the -nails in place, no fourth hand to wield the hammer. He put the -boot down and started all over again.</p> - -<p>But his face was growing hot and his fingers even more -clumsy. Suddenly he ceased his efforts. “I am sorry,” he said. -“I forgot my most needful tool. You must wait until you get -to Cambridge, unless you can find another cobbler.”</p> - -<p>Tom Trask stood up. He held the old gun lightly in his -hand. “Your most needful tool is there,” he said, “but you -don’t know enough to know it. Put the boot on the last, you -should have. That would ha’ held it firm, and left your -hands free to get on with your cobbling. Right enough, we’ll -go to Cambridge, and we’ll take you along as our prisoner, -Captain Malory o’ the Twenty-third. All the world can see -you’re no shoemaker. Johnny Stark will know what to do -with you. Landlord, have you a length of rope, or better, a -few links of chain, about the place? For safety, we’ll tie him -up now.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>Gerry Malory, of Barnstaple in English Devon, bit his -lip and stared around him somewhat wildly. That cursed -Yankee with the gun that looked as if it came out of Noah’s -ark stood between him and the open doorway. He doubted -if it would shoot, but even if it didn’t, its owner looked like -no easy man to handle. And the Yankee had his friends -about him.</p> - -<p>While he hesitated, two old men ambled forward and -bound his wrists together with a heavy length of clanking -chain. Then they stepped back, and the whole company continued -to stare at him.</p> - -<p>“Captain,” said Tom Trask thoughtfully, “I be not so -sure as I was that you come this way to see a girl. Likely you -did, but likely, too, you might ha’ spread the false report that -the British was upon us. It might ha’ been a word o’ yours -that sent us flying over hills far and wide as if the devil was -after. A fool’s prank, maybe—maybe a smart trick to spread -confusion amongst us.”</p> - -<p>Suddenly Gerry Malory remembered the scenes of the -afternoon: lean spinsters rocking along like giraffes in the -animal garden on Tower Hill, fat men waddling off, their -faces red and their eyes popping with panic. He laughed -aloud and looked down at his hands bound stiffly in front of -him.</p> - -<p>“In either case, it was fun while it lasted,” he said.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Seven</i><br /> - - -<small>OFF TO THE WARS IN BOSTON</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“Cousin,</span> I see no future for us in this place,” said Sally -Rose bleakly.</p> - -<p>She was sitting in the soft grass on the hill behind the Frog -Pond, looking down the dusty street that led through the -Port, straight to the wharves and warehouses along the river.</p> - -<p>Kitty pulled herself up on her elbow and let her glance -follow her cousin’s. There appeared to be as many white sails -in the channel as usual, the same blue spring haze on the far -shore, and the familiar curve of sky overhead. But the town -below them, commonly bustling with life on a warm May -afternoon, looked strangely deserted and still. A brown dog -slept in the middle of High Street, and two old men hobbled -past the Wolfe Tavern in the direction of Market Square. A -farm cart ground its slow way towards Old Newbury, and a -group of children ran hither and thither across the training -green with laughter and shrill cries.</p> - -<p>Kitty pulled a golden dandelion blossom from the grass -and began to tear it apart in her fingers. “I think I see what<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> -you mean, Sally Rose,” she said. “It is dull here with no one -to talk to but grown folk—and of course, the other girls. I -never realized how many girls there are in town. There -never seemed to be so many before. I never thought I bothered -myself much about the lads, but what a difference it -makes—now they are all gone away.”</p> - -<p>“Gone, and not likely to return very soon, from what I -hear,” said Sally Rose thoughtfully. “A few have come home, -but mostly the older men with families, or the fainthearted -ones. Last night I heard Uncle Moses telling Granny they -plan to stay where they are and form a mighty army that will -circle round like a wall of iron to keep the British penned in -Boston.”</p> - -<p>“Then there’s no knowing when they’ll be home,” -answered Kitty. It made her uneasy to admit to herself, as -she had been forced to do, that all her eagerness and anxiety -were not for her long-time friend, Dick Moody, but for that -other one, the thin lad from New Hampshire who had taken -her father’s blunderbuss away.</p> - -<p>“No knowing,” agreed Sally Rose. “Three weeks it’s been -since Concord Fight, maybe more. More than a month since -I’ve seen Gerry. I thought he might write to me, but he never -has. Some of the Tory girls in Boston are very fair,” and she -sighed. “I thought I might find someone to take his place, -but I should have known I never could—here in this dull, -stupid, country town.”</p> - -<p>“You’re better off not seeing him, since he’s British,” said -Kitty sharply. “I’m sure, most times, you’d find better lads -than him, walking down Queen Street any day. But just now—well, -you know where they’ve all gone. They’ve gone to -fight for the rights of our colony, and you ought to be proud -of them, Sally Rose.”</p> - -<p>“Ummmm,” said Sally Rose, chewing a dandelion stem -and then making up a face when its bitter white milk puckered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span> -her mouth. “Of course I’m proud of them. How old -does one have to be before they’re an old maid, Kitty? It -seems like I might be approaching the time.”</p> - -<p>“Oh no,” cried Kitty. “We’re only sixteen. No one would -think that of us—not for at least two years more!”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose stood up and tossed her bright hair in the sun. -“Two years isn’t long,” she said. “Well, you can sit here in -the Port and wither if you want to, but I’ve got other fish in -the pan.”</p> - -<p>She started walking quickly in the direction of Granny -Greenleaf’s weathered house.</p> - -<p>Kitty watched her with apparent unconcern for as long as -she could. Then she jumped to her feet and hurried after.</p> - -<p>“Where are you going?” she panted.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose smiled at her. “Why,” she said, “I think I’ll go -back to my father’s house in Charlestown. If there’s a war in -Boston, we’ll be in the midst of everything there. Why don’t -you come along, Kit? Tom Trask may not be back this way, -you know.”</p> - -<p>Kitty felt her face turning hot and red, but she chose to -ignore the last part of her cousin’s remark. “You can’t go to -Charlestown,” she said. “Granny won’t let you go where -there’s likely to be fighting. You know that as well as I.”</p> - -<p>They had turned in at the front gate now, and were walking -under the budded lilac bushes, Sally Rose in the lead, -Kitty following breathless, a few steps behind.</p> - -<p>“A fig for Granny!” cried Sally Rose. “I love her, of course, -but she’s a timid old lady, fit only to huddle in the chimney -corner. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be bold and daring—the -way a girl has to be these days. Of course she won’t let -me go, and so I shan’t ask her. She drove out to see Nancy -Davis this afternoon. When she gets back at suppertime, I -won’t be here. I’ll be halfway to Rowley—or further on.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>She opened the unlocked kitchen door and ran lightly up -the back stairs to their chamber.</p> - -<p>Kitty followed, a little more slowly. She sat down on the -edge of the high four-poster and dangled her feet over the -side; watched while Sally Rose gathered ribbons, laces, and a -few toilet articles and tied them up in a shawl.</p> - -<p>“It’s a long walk to Charlestown,” she said tartly.</p> - -<p>“Not so far for a horse,” answered Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>“You have a horse then?”</p> - -<p>“I know where to borrow one. I know where I can borrow -two. Uncle Moses Chase keeps half a dozen in his barn on the -Old Newbury road, and he’s gone with Granny, so he won’t -know if we take them. He won’t care, when he finds out. -Why don’t you come with me, Kitty? We’ll have a gay time -in Charlestown.”</p> - -<p>Kitty shook her head, but without much conviction. “I -couldn’t go behind Granny’s back,” she said.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose smiled sweetly. “I’m sorry you feel so, Cousin. -Perhaps I do wrong to make a jest of everything, but that is -my way. Have you never thought, when you hear all these -preparations for war, that there is work for us as well as for -the lads? Who’s to cook and wash and sew for them, and bind -up their wounds when the fighting is over? I’m going where -I can be of use to my country. If you’re afraid to come with -me—well, you can stay here and sleep in the sun by the Frog -Pond every afternoon. You’ll surely be safe enough—unless -a horsefly bites you, or the dry rot settles in.”</p> - -<p>She took a quill pen and inkpot from the mantelpiece, sat -down at the dressing table, and began to write.</p> - -<p>Kitty jumped from the bed and took a few turns up and -down the room.</p> - -<p>“Do you really think we ought to go, Sally Rose?” she -asked. “Do you think—we might be needed there?”</p> - -<p>“I certainly do think so,” said Sally Rose. “Don’t bother<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> -to pack any clothes, Kit. At home in Charlestown I have more -than enough for two.”</p> - -<p>Under Sally Rose’s urging, Kitty opened a top drawer in -the old mahogany chest and began slowly to sort out the few -possessions she wanted to take with her, if she did go; an -ivory comb, a pleated linen fichu, her mother’s cameo brooch. -Her fingers flew faster every minute, as her heart warmed to -the plan.</p> - -<p>Her throat grew tight, and she felt tears of eagerness and -excitement sting her eyelids. She was going to serve her -country, like Tom and Johnny and Dick, and all the Newburyport -lads, all the lads of the Bay Colony, and maybe -other colonies, too. She was going to take part in a serious, -and a mighty, and a very grown-up thing. Wars were history, -and she was going to help make history. It had been done -before by other girls who were just as young. She was glad, -she thought, that she was to have a chance to do it in her time. -Her heart stirred just as it did in church when one or another -of the old warlike hymn tunes rose on the air.</p> - -<p>“You’d better take a cloak, Kit, for it’ll grow cold after -sundown, and we may ride late,” advised Sally Rose, pulling -her own fleecy shawl from the carved old press. “Come, let’s -be off to the wars in Boston!”</p> - -<p>On her way to follow Sally Rose’s bidding, Kitty caught -sight of her cousin’s note as it lay open on the dressing table.</p> - -<p><i>Dear Granny</i>, the note began, in dainty, pointed script, -<i>Forgive me for leaving you so suddenly, and practically forcing -poor Kitty to go along. But I dare not travel by myself, -and I find that a sudden yearning to see my father takes -me....</i></p> - -<p>Kitty stood still for a moment and almost gave up all idea -of this desperate journey.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have a gay time in Charlestown.” “I want to serve -my country.” “A sudden yearning to see my father takes me.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>Sally Rose could give many reasons for what she wanted -to do. And she would always give the ones most likely to get -her what she wanted. And what was her true reason? No one -knew except Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, Kitty found she did not turn back, but -folded her cloak over her arm and hastened downstairs after -her cousin. After all, what was her own reason for wanting to -go to Charlestown? She did want to serve her country, but -she was quick enough to see that she could serve it quite as -well at home, if she had chosen so. But she had not so chosen. -Was not she, Kitty, slyer, more secret and stubborn than -Sally Rose in getting her own way?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was black dark when they rode into Ipswich, very few -lights in the town, and very few people still awake. The moon -was hidden away behind the clouds somewhere, and a light -mist had begun to fall.</p> - -<p>“I hoped we could get as far as Beverly,” said Sally Rose, -“but we’ve come only half the way. Uncle Moses said he had -plenty of horses in his barn, but he didn’t say they were plow -horses. Well, there’s a light in the tavern. I’ve stopped there -before, and I know the landlord’s daughter. A pert, homely -little wench, but I’m sure she’ll find us a bed.”</p> - -<p>“I hope so,” said Kitty dubiously, climbing down from her -horse and following her cousin up the wide stone steps and -through the low front door.</p> - -<p>The taproom smelled of cider and fish and the smoky -wood fire burning on it blackened hearth. It was dimly lit and -empty, except for three old men who sat at a table with -glasses in front of them, and a sharp-faced, sallow girl polishing -other glasses behind a narrow bar.</p> - -<p>When Sally Rose walked across the uneven floor, her head -up, her eyes shining in the candlelight, her hips swaying ever -so slightly, the heads of the old men turned toward her as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span> -sunflowers turn to follow the golden light of day. Kitty -walked demurely behind her, but nobody noticed Kitty.</p> - -<p>“Nanny,” cried Sally Rose, putting out her hand to the girl -eagerly, as if there was no one in the world she would be -gladder to see than Ipswich Nan. “Nanny, we’re o’ertaken -with darkness, and we need a bed for the night, my cousin -and I.” She drew Kitty forward, and they stood together at -the bar. “We’ll need supper, too, Nanny,” she said.</p> - -<p>Nanny curtsied. “Yes, Miss Sally Rose,” she answered, -beaming adoringly at the pretty, smiling face turned toward -her. “The bed in the east chamber is aired and ready. Should -I serve you there, or....” She glanced about the taproom.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose began to pull off her embroidered gloves, put -up a hand to pat her golden hair. “Oh—at that table by the -fire, please. It was chilly, coming the last mile through the -swamp willows, and with all the fog about.”</p> - -<p>Nanny lighted a candle in a pewter holder and carried it -to the table by the fire. “I’ll bring you supper right off, Miss -Sally Rose. We got dandelion greens and a ham bone—”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose made up a face. “Oh Nanny,” she pleaded, -“you know my stomach’s delicate.”</p> - -<p>Kitty clapped her hand over her mouth so that she would -not giggle. Sally Rose had never been sick in her life, and -could probably digest brass nails if she had to.</p> - -<p>“Couldn’t you find a bit of chicken, Nanny?”</p> - -<p>“Chicken I’ve not got,” answered Nanny. “But there’s a -piece of spring lamb I just been a-roasting for the minister’s -wife. She’s got Salem company coming tomorrow.”</p> - -<p>“The lamb will do nicely,” said Sally Rose, sitting down -at table.</p> - -<p>“About our horses,” asked Kitty, taking the chair across -from her cousin.</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course. I’ll speak to one of the men and have them -seen to. I noticed the landlord as I came in.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>They turned to look at the three men by the table. The -men were all staring at them and talking together in low -voices. One of them now rose and came forward. He wore -a leather apron tied around his middle and walked with a -decided limp.</p> - -<p>“Job Townsend’s daughter, ain’t you?” he demanded of -Sally Rose. “Visit kin in Newburyport on occasion?”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose smiled and dimpled. “Why, how clever of you -to remember me! Of course I’m Job Townsend’s daughter,” -she said. “And I’m on my way home from Newburyport -right now. I’ve often told my cousin Kitty here, about your -tavern—there isn’t a better one in the whole of Essex -County.”</p> - -<p>Strangely enough, the landlord was not smiling at Sally -Rose, and he ignored her compliment.</p> - -<p>“We had a young fellow here a short time back. A young -fellow who said he hung around the Bay and Beagle some.”</p> - -<p>He waited, his face expressionless, for Sally Rose to speak. -In the silence Kitty heard the rattle of dishes from the -kitchen. She caught the delicious odor of roast meat, the tang -of crushed mint leaves.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose’s smile grew no whit dimmer. “We’ve many -young fellows who hang around the Bay and Beagle,” she -said. “My dad would go poor, if we didn’t. They keep the -till full. Did he tell you his name?”</p> - -<p>The landlord spoke accusingly. “He said his name was -Gerry Malory. He said he was going to Newburyport to see -a girl.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose shrugged her graceful shoulders. “Plenty of -girls in Newburyport,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Do you know this Gerry Malory?”</p> - -<p>“I might,” she answered cautiously. “Was he a dockyard -hand now, or maybe a farmer from Breed’s hill—”</p> - -<p>“This one was took up for being a British officer,” said the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span> -landlord grimly. “Took up, right here in my tavern. Irons -put on his wrists—part of an old ox chain I had—and he was -took to the camp at Cambridge under guard. Likely they’ll -hang the damn redcoat. I hope they do.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose’s smile looked a bit frozen, but it did not vanish -away. There was a tremor in her voice, but she spoke imperiously -still. “All very interesting, Landlord, but your daughter -has undertaken to fetch us a supper of spring lamb. We -are tired with long riding, and if you could ask her to be spry -about it, we should be grateful. Our horses, also, are at your -door and in need of attention.”</p> - -<p>She sat down and turned her back upon him.</p> - -<p>Kitty watched the lame man shake his head. Then he -stumped off toward the kitchen. She looked again at her -cousin, and Sally Rose’s eyes were shining with more than -the candlelight.</p> - -<p>“He was coming to see me,” she murmured happily. -“Gerry was coming to see me when they caught him.”</p> - -<p>Kitty felt her face twist in a frown and spoke her disapproval. -“Which he shouldn’t have been doing, of course. He -belongs with the other British in Boston. Well, he’s got himself -in trouble now. A prisoner of our men, and the landlord -talked of hanging. Aren’t you worried about him?”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose took off her bonnet and shook back her shining -hair. “Not a little finger’s worth,” she said. “They won’t -hold him long. He can come and go like a breath of east -wind, Gerry can. My, oh my”—and she patted the front of -her muslin gown—“I’m so hungry. I wish Nanny would -hurry and bring that spring lamb!”</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Twenty-four hours later they were hungry again, much -hungrier, and very tired. But they were riding down Crooked -Lane in Charlestown, with the Bay and Beagle almost in -sight, and over the river the lights of Boston.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>“My, it’s been a tiresome day,” sighed Sally Rose. “Losing -my purse, horse going lame, taking the wrong turn in Danvers—I -don’t see how I could have been so stupid as to do -that.”</p> - -<p>“The black flies were the worst,” complained Kitty. “I’m -bitten in a dozen places, I vow. And I don’t dare scratch the -bites, for if I do, I’ll look as if I had smallpox.”</p> - -<p>She thought back over their long day’s riding: village -greens with white steeples—Wenham, Beverly, Salem; long -stretches of salt marsh with the sea beyond it; then Lynn and -Malden, as the towns drew closer in. It was already night -when they came to Medford, and there a constable had -ridden with them through town, straight to the Penny Ferry. -Part of the great New England Army was camped on the -hills about and overflowing the streets and taverns, he said, -and he feared for the safety of young maids abroad so late. -What were their folks thinking of, anyway?</p> - -<p>For once Sally Rose had been too tired to be charming. -She bowed her head meekly and accepted his rebuke. But her -spirits rose as they left river and causeway behind them and -took a field path so as not to have to pass the Sign of the Sun -tavern where there were apt to be British officers about.</p> - -<p>“My, but Daddy will be surprised,” she said. “I want a -glass of Spanish wine and a meat pasty. And then, bed! Oh -Kitty, think what it’ll be like to have a featherbed under us -again! I swear, I’ll roll and wallow in it! Why—why here -we are, and there aren’t any lights in the windows!”</p> - -<p>They drew up their horses uncertainly in the deserted -street. All the houses were dark around them, and the cloudy -sky was dark overhead. A lantern burned at the top of a pole -a little way off, so that Kitty could make out the weathered -sign before her uncle’s tavern, the wooden profile of a tall -bay horse pawing the air, and at his feet a trim, alert hunting -dog. But as Sally Rose said, the diamond-shaped panes were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> -dark. Peering closer, however, she noticed some letters traced -in whitewash on the iron-bound door.</p> - -<p>“Look, Sally Rose, there’s a sign, but I can’t read it,” she -said.</p> - -<p>They got down from their horses and walked closer. -“Neither can I,” said Sally Rose. She tried the door. It was -locked tight.</p> - -<p>“I know how to climb in by the buttery window,” she -murmured, for once a little crestfallen, “but I still want to -know what is written on the door. I wonder where Father can -be. He always keeps late closing time.”</p> - -<p>She stood irresolute a moment. Then she drew a quick -breath as if something pleased her, and ran down the street -to the lantern swinging on its pole. Reaching, stretching, -pulling herself up, she managed to lift it down and hurry -back, holding it proudly aloft, flashing it on the paneled door.</p> - -<p>In the light that flared uncertainly behind the thin panes -of horn, the two cousins bent close and read aloud the words, -“Closed. Gone to the wars till the damn British be beat. J. -Townsend.”</p> - -<p>They stood still and looked at each other. A salt-smelling -wind blew down the old street, and a wisp of fog came with -it. Fog was dimming the lights of Boston, that even now, -close to midnight, still burned on the other side of the river. -The lights looked unfriendly, Kitty thought, as she remembered -that Boston was in the hands of the enemy. Down by -the wharves men were shouting and the shouts had an angry -sound. A burst of musket fire broke out, somewhere off Medford -way. The girls looked at each other and shivered. They -were hungry and tired and fly-bitten. They were a little -frightened, maybe.</p> - -<p>“What will we do now?” asked Kitty. The tone reminded -Sally Rose that she was to blame for the plight they were in, -even if the words did not.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>“I—don’t—quite know,” faltered Sally Rose. “We can -get into the house. We’ll have a roof over our heads, and a -bed to sleep in. Maybe there’s something to eat in the cupboard. -We’ll be safe for tonight. But it’s after that I’m thinking -of. We can’t run the tavern alone, without father, and -how are we to live if we cannot run the tavern?”</p> - -<p>“We could send for Gran,” said Kitty a little mockingly. -“Of course she’s a timid old lady, but I notice she’s able to -do most everything that comes her way. I’ll bet she’d be able -to serve up cider, or rum toddy, or hot grog—or whatever it -is they drink.”</p> - -<p>Suddenly Sally Rose was smiling again. “Kitty, that’s a -wonderful plan. Let’s climb into the house now, and have -supper, and sleep forever. When we wake up we’ll send her -a letter by the first post. The buttery window’s around here -at the back, under the apple tree. Come along. I can unfasten -the catch, but you’ll have to hoist me in.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Eight</i><br /> - - -<small>SAVED BY A PIPE-SMOKING MAN</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Standing</span> in the wet salt grass at the end of Chelsea Neck, -Tom Trask shifted the old blunderbuss from one shoulder -to the other.</p> - -<p>“Wisht I had my own gun,” he said to himself. “I’d rather -try to lug a young pine tree, roots and all, than this critter -here.”</p> - -<p>Then he smiled sheepishly as he thought of the pretty girl -who had loaned him the aged weapon. She was a pretty girl, -too. Likely he’d go to her house and see her when he went -down river with the logs next spring. Guess she wouldn’t -have any eyes for the Newburyport lads when he was about. -This fuss would all be over by then, and folks back where -they belonged, plowing their own ground.</p> - -<p>He shivered with the cold that goes before sunrise and -tried to peer through the blackness and mist around him to see -if the others were getting as restless as he. There were three -hundred or more of them, New Hampshire and Massachusetts -men, here where the Neck narrowed down. Not a torch, not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span> -a lantern, General Putnam had warned, and if any man felt -the need of tobacco, let him cut plug and chew, like an old -cow with cud. It was worse than being lost in the devil’s -pocket, but even at that, it was better than sitting around -camp playing cat’s-cradle, like they’d been doing for the past -month. A man could get gray whiskers before his time, that -way.</p> - -<p>Some of the lads who came a-running so quick after Concord -Fight had got tired of the game and put for home already, -but Tom hadn’t quite been able to convince himself he -ought to go along. No, so long as Colonel Stark saw a reason -to sit around waiting for the British to jump, he guessed he, -Tom Trask, could wait too. He himself hadn’t been far from -the camp at Medford, but he’d heard Boston was all ringed -round with Massachusetts and Connecticut men keeping the -redcoats shut up tight.</p> - -<p>“Can you hear me, lads?” bellowed a gruff voice up ahead.</p> - -<p>“Aye,” came a dozen shouts from the tall reeds around -him, and an equally gruff voice added, “Aye! We be listening -all.”</p> - -<p>“Volunteers! Old Put wants volunteers!” roared the first -speaker. “There’ll be an officer come amongst you. There’ll -be....” His voice grew fainter as he turned to deliver his -message in another direction, but the words still sounded -plain.</p> - -<p>Tom put his blunderbuss down and leaned on it. He spoke -to the man who stood in the marsh grass just ahead of him.</p> - -<p>“Got any idea what this is about?” he asked.</p> - -<p>The other man took his time in answering. He was older, -Tom sensed, and more heavily built. In the silence they -heard shouting and the rattle of musket fire. A ship’s gun -flashed on the dark waters of Chelsea Creek.</p> - -<p>“Yea—a,” said the man slowly. “I was down by the ferry -stage awhile back.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>“Was there fighting there?”</p> - -<p>“Fighting there was. The British ships firing at us, and -our men waist-deep in water shooting back—even the General -himself, Old Put.”</p> - -<p>“Did you hear what the volunteers be for?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe. You haven’t been here all along? You’re one o’ -the reserves who come in late last night? One o’ Stark’s -men?”</p> - -<p>“Aye. One o’ Stark’s men, and proud of it.”</p> - -<p>The man was chewing tobacco, Tom’s keen nose told him. -He spat suddenly into the reeds, his own mouth tasting rancid.</p> - -<p>“Likely some day you may have something to be proud of. -You done no more yet than anyone else, as I can see.”</p> - -<p>Tom ignored the rebuke. “Volunteers now,” he murmured. -“If I knew what ’twas about, likely I might take a -notion to go.”</p> - -<p>“Likely they wouldn’t want you,” sneered the older -man. “If I was Putnam—which I ain’t—I’d give the job to -one o’ the Essex County boys.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“Because ’tis a seafaring operation, of a sort, and there be -none like the Essex men for maneuvers at sea.”</p> - -<p>The firing from the river was steady now.</p> - -<p>“Maybe,” said Tom. “What is this operation that takes -such a picked crew? I never see salt water yet will fight a man -as hard as old Merrimack when the freshets come down.”</p> - -<p>“Volunteers!” sang out a voice nearby. A man, bareheaded, -wearing a torn brown coat, stood before them holding -a carefully shielded lantern in his hand.</p> - -<p>“Eleven picked men I got. I need one more.”</p> - -<p>“Twelve men, you got,” said Tom, shouldering his blunderbuss. -“Where do I go?”</p> - -<p>The man held up his lantern so that the dim light shone -on his new recruit.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>“Built for it, you be,” he said after a moment. “Long, and -lean, and tough, by the look of you. Are you tough, lad?”</p> - -<p>“Tougher’n a biled owl,” said Tom imperturbably.</p> - -<p>“Can you swim?”</p> - -<p>“Like a muskrat.”</p> - -<p>The man grinned. “What’s your trade?”</p> - -<p>“I’m a timber man. Floating logs downstream out of the -Hampshire woods is my trade.”</p> - -<p>“Good! Come along then. Down by the water. Ike Baldwin -has charge o’ the action, and he’s gathered his men -there.”</p> - -<p>Tom followed as he was bidden, down a rough path to the -border of Chelsea Creek. Looking over his shoulder once, he -saw in the sky a long streak of sunrise, salmon and silver-gray.</p> - -<p>The Neck ended in a narrow strip of shaly beach, and as -Tom moved out of the protecting reeds he drew his head -down turtle-fashion. A British ball whined past him, and -then another. Half an hour now, and it would be broad daylight. -Whatever this seafaring operation was, they’d better -get it over, and soon. Then a little group of men loomed up -in the thinning mist ahead of him. Eight, nine, he counted, -most of them no older than he. They were stripped to the -waist and unarmed, save for their leader, a stalwart man in -a blue coat and knee breeches who leaned on a musket. Tom -and his guide approached the group.</p> - -<p>“Here’s your twelfth, Ike,” said the brown-coated man. -“Swims like a muskrat, tougher’n a biled owl, and is used to -riding log rafts down the Merrimack. Think he’ll do.”</p> - -<p>Ike cleared his throat and spat into the water lapping -gently along the beach. “Have to, now,” he said. “We’ll be -sitting ducks in fifteen minutes more. Cal and ’Lisha’s gone -for a keg of pitch.” He turned to Tom. “You one o’ Stark’s -men?”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>“Aye. Tom Trask of Derryfield.”</p> - -<p>“Good. Get rid of your gun and strip down.”</p> - -<p>Tom looked around and found an outcrop of ledge where -he thought he could probably leave the blunderbuss in safety. -Then he peeled off his hunting shirt. British mortar fire still -droned overhead—too high; he had heard back in camp that -the British usually shot that way. As he shook his hands free -from the loose sleeves and flung the garment down, he lifted -his head and looked at the man nearest to him. Then a wry -smile twisted his mouth.</p> - -<p>“I think I seen you before,” he said.</p> - -<p>The other lad peered through the thinning mist, then his -eyes widened in recognition and he smiled.</p> - -<p>“Aye,” he answered jauntily. “Last time I seen you, you -was playing hide-and-seek. You grown up yet, I wonder?”</p> - -<p>“There was others playing it, too,” retorted Tom.</p> - -<p>“Yes, others. Kitty Greenleaf, you’ll likely remember.”</p> - -<p>“Kitty Greenleaf! So that’s her name. I never did know -the whole of it. Promised her I’d call by and see her, if I ever -happened back that way.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t take the trouble. Kitty’s closer now. She’s in -Charlestown with her cousin, Sally Rose. I went home to -get some clean shirts and a better gun, and ’twas there I heard -it.”</p> - -<p>“In Charlestown?” asked Tom in surprise. “Charlestown’s -not held to be very safe these days. ’Tis thought the British -may strike at us from there. I heard there be only a couple -hundred people left in the town, and most of the women sent -away.”</p> - -<p>“I heard so, too. But Sally Rose took a notion to go home -and nothing would stop her, so Kitty went along. I ain’t got -over there yet to see them, but I mean to. I heard Granny -Greenleaf went legging after them, mad as time.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>Tom laughed in spite of himself as he remembered the -thin old voice quavering excitedly, “Stop, thief, stop!”</p> - -<p>“Maybe I’ll just go along with you, when you do go,” he -said. “What’s your name now? Eben, was it?”</p> - -<p>“Eben! No! You’re thinking of Eben Poore. He’s naught -but a foolish little lad. I be Johnny Pettengall.”</p> - -<p>“So,” said Tom. In the river ahead of him he could see -two low green islands getting plainer every minute as the -mist cleared away. “Well, Johnny, for old times’ sake then, -tell me what’s afoot and what are we down here for?”</p> - -<p>Johnny’s face brightened and his voice grew eager, now -that he was intent again on the business in hand.</p> - -<p>“Likely, being a New Hampshire man, you come in with -Stark’s reserves last night.”</p> - -<p>“No. I wasn’t detailed to go—nor to stay, either. Couldn’t -sleep, and long in the night sometime, I thought I’d just -wander this way.”</p> - -<p>“I been here all along. We was sent over to Noddle’s Island -yesterday to drive the cattle off. Farmers who pasture -there have been selling beef to the British. We’d cleared off -Noddle, burned the house of one man who resisted, and was -on our way back across Hog Island, when a sloop and a -schooner sailed close in. Fired on us, they did, and o’ course -we answered back.”</p> - -<p>“O’ course,” agreed Tom.</p> - -<p>“Been firing ever since, except for the schooner—the -<i>Diana</i>, she is, one of our men said who recognized her. She’s -run aground and been abandoned. It’s her we’re going out to -burn.”</p> - -<p>Tom looked where the other lad pointed. Sure enough, -there in the gray light, not very far from shore, rode a two-masted -schooner, listing badly to one side. Her foresail hung -in long streamers that stirred as the morning wind blew<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span> -through them. Her colors had been shot away, and the lower -side of her deck was all awash with sea.</p> - -<p>“All right, boys!” Ike Baldwin straightened them to attention -with his command. “Here’s Cal and ’Lisha with the -pitch. Now we can go.”</p> - -<p>Two young men, dark-haired and muscular, came panting -up with a heavy keg between them, swung in a cradle of stout -rope. Baldwin went on, speaking rapidly.</p> - -<p>“Cal and ’Lisha will tow the pitch out to the schooner. -Got that now?”</p> - -<p>General murmurs of assent passed among the little group.</p> - -<p>“Aye,” murmured Johnny brightly, like a smart lad repeating -catechism.</p> - -<p>Tom inclined his head and chewed nervously at a bit of -grass he had picked up somewhere. It had a rank salty taste. -He wished he knew exactly what he was supposed to do.</p> - -<p>“The rest of you ain’t going along for the swim, remember,” -the relentless orders went on. “You’re there to help -get the pitch aboard and spread it around on whatever parts -of her is driest and most likely to burn. Don’t want her to go -back into British service again. Don’t want the British to think -they can come shooting amongst us any time they choose -without having to pay.”</p> - -<p>He stood still for a moment, in a defiant attitude, waiting -for his words to take effect.</p> - -<p>“How we going to kindle the pitch, Ike?” asked a voice at -the rear of the group. “Flints and tinderboxes’ll be wetter’n -a drowned cat ’fore we get there.”</p> - -<p>Isaac Baldwin frowned. Then his face cleared and he -waved a nonchalant hand. “Likely there’ll be a cookfire in -the galley,” he said. “She ain’t been abandoned long. Likely -you’ll find a tinderbox there—or somewhere else aboard. -Her crew must ha’ had some means to light a fire.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe,” said Tom. He stood thoughtfully for a moment,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span> -wondering how much time he would have before Ike -Baldwin ordered them into the water. It would take a few -minutes, the thing he wanted to do.</p> - -<p>Luck was with him, for Baldwin bent over just then to -speak with Cal and ’Lisha who were tightening the cradle -ropes about the keg. He looked up the hill in the direction he -had come, then back at the creek again. Out beyond the -stranded <i>Diana</i>, the guns of the sloop were still firing harmlessly -away. After a moment of indecision, he turned and ran -up the hill.</p> - -<p>He found the man he had been talking to a short time -before, seated now on a tuft of marsh grass, his gun beside -him. He was just in the act of filling a pipe, as Tom had -gambled he would be. The New Hampshire man loped up -and accosted him.</p> - -<p>“You with that pipe there!”</p> - -<p>The man did not look up. His fingers moved leisurely -with flints and tinder. He lit the pipe, drew on it deeply, then -took it from his mouth and asked, “Was you speaking to -me?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. General Putnam gave out the word there was to be -no smoking amongst the men. He sent me to collect every -pipe I found lighted. Like this.”</p> - -<p>Tom’s hand reached forth lightning quick and snatched -the pipe from its owner’s startled jaws. Then he sprinted off, -down the Neck.</p> - -<p>“Hey! Give me back my pipe!” yelled the man, scrambling -to his feet, his arms flailing the air. “Them orders -against pipes was night orders only. It’s safe enough, now -day’s come.”</p> - -<p>“Tell it to General Putnam,” called Tom over his shoulder. -He did not slow his pace until he reached the beach. Cal -and ’Lisha had waded out waist-deep, floating the keg between -them. The others plunged in now, and began swimming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span> -toward the schooner. Their officer laid his musket -down and shed his clothes, obviously intending to follow -them, like a shepherd after his sheep.</p> - -<p>Tom stood still, put the pipe in his mouth, and took a pull -on it. Great Jehovah, it tasted worse than sulphur and molasses -that the old women dosed you with in the spring. It -tasted worse than wormwood and bear’s grease, worse than -dragonroot tea. Ike Baldwin stepped into the water now, and -Tom followed at a little distance. By and by he felt the river -floor sloping away under his feet, but he managed to keep on -wading, though the others launched forth and swam. He held -his head high and his neck still, and kept puffing on the pipe. -The schooner was only a little way off, stranded in shallow -water, but it seemed to Tom as if he would never get there, -with the ill-smelling wooden bowl and its little treasure of -fire. Maybe they wouldn’t need it, he thought, but if they did -they would need it bad, and he meant to have it on hand.</p> - -<p>Once a British ball struck close by, throwing up a shower -of spray that left him shaken and half blinded, but he kept -puffing away at the pipe and forged steadily ahead. Then -another ball struck even closer. The British were finding the -range, he thought. They must have realized what their opponents -meant to do.</p> - -<p>When he reached the schooner, she was so sharply tilted -that he found it as easy to climb aboard her as it would have -been to swarm up a sloping beach. The other lads were there -ahead of him, busy spreading pitch on a pile of canvas mattresses -and hammocks fetched up from the sleeping quarters -below, spreading it on the dry parts of the deck above water -line.</p> - -<p>A brisk wind sang through the <i>Diana’s</i> broken rigging. It -struck cold on Tom’s bare shoulders and drove the last of the -mist away. Sounds of firing came from the British sloop, but -he forgot the sloop. He cupped his hands about the pipe bowl<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span> -to shelter its living contents from the wind. He took a long -puff.</p> - -<p>“So this is the way Stark trains his lads!” Isaac Baldwin’s -voice lashed out at him. He turned sharply and looked into -the grim, angry face of their leader.</p> - -<p>Tom took the pipe cautiously from his mouth. “’T hasn’t -got nothing to do with Stark,” he said.</p> - -<p>“If this were a regular engagement, you could be court-martialed. -Smoking a pipe! Skulking here smoking a pipe! -Look at the other lads!”</p> - -<p>Tom stared miserably at the busy group who were still -heaping up whatever inflammables they could find. Then he -put the pipe back in his mouth and gave another dogged puff.</p> - -<p>“Here! Give me that!” Livid with rage, Ike Baldwin -made a grab for the pipe.</p> - -<p>Tom put one hand up before his face and ducked away. -The deck under his feet was worn by the tramp of many men, -and it was slippery with morning dew. He fell, half recovered -himself, and then went down on his knees, his teeth still -clamped to the pipestem.</p> - -<p>From the hatchway that led below came confused cries.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Captain! Tell the Captain there’s not a spark aboard -her! Galley fire’s been put out and the ashes raked over! Not -a flint! Not a tinderbox! How’s to have a burning without -fire?”</p> - -<p>Tom felt his pulses quicken. It was as if there were shooting -sparks of triumph in his blood. His guess had been right, -then. He lifted his head. Baldwin had turned away, having -greater troubles now.</p> - -<p>“There must be flints somewhere,” he exclaimed crustily. -“Have you searched the officers’ quarters? The mess cabin? -The hold?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sir. Everywhere.”</p> - -<p>Tom got to his feet and looked around him. The men were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> -standing idle now, about the heap of mattresses. They looked -bewildered and—well, not afraid—uneasy, maybe. Turning -his head a little, he saw the green shores of Hog Island with -Noddle’s Island just beyond it, and far beyond that, the roofs -of Boston touched with the morning sun. In the foreground -hovered the British sloop. Her guns were silent now, but her -sails were spread and she seemed to be drawing close. Perhaps -this was the time for him to speak.</p> - -<p>“Give me that pipe!” Isaac Baldwin’s command had a different -tone to it this time. Before he had been angry and -somewhat scornful. Now his voice was full of eagerness, -quick and keen.</p> - -<p>Tom took the pipe from his mouth. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I -thought we might need it, sir. That’s why I brought it along. -I—I’m not much of a smoking man.”</p> - -<p>“Good boy,” said Isaac Baldwin.</p> - -<p>He walked quickly across the deck, knelt down, and ripped -a bit of tow from a mattress, testing the dryness of it with his -fingers. Then he placed it lightly across the bowl of the pipe.</p> - -<p>The other men were holding their breaths as they looked -on. Tom watched, too, but he felt a strange dizziness coming -over him, so he went and clung to the rail.</p> - -<p>At first nothing happened. Then it was as if the tow began -to melt away. Ike held a larger piece of tow above the first -one—a fluffed-out piece. Suddenly the fluff burst into open -flame. Someone started to cheer and quickly choked the -sound back. From the fluff, Ike lighted a still larger piece of -tow and dropped that on the heap of bedding. The men -watched, fascinated. First one little tongue of flame leaped -up and then another. Then a tiny roaring sound began, growing -louder every moment.</p> - -<p>When he saw that there was a splendid bonfire a-going, -Tom turned to the rail and hung weakly overside. He knew -now that his trick had worked and the British schooner would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span> -soon be a seething mass of flame. Soon his comrades, their -mission accomplished, would be leaping overside and swimming -back to Chelsea Neck. When that time came, he knew, -he would straighten himself up and go with them, but right -now there was a rancid taste in his mouth and the smell of -burning pitch in his nostrils. He’d had enough of pipe-smoking -to last him a lifetime, and he didn’t feel very well—in -fact, he didn’t feel well at all.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Nine</i><br /> - - -<small>NO CLOUDS ON BUNKER HILL</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“Never</span> expected to see you keeping a public house, Ma’am -Greenleaf—leastwise, not one with a strong drink -license.”</p> - -<p>Old Timothy Coffin’s voice had disapproval in it, Kitty -thought, as she turned from the small oak bar where she was -polishing glasses. The warm June sunshine struck through -the diamond-shaped panes and lay in pools of light with -rainbow edges on the sanded floor, on the worn tables and -benches. A gentle breeze stirred the tall hollyhock stems outside -the window. Sally Rose was weeding the hollyhocks—or -supposed to be. Now that Gran had come to take charge, -there was a task for everyone.</p> - -<p>“You’re a-going to see a deal of things you never expected -to see,” said Gran tartly. She was seated by the hearth shelling -peas, while Timothy swept the tiles with a birch broom.</p> - -<p>“Happen you’re right, Ma’am,” agreed the old man. -“Never expected to see the King’s men shooting at us—and -we going to meeting, praying for the King, all the while.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s a strange state of affairs, Timothy,” answered -Gran. Her voice had turned suddenly thoughtful, and her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> -fingers played idly with the empty pods as she stared through -the open door at the empty house across the way.</p> - -<p>Kitty looked at the empty house, too. Most of the houses -in Charlestown were empty now, and scarcely any women -left in the town at all. The men came back sometimes to cut -hay and weed their gardens, but they had sent their families -away to the inland towns, and swore they would leave them -there till this fuss with the British soldiers was ended, one -way or another.</p> - -<p>This was bad for business, of course. Here it was, nearly ten -o’clock of a fine hot Tuesday morning, sixth of June by the -almanac, and she hadn’t served a single customer.</p> - -<p>Everything seemed to be set up in terms of this “fuss,” -nowadays. For instance, she and Gran and Sally Rose living -here in Charlestown and running the Bay and Beagle, while -Uncle Job was away with the Massachusetts troops somewhere. -Not knowing they were here, thinking Sally Rose -was safe in Newburyport, he hadn’t come home. Then when -Gran came to join them, hopping mad at the trick Sally Rose -had played, she brought Dick Moody and Timothy along to -do the men’s work about the place. They hadn’t stayed in -camp long, for Dick was young and couldn’t shoot well -enough, and Timothy was old, and his bones creaked. But -all they wanted to talk about was the camp and the goings-on -there. But they didn’t call it a “fuss” like Gran did. They -called it a war. And that had a much more important and -terrible sound.</p> - -<p>War was terrible, Kitty knew, so terrible that it couldn’t -be going to happen right here in front of her eyes, to people -she knew, maybe to herself—not really.</p> - -<p>Dick came in from the backyard with an armful of wood -and stacked it carefully beside the hearth. Then he stood -silent and respectful, looking at Granny.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>Dick had grown taller, Kitty thought, and next time he -went to camp, as he threatened to do every day or so, it -wasn’t likely they’d send him home for being too young. -Sometimes he and Timothy went to the cow pasture at the -foot of Bunker Hill and practiced a little with Timothy’s gun—not -much, though, because they didn’t want to waste -powder and ball. Suddenly she realized Dick was speaking. -He looked at her, but he addressed himself to Granny.</p> - -<p>“I thank you for bringing me down here, near where I -wanted to be. But I’m quitting your service now, Ma’am -Greenleaf.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, go get yourself a slice of bread and molasses, and -you’ll think better of it,” said Granny. “You can put maple -sugar on it, too,” she added.</p> - -<p>Dick’s face grew red, and his young voice had an unfamiliar -harshness in it. “You’ve fed me well enough, Ma’am. It’s -not on account of the food and wages I’m leaving.”</p> - -<p>“What is it then, and what do you think to do?” asked -Gran, with an air of rapidly exhausting patience.</p> - -<p>“Up the Mystic a ways—in one o’ the swamps there—some -men from Gloucester are building fire boats. I been in -the ship-building trade. They said I could help them.”</p> - -<p>“Fire boats!” Granny tried to laugh, but there was no -merriment in the noise she made. It sounded like a cackle. -“And what do you think to do with fire boats, pray?”</p> - -<p>“Why, what do most folk do with fire? Burn something. -Maybe one o’ the British schooners, or men-o’-war, even. -Maybe burn Boston, for all I know. Whatever our orders -say.”</p> - -<p>“You can’t burn Boston,” retorted Granny severely. “Boston -don’t belong to the British soldiery. Houses and shops and -all belongs to Americans, as good as you be. True, they’ve -most of them fled from it now, but they’ll be back some day—when -this fuss is over, and God send that happen right soon.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span> -Now whatever is that drum a-beating for?” She held up her -head and listened. “I’ve heard fife and drum music enough -to last me a long time.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll hear more of it before you hear less, Ma’am,” -muttered Timothy.</p> - -<p>Dick hurried to the door and stared up the road that led -to the Neck, from which the sound came. Kitty went to stand -beside him.</p> - -<p>“Are you really going back to be with the Army, Dick?” -she asked, in one of the brief pauses between the slow beats of -the drum.</p> - -<p>Dick cleared his throat. “Seems like I have to,” he murmured. -“Would it matter to you, Kit, if I—” His voice broke -off, and his hand just brushed her shoulder.</p> - -<p>“Oh Kitty! Kitty!” cried Sally Rose as she came flying -down the street, her bright hair loose on her shoulders and -her cheeks flushed with excitement. “They’re bringing the -prisoners! There’s going to be an exchange! Perhaps Gerry -will be in it!”</p> - -<p>She dropped down on the broad doorstone and sat there, -trying to get back her breath.</p> - -<p>“How do you know?” asked Dick quickly. He was not -looking at Sally Rose, but up the winding street that led to -Charlestown Neck and the towns beyond it on the mainland.</p> - -<p>Kitty looked, too. Down the narrow way between the -gabled houses came a slowly moving procession. First the -drummer stepped out, a scrawny lad not much taller than -Dick. He walked all alone, beating a brass-bound drum, and -behind him followed a black horse drawing a phaeton with -two men in it. After the phaeton rode two British officers on -horseback. She could see nothing more at the moment because -of a crook in the street. A little crowd was beginning to -gather in the direction of Market Square. Sally Rose finally -got back her breath and answered Dick’s question.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>“When I heard the drum I ran down to Mr. Bassett’s -wine shop. He’s back in town, you know, to cut his hay on the -Point Road, and I asked him what was happening. He said -he heard—”</p> - -<p>The drummer had come even with the Bay and Beagle -now, and his steady beating drowned out the girl’s excited -voice. Sally Rose stopped talking and got to her feet. She and -Dick and Kitty stood together in the tavern doorway and -watched the slow procession advance and pass close by them.</p> - -<p>The two men who rode in the phaeton behind the drummer -were in odd contrast to each other, and yet there was the -same air of dignity and purpose enveloping both of them. -One was old—not so old as Timothy, but not young any -more. He was broad-shouldered and sturdy and had a round, -good-natured face and a shock of tousled gray hair. He wore -a blue uniform. His companion was younger, fair-haired and -blue-eyed, with a ruddy face and a fresh, scrubbed look -about him. He was not a soldier, apparently, for his coat was -fawn-colored with a white-fringed waistcoat underneath.</p> - -<p>“That’s Old Put,” said Timothy proudly, for he and Gran -had come to stand just behind them. “See! In the blue coat -there! General Putnam. His wife must ha’ sent him his uniform.”</p> - -<p>“Why would she have to do that?” asked Gran tartly. -“Wouldn’t go off to war without it, would he?”</p> - -<p>Timothy chuckled. “That’s just what he done! When he -heard about Concord Fight, he was building a stone wall on -his farm away down in Connecticut. But he come just as he -was, in leather breeches and apron. Got here at next day’s -sunrise, they say.”</p> - -<p>“I guess there was others got here just as quick as he did,” -answered Gran. “Yourself for one.” She peered over Kitty’s -shoulder. “Who be that by his side?”</p> - -<p>“That’s Dr. Warren. Best damn man, I say, that ever come<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span> -out o’ Boston. Don’t know how General Ward would run -Cambridge Camp without him. Figures out how to get supplies, -and men, and money, and all. He’s got book learning -and can talk to anybody. More’n that, he’s a good doctor.”</p> - -<p>“Where are the prisoners, I wonder?” asked Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>Kitty nudged her, and she subsided.</p> - -<p>After the phaeton came two British officers, splendid in -white and scarlet, and riding sleek horses; then another officer -in a chaise; then a handful of officers on foot. They were -escorted by a blue-uniformed guard that Timothy said -looked to him like Connecticut men. By now the drummer -had turned into Ferry Street, heading for the wharves at the -waterside. Here and there stood a little cluster of men, here -and there a woman’s head appeared at a gable window, but -the spectators were few. At the very end of the procession a -farm cart rattled along, drawn by two plow horses. A group -of men sprawled on the floor of it, men in tattered British -uniforms, pale and unshaven, unable to walk, apparently, -because of wounds or illness. They looked so forlorn and -miserable that Kitty felt tears start to her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Oh,” she whispered to Sally Rose, “I’m sorry for the -poor lads. I don’t care if they are British.”</p> - -<p>“If they hadn’t come out shooting at us, they wouldn’t be -in this pickle now,” growled Timothy. “Wonder where is -our boys we’re supposed to get back in the exchange.”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Bassett says they’re aboard the <i>Lively</i>,” said Sally -Rose. “Oh—oh—Kitty—” She clapped her hand over her -mouth.</p> - -<p>For a moment Kitty did not see anything to exclaim about. -The cart full of prisoners trundled slowly by. Close beside it -walked a young man in a rough woolen shirt and homespun -breeches. He carried a knapsack, and a large wooden bottle -was slung from his shoulder by a leather strap. Just then the -procession halted a moment. Up ahead, the drummer turned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span> -down Ferry Street on his way to the docks to meet the boats -from the <i>Lively</i>. The phaeton bent its wheels sharply to -round the corner. In the pause the young man unstoppered -the wooden bottle and held it over the side of the cart so one -of the prisoners could drink. The rear guard, another group -of blue-coated Connecticut men, halted too. They were apparently -the last of the procession.</p> - -<p>Kitty glanced again at her cousin. Sally Rose stood up -proud and smiling. The long lashes about her hazel eyes -flickered provocatively. Sally Rose was watching the young -man with the bottle. For that reason, and that reason alone, -Kitty looked closer at him herself.</p> - -<p>He turned just then and smiled at them. He had dark hair, -she saw, and deep-set blue eyes. My, he was certainly handsome! -Living all her life in Newburyport, she hadn’t realized -how many handsome men there were in the world—drifting -down the Merrimack on a log raft, walking the road -that ran past Bunker Hill. They were everywhere, now that -she had suddenly grown up enough to look at them. Sally -Rose had always known. Sally Rose was born grown up.</p> - -<p>She cast a sudden look at Dick, and knew instinctively that -she would never kiss him good night again, or if she did, it -would be with a difference. Their kissing days were over. -Dick was an old friend now, and only that. Never again -would he stir in her that strange tremulous feeling that went -with a new moon and apple blossoms and the first warm -nights of spring. She knew, but she did not know how it was -that she knew.</p> - -<p>The young man in the leather breeches was still smiling. -He lifted his hand, oh so slightly, and motioned toward the -docks. Then the cart wheels began to turn again, and the -procession plodded on. The little group around the door of -the Bay and Beagle watched until the last straggler was out -of sight.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>“Well, that’s over,” said Gran briskly, “It’s well past -noon, and I expect we’ll have custom. If you’re leaving us, -Master Dick, you might as well be off, and good luck to you—the -same as I’d wish to the son of any neighbor. Timothy, -you better bring up another keg of brandy from the cellar. -You can tend the taps for awhile, Kitty, and Sally Rose—why, -where is Sally Rose?”</p> - -<p>They called and called and searched the bedrooms and the -attic and the back garden, but the girl was nowhere to be -found. Dick left, after a bit, taking his spare shirt with him, a -small ham, and a hunting knife proffered by Timothy. The -old man went on his errand to the cellar, and Kitty returned -to polishing glasses. A few men drifted in to drink beer and -cider and talk about the exchange of prisoners. Gran muttered -a few dark words about the flightiness of the younger generation -and went into the kitchen to put the bread to rise and -make pease porridge for supper. Bread and beer and pease -porridge folk had to have, thought Kitty, no matter if wars -came about, and handsome young men went out to be killed -in them, and girls grew up all too late.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Trade got brisker during the long hot afternoon, and Kitty -was kept busy filling mugs and glasses. She learned from the -talk of the men who happened in that the British prisoners -had been sent out by boat to the great, threatening man-o’-war -that swung at anchor in the channel, halfway to Boston. -The officers in charge of the business had all come into town -to take some refreshment and expected shortly to return to -the dock to receive the American lads whose delivery would -complete the exchange. Everything had been conducted in -an orderly and courteous fashion.</p> - -<p>Gradually the excitement died down. Gran put on her -second best straw bonnet and went out to look for Sally Rose. -Timothy had trouble getting the brandy keg up the cellar<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span> -stairs. Bees droned loudly in the hollyhocks, and gulls cried -from the harbor. Slowly the sun moved over to the westward -side of the roofs and gables. It was a summer afternoon like -any other summer afternoon.</p> - -<p>And then, all of a sudden, Sally Rose was back. She slipped -in quietly, like a shadow. On her face was that cat-stealing-cream -look that fitted her so well. She went straight to the -kitchen.</p> - -<p>Kitty hastily served a waiting customer, that same Mr. -Bassett who had come back to Charlestown to cut his hay, and -then she followed her cousin. Sally Rose stood by the water -bucket, the dipper lifted to her mouth. She drank thirstily.</p> - -<p>“My, that tastes good,” she said, licking her wet red lips. -“It was hot down by the dockside. Not a sea breeze anywhere.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve been to the docks?” asked Kitty curiously.</p> - -<p>“Of course. Didn’t you see Gerry wave to me to follow -him?”</p> - -<p>“Gerry?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course, Kit!” Sally Rose’s voice had a ring of impatience -in it. “I tried to make signs to you. I thought by the -look of your face you understood me. You were surely -staring at him.”</p> - -<p>“Staring at whom?”</p> - -<p>“Oh Kitty! You saw him! Gerry was the lad in the homespun -breeches who marched beside the prisoners’ cart. He was -the only one able to walk, and so he had to wait on them.”</p> - -<p>“But—but that lad—he looked like an American. His -clothes—I thought—”</p> - -<p>“Of course! Gerry was pretending to be an American when -we captured him. That’s why he was looking so shabby. You -should see him in his captain’s uniform! He’s been kept in a -tent in Cambridge—a tent made of old sailcloth that the rain -came through, and guards all around him. But he was exchanged<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span> -this afternoon. I went down to the dock and talked -to him while the boats were putting off. He’s gone safe to -his own regiment in Boston now. But he says he’ll come back -to see me—another day.”</p> - -<p>“That’s nice,” said Kitty. “That’s very nice indeed.”</p> - -<p>She felt cross suddenly. It must be the heat, or because -she had been working so hard, or because she had forgotten -to eat any dinner. It might be the outrageous behavior of -Sally Rose. There are many ways to explain such a thing.</p> - -<p>“And you know he said ...” Sally Rose rattled on.</p> - -<p>Suddenly there was a hoarse cry from the cellar stairs—a -burst of strong language, then a deep groan of pain. The -girls looked at each other.</p> - -<p>“Oh, it’s Timothy!” gasped Kit. “He was trying to bring -up a brandy keg. He must have fallen.”</p> - -<p>The groans continued. She ran to the head of the cellar -stairs and looked down. Sure enough, the old man lay on the -dank earth that served for a flooring, the heavy keg on top -of his right foot, his left leg bent beneath him.</p> - -<p>“We’re coming, Timothy,” she called. “We’ll help you.”</p> - -<p>She gazed desperately around the taproom, but it was -empty. The last customer had gone. Again she and Sally -Rose stood looking at each other.</p> - -<p>“He’ll need a doctor,” murmured Kitty. “He’s sure to -need a doctor. Whether there’s one left in town or not, I -don’t know.”</p> - -<p>Suddenly her cousin’s face lighted. “Of course there’s one -in town,” she cried. “Timothy himself pointed one out. That -kind-looking man who rode in the phaeton with Old Put. -Dr. Warren of Boston.”</p> - -<p>“Oh—of course I remember. But he’ll be dining with the -British officers. He’s an important official, I think, like a -minister or a judge. He was wearing a fine coat, Sally Rose.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span> -He won’t want to leave his wine and go down in a dirty cellar -to tend a poor old man.”</p> - -<p>“You can’t tell,” said Sally Rose. “You can’t tell at all. He -looked kind. I’m going to try to find him.” She ran through -the doorway.</p> - -<p>Kitty stepped gingerly down the cellar stairs to see if she -could help the old man. He could only moan and grunt and -utter inarticulate sounds when she tried to talk to him, but -she managed to roll the heavy cask off his foot and drag him -into a sitting position against the roots of the massive chimney. -It seemed hours before she heard footsteps on the floor -overhead, but later she realized it could not have been very -long.</p> - -<p>A moment later the fair-haired doctor in his neat coat and -breeches stepped nimbly down the stairway. Four of the -blue-coated Connecticut lads swarmed after.</p> - -<p>Dr. Warren looked around him in the dim light, at the -cobwebbed depths of the cellar: at the empty vegetable bins -waiting for this year’s harvest, the shelves of preserves and -jellies in stone crocks, the casks that held the stock in trade -of the tavern above. He smiled briefly at Kitty, then he went -down on his knees on the earth floor.</p> - -<p>“A bad mishap, Timothy,” he said, bending over the old -man. There was a note of cheery courage in his voice. Kitty -felt it, and she knew that Timothy felt it too. The old man -spoke weakly.</p> - -<p>“Aye, sir. All the brandy in the house be not in that blasted -keg there. Have the lass to fetch me a swig, if you will, sir.”</p> - -<p>Kitty did not need to be told again. She ran upstairs to -fetch a glass of brandy. When she came back, the doctor had -cut Timothy’s boot away and bared the flesh beneath it. He -shook his head, and there was a sober look on his face.</p> - -<p>“’Tis somewhat crushed I fear. Drink up your brandy, -sir, and I will patch it as best I can. Then the lads will carry<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span> -you upstairs—where there should be a bed waiting.” He -looked questioningly at Kitty.</p> - -<p>“There will be,” she assured him tremulously. “I spoke to -my cousin, Sally Rose. She’s getting it ready.”</p> - -<p>She held the brandy glass to Timothy’s mouth, and the -old man sipped feebly. Sometimes he flinched, as the doctor -worked at the broken foot, reshaping it, applying splints and -bandages. He did not utter a word, but his breath came in -painful gasps, and he was shivering. The young soldiers -stood looking on.</p> - -<p>Dr. Warren talked as he worked, hoping, perhaps, to distract -the old man’s attention.</p> - -<p>“Well, sir,” he said, “to tell you the truth, sir, I was glad -enough when the young lady came to fetch me here. I was in -the act of quarreling with Old Put as we partook of a roast -goose and glasses of claret. Somehow, in spite of the present -triumph of more cautious gentlemen, I fear the General may -yet have his way.”</p> - -<p>Timothy grinned faintly. “I be sorry for ye,” he whispered, -“if ye quarreled with Old Put.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and I felt I was getting the worst of it, though it -seems that at the moment all the greatest powers in our -Great American Army be on my side. Steady, Timothy! This -will take but a minute. There! As I was saying, the whole -camp has been in an uproar the past month, as to whether or -not we should fortify Bunker Hill and make a stand against -the British there. Some say we must fight them, and it better -be soon rather than late. Old Put and Prescott go with that -way of thinking.”</p> - -<p>“Fortify Bunker Hill?” whispered Timothy manfully -through his pain. “Why, that be close by!”</p> - -<p>“Very close,” said the doctor. “General Ward and I have -talked much about it. I have been housed at his Cambridge -headquarters of late, where I can easily visit the Provincial<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span> -Congress in Watertown. He and I think our men are not -yet ready to make a stand. We are against such an incautious -display of valor. Later, perhaps, but not until we have a -better equipped and conditioned army.”</p> - -<p>“I wisht,” muttered Timothy, “I had displayed less incautious -valor with that brandy keg. In God’s mercy, I do, -sir.”</p> - -<p>Dr. Warren tightened the last bandage and got to his feet.</p> - -<p>“Take him up carefully, lads,” he said, “and carry him -above stairs. The little golden-head will show you where.”</p> - -<p>Kitty thought fleetingly that even the great doctor had -been enough like common men so that he had an eye for the -beauty of Sally Rose. She had hardly noticed what he said -about a battle on Bunker Hill.</p> - -<p>But she thought about it later when she was standing at -the tavern door in the hot dusk, looking past the roofs of -Charlestown at the green countryside rising behind it. Gran -was at home now, alternately tending Timothy and scolding -Sally Rose. The doctor and the soldiers had long since gone, -and the exchange of prisoners was probably complete.</p> - -<p>Bunker Hill rose smooth and round and green. Breed’s -Hill, not so tall, was nearer the point, and the third hill, -away to the southeast, she could not see. The hills were criss-crossed -with rail fences and stone walls, divided into orchards, -gardens, and pasture land. Daisies and buttercups -bloomed all white and gold in the hayfields. The locust trees -rose tall, and the elm trees taller. Hard green fruit clung to -the apple boughs, and tassels were coming on the stalks of -Indian corn. Gulls cried from the harbor, and a bat swooped -down from the eaves above her head, and darted off, winging -its way from side to side of the crooked street.</p> - -<p>Away to the eastward a low-lying cloud bank merged with -the dim sea. There were clouds in the west, too, and thickening -round the hills and steeples of Boston. But over Bunker<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span> -Hill the sky was clear, lighted with one pale star. She took it -to be a good omen—that there would be no battle there.</p> - -<p>It seemed to Kitty the most peaceful landscape she had -ever seen in her life. And yet, the talk was, “Fortify Bunker -Hill! Make a stand against the British there!” She was glad -Dr. Warren did not favor it, and she hoped he would have -his way. She thought maybe she would have liked the young -man by the prisoners’ cart, if she had ever come to know him. -But then, she had never dreamed that he was not an American. -And he had turned out to be her cousin’s British Gerry. -He probably wouldn’t have looked so handsome to her if he -had been wearing his red coat.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Ten</i><br /> - - -<small>A TRYST WITH THE ENEMY</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“But</span> what makes you so sure he will be there, Sally -Rose,” asked Kitty, “if you haven’t had any word?”</p> - -<p>She was curled up in the middle of the four-poster bed -which she shared with her cousin. Sally Rose sat at the dressing -table. A candle burned at each side of the mirror, and she -was studying her reflection in its glass. She wore nothing but -a thin cambric shift, and her feet were bare.</p> - -<p>“He told me he would come in a week’s time, if not before. -He promised it wouldn’t be more than that. When he got -aboard the boat to go to the <i>Lively</i>, he promised me.”</p> - -<p>Kitty stared past Sally Rose’s golden head into the dark -street. Their bedroom was over the kitchen, and she could -hear Gran’s brisk footsteps trotting about below. Gran was -roasting mutton to feed tomorrow’s customers, but she had -sent the girls upstairs to get their beauty sleep.</p> - -<p>“I’ve slipped out to our old meeting place in the graveyard -every night, but he was never there,” she went on. “But tonight -it’s Tuesday again, so he has to be. He just has to be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span> -there tonight.” She pulled on a pair of delicate thread stockings, -and thrust her feet into high-heeled slippers with roses -on the toes.</p> - -<p>Kitty eyed them disapprovingly. “As I remember the old -graveyard, it’s full of holes and hummocks,” she said. -“You’ll trip and fall in those shoes, if you go walking there.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t expect to do much walking,” said Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>Then a mischievous light shone out of her hazel eyes. -“Kitty! Wait till you see what I bought today. The shops are -full of bargains, with all the Tories gone out of town. You’ll -have to help me, I think.”</p> - -<p>She scurried to the clothespress, reached inside it, and -brought out the most hideous contraption Kitty had ever -seen. It was a pair of stays, she supposed, but what a pair! A -long cruel case of whalebone and stiff buckram, high in the -back, very low in the front, pinched and pointed like the body -of some vicious insect. That it was covered with white velvet -and sewn with brilliants did not make it any the less frightening. -Kitty got a cramp in her stomach as she looked at it. Her -chest tightened, and for a moment she had trouble in breathing. -But Sally Rose had a gleam in her eye.</p> - -<p>“I got this at the staymaker’s this morning,” she said. “He -ordered it for a rich Tory lady, but she fled away to join the -British in Boston, so he let me have it cheap.”</p> - -<p>“I should think he might,” said Kitty. “Why it’s hardly a -foot around the middle. You’re slender, but not that slender, -Sally Rose. How do you think to lace it up?”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose smiled engagingly and stepped into the dreadful -garment, dragging it over her hips and around her slight -form. “Oh, you’ll have to lace it for me, Kit,” she announced. -“I’ll have a truly fashionable figure now. I always wanted -one. Remember, Gerry’s been looking at those rich Boston -ladies all the week long. I don’t want him to feel disappointed -when he sees me.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>Kitty climbed down from the bed and went to her cousin. -She picked up the ends of the lacings and began to weave -them into the metal hooks. Sally Rose stood there beaming, -holding the stays in place.</p> - -<p>“Hurry and lace them up, Kit,” she urged. “It will be -easier if I can slip out while Gran is still at her work. Before -she comes upstairs, I mean to be gone.”</p> - -<p>With a great effort Kitty drew the stays together at the -bottom, clamping her cousin’s slim hips and belly into a -frighteningly narrow space. The garment had been designed -for a much taller girl, and came well down over the thigh, -almost to the knee. It fastened at the bottom with a tiny -jeweled padlock, and Kitty noted a similar one at the top. -She hesitated.</p> - -<p>“Does this unlock with a key?” she asked.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose held up a tiny bit of gold on a satin ribbon. -“Oh, it does, Kitty, and I have the key here. Isn’t it all deliciously -clever?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” muttered Kitty. “Hold your stomach in.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose compressed herself to the utmost and closed -her eyes. Kitty fastened the padlock and struggled with the -lacings.</p> - -<p>“Tighter! Tighter!” gasped Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>Kitty pulled at the strong cord until it almost cut her -fingers. It was waxed, and it had a toughness about it that -made her think of wire.</p> - -<p>After a moment she shoved Sally Rose up against the wall, -sat down in a chair in front of her, braced her knees, and -laboriously threaded and pulled till the task was over and -she could snap the jeweled padlock at the top. Then she -stood off to view her work.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose looked like a long white worm standing up on -its tail—or like a white candle, if you wanted to be poetic—but -more like a worm. Her face was flushed, and she could<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span> -take only the shortest, shallowest breaths, but there was -triumph in her eye.</p> - -<p>“Now my dress and petticoat, Kitty, if you’ll be so good. -Oh wait till Gerry sees me! He’ll be so o’ercome with admiration -he’ll scarce know what to say!”</p> - -<p>“He’ll be o’ercome, I don’t doubt,” said Kitty. “Especially -if he tries to put his arm around you. You feel like a stick of -cord wood.” She fastened the gauze petticoat over the stays -and then brought the sky-blue muslin gown Sally Rose had -laid out on a chair.</p> - -<p>Was life going to be like this always, she wondered somewhat -wistfully; helping Sally Rose to dress, letting Sally -Rose in when the evening was over; herself never dressing -up, never meeting anyone, never going anywhere? She -wished that Tom Trask the logger had the daring British -Gerry had. Gossip said that the New Hampshire men were -in camp in Medford, and Medford wasn’t much farther than -Boston. But he had no way of knowing she was so near him, -of course. Perhaps when things got quieter after Concord -Fight, he’d gone back to Newburyport to return her father’s -gun. But now it seemed that battles were threatening again. -Perhaps—</p> - -<p>“Now my gold gauze kerchief and my scent bottle,” -panted Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>Kitty brought them. “Are you ready now?” she asked, trying -to keep the envy from her tone. It wasn’t Sally Rose’s -fault that she felt lonely and neglected, not Sally Rose’s -fault at all.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’m ready,” sighed Sally Rose. “I’ll go down the -back stairs, I think, and through the garden. Good-by, -dear.” She held up her soft cheek.</p> - -<p>Kitty brushed her lips against it. “Good-by, Sally Rose,” -she said. “Don’t get into any trouble, and come home soon.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose laughed a little uneasily and made an awkward<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span> -motion to step forward. But she did not step forward. She -stopped suddenly, twisted her body, or tried to, and put her -hand to her side.</p> - -<p>“My, a bone jabbed me,” she said.</p> - -<p>After a moment she tried again to move forward. This -time she succeeded in taking three little hobbled steps. Then -she swayed clumsily, tripped, and fell on the rag rug. There -she lay like an overset turtle, unable to rise.</p> - -<p>Kitty stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to choke -back her laughter. Then she ran forward and struggled to -hoist Sally Rose to her feet.</p> - -<p>“I—I don’t think I can walk in this thing,” gasped Sally -Rose. “It’s like having two feet in one breeches leg. And the -bones hurt me. And it’s getting late. Take it off, Kit. Take it -off at once. Here’s the key.”</p> - -<p>Still trying to keep back her laughter at the other girl’s -ridiculous plight, Kitty pulled off the blue dress and the -petticoat and fitted the tiny key into the jeweled lock. It refused -to turn, and she twisted it gently.</p> - -<p>“You’ll be in a pickle,” she muttered, “if it should break.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you dare break it!” squealed Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>Kitty worked the key this way and that. Below in the -tavern kitchen Gran’s voice lifted up the words of an old -hymn. Through the open window drifted the scent of garden -flowers in the warm dark. Her hands got sticky with sweat. -She kept dropping the wretched little key.</p> - -<p>“Hurry!” pleaded Sally Rose. “I’m afraid he’ll come and -not find me. I’m afraid he’ll go away.”</p> - -<p>Desperately Kitty twisted the bit of metal.</p> - -<p>“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” she said at last. “I can’t make -it work. What will we do?”</p> - -<p>“Cut the lacings, I suppose,” sighed Sally Rose, “and I’ll -try to wiggle out through the gap in the middle. I don’t care -much. I never should have bought it. Maybe the staymaker<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span> -will take it back. Get my shears. They’re in the workbox in -the top drawer.”</p> - -<p>“But you left your workbox in the kitchen,” said Kit. “I -saw it there when we were scouring the pots after supper. All -the other shears and knives are there too, and if I went down, -I’d have to explain to Gran.”</p> - -<p>The two girls looked at each other in dismay. Sally Rose -bit her lip. “Yes, you would,” she said. “And whatever excuse -you made, she might come back upstairs with you, and then -I’d never get away. Can’t you break the lacings?”</p> - -<p>“I doubt it,” said Kitty. “It’s the toughest cord I ever -saw.”</p> - -<p>“Try.”</p> - -<p>So Kitty yanked and tugged and twisted, but the cord refused -to break. Sally Rose was hopelessly trapped.</p> - -<p>They were silent for a moment. Then she clenched her -soft hands and stiffened her mouth. “I’ll have to go just as I -am,” she said, and tried to walk again. Again she fell.</p> - -<p>Kitty helped her up and led her to a chair. “Sit down, Sally -Rose,” she said gently. But Sally Rose could not sit down.</p> - -<p>“I guess it’s no use,” she murmured, reluctant, almost -tearful. “You’ll just have to go and tell Gerry I’m sick, or -something. Tell him to come back tomorrow night. I’ll surely -be there.”</p> - -<p>Kitty hesitated. She didn’t know quite why. Was it because -Gerry was British and she disapproved of the British? Or was -it a deeper, stranger thing—a sort of foreboding? A fear, and -yet an eagerness, too.</p> - -<p>“Are you sure you want me to, Sally Rose?” she asked.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose stamped her foot, or tried to, then writhed as -a whalebone jabbed her. “Of course I do,” she cried. “Go -quickly, do, and come back and tell me what he has to say. -Then we’ll have to get the shears and cut me out of this thing. -Oh Kitty, go now!”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>And so it was that Kitty Greenleaf slipped away to -Charlestown’s old graveyard that night to meet her country’s -enemy, her cousin’s exciting young man.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>An eerie little wind was blowing through the town that -night, a warm wind, and it had the tang of sea salt in it, and -the heavy sweetness of the new mown hay on Bunker Hill. -It ruffled Kitty’s hair and cooled her hot face as she walked -through the empty streets, past the Two Cranes, the courthouse, -and the meeting house with its tall white spire rising -against the dark. Few of the windows were lighted, but down -by the docks she could hear the familiar cry of the watch, and -over the bay the lights of Boston shone out bright and clear. -It was hard for her to remember that Boston was no longer a -friendly town.</p> - -<p>When she reached the graveyard she felt her way along -the low wall that protected it from the street. Shadow lay -thick about the grassy mounds inside, and crooked elm -boughs meeting overhead shut out the thin glow of the starlight. -There was no moon.</p> - -<p>Leaving the wall she blundered forward, now and then -brushing against one of the old headstones. She knew what -they looked like well enough: short thick slabs of greenish -slate with a death’s head at the top; some of reddish sandstone; -beyond them the granite tombs where the great families -lay. But she could not seem to find the path that would -lead her through. And then, somehow she did find it, and -groped her way to the wall on the far side with the open -fields beyond. He was standing there, just as she knew he -would be.</p> - -<p>He carried a dark lantern, half open now to let a little -light shine through, and he wore the rough shirt and breeches -of an American farmer. Sally Rose would have been disappointed -had she hoped to see the scarlet coat. As he heard<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span> -her footstep on the worn grass he drew in his breath sharply.</p> - -<p>“Ah, Sally Rose!” he whispered, and turned the lantern -full upon her.</p> - -<p>“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’m her cousin Kitty. -She sent me to tell you—”</p> - -<p>And then suddenly, to her own horror, in spite of the awe -she felt for this handsome young stranger from the enemy -camp, in spite of the need to keep this tryst in silence and -secrecy, she began to giggle. She couldn’t help it when she -thought of Sally Rose trapped in the stays; of her pretty, -angry face on top of the body of a pinched white worm. She -put both hands to her mouth and rocked and rocked with -stifled mirth.</p> - -<p>Then she realized that he was shaking her. “Stop it, Kitty, -if that’s your name,” he said. His voice was firm but not unkind. -“Where’s Sally Rose? Tell me what you are laughing -at? I want to laugh, too.”</p> - -<p>He had put the lantern down and was holding her by both -shoulders. She could not see his face, and yet she knew what -he looked like. She would always remember him, she -thought, from that day when he marched past the Bay and -Beagle and she was standing at the door. Suddenly she found -herself telling him all about the stays and Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>He kept very quiet until she had finished, but then he did -not laugh as she had expected him to do. When he spoke -again, his voice had an impatient sound.</p> - -<p>“I’ve often heard the men in barracks say—the married -men, that is—that women have no sense at all. And I guess -they be right. I’m sorry Sally Rose did such a foolish thing. -I—I wanted—tonight it really mattered that I should see -her.”</p> - -<p>“But she will be here tomorrow night, sir,” answered -Kitty, not quite sure how one addressed a British officer who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span> -pretended not to be a British officer. “It will be such a little -time till then.”</p> - -<p>“A little time,” he muttered, “but much may happen in it. -I may be here tomorrow night—but I trust she will not be.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” faltered Kitty.</p> - -<p>A bough rustled a few yards off, and he flashed his lantern -that way and listened. After a moment he spoke again in a -lower tone.</p> - -<p>“How does it happen you womenfolk are still in Charlestown? -I understood that it had been evacuated.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, it has been—nearly. But Granny says she will not -abandon my uncle’s property here until she must. She says -she will stay and try to keep it intact for him, if she can.”</p> - -<p>“It’s been known since April that we might burn the town -any day.”</p> - -<p>“I know. But time goes on, and you do not do it, and we -grow less afraid. And all the while our Army is growing -larger and more strong.”</p> - -<p>“So is ours,” he retorted. “Three new generals arrived -from England; martial law proclaimed in Boston yesterday. -General Gage denounced you for rebels and traitors. If you -don’t disband and go your ways in peace soon, we’re coming -out to make you go.”</p> - -<p>“Then I suppose there will be a battle,” sighed Kitty. “I’ll -never know why it is men can’t settle a squabble without trying -to kill each other.”</p> - -<p>Again he flashed the lantern on her face and held it there -a moment. Then he spoke to her from out of the dark, and -his voice had a different sound.</p> - -<p>“You know—Kitty—I don’t think I understand it either. -I never really wanted to be a soldier.”</p> - -<p>“A captain,” she corrected him. “A captain in the Twenty-third.”</p> - -<p>“Ah yes, a captain. I can hear the watch coming down the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span> -street, and we cannot leave here until he is gone. Sit down -on the grass.”</p> - -<p>Indeed it was the watch, and she could hear him shouting -as he turned the corner by the brick well. “Ten o’ the clock, -this thirteenth night o’ June, and the weather fair. Town’s -empty, Sons o’ Liberty gone to camp, Rogues and Tories to -Boston!”</p> - -<p>The young Englishman drew her down in the shadow of a -flowering quince tree. She sat there straight and proper and -he sprawled with careless grace beside her, not alarmingly -near.</p> - -<p>“No, I never meant to bear arms, and how I came to do it -is no matter, but I, too, wish England and America could -settle their differences without spilling blood. Do you think -I am a coward, Kitty?”</p> - -<p>“No,” she said slowly. “I do not think that.”</p> - -<p>The voice of the watch grew louder. He must be passing -very close by.</p> - -<p>“I have cursed the Americans, and yet I am not sure I was -right when I did it. I have gone amongst them some, even -been kept in gaol by them, and yet I can’t see that they’re -any worse fellows than I. I cannot help thinking that I myself -might have been an American. Except for a choice a man -made some hundred and fifty years ago. The right choice, of -course—and yet—”</p> - -<p>Kitty felt her blood stir in a different way now. She had -been thrilling to his strangeness and his handsomeness, and -the excitement of this secret meeting. But now she had the -uncanny feel that there were ghosts about. Mighty ghosts, -ghosts of countries coming together, here in the dim starlight -in the shadow of Bunker Hill.</p> - -<p>“You an American? How?”</p> - -<p>He settled comfortably in the grass. “Listen, Kitty, I’ll -tell you more of myself than I ever told Sally Rose. I do not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span> -know why, unless it is because you are less distractingly fair. -Alas, I am afraid I like overwell to talk, Kitty.”</p> - -<p>“So does everyone, it seems,” murmured Kitty. “But what -happened—a hundred and fifty years ago?”</p> - -<p>“I like to talk, I suppose, because my mother was a strolling -player, and famous for the way she spoke her lines as -well as her good looks. She traveled the fairs and market -towns, and everywhere she was made welcome and a stage -set up for her. My father was a West Country farmer, and a -dull husband I think he made her. I cannot recall her too -well. But it was through his blood that I might have been -born an American.”</p> - -<p>The voice of the watch was fading now, down by the tannery -and the distilleries, but Gerry Malory kept on talking.</p> - -<p>“My father would shake his head, I remember, whenever -anyone mentioned America. ’Twas a legend in our family -that once an old grandsire of ours, about the time I mention, -had journeyed to Plymouth and watched a shipful of people -leaving that country to settle in this one. That he thought for -a time to go with them, but decided against it. Sometimes I -wonder if he had gone—”</p> - -<p>The watch was coming back. They saw the light he carried. -It wavered to and fro. Then it stopped just at the wall of the -graveyard. Gerry Malory sprang hastily to his feet. “Kitty,” -he whispered, “go back and tell Sally Rose—I don’t know -when I’ll see her—but tell her to get out of Charlestown. -We’re getting ready to move against the Americans. I don’t -know when. At least by the end of the week. Some say we’re -for Dorchester Heights, and some say Bunker Hill. Tell her -to be gone. And you go with her—Kitty.”</p> - -<p>He vaulted over the low wall and disappeared in the darkness -between the fields and the flats along the river. Kitty -peered after him, but she saw only a scatter of fireflies and -a light mist rising from the earth. She was not afraid of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span> -watch, but he did not challenge her as she crept back to the -Bay and Beagle. He did not know she had been keeping a -tryst with the enemy. Well, she had been, and felt herself -none the worse for it.</p> - -<p>She, too, was wondering what would have happened if old -Grandsire Malory had taken that ship so many years ago.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Eleven</i><br /> - - -<small>A GREAT SECRET</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“We</span> been long enough getting here,” said Tom Trask, as -he dragged the prow of a small rowboat up the shaly -beach. “Are you sure this be Charlestown Neck, Johnny?”</p> - -<p>Tugging away at the other side of the boat, Johnny Pettengall -answered him. “Charlestown, sure enough. Hold on. -Give me your hand. I got my foot caught in a patch of eel -grass or summ’at like.”</p> - -<p>Tom did as he was bidden, and in a moment the two were -climbing up a steep bank into the hayfield above. Just to their -left loomed a low hill, sharp on its eastern side. A taller, -more gently rounded hill stood up behind it, and through -the thick, fragrant grass around them a rail fence wound -away toward higher ground. Tom could see no lighted windows -anywhere.</p> - -<p>“You ever been here before?” he asked doubtfully.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Johnny, “but I come by here yesterday when I -was aboard our sloop that went up to the Penny Ferry to -meet the supply carts from the eastward. I had it pointed out -to me. This is Breed’s Hill just ahead of us, and Bunker -Hill’s behind.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>“Charlestown’s said to be a village,” Tom continued to -object. “I can see orchards, and what looks like a brick kiln -over there, and by the smell there’s clay pits somewhere -about. But I don’t see any houses at all.”</p> - -<p>“Town’s the other side of the hill,” Johnny reassured him. -“Come on. We got to get to the Bay and Beagle before -Ma’am Greenleaf locks up for the night.”</p> - -<p>Uncertain and on his guard, Tom followed his companion -up the slope through the firefly-studded grass. More than a -week now, he and the Newburyport lad had been sleeping at -night with their feet toward the same campfire—when they -did sleep—sharing the same ration of salt pork and corn -meal. He had not gone back to Medford after they burned -the <i>Diana</i>, for he and Johnny kept telling themselves that -they would borrow a boat and row over to Charlestown to -see the girls, but not until tonight had they been able to get -away. They had not wasted their time, though. They had -gone with the raiding parties that constantly scoured the -islands all the way from Chelsea Neck to the deep sea. They -had helped to burn Tory barns and steal Tory cattle. Tom -felt he could give a good account of himself when he got back -to his own company, but he was not so sure Captain Moore -would consider it a good account. He was even more dubious -about the attitude of the Colonel, his old friend, Johnny -Stark. That they were old friends wouldn’t make any difference -at all, when there was business in hand.</p> - -<p>Yes, tonight after he’d seen Miss Kitty again and stolen a -kiss or two, he thought he’d better make for Medford, with -or without young Pettengall. Maybe he’d better ask now -just what his companion intended to do.</p> - -<p>At that moment they reached the crest of Breed’s Hill and -paused to look down.</p> - -<p>“Them lights over there must be Boston,” Johnny told<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span> -him. “You ever been there, Tom? I heard it’s the greatest -city in North America. The best anyway.”</p> - -<p>“Didn’t know we had any other cities,” said Tom, grinning -in the darkness.</p> - -<p>Johnny took him seriously. “Course we have,” he hastened -to protest. “There’s New York, and Philadelphia where the -Great Congress meets. Some others further south, I guess, -and all of ’em sending help to Boston. There’s talk they’ll -even send their soldiers here.”</p> - -<p>“Believe it when I see them,” said Tom skeptically. “But -you ask me, and I say no, I never been to Boston. I live a -sight of a ways off, you know, up the Merrimack.”</p> - -<p>They stood there together a moment in the starlight and -cool sea wind, the sweetness of ripe hay.</p> - -<p>“I know,” said Johnny. “You didn’t go back there, ever—after -we got news of Concord Fight, did you? Ain’t you got -some folks waiting for you to come home?”</p> - -<p>Tom shrugged. “Folks is all dead,” he told Johnny. -“Won’t nobody miss me. Well—maybe a girl or two.”</p> - -<p>Then he spoke more quickly and in a lighter tone. “But I -know where I will be missed, I bet, and that’s back in Medford. -My company was less than half full strength when I -left, and I better be getting myself over there. How about -you?”</p> - -<p>“I ought to be in Cambridge, I guess, with Captain Little’s -company.”</p> - -<p>“Moses Little? Heard he’d been made a colonel, just like -Stark.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. I didn’t hear.”</p> - -<p>They were starting down the hill now, toward a cluster of -roofs and gables with a tall spire in the midst of it, toward a -shadowy line of wharves along the shore.</p> - -<p>“I know sure enough about Johnny. I was there in the -tavern when we chose him by a show of hands. They say some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span> -voted twice. I know I did. He was my neighbor up in Derryfield. -I worked in his sawmill some and went hunting with -his son Caleb. Caleb’s a right smart lad.”</p> - -<p>It was harder going down Breed’s Hill than going up, for -the western side was as steep as the eastern, and they had to -hold back. There were stone walls to climb, and the dew-wet -grass was hard to wade through, but Tom scarcely noticed -that. Funny, he thought, as he heard his tongue run on, how -he never had very much to say, unless it was about John -Stark.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Johnny’s the man for you,” he was saying. “Once -when the Indians captured him and put him to hoeing their -fields, he cut down the corn and left the weeds standing. -When they made him run the gantlet, he whacked them as -he went through, instead of t’other way. Kept singing while -he ran that he’d kiss all their women. He never liked the -British either, after he fought beside them at Quebec. ’Fore -I was high as a rail fence, I heard him say we’d have to fight -against them sometime. There was folks who laughed at him, -but I guess they ain’t laughing now.”</p> - -<p>“Here we be,” said Johnny as they came to the beginning -of a street that led past the darkened windows of Charlestown. -“I got no idea where the place is. Likely there’ll be a -horse and a dog on its sign.”</p> - -<p>But Charlestown was no very extensive metropolis, and -after a little wandering through its dim lanes and uncobbled -streets, they found the tavern they were seeking. The door -stood open to let in the night breeze, and the two boys -stepped uncertainly through.</p> - -<p>A few candles burning in iron holders lit the dim taproom. -Clean mugs and glasses stood neatly on shelves behind the -bar, and the long brown braid of tobacco leaves hanging near -it swayed gently in the draft from the open door. Tom -thought that the braid looked like a cow’s tail. He made up a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span> -face when he remembered the pipeful of tobacco he’d had to -smoke the night they burned the <i>Diana</i>. Here was one customer -of Ma’am Greenleaf’s who wouldn’t ask her to cut off -a few inches for him, that was sure. But where was Ma’am -Greenleaf? Or Kitty? Or the other girl? The room was -empty, so far as he could see.</p> - -<p>Johnny, too, was looking around him. “Don’t see where -they could have gone to,” he muttered, “and left the door -open and the lights burning.”</p> - -<p>Just at that moment there came an anguished wail from -somewhere overhead.</p> - -<p>“Stop it! Oh stop! You’re killing me!”</p> - -<p>“Robbers!” gasped Johnny.</p> - -<p>“Or them British devils!” cried Tom, looking desperately -for the staircase. He finally saw it, winding up from a little -alcove that led to the kitchen, and in a flash he and Johnny -pounded up the narrow treads, bursting breathlessly into a -long hall at the top. From a room on the side toward the -river emerged another half-stifled cry.</p> - -<p>“In here!” shouted Tom, flinging the door open.</p> - -<p>Then he stood quite still. The sight before him was such -a one as he had never seen by the falls of Derryfield. -Johnny’s astonished gasp told him that his friend was as taken -aback as he.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose Townsend sat precariously on the edge of a -four-poster bed, her face flushed and distorted. Granny -Greenleaf stood in front of her, her hands busy about the -girl’s dress—except that Sally Rose wore no dress. Her -shoulders were bare and gleamed whitely in the candlelight, -but her entire body below her shoulders seemed to be shut up -in some sort of cage. The cage gapped apart in the middle to -show an expanse of some white fabric underneath. It was -gripped firmly together at a point just above the girl’s waist, -and again below.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” Gran was muttering. “I can’t -get this foolish contrivance apart, and there isn’t a locksmith -left in town. I believe there’s a blacksmith, though. We’ll -send Kitty to fetch the blacksmith. Mercy, where is Kitty? I -never thought of her before. Where has Kitty gone?”</p> - -<p>“Quick! Cover me up, Gran!” gasped Sally Rose frantically, -her breath short, her words not quite clear.</p> - -<p>Gran glanced backward over her shoulder. Then she -turned completely round and faced the intruders.</p> - -<p>“Johnny Pettengall! And you—” she peered closer, “the -thief who made off with my son’s musket! What are you -doing in the bedchamber of a decent lass?”</p> - -<p>“We didn’t mean no harm, Ma’am Greenleaf,” explained -Johnny. “We just came from camp to see the girls, and -walked into the taproom like—like anybody would. Then we -heard Sally Rose scream she was being killed—” He broke -off and stared again at the bent golden head of his adored -one. Sally Rose was beginning to weep tears of embarrassment.</p> - -<p>“I see,” replied the old lady grimly. She stood protectingly -in front of her granddaughter. After a moment she -seemed to come to a decision. “Well, since you’re here, you’re -here. And it’s plain some male critter will have to help us. -’Tisn’t as if the girl weren’t decently covered underneath. -Can you boys get her out of that contraption?”</p> - -<p>Johnny swallowed and made inarticulate sounds.</p> - -<p>“We can try,” said Tom. “What is it? What’s it made of?”</p> - -<p>“It’s a pair of stays. An outlandish pair brought from New -York for some Tory hussy.”</p> - -<p>“My mother’s stays are laced together,” said Johnny, his -embarrassment lessening a little. “Won’t they come off if -you unlace them?”</p> - -<p>“I cut the laces—first thing I did when I came upstairs and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span> -heard her moaning,” snapped Gran. “But these are fastened -with locks at top and bottom. Come and look at them.”</p> - -<p>Gran motioned the boys forward and they gingerly approached -Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>Tom reached out coolly and fingered the jeweled padlock.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose sucked in her breath and closed her eyes. -Johnny looked the other way.</p> - -<p>“I could force it apart,” said Tom thoughtfully, “but it’s -too small for me to get a grip on. What we need is a file. You -got one about the place somewhere?”</p> - -<p>“Does your father keep a tool chest handy?” demanded -Gran of Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>“I think—in the barn—out the back way through the garden,” -Sally Rose whispered.</p> - -<p>“Go find it, Johnny,” ordered Tom.</p> - -<p>Johnny dashed for the stairway, and the Derryfield lad -walked to the window and stood there with his hands behind -him, gazing into the summer night. Nothing could be done -until Johnny came back, and he had no wish to embarrass the -poor girl further by staring at her.</p> - -<p>He looked at the gable windows of the house across the -street, and then down the narrow way that led to the market -place. Then he craned his neck at what he saw, and felt a -little smile crooking the corners of his mouth. Miss Catherine -Greenleaf was coming hot-foot home from somewhere, and -he guessed he’d see she got a proper welcome. He turned -back to Gran who still stood in front of Sally Rose, tapping -her slippered foot on the pine floor.</p> - -<p>“Think I’ll go help Johnny hunt for the file,” he said.</p> - -<p>He stepped into the taproom of the Bay and Beagle just as -Kitty entered from the street. He had the advantage, for he -had expected the meeting. She stopped still and gave a little -gasp, but he spoke calmly enough.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>“You ought to stay to home when you have company, Miss -Kitty,” he rebuked her mildly.</p> - -<p>Kitty recovered herself quickly, lifted her head, and smiled.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I would have,” she said, “if I had known. -Wherever did you come from?”</p> - -<p>“Sit here,” he said, and drew her down beside him on the -wide ledge that ran under the window. “I come from Chelsea -Neck on my way back to the camp in Medford—”</p> - -<p>“You—you’re going back to camp?” she interrupted him.</p> - -<p>He looked at her keenly. Something was the matter with -her. She was all upset like, but trying not to let him see. He’d -thought to steal a few kisses, but he felt pretty sure she wasn’t -in the mood for kissing. Too bad. Well, another night, -maybe. He shrugged his shoulders.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I think likely they can use me there. I been away -driving cattle off the islands the last week or two. Met up -with Johnny Pettengall and he told me you was here. Tonight -we borrowed a boat and rowed over the Mystic. But I -didn’t see you anywheres as I come across Breed’s Hill and -through the town. Where you been tonight, Kitty?”</p> - -<p>She looked at him thoughtfully. “I don’t know that—but -maybe I ought—”</p> - -<p>“Here ’tis!” cried Johnny triumphantly, rushing into the -room with a small iron file in his hand. He paid no attention -to Kitty. “Come on, Tom! Let’s go file Sally Rose!”</p> - -<p>Tom waved him away with a flippant gesture. “You go file -Sally Rose,” he said. “She’s your girl. I got business with -Kitty.” He turned his back on the other lad.</p> - -<p>Kitty put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I forgot!” she -gasped. “Sally Rose is still in the stays!”</p> - -<p>“Sure enough she is,” agreed Tom. “Johnny’s got a file, -and he can shave the lock away. I asked you where you’d -been tonight, Kit. Walking out with some other lad, maybe.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span> -No moon, but it’s sweet-aired and warm. A good courting -night.”</p> - -<p>Kitty sat twisting her hands in her lap and did not answer. -Johnny made a pitiful noise of dismay and turned reluctantly -toward the staircase.</p> - -<p>“Where’s Gran?” asked Kitty.</p> - -<p>Tom smiled widely. “With Sally Rose,” he said. “Likely -to stay there awhile, wouldn’t you think so?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course. She wouldn’t leave Sally Rose like that—and -with Johnny. I—I—” she stopped again.</p> - -<p>“What’s on your mind, Kitty? Something, I can tell.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Yes, there is. I don’t know—maybe I should—or -maybe I should wait and tell Sally Rose first. But maybe -you’re the one.”</p> - -<p>“You better tell me,” he said, trying to put strength into -his voice, and a little tenderness, but not too much. He -didn’t want her breaking down.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said after a moment, lifting her head and looking -straight into his eyes. “Yes, I think I should probably tell -you, for you’ll know what to do about it. If you’re going -back to camp—it ought to be made known to the officers -there.”</p> - -<p>“I aim to go tonight, not tomorrow morning,” he said. -“Say what’s got to be said, Kitty.”</p> - -<p>“Well then, I will.” She was not looking at him now. She -fixed her eyes on a candle burning in a sconce across the room. -“Tonight I went out to meet—a man—who was expecting -Sally Rose. You can see why she couldn’t go.”</p> - -<p>He grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Sally Rose ain’t geared right -now to travel far. Who was the man? Oh—I bet I know—that -redcoat she took such a notion to.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it was Gerry. Captain Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third. -I did see him, and he warned me. He told us to get out -of Charlestown, for the British are about to strike.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>Tom leaned forward. “When?” he demanded. “Where?”</p> - -<p>“Any night now. By the end of the week, surely. Here, or -in Dorchester. Gerry wasn’t sure. But if it should be Bunker -Hill—”</p> - -<p>“Bunker Hill would be a right handy site for them to -hold,” muttered Tom. “We thought they was about ready to -go. But before this we had no real word.”</p> - -<p>He was silent for a moment. Then he laid his hand over -hers. Then he stood up.</p> - -<p>“Guess I better make for camp,” he said. “This is important -information you got here. I’ll carry the news straight to -Stark. He’ll be the man to tell. He’ll know what steps to -take. You was smart, Kitty, to tell me. May make a big difference—to -both sides. Don’t suppose you’ve got a horse -about?”</p> - -<p>“Indeed we have,” cried Kitty, relieved that she had told -her disturbing secret and eager to be of further help, if that -were possible. “There are two horses in the barn that belong -to Uncle Moses Chase. Sally Rose and I brought them from -Newburyport. Gran says they’re eating their heads off, but -she hasn’t sent them home. But they’re only plow horses.”</p> - -<p>“Kind I’m best used to. Like the gun, I’ll see you get it -back some day.” He stroked the blunderbuss that now accompanied -him everywhere. “Don’t know when I’ll see you again -Kitty. Not here, likely. If the British are aiming to come this -way, you folks will have to go.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, we will. Just as soon as I can talk to Gran and Sally -Rose. Back to Newburyport, perhaps. Why don’t you come -to see us there?”</p> - -<p>“Can’t tell. Looks like I’ll have some fighting to do first. -Glad you took our side and told me that British fellow’s secret, -instead of hiding his little plan for him.”</p> - -<p>A startled look came over Kitty’s face. “Why—why, I did -betray Gerry, didn’t I? I—I never thought of it like that.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>“’Course you betrayed him. You’re too good a Yankee to -do aught else, as I can see. Good-by, Kitty.”</p> - -<p>He strode into the kitchen on his way to the garden and the -barn behind it.</p> - -<p>The last thing he heard was a triumphant squeal from -Sally Rose.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Colonel John Stark of the New Hampshire line was not in -his quarters that night, but walking among the tents on the -hillsides above Medford, talking with his men. After the -long ride from Charlestown, Tom Trask felt weary and -breathless when he finally caught up with his old neighbor.</p> - -<p>The colonel stood in a grove of oak trees where a little -brook drained down. All along the brook the crude sailcloth -tents clustered very thick. Campfires were burning low now. -Some of the men lay sleeping on the ground beside them. -Others were playing cards, jubilant when they could fling -down the ace to take the queen. Stark was talking with a -couple of grizzled veterans who had fought beside him in the -Indian wars, but he broke off when the younger man came -panting up.</p> - -<p>“Where you been, lad?” he asked, and clapped Tom on -the shoulder. “Couldn’t believe it when Moore reported you -missing. Shut up in gaol, maybe? I know you got some good -reason for being away.”</p> - -<p>Tom could not bring himself to look at the keen blue-gray -eyes and sharp, viselike face.</p> - -<p>“I been raiding the islands with some of Putnam’s men,” -he muttered. “But on my way back tonight, I heard a word -in Charlestown you ought to know.”</p> - -<p>“You got no business raiding islands, nor being in Charlestown,” -snapped the colonel, all the warmth and friendliness -gone from his voice. “Get back to Captain Moore, and tell -him where you been. He’ll deal with you.” He turned away.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>Tom nerved himself to step forward and pluck the sleeve -of Stark’s new blue uniform.</p> - -<p>“Colonel Stark, sir,” he stammered. “You know what I -heard in Charlestown? It come straight from a British captain, -what I heard.”</p> - -<p>The colonel turned toward him again. “What was it?” he -demanded.</p> - -<p>Tom lowered his voice. No use in alarming the men. “Oh, -a very great secret it was, told in confidence to a girl. This -captain said that the British mean to move out of Boston -before the week’s end. They mean to seize and fortify either -Dorchester Heights or Bunker Hill.” He paused expectantly.</p> - -<p>John Stark uttered a mirthless ha-ha.</p> - -<p>“I know,” he said. “Seems like you be about the forty-first -private to come up and tell me that. The word’s spread wide, -from here to Jamaica Plain.” Then he shook his head. “Too -bad you done what you done. I’d ha’ liked to ha’ recommended -a sergeant’s knot o’ red for your shoulder when I -sent you back to Captain Moore.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Twelve</i><br /> - - -<small>THUNDER IN THE AIR</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> bells were sounding midnight in Medford Steeple, -turning Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, when -Tom Trask tied his borrowed horse to a nearby fence and lay -down beside the dying campfire of his own company. After -the rebuke by his colonel and another one next day by Captain -Moore, he hardly expected John Stark to send for him -within a day or two, but that was what came about.</p> - -<p>Stark was holding a conference with a handful of his captains -in the little hollow between Plowed Hill and Winter -Hill. It had probably been a green valley once, but now the -young grass was all trampled away, and so was a field of -what had started out to be Indian corn. All about stretched -the tents and crude wooden shelters of the New Hampshire -men. The colonel was in his shirt sleeves, and his lean face -looked grimmer than usual. He had no smile of greeting, but -he did not seem to be angry any more.</p> - -<p>“See you brought your horse, Tom, like I said. Was surprised -when ’twas reported to me you owned such an animal. -They’re scarcer’n hen’s teeth around here.”</p> - -<p>“I only borrowed him, sir,” replied Tom quickly. “Borrowed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span> -him in Charlestown. He belongs in Newburyport. -When I can, I mean to return him home.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t hurry about it,” replied the colonel. “See that cart -over there?” He pointed to a heavy wagon, empty, three -young men standing close by. A horse was fastened between -the shafts of it, but he was a lank, ill-favored nag and looked -scarce able to go.</p> - -<p>“Yes, sir,” said Tom.</p> - -<p>“Then take your critter over to help the other one pull. -General Ward has promised to issue some lead to us, if we -send to Cambridge for it. That’s Peter Christie, Hugh Watts, -and Asa Senter who are going with you. Good lads. I knew -their folks in Londonderry before I was grown. Be as quick -as you can about it, too. We haven’t got enough powder and -ball to scare off a herd of deer, let alone the British Army.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, sir,” said Tom again. He waited for further instructions, -but none were forthcoming. Colonel Stark turned back -to his worried-looking officers. After a moment Tom led his -horse over to the wagon.</p> - -<p>The Londonderry men were indeed good fellows, he soon -found out, used to the same life as he. They had fished in the -same streams and hunted over the same mountains, knew as -little about books and high living, as much about how to plant -corn or cut down a white pine so it would fall the right way. -And soon they were all singing crude old-fashioned country -songs as they drove along the winding road.</p> - -<p>Tom looked westward across the pleasant farms to the -faint blue line of hills beyond them, and he thought of the -unseen army that was supposed to be circling tightly all -around Boston, an army of men like himself and the Londonderry -boys. Some said it was ten thousand strong, and -some said twenty, all the way from Medford River to Jamaica -Plain. He thought of that other army, swaggering -through the streets of Boston; men, he supposed, like that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span> -redcoat captain he’d brought home in chains a while back—and -nobody knew what strength they had. He remembered -Kitty’s warning that the British meant to strike by the week’s -end. Well, here it was, Friday, June sixteenth, and the -weather hotter’n the burning roof of hell. If the British were -coming, they’d better be on their way. Maybe they were on -their way. Everybody in camp was worn out and restless with -expecting them, but nobody seemed to know.</p> - -<p>Just then his horse gave a neigh, laid back its ears, and -stood still. Perforce, the other horse halted, too.</p> - -<p>“Must ha’ seen a rabbit,” said Hugh Watts, peering over -the side of the cart into the thick grass that grew beside the -road. “I don’t see anything but ripe strawberries, though. -Think we could stop to pick a few?”</p> - -<p>Asa Senter shook his head. “Wouldn’t hardly dare it,” he -objected. “Stark wants us to go and get back. By the look o’ -the sun, it’s already six o’clock, and we still got about another -mile.”</p> - -<p>Tom leaped down from the wagon. “I don’t think it was a -rabbit,” he said. “He acts more like there was thunder in the -air.”</p> - -<p>“Not a cloud anywheres that I can see,” said Peter Christie.</p> - -<p>“Don’t have to be.” Tom patted the horse’s flank and -started to lead them ahead. “If there’s thunder somewheres -over back, a critter’ll always know.”</p> - -<p>“Feel a bit uneasy myself,” said Asa, getting down to walk -beside Tom. “Look! There’s a steeple and some roofs sticking -up through the trees. Cambridge must be just ahead.”</p> - -<p>There were a sight of mighty fine houses round Cambridge -Common, Tom thought, as they approached it. Big square -mansions, some of them; some with gambrel roofs, mostly -painted yellow and white. But he didn’t see any of the sort -of folk who looked as if they lived in the houses; pretty -women with flowers and jewels, or gentlemen in velvet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span> -jackets wearing swords. The roads that led to the Common -were thronged with soldiers like himself, in cowhide shoes, -leather breeches, and tattered tow-cloth shirts, with bandanas -round their heads; and all too many, for his taste, had -a short-stemmed pipe gripped between their teeth. They all -seemed to be excited about something.</p> - -<p>He had no trouble in getting the old Hastings house -pointed out to him, but he was unable to lead his horse anywhere -near it because the crowd was so great. They seemed to -be having some sort of muster on the Common, for men were -drawn up in rank there, maybe a thousand or so.</p> - -<p>“What’s a-going on, Tom?” Peter demanded.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” said Tom, “but I aim to find out. You -boys stay here with the cart, and I’ll go over to General -Ward’s and ask. We got to go there anyway to get the lead.”</p> - -<p>He left his companions and made his way forward till he -reached the rail fence before the dwelling house that had -been pointed out to him as the headquarters of the Great -American Army. A row of Lombardy poplar trees stood up -tall and pointed behind the fence, and just as Tom elbowed -his way to the gate, a man came out to stand before the wide -front door.</p> - -<p>First there was a loud shouting, and cheers, and then a -hush. The seething mass of men around Cambridge Common -stood very still.</p> - -<p>The man in the doorway was not General Ward, surely, -for he wore a long black gown with flowing sleeves and a -square-topped cap such as Tom had never seen before, with a -tassel hanging down. But two other men stood behind him in -blue coats and three-cornered hats, and they were officers, -right enough.</p> - -<p>However it was the black-clad man who spoke, loudly and -clearly, so that as many as possible might hear.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>“I, Samuel Langdon, President of Harvard College, am -here to assure you that the hearts of our little community go -with you in your heroic venture. With you go the hopes of -Massachusetts, and the future, perhaps, of our whole great -country. I am here to bless your going out and your coming -home. May His strength uphold you when your need is greatest, -His spirit restore you when you falter, and His truth -abide in you always. My sons, let us pray.”</p> - -<p>Tom whipped off his cap, bowed his head, and closed his -eyes, aware that hundreds of other men were doing the same. -But his throat tightened and he heard no more of President -Langdon’s prayer. This was the beginning, he thought. Concord -Fight hadn’t been anything to what this would be. At -Concord Fight they had all come a-running, just the way -men come when the word goes out that a house is afire. But -this was like when a whole town got together by plan and -moved out against the French or the Indians. Concord Fight -had been a fight—just that—but this wouldn’t be a fight, -what was coming now. It would be a battle. It would be a -war.</p> - -<p>“<i>Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori</i>,” finished Dr. -Langdon soberly. “It is sweet and fitting, my sons, to die for -one’s country.”</p> - -<p>He lifted his eyes and stood silent, looking over the heads -of the company, straight at the small square bell tower of a -church across the way.</p> - -<p>Everyone began to talk at once, it seemed, and in the uproar -Tom thrust open the gate that led to the Hastings house -and crossed the lawn to the back door. Lilac trees grew close -to it, and here, away from the glare of the sinking sun, the -air was fragrant and cool. A young man in a trim blue coat -sat at a table just inside the door.</p> - -<p>“Lead for Colonel Stark?” he replied to Tom’s question. -“Yes, he’s to have a supply our men cut out of the organ pipes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span> -in the English church across the Common. Trouble is, I can’t -think for the minute where ’tis stored. Suppose you come back -tomorrow.”</p> - -<p>Tom pulled a tendril off a grape vine that grew on a trellis -over the door and began to chew it. “Stark wants me to bring -it back tonight,” he said.</p> - -<p>The young officer sat up and surveyed him insolently.</p> - -<p>“Stark may not know it, but there’s a war beginning,” he -announced.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” agreed Tom. “There is. That’s what he wants the -lead for.”</p> - -<p>Suddenly they were both laughing.</p> - -<p>“You’re right, man,” answered the young officer in a -friendlier tone. “We’re all on edge, and it takes us different -ways, I guess. But I still don’t know where the stuff has got -to, and I’m afraid we can’t do anything till Prescott takes his -force out of town, which he’ll do as soon as it’s dark enough. -Come back a little after nine.”</p> - -<p>“Where’s Prescott going?” Tom asked.</p> - -<p>The officer laid his finger across his mouth. “Prescott -knows—and nobody else has any need to. Have you got -rations, lad?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Tom, “we come empty-handed. Three others -besides me.”</p> - -<p>The officer wrote rapidly on a slip of paper.</p> - -<p>“Here. Take this to the head of the Common when you -hear them blow a bugle up there. Give it to the mess sergeant, -and he’ll see you have some supper.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you, sir,” said Tom. He went back to where he -had left his companions.</p> - -<p>He found them sitting along the top rail of a fence while -the horses cropped the wayside grass.</p> - -<p>“Did you find out what’s afoot, Tom?” asked Hugh Watts -eagerly.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>The men in the streets were thinning out, but those on the -Common, though no longer drawn up at attention, still remained -there.</p> - -<p>“Oh, there’s a war beginning, and nobody knows where -the lead is,” said Tom, flinging himself down on the grass. -“Didn’t find out a thing beyond that.”</p> - -<p>“We did,” said Asa. “After the man got through praying, -we asked around. Seems Colonel Prescott’s taking out twelve -hundred men with packs and blankets and a day’s ration. -There’s a fatigue crew along, and picks and shovels like they -mean to fortify. Nobody knows where.”</p> - -<p>“It’ll either be behind Dorchester or Charlestown,” said -Tom. He thought fleetingly of Kitty, and the yellow-haired -minx, and the gallant old woman. He hoped they’d got safe -away, but he didn’t think of them long. “There’s the bugle,” -he said. “Let’s go get supper.”</p> - -<p>Supper in Cambridge camp that night, for such men as did -not have regular rations, consisted of a slab of salt fish and a -hunk of hard, grayish bread, served with a noggin of sour -beer. After the boys had eaten they walked about the town, -down to the red brick buildings of the college, filled now with -soldiers instead of scholars, and into the gray flush-board -English church to see if by any chance the lead was still there. -The church was full of Connecticut men who were using it -for barracks, and they knew nothing about the lead at all.</p> - -<p>By nine o’clock the twilight had gathered thickly about the -little town, and the men on the Common formed in ranks and -began their march. Two sergeants walked ahead carrying -dark lanterns, half open so as to throw the light behind. Then -came two blue-coated officers, Colonel Prescott and Colonel -Gridley, then the rest of the detail, made up of Massachusetts -and Connecticut men. Tom was not surprised when he -saw that they took the Charlestown Road.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>“Bet they’re going to fortify Bunker Hill,” he told his -friends. “They’re carrying entrenchment tools. Wouldn’t -bother with them if the British had already struck. Must be -we mean to get there first and beat them to it. You go back to -the cart, and I’ll call round at headquarters again. We got to -get that lead and start for Winter Hill.”</p> - -<p>The town had quieted down now, and most of the men remaining -there had gone to the houses where they were quartered, -or to their tents in the fields beyond. Nobody would do -much sleeping, Tom thought. Tense and nervous they all -felt, trying to tell themselves they were too much men to be -afraid—just like any flesh and blood thing when there was -thunder in the air.</p> - -<p>Two lanterns were burning on poles set up in the yard of -the Hastings house, but the back door was locked when Tom -rapped on it. So was the front door, when he tried to enter -there. Through the window he could see candles burning in -prismed holders, and a group of men sitting around a mahogany -table, some in uniforms, others in buff and gray and -bottle green coats. One of the officers stood up to speak. He -was heavily built, with pointed features and bright eyes, but -his face had an unhealthy look. Must be Ward himself, -thought Tom. All the Army knew their leader was a sick -man.</p> - -<p>“When the Committee of Safety advised me this afternoon,” -he began, “that it was deemed best for us to fortify -Bunker Hill—”</p> - -<p>Just then a sentry tapped Tom on the shoulder with a gun -barrel. “What are ye lurking about for?” he growled in a -rough voice.</p> - -<p>Tom turned around sharply. The sentry was an oldish -man, unshaven, with shaggy hair and beard.</p> - -<p>“I got business here,” he said. “I come to get Colonel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> -Stark’s lead, and by the great Jehovah, I mean to do the -same.”</p> - -<p>The sentry spat. “Maybe ye’re honest,” he said. “Ye look -to be. But General Ward’s a-talking to some important men -from the Congress o’ Massachusetts right now. Couldn’t let -ye in there if ye was King George himself, with the Queen -tagging along.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll wait here till they’re through then,” insisted Tom. -“I’ll wait right here.”</p> - -<p>The sentry shrugged. “Guess there’s no harm in that,” he -muttered, and ambled off.</p> - -<p>Tom sat down on the grass with his back against a poplar -tree and looked up at the stars. They were just as bright as -they had been when he crossed Breed’s Hill a few nights -ago. He wondered if tomorrow he’d be going back there, -lugging Kitty’s old blunderbuss with him. Suddenly he realized -that he was sleepy. The tension had eased out of him, -even though there was still thunder in the air, the thunder of -war about to break. A man could only keep himself keyed up -for so long. But it wouldn’t do—now—to go—to sleep. He -ought to get up and walk—get—up—and—walk—</p> - -<p>He opened his eyes and shook himself. How did it get to -be like that—early morning, the light as broad as day? The -sky was red and golden over eastward where the sea must lie. -The grass around him was wet with dew. Smoke was curling -upward from the chimneys round about, and in somebody’s -barnyard he could hear a rooster crow. Lord forgive him, -he’d slept all night. They’d drum him out of camp or at least -give him forty lashes, and he deserved it, too.</p> - -<p>He stood up just as a horse and rider came spurring to the -gate. The rider dismounted hastily and approached the front -door. He was a trim, neat man with fair hair, but he looked -feverish and ill. Almost immediately a pint-sized man came -out to let him in. The two shook hands.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>“Ah, Elbridge, Elbridge Gerry, my good friend,” murmured -the newcomer. “It is folly to try to seize and hold -Charlestown. Yet, I must go.”</p> - -<p>“Ah no, Dr. Warren,” pleaded the smaller man. “You are -too well known. You stayed in Boston too long, and the -British know too well what a great pillar of strength you -have been to our colonial cause. As surely as you go up -Bunker Hill, you will be slain.”</p> - -<p>“I know,” answered the doctor tensely. “I told the friends -with whom I dined last night that I would go up the Hill -today and never come off again. I slept wretchedly, and my -head aches, but after an hour or two—”</p> - -<p>“Sirs,” interrupted Tom politely, “I am sorry to bother you -when you’re about such weighty business, but I been here -since six o’clock last night, trying to get some lead for Colonel -Stark.”</p> - -<p>Elbridge Gerry gave a snort of impatience, but Dr. -Warren turned and smiled at the boy.</p> - -<p>“I am sorry you had the long delay, lad. I myself saw that -the lead was dispatched to Stark late yesterday afternoon. -He’ll know what to do with it, if anybody does. His men will -have melted it into bullets by now, and may be shooting it at -the British, for all I know.”</p> - -<p>He turned again to Mr. Gerry. “Ah, sir, ‘<i>Dulce decorum</i>,’ -as all men know or must learn. Let us go inside, and send -someone to lead my horse away, for he is as spent as I.”</p> - -<p>Tom walked thoughtfully back to where his comrades -would still be asleep in the empty cart. ‘<i>Dulce decorum</i>’! He -knew what the Latin meant, for President Langdon had -translated it yesterday afternoon. “It is sweet and fitting to -die for one’s country.” But was it, he wondered. The sun felt -gloriously warm on his back, and made his blood tingle. -The birds were singing in the elm trees round the Common. -Kitty was a pretty girl, and there were other pretty girls.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span> -Sweet to die? That sounded like a thing old men would think -of, tired old men who never had to go out and fight, who -would die in bed at ninety-three or so. Still, if you had to do -it, you had to do it, and he guessed he was as ready as he’d -ever be.</p> - -<p>Over towards Charlestown he heard the boom of a heavy -gun.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Thirteen</i><br /> - - -<small>THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Gerry Malory</span> was back in Devonshire at daybreak on -that hot June morning, only it did not seem to him to be -morning, or any special time of day. He stood in a low valley -opening toward the sea, and there were little farms all around -him with hedgerows in between them, and here and there a -church spire reaching toward the sky. He was not alone, for -a man stood beside him, a man he had never seen before, -about his father’s age, dressed in quaint old-fashioned clothes, -and carrying an ancient gun. The gun looked like the one -that belonged to the Yankee that had taken him prisoner in -the tavern by Ipswich Green. The man was shaking his head -and scowling. He seemed to be angry about something. Gerry -was ready to protest that he hadn’t done anything wrong, -when suddenly he thought that maybe he had. Maybe he’d -been poaching again.</p> - -<p>Just then the man spoke. “It’s the coming country, lad,” -he said. “Don’t make the mistake I did in my time.”</p> - -<p>“What mistake?” Gerry murmured, but he thought he -knew. His words were drowned out by the deep boom of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span> -thunder. Again and again the thunder sounded, and the -echoes rolled over valley and hill and sea.</p> - -<p>His body shook like an aspen in a storm wind; his eyelids -snapped wide apart. He was in the warehouse behind the -stables near Long Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts, and Sergeant -Higgs had him by the shoulder. The thunder still -boomed in his ears, but the Devon landscape had gone back -into his memory, where it probably came from. He was lying -on his own blanket on a heap of straw, with the regiment’s -goat tethered nearby.</p> - -<p>“Wake up, lad! Don’t you hear the guns?” Higgs was -saying.</p> - -<p>Gerry pulled himself erect. He found it hard to come out -of the dream that had seemed so real to him.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I hear them,” he said. “Whose guns are they?”</p> - -<p>“Whose would they be?” scoffed the sergeant. “Do you -think the Yankees have guns like that?”</p> - -<p>“No—no.” He was wide awake now, wider awake than he -wanted to be, he thought, for the cannonading sounded ominous -and near. “What’s happening, Jack? Are we marching -against them? Have we attacked—or they?”</p> - -<p>“Can’t tell yet,” said Sergeant Higgs. “All we know is, we -hear gunfire. Lieutenant Apthorp has gone to headquarters -to find out. You better get some breakfast. It’s best we be -ready for anything.”</p> - -<p>In the cobbled square outside, the men of the Twenty-third -had built their usual cookfire, just as they did every -morning, and gathered round it, salt pork spitted on bayonets -and stale bread handed round by the mess sergeant. Lieutenant -Apthorp did not come back, and Lieutenant Julian went -to see what was keeping him. The cannonading went on. It -was coming from the ships in the river beyond the North -End, most of the men agreed. Maybe the Yankees had got -together some sort of raft and were moving by water against<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span> -Boston. The Twenty-third seemed more amused than frightened -at this suggestion.</p> - -<p>And then, without any official announcement being made, -the word was passed from mouth to mouth, and everybody -knew.</p> - -<p>The Yankees had taken the hills above Charlestown in the -night, and built some sort of entrenchment there. They were -being fired at from three sides by the British men-o’-war, but -it began to seem as if this would not be enough to dislodge -them, as if a force would have to go out and drive them from -the hill.</p> - -<p>In the town behind him Gerry could hear the rattle of -artillery carriages, the thud of horses’ hoofs as the dragoons -galloped here and there. General Gage had called for his officers -to meet at the Province House, and some of the men -went off to hover about that grim, narrow structure and get -the word as soon as it was handed down.</p> - -<p>Gerry did not go to the Province House. He went to the -edge of the wharf and sat there, dangling his legs over the -side. The sun was getting higher and hotter, and he looked -up at the sun, and then down at the thick grayish water lapping -silently round the piers below. He thought about his -dream, and he thought about the girl called Kitty, who was -not so distractingly fair as Sally Rose, and wondered if she -had got safe away. He thought about Captain Blakeslee lying -dead under the locust tree. True, he had never wanted to be -a soldier, but once he became one, he’d expected to bear his -part well. Once he’d have been eager to march out when he -heard firing, but he was none so eager now. Maybe he was -afraid. Maybe that was a bad omen. He’d heard around the -campfire that men who were going into their last battle often -felt that way. If only he could forget the dream....</p> - -<p>The sounds of confusion in the town behind him seemed to -increase and grow. Now that he thought of it, none of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span> -usual daily noises could be heard: not the tapping of the carpenters’ -hammers, nor the thumping of handlooms, nor the -creak of wooden machinery. The little Negro boys were nowhere -about with their cries of “Sweep oh! Sweep oh!” He -suspected that the town of Boston would do no work this day. -Everywhere men were shouting and bells were ringing: -Christ’s Church with its royal peal, the North Church with its -sour note, and half a dozen more. Just as usual, the breeze -that blew over Long Wharf smelled of fish and whale oil and -the nearby stables, of tar, and spice, and wood smoke, but -now, or did he imagine it, it had an acrid brimstone tang.</p> - -<p>At eleven the men came trooping back, and the word was -out. Every man knew what was to be the order of his day.</p> - -<p>At half past eleven the men of Gerry’s company paraded -on the Common, splendid in scarlet and white and brass, -equipped with full kit, blankets, and three days’ rations, and -drawn up beside them were fifteen hundred more. The ships’ -guns still roared away, and every now and then a terrible -blast let go from the battery on Copp’s Hill.</p> - -<p>“They say it’s only a handful of farmers,” muttered Jack -Higgs. “I’d not think they could stand such punishment for -long.”</p> - -<p>Gerry looked at Boston Common, the rambling field that -had become so familiar to him in the past year: the crooked -cowpaths, and the little pond, and the thick clumps of juniper -and steeplebush, so handy to come upon when you were -walking in the moonlight with a girl; the gravel strip where -the officers still raced their horses, in spite of all the town -fathers could do. He looked at the gabled mansions and -quaint, crooked houses round, as if he never expected to see -them any more.</p> - -<p>“The Yankees’ll take more punishment than you’d think -for,” he said.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>Once on the water, the barges from Long Wharf joined -with the barges from the North Battery, twenty-eight of -them moving in two long parallel lines, filled with scarlet-coated -men. In the leading boats were two polished brass -field pieces, and the noonday sun struck everywhere on colorful -banners and gleaming arms. For the Tories in Boston, it -must have been a splendid sight, but Gerry turned his eyes -toward the Charlestown peninsula as the troops were rowed -across the blue bay.</p> - -<p>Smoke and flame and awful sound kept pouring forth from -the great guns of the fleet—the <i>Somerset</i>, the <i>Falcon</i>, the -<i>Lively</i>. Dimly through the barrage he could see the little -village where he had gone drinking at the Bay and Beagle -and courting in the graveyard under the spring moon. On the -hill above it, grown up overnight like a mushroom, stood a -small square earthworks, silent, except for one erratic cannon -that spoke now and then. Black dots of men moved about the -earthworks, but no columns issued forth drawn up in battle -array, no reinforcements poured in from any side.</p> - -<p>Gerry’s spirits rose and he cleared his throat. “Is that,” he -asked the sergeant, “the great fortification we’re all ordered -out to tear down?”</p> - -<p>The sergeant laughed grimly. “Don’t look very fearsome, -does it?” he agreed. “But after the way they run us back -through Lexington, I don’t trust them devils.”</p> - -<p>“And I thought it was Bunker Hill instead of Breed’s -they’d be likely to fortify,” went on Gerry. “That’s how we -would have chosen. But that’s Bunker Hill, standing up -behind there, bare as a plate. The little dugout is on Breed’s -Hill, below.”</p> - -<p>“Breed’s or Bunker makes no difference now,” said Sergeant -Higgs. “Keep your cartridges dry in the landing. -We’re headed in towards shore.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>A few minutes later they were all drawn up in a low-lying -field where Charlestown peninsula extended, pear-shaped, -into the sea. Gerry found himself in the front line, far to the -right, with the light infantry of the Twenty-third and the -King’s Own. To the left stood the grenadiers, and behind -him the Fifty-second and the Fifth. He was feeling cheerful -and brave now, and as safe as London Tower. It reassured -him even more when the order came to break ranks and dine -on the rations in their knapsacks before going farther along.</p> - -<p>Sprawled in the hot sun, chewing his beef and biscuit, he -eyed the landscape round him: the green, sloping fields, some -cocked hay, and some standing grass; the swamp and brick -kilns to the left; Breed’s Hill above, where the black dots -still crawled around the tiny redoubt. He talked with the -other men.</p> - -<p>All the young lads, he found, were in their glory that the -attack was to be made straight on, that this detachment of the -British Army would pound forward full force and set the -Americans running, or beat them down into their native clay. -But the old wise sergeants shook their heads and said it was -a pity Gage hadn’t ordered them to land at the Neck. They -could have bottled up the Yankees in Charlestown then, and -starved them out, and not had to fire a shot.</p> - -<p>No, somebody else said, for to do that would have meant -sending a force between two wings of its enemy, and that was -a tactic frowned upon long before Caesar marched through -Gaul. In the end they all agreed that they were well enough -satisfied with the way things had fallen out. They’d march -up that hill in double-quick time, drive the cowardly Yankees -out of their burrow, and be back drinking beer in Boston -before the sun went down.</p> - -<p>They were beginning to take out packs of dog-eared playing -cards when the word passed among them that reinforcements -were disembarking on the fields to the left; that Howe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span> -had sent for the reinforcements because the Americans were -bringing in more troops, the earthworks had been extended -far to the left, and he didn’t like the looks of things at all.</p> - -<p>Gerry began to put his uneaten food away in his knapsack. -There wasn’t as much room in it as there should have been, -because at the last moment he had decided to stuff in the -rough shirt and breeches he wore when he went about the -Yankee countryside. He smiled now, as he saw them there. -Didn’t think he’d have a need for them, but you never know. -Just then the bugles sounded and the officers called them to -attention. Like one man the assembled army was on its feet. -Gerry could see the newly landed troops drawn up away to -the left, facing the redoubt.</p> - -<p>General Howe, dark, florid and heavily built, stood forth -and spoke to his men.</p> - -<p>“Gentlemen, I am very happy to have the honor of commanding -so fine a body.... I do not doubt that you will -behave like Englishmen and as becometh good soldiers. If -the enemy will not come from their entrenchments, we must -drive them out, otherwise the town of Boston will be set on -fire by them.... I shall not desire one of you to go a step -further than where I go at your head. Remember, gentlemen, -we have no recourse, if we lose Boston, but to go on board our -ships ... which will be very disagreeable to us all.”</p> - -<p>General Howe stepped a little aside and stood smiling -proudly round him, his hand on his sword. The troops stood -tensely, bayonets in hand, waiting the order to move ahead. -The cannonading from the ships was so steady that they did -not hear it any more, but the guns of Boston now set up an -iron clamor that seemed fit to shake the earth. Now the artillery -rolled toward the redoubt.</p> - -<p>Gerry looked up at the serene blue sky, at a cluster of apple -trees a little way ahead. There were trees like that on his -father’s farm in Devon, and he wondered if he’d ever again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span> -see them growing there. He looked at the hill where spouts -of dust shot upward as heavy balls hit the turf of the redoubt. -Suppose they did have to board their ships and sail away? -Maybe he wouldn’t sail away, maybe he’d go and find blue-eyed -Kitty. Maybe he would....</p> - -<p>The artillery seemed to have slowed and faltered, bogged -down in the miry earth at the swamp edge, crushing the -blue flag lilies as it moved forward again. At last came the -order the scarlet host had been waiting for.</p> - -<p>Gerry gripped his bayonet and stepped out as he had been -trained to do. A rippling field of buttercups and daisies lay -ahead, and beyond it a rail fence, but he saw no likely danger -there. He glanced toward the redoubt where General Pigot -was to lead the attack. Howe would march on the rail fence -that joined a stone wall running to the waterside. Then -Howe’s regiments and the light infantry would shatter the -Yankees’ left and sweep across it, swinging inland to overwhelm -the earthworks from behind. It seemed like an unbeatable -plan.</p> - -<p>The light infantry, men from the Welsh Fusileers and the -King’s Own forged steadily ahead—but not easily. The day -was growing hotter. What with ammunition, food, blankets, -and firelocks, they were weighted down a hundred pounds to a -man. Gerry felt the sweat burst out on his face. He wished -he had a drink. He wished he could run his finger under the -stiff leather stock that gripped his throat. He wished he could -rip off his beaver hat. Clouds of black smoke with white -under-edges were billowing up to the west of Breed’s Hill. -Looked like Charlestown Village was afire. Well, Admiral -Graves had wanted to burn it long ago.</p> - -<p>He waded through the thick grass, almost to his knees, -then out on a muddy strip of beach littered with driftwood -and small dead creatures of the sea. Here they halted briefly -to re-form.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>Grouped now in columns of fours, the Welsh Fusileers in -the lead, the light infantry advanced along the narrow strip -of shore. They drew close to the rough fieldstone wall. That -it had been hastily thrown up, Gerry could see now. Undoubtably -there would be Yankees behind it. He half lifted -his bayonet. They drew nearer and nearer. They were ready -to deploy and charge, when the blast came.</p> - -<p>The low stone wall seemed to leap forth at them in a searing -torrent of fire. Like corn before the scythe, the men on -both sides of him went down. More from shock than anything -else. Gerry fell on his knees, but he lifted his gun and -fired once from there. Where the bullet went, he never knew. -Crouched in the foul-smelling mud, he tried to load again. -Wounded men lay all around him. His own company seemed -to be cut to pieces, but the King’s Own tried to form a charge -and went streaming through. Again the tide of flame leaped -forward. The scarlet line, broken in many places, reeled back. -Again the officers rallied what was left of them, and again -the charge came on. The whole world seemed to be dissolved -in blood and fire, the cries of the wounded, the shouts of the -officers, and the steady roar of the guns upon the hill.</p> - -<p>He tried to pull himself upright, but just then he felt a -terrible blow against his head. His ears rang. Stars and circles -swam before his eyes, orange, green, and rainbow-hued. He -seemed to be no longer a living thing, only one huge dull -pain sinking into darkness.</p> - -<p>He did not know how long it was before the darkness -streamed past him and away, and he saw the stone wall -abristle with smoking gun barrels. He lifted his head from -the mud and gazed in the other direction. To his horror he -saw the scarlet backs of his comrades fleeing helter-skelter -toward the barges by the shore. He lay all alone, in the midst -of the dying and the dead. One man was calling for a drink -of water, and another man gasped out a prayer. Shattered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span> -muskets, ripped knapsacks, and the discarded wigs of the officers -littered the beach about him.</p> - -<p>His head throbbed and seemed to be swelling larger every -minute, big as the sun itself, the sun that still glared down -from the pitiless blue sky. He couldn’t think clear, and he -knew he’d have to think clear, if he ever got out of this alive.</p> - -<p>Finally he lifted up his head and saw a steepening of the -river bank just ahead of him that made a sort of bluff he -could try to crawl under. Inch by inch, painfully, he dragged -himself among the fallen men. Most of them lay quiet now -and were not troubled by his passage through. They would -never be troubled by anything any more. They had not -beaten the Americans, but they would never board the ships -and sail away.</p> - -<p>Once under the safety of the bluff, he lay there and sipped -a little of the brackish water which he scooped up in his hands. -There was blood on his uniform, and blood was trickling -down from somewhere over his left ear, but he did not put -his hand up. He did not want to know how badly he was hurt—not -right now.</p> - -<p>And yet, his own wound wasn’t the worst of it. The worst -of it was the sight of the British Army running away. Running -to the barges, fleeing back to Boston, beaten almost to -destruction by a mob of American farmers at a stone wall and -an earthworks on a hill! What was that old tune the band -played sometimes on parade? <i>The World Turned Upside -Down!</i></p> - -<p>What would happen to him, he wondered, when the -Yankees found him lying here? They didn’t have bayonets, -most of them, so they couldn’t run him through, but there -were other ways to kill a man.</p> - -<p>But maybe they wouldn’t, all of them, kill a wounded -man, any more than he would. He’d gone among them, traveled -through their towns, and found there men no worse<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span> -than he. And at that he remembered the knapsack and the -clothing in it. He reached down; yes, it still hung at his side.</p> - -<p>Painfully, haltingly, he pulled off the ruined uniform, the -muddy scarlet and blood-stained white. Then he lay there -naked in the mud a little while, under the bluff of sun-baked -clay, till he had gathered strength enough to pull on the -country clothes, the garb of most of the men behind the -American line.</p> - -<p>“Maybe—if they find me—they’ll think I’m one of -theirs,” he muttered, “take me in with their own wounded -and bind my head up—and never know.” He managed a -weak smile. The last prank he’d ever play on the Yankees, -he guessed, but it was worth a try.</p> - -<p>Somehow he managed to crawl up the bank and out on the -bloody grass. He lifted his eyes toward the redoubt. Could -he believe what he saw? It had redcoats swarming all over it, -their bayonets drawn, struggling on the parapet with the -Americans, leaping down on those below.</p> - -<p>“So the lads have come back,” he whispered faintly. “We -aren’t beaten after all. I should have known it couldn’t be—not -Howe and Pigot! Not the Fusileers and the King’s Own.”</p> - -<p>He tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t because his head -was too big and heavy. His head was as big as the whole -world. His head was drifting away on a tide of darkness that -swept by.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Fourteen</i><br /> - - -<small>THE YOUNG MAY DIE</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Kitty</span> did not know what time it was or how long she had -been asleep. She only knew that she was wide awake -now, somewhere in the empty black middle of the night, and -she could hear Gran’s voice from the taproom below.</p> - -<p>“You may be an officer, young man,” Gran was saying, -“furthermore, you may have come all the way up here from -Connecticut, but I’m not impressed with that. I’m not one of -your soldiery, nor obliged to take your orders. This is my -son-in-law’s house, and the taxes upon it paid. I mean to stay -here till he orders me from it.”</p> - -<p>Kitty leaped out of bed and ran to the head of the stairs -where she could hear better.</p> - -<p>“It’s only for your own safety, Ma’am,” a harassed young -voice was explaining. “There’s going to be all hell to pay here -tomorrow morning.”</p> - -<p>“So you’ve been telling me,” went on Gran calmly, “and -in that case, I’d better get some sleep to be ready for it. Good -night, young man.”</p> - -<p>Kitty heard the slamming of the front door. She crept -downstairs.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>Gran was methodically taking all the best silverware out -of the chest and wrapping each piece separately in flannel.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter, Gran?” asked Kitty. She drew her -flimsy nightrail around her and stood there shivering.</p> - -<p>Gran went on sorting out porringers and teaspoons. -“There’s going to be trouble, child,” she said. “The town’s -full of soldiers, and there’s more soldiers digging some sort -of burrow above us on the hill. They say by daylight we can -expect shooting.”</p> - -<p>“Are they British soldiers?” asked Kitty. After all, Gerry -Malory had warned her, and she had passed the message on, -telling Gran it was something she had heard in the street. -Gran had scoffed at the idea, refused to be driven away.</p> - -<p>“British! No! They be still drinking and gambling in Boston, -and like to stay there till the blast of Gabriel’s horn, if -you ask me. These soldiers are our own lads, and they sent -the word about that since they’ve entrenched themselves on -a hill the British wanted, they look for a battle.”</p> - -<p>“If—if there is a battle, what will we do?” asked Kitty.</p> - -<p>“We’ll do what is needed,” said Gran shortly. “Right now -I want you to wake Sally Rose. Put on your oldest dresses and -good stout shoes. No flounces and toothpick heels, mind. Pick -up whatever valuables you have and bring them to me.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose, still sleepy-eyed, was enchanted at the prospect -of adventure. She brought a whole little chest full of -trinkets when they returned to the kitchen. Kitty had only -her mother’s cameo brooch, and she pinned that inside her -bodice. Gran held out a willow basket full of the carefully -wrapped silver.</p> - -<p>“You girls take this down to the graveyard and bury it,” -she ordered. “If the British come pouring in here tomorrow -morning, looking for what they can find, new-turned earth -in a graveyard will occasion no comment.” Across the lid of -the basket she laid a wooden shovel.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>Carrying the basket between them, the girls picked their -way through the town in the warm, dim starlight. Here and -there they passed by little groups of men who seemed to be -patrolling the streets, who looked at them curiously but uttered -no challenge. Lights were burning across the river in -Boston and on the masts of the <i>Somerset</i> lying at anchor in -mid-channel. Cries of “All’s Well!” sounded faintly at intervals -from its decks and from the sentries in the town beyond -it.</p> - -<p>There were no lights or sentries apparent on Bunker Hill, -nor yet on Breed’s, when they looked that way, but both hillsides -seemed to be alive with moving masses of shadow; a -low hum rose above them like the swarming of many hives -of bees. Now and then there was a tiny flash of light, or a -clang as a shovel hit against stone.</p> - -<p>Kitty dug a shallow pit under the flowering quince tree -where she had talked with Gerry Malory, and Sally Rose -helped to cover it over, once the silver and her own treasures -lay safe inside. Then they hurried back to the Bay and -Beagle. Gran was trotting about the kitchen, setting many -pans of bread to rise, pulling down hams from the rafters, -heating the bake ovens red hot.</p> - -<p>“Get to work, girls,” she said as they came in, handing -Kitty a carving knife and Sally Rose a wooden spoon. “Can’t -tell how many men we may have to feed tomorrow.”</p> - -<p>When they finished the preparations she considered necessary, -they sank down exhausted on benches drawn to the oak -table. Kitty noticed that the hands of the tall old clock -pointed to a quarter past three.</p> - -<p>“My soul and body,” said Gran, “I thought I’d learned to -do without it, but a cup of tea would certainly taste good to -me right now.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose smiled and her eyes sparkled in the candlelight. -“I can get you tea, Gran,” she said. “Father has some hidden<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span> -away. He says he keeps it for times of need among womenfolk. -’Twas bought long ago before tea-tax time. Put the -kettle on, Kitty.”</p> - -<p>She went flying into the taproom to the secret cache behind -the bar. A little later they sat down again with steaming cups -before them.</p> - -<p>But Gran’s face was sober, and she spoke more gently than -was her wont to do. “I hope that whatever happens tomorrow,” -she said, holding her teacup in her hand, not tasting -the fragrant liquid, “you girls will behave in a fitting -manner, though it may not be easy. There is bound to be -much danger about in a battle, and many horrible sights to -be seen. When the soldiers came here first and warned us to -go away, I thought I would do as they advised me. And then -I remembered an old great-grandmother of mine. She lived -in a lonely garrison and when the Indians attacked her home, -she did not run away.”</p> - -<p>“What did she do?” asked Sally Rose, her eyes wide.</p> - -<p>“She poured boiling water out of an upstairs window and -scalded the varmints,” snapped Gran, with all her usual -severity. “And if she could do that, it came to me that I could -stay here and do whatever it was needful I should do.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think to pour hot water on the British, Gran?” -asked Kitty, trying to suppress a giggle.</p> - -<p>“Times change,” said Gran, her eyes fixed on the dwindling -darkness outside, on the tall hollyhock stems becoming -visible in the garden, “and that’s not what will be expected of -us, most likely. Only—it comes to me—that sometime, a -good many years from now, all of us, yes, even you, Sally -Rose, will be great-grandmothers, too.”</p> - -<p>“With gray hair?” asked Sally Rose plaintively.</p> - -<p>“With gray hair—or no hair at all,” continued Gran. -“And then, at that time, we wouldn’t want the young folk of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span> -our blood to say we were afraid and ran away when the time -of danger came.”</p> - -<p>She looked challengingly at the girls.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Kitty soberly. “We wouldn’t want that. But -what will we do, Gran?”</p> - -<p>“Can’t tell for certain. But the way I see it, we keep a victualling -house, and when there’s a lull in the fight, if a fight -there be, the men will want food and drink. We’ll be here to -provide it for them. All we have to do is the thing we do -every day—”</p> - -<p>A low boom like thunder, and yet sharper and more explosive -than thunder, rolled and echoed in the direction of -Morton’s Point. A moment later the windows rattled and -the tavern shook.</p> - -<p>Gran covered her ears and closed her eyes. “Merciful -heavens, it’s begun! I’ll have to eat my fine words now! -Under the table, Kitty, Sally Rose!”</p> - -<p>In a moment they were huddled together on the floor, with -the spreading trestles round them and the stout oak planks -above. The blast was followed by a silence, and in the silence -they heard a derisive shouting from the crest of Breed’s Hill.</p> - -<p>“Sounds like the lads up there had suffered no harm from -it,” murmured Gran, her voice a little steadier now. “That -was a cannon shot, I think; most likely from one of their -ships. I really doubt they’ll come ashore. Perhaps it would -be safe—”</p> - -<p>The cannon boomed again. Now another cannon spoke out, -a little to the left. Then another. There were no silences any -more, only the steady booming, and with every fourth or -fifth boom, the tavern shook. One after another the windowpanes -began to shatter. Once they heard a great crash in the -street.</p> - -<p>They did not speak to each other, for no human voice -could penetrate the din. Kitty watched a streak of sunlight<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span> -slowly widen and move across the floor. It told her that time -was passing, and that this was a clear, bright day.</p> - -<p>After awhile a lull did come, and the cannonading died -out into silence. The silence was broken by a heavy knocking -on the street door.</p> - -<p>Gran’s eyes snapped and her face hardened. “’Pon my -soul, no stranger is going to catch me hiding under a table, -cannon or no cannon—nor my granddaughters, either. Kitty, -go and see what’s wanted.”</p> - -<p>She got to her feet and smoothed her apron. Sally Rose -followed her and stood still, her eyes wide with fright, her -lips trembling. Kitty went to open the door.</p> - -<p>A gnarled old man stood there, holding a wooden bucket -in each hand. He pointed to the tavern sign and then opened -his mouth in a toothless grin.</p> - -<p>“Lass,” he inquired, “are ye doing business today?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Kitty steadily. “I guess we are.”</p> - -<p>“Good. Will ye fill these pails with water for me. The lads -has need of it on the Hill.”</p> - -<p>“Come in,” said Kitty. She took the two pails through the -kitchen to the garden well. When she returned with them, -there were half a dozen other men waiting, and they wanted -water, too.</p> - -<p>The guns began again with a new fury. Gran and Sally -Rose had stepped into the garden, and when Kitty returned -there after the men had gone, she found them staring up the -hill.</p> - -<p>A small, square earthworks stood on the green crest that -had been bare at twilight. Small figures of men were working -all around it, digging up turf, building it higher, stringing a -wooden fence in front. Other men passed to and fro over -Bunker Hill and the highroad that led to the Neck. Every -now and then a column of dust shot skyward as a cannon ball<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span> -plowed into the earth. But the men who were busy about the -earthworks paid no attention to the cannon balls.</p> - -<p>Now and then there would be a moment’s pause in the -firing, and that gave Gran and the girls a chance to speak to -one another.</p> - -<p>“What’s going on up there, and where are the British?” -demanded Gran. “Did those water boys bring you any news, -Kitty?”</p> - -<p>“It’s just as you thought,” said Kitty hurriedly, knowing -that the guns might interrupt her at any moment. “The ships -are firing at us from all three sides. The lookouts say there’s -a commotion in Boston, but it’s too early to tell yet what they -mean to do. They say there are about a hundred people left -here in the town, but there’s such heavy firing across the Neck -they doubt that we can get away.”</p> - -<p>Just then there came a hail from the kitchen doorway, -where a man stood with two empty water buckets. Gran went -to talk with him herself, this time. When he had gone, she -spoke her mind to the girls.</p> - -<p>“Nobody up there’s got time to be hungry, it seems, and -they’ve plenty of strong drink amongst them, but two of their -great hogsheads have been shot open, and the need’s for -water. Sally Rose, you stay by the windlass and keep turning. -Kitty, you carry the pails to the taproom to save the men the -journey out here. Fill every tub and bucket and keep them -full. I’m going to the roof to see for myself whatever there -is to be seen.”</p> - -<p>It seemed to the two girls that the morning would last forever, -as the sun toiled upward toward noon. Sally Rose -ground at the windlass and swung the heavy buckets over the -stone curb where Kitty’s hand received them and carried -them inside. Round and round, back and forth, round and -round, less like women of flesh and blood than like two -parts of some wooden machine. They did not talk much together.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span> -They had not the breath for it, nor very much to say. -Now and then Kitty looked up the hill to the earthworks, the -tiny, gallant redoubt. The men were still toiling to reinforce -it, and a man in a blue coat strolled fearlessly along the parapet -as if he were telling them what to do.</p> - -<p>It was about noon by the kitchen clock when Gran came -down stairs. Her face was grim. “Girls,” she said tensely, -“leave your work and come with me. I want you to see a -shameful sight. I want you to see the King’s soldiers coming -out with guns against the King’s loyal people.”</p> - -<p>The Bay and Beagle was a square-built house of red brick, -three stories tall, with a white railing about its flat roof. Gran -led the girls to the side facing Boston, half a mile away. Kitty -gripped the rail with both hands, though she would have -liked to put them in her ears, the cannonading had become so -much louder, the spaces between the blasts so brief and few. -Sunlight sparkled on the blue river and on the three great -ships pouring forth constant broadsides of fire. Flames leaped -forth from Copp’s Hill, from floating batteries in the ferry -way, and over all hung a mist of grayish white smoke.</p> - -<p>“Look there,” hissed Gran during a quiet interval, quiet -except for the jangling bells of Boston that were doing their -best to make their steeples rock.</p> - -<p>Kitty and Sally Rose let their glances follow her pointing -finger, to the docks that lined the opposite shore. Two lines -of barges were moving out on the full tide, one from Long -Wharf, and one from the North Battery. They rode low in -the water, being full to the gunwhales with soldiers clad in -white and vivid scarlet. The sunlight gleamed on the steel of -bayonets, on the brass mountings of the great black guns. It -was a gorgeous and yet a terrible sight.</p> - -<p>All Boston seemed to go mad with the frantic clamor of -bells. Shouts and cheers rose from its crooked streets that -wandered up hill and down, and somewhere a band was playing.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span> -Its rooftops were black with tiny figures who had climbed -there to watch the King’s troops move against the King’s -people who felt they had always been loyal to him—so far.</p> - -<p>When the two rows of barges reached midstream they -drew near to each other and then moved forward in two long -lines, side by side, like pairs of marching men. They seemed -to be headed for Moulton’s Point. Kitty watched them till -they passed out of sight around a curve of the shore. Then -she turned to face Gran and Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>“Do—do you think they’re going to land?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Sakes alive, child,” answered Gran, “I don’t know what -they mean to do, but we’ll go back downstairs and see if we -can find out. There are sure to be more men coming after -water.” She glanced up the hill toward the redoubt. Only a -few figures moved about it now, but clouds of dust rose -everywhere, thrown up by the impact of cannon balls, and -the smoke from the guns themselves drifted that way. At that -moment a handful of men appeared on the top of Bunker -Hill, coming from the direction of the Neck. More men followed -them, and still more. In orderly fashion they marched -toward the redoubt where they were greeted with a faint -cheering.</p> - -<p>“Looks like more of our lads had come to help,” said -Gran, as she led them down the narrow stairs and into the -taproom. Just as she had suspected, three water carriers -waited there, and all the pails and tubs were empty.</p> - -<p>“Gran,” whispered Sally Rose, “I—I just don’t think I -can turn that windlass any more.”</p> - -<p>Gran looked at her keenly. “It makes the arms ache, I -know,” she said with surprising sympathy. “Kitty, you go to -the well for a while, and let Sally Rose carry the buckets.”</p> - -<p>And thus their morning chores began all over again, -though it was already early afternoon.</p> - -<p>At the end of her third trip between well and taproom,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span> -Sally Rose stopped to talk to Kitty in one of the rare intervals -when no gun was going off.</p> - -<p>“Kit,” she said wanly, “I—I’m frightened, Kit. Do you -think Gerry’s coming in one of those barges? Do you think -he’ll have to shoot at our lads on the Hill? Do you think he -might shoot at me?”</p> - -<p>Kitty had been wondering almost the same thing, but she -would not tell her cousin so.</p> - -<p>“If you’re going to think about a lad at a time like this,” -she said, “why don’t you think of Johnny? You’ve gone about -with Johnny for a long time, Sally Rose, and Johnny’s on our -side. Don’t you wonder if maybe he isn’t up there—in that -earthworks on the Hill? Right there in the thick of the -cannon balls?”</p> - -<p>“Well, I do wonder about Johnny,” she answered plaintively, -“and about Dick, even about that New Hampshire -boy with no manners—Tom what’s his name.”</p> - -<p>Kitty, too, had wondered about Tom, but not too much. -There was a cold certainty in her heart that Tom Trask -would be in the thick of whatever fighting there was to come. -She knew that as well as if she could see him there.</p> - -<p>“Girls!” called Gran’s voice from the kitchen door. “Girls! -come here to me!”</p> - -<p>Kitty let go the windlass suddenly, and the handle spun -creaking round. Sally Rose set down her pail.</p> - -<p>Just then there was a loud whine somewhere overhead, and -then a whoosh, a shower of splinters about them, and a roaring -wind that flung them hard against the turf. For a moment -they lay there, not daring to move. The smell of burning -powder filled the air. Then another roaring wind went by, -but not so close, and higher overhead.</p> - -<p>Kitty sat up. A cannon ball was bouncing across the grassy -yard of the house next door. It had passed through the garden -and shattered the pointed roof of the well-house where<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span> -they stood. She reached out and grasped Sally Rose by the -shoulder.</p> - -<p>“Quick,” she gasped. “Let’s get inside. They’re firing -into the town, not just at the earthworks any more.”</p> - -<p>Racing into the taproom, they found Gran in talk with a -tall man who wore an officer’s coat and three-cornered hat -and did not carry a pail.</p> - -<p>“Girls,” said Gran, her voice frighteningly calm, “the British -have landed, and ’tis plain they mean to charge the Hill. -Whether they can take it or not, we don’t know. But they’re -shooting straight into Charlestown now, iron balls and iron -cases full of burning trash. The town’ll soon be in flames over -our heads. ’Tis time to leave. There’s nothing more we can -do.”</p> - -<p>A moment later they were in the street outside, trailing -along after a sorry-looking group of men and women, poor -folk, mostly, who had stayed in town in spite of all the warnings -of danger, because they had nowhere else to go.</p> - -<p>“I’m glad,” murmured Gran as they plodded over the -cobblestones, their eyelids smarting and their throats choked -with the thick smokiness that seemed to be flooding over the -whole world, “I’m glad we sent Timothy to Cambridge, two -days back—Timothy and that poor horse, too. At least, we’re -leaving no living thing behind to burn.”</p> - -<p>Kitty thought of all the living things who were left to their -fate in that tiny fortress on the Hill.</p> - -<p>Iron shot blasted the roofs about them, and balls of living -flame burst in the street. All along their way the old wooden -houses were beginning to catch fire. Just as they passed out -of town and into the green country at the rear of Bunker -Hill, Kitty looked back. Clouds of black smoke billowed upward -from the docks, the warehouses, the dwellings, the -shops in the market square. The church steeple lifted up one -soaring pyramid of fire.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>Her eyes hurt suddenly with tears that did not come from -the smoke.</p> - -<p>“Come away, child,” said Gran, putting her arm about the -girl’s shoulders, using her other hand to guide the half-blinded -Sally Rose.</p> - -<p>How far they had gone before the little procession came -to a halt, she did not know, but she did know they toiled a -long way down the dusty road, constantly shelled by the -heavy guns of the ships.</p> - -<p>When they did stop, it was in the front dooryard of a little -tavern, The Sign of the Sun. The raggle-taggle company scattered -themselves about on the grass, but Gran led the girls -inside.</p> - -<p>“They say the firing’s too heavy for us to cross the Neck -and flee inland,” she explained, “but ’tis to this place they are -bringing the wounded men. Perhaps we can help here.”</p> - -<p>The taproom they entered was not unlike the taproom at -the Bay and Beagle, but tables and benches had been moved -back to clear the floor. Some dozen men in tattered shirts and -bloody breeches were lying on the wide pine boards. Some -moaned, and some lay very still. Three women worked -among them, and a man in a buff coat, a doctor, most like, -knelt by one soldier probing a wounded knee.</p> - -<p>Gran looked around her. “There’s water and bandages on -the counter over there,” she said. “Get to work, Kitty, Sally -Rose.”</p> - -<p>If the morning had seemed long, it seemed that that afternoon -at the Sign of the Sun would never go. Kitty knelt and -swabbed and tied bandages and held whiskey to men’s lips to -ease their pain when Dr. Eustis’ probe went deep. Sally Rose -and Gran were doing the same thing, too.</p> - -<p>Then the men came in so fast there was no room for them -in the tavern, so they were laid in the yard, and all about the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span> -garden reaching up the hill. The air was full of booming -sound and smoke, and over all burned the hot, hot sun.</p> - -<p>The British had charged the Hill and been driven back, -she heard from the men she tended. The British had gathered -themselves together and were about to charge again.</p> - -<p>She and Gran and Sally Rose were working over two men -with shoulder wounds, trying to staunch the flow of blood, -when Gran suddenly stood up and put her hand to her forehead. -A strange look came across her face. Then she smiled, -and the light in her eyes paled out and dimmed away.</p> - -<p>“The young may die,” she murmured, “but the old must.”</p> - -<p>She tottered and fell beside the soldiers on the bloody -grass.</p> - -<p>“Dead. Stone dead,” muttered Dr. Eustis, kneeling above -her a few moments later. “Her heart failed from the shock -and strain of this day, I do believe. But she died with her -hand to the plow. She died like a good soldier.”</p> - -<p>Sally Rose crouched on the steps of the tavern, put her -head in her lap, and burst into uncontrollable weeping. She -never moved from there the rest of the afternoon. After -Gran’s body was carried to a chamber over the taproom, Kitty -looked desolately about her for a few moments. Then she -went back to tending the wounded men. She would do what -it was needful for her to do.</p> - -<p>Word came down the hill that the British were driving on -the redoubt, that powder horns were getting low.</p> - -<p>Sometime after that—she never knew how long—Kitty -knelt beside the newest soldier to arrive. His head was -bloody, and he wore a rough shirt and breeches like all the -rest, but on his feet were the fine polished boots worn by the -men in the British Army. When she washed the blood away, -she found she was bending over Gerry Malory.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Fifteen</i><br /> - - -<small>A TERRIBLE BLACK DAY</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“We be</span> going down this hill now,” said Colonel John Stark, -“to fortify and hold the rail fence there.”</p> - -<p>He stood out boldly on the bold bare top of Bunker Hill, -his new blue and buff coat unfastened at the neck, his musket -held lightly but warily in his hand. His New Hampshire -troops were drawn up before him, farmers and woodsmen for -the most part, and dressed as befitted their callings. They -wore homespun shirts and breeches dyed in the sober colors -of late autumn, after the red and gold are gone. They carried -a variety of weapons: here a fowling piece made by a -village blacksmith; there an ancient queen’s arm left over -from the Siege of Louisburg thirty years ago; there a blunderbuss -older than Plymouth Colony.</p> - -<p>Tom Trask, who carried the blunderbuss, looked past his -colonel at the whole of Charlestown peninsula spread out -before him in the early afternoon sun. Below, on Breed’s -Hill, that Prescott’s engineers had made the surprise decision -to fortify, stood the redoubt. He could look down into -it, just as if he were standing in the top of a tree. The men -had built wooden platforms to fire from, and they were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span> -massed and waiting behind their guns. Farther down, on the -point of land between the sparkling blue rivers, the scarlet -pride of the British Army sprawled on the grass eating its -dinner.</p> - -<p>Stark went on, his voice low but piercing, a tenseness in it -that made a man’s blood run hot with courage, rather than -cold with fear. He gestured toward the shores of the Mystic, -the side of the field away from Boston.</p> - -<p>“To the left of the redoubt, lads, you can see a rail fence, -and Knowlton’s men have banked it with cut hay. But past the -rail fence there’s an open stretch along the river, wide -enough to drive a team of horses through. We’ll go down -there now and build a stone wall across it. Isn’t a man among -you don’t know how to build a stone wall.”</p> - -<p>He paused and looked proudly around him. “And when -it’s built, we’ll take our stand there, there and along the -fence, and fight. If there’s a man among you don’t know how -to do that, he can go home.”</p> - -<p>The road back to the safety of Medford lay broad and -smooth behind them, but nobody turned toward that road. -They started to cheer, but the colonel held up his hand.</p> - -<p>“Wait till you got something to cheer for, boys,” he said. -“But remember this—all! Don’t shoot till they be within -fifty yards. Pick out the officers. Fire low, and aim at the -crossing of their belts. Hit for the handsome coats and the -commanders.”</p> - -<p>He lifted his head and stepped back. Tom stood close -enough to see his burning eyes and the unflinching line of his -mouth. “I don’t know how the rest o’ you feel,” Stark went -on, “but for myself, I’ll fight to the last drop o’ blood in me. -By the great Jehovah, I mean to live free or die!”</p> - -<p>“Fall in!” he shouted. He held up his arm and made a -swooping motion toward the rail fence. The New Hampshire -regiments followed him down the hill.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>Once on the narrow strip of muddy beach beyond the -fence, they worked desperately to rear a wall across it before -the British should come on. Some fetched stones from other -walls that divided the pastures on the hillside. Others toiled -to heap them in a bulwark straight to the water’s edge. Tom -was with those who carried boulders flung from the bank and -piled them ready to the builder’s hand. Once he climbed up -the ledge himself to take a look at the field above.</p> - -<p>“Hey, Caleb,” he called eagerly, as he noticed a young -man standing where the rail fence ended, a musket in his -hand.</p> - -<p>Colonel Stark’s first-born son, sixteen-year-old Caleb, -turned around and a grin broke over his lean face as he recognized -his old hunting companion. He stepped forward.</p> - -<p>“Tom!” he exclaimed. “Haven’t seen you since you left -for Newburyport with the log raft, back sometime in the -spring.”</p> - -<p>“No, I ain’t had a chance to get home. Ever since Concord -Fight I been in camp. Where you been?”</p> - -<p>“Round home mostly. Just got here this morning. Word’s -gone all around the countryside that the British be about to -attack. Figured my dad could use another man. Say, Tom, -Jean’s been asking about you—”</p> - -<p>Fife and drum music burst forth from the red-coated -ranks below the hill, and the bugles uttered an urgent cry.</p> - -<p>“Here they come!” yelled Tom. He leaped down the -bank and ran to where he had left his blunderbuss, in the -center of the stone wall.</p> - -<p>Crouched behind it, he watched the British come on. He -could not see the field above him that sloped upward to the -redoubt, and ’twas likely the heaviest charge would be there. -But there were plenty of red coats and white breeches moving -toward the New Hampshire line. Once the attackers stopped -and reformed in groups of four. Then on they came.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>Just to his right a musket spoke, though they had received -no order to fire. Tom lifted his own blunderbuss, but before -he could pull the trigger Colonel Stark strode fearlessly between -the opposing armies. He had a tree branch in his hand. -With a sharp stab he thrust it into the earth.</p> - -<p>“Don’t another man fire till they pass this stake. Whoever -does, I’ll knock him down,” he said.</p> - -<p>He looked around him to make sure his words were understood. -Then he walked back to his own line as calmly as if he -were going down to his sawmill on any summer afternoon. -Behind him the advancing British fixed their bayonets. He -leaped down into the shelter of the wall.</p> - -<p>When the word came, Tom was ready, and his blunderbuss -spoke punctually as the British passed the stake. He could -not tell how many times he fired, and he did not stop to see -what damage he had done. Aim, fire, load. Aim, fire, load. -He kept relentlessly on, scarce conscious that all around him -other men were doing the same. He knew that the ground in -front of the stone wall was covered with wounded and dying -redcoats, but their line kept still coming on, and so long as it -did, he would do nothing but fire, load, aim.</p> - -<p>As he had been told, he aimed at the handsome coats and -the commanders. Once when he lifted his eyes to choose the -next target, he saw, to his utter amazement, a man he knew. -Captain Gerald Malory was advancing toward him, bayonet -in hand. As he looked, his amazement turned to contempt. -“Polecat!” he muttered. “Said he was captain. Done it to -dazzle the girls, I’ll warrant.” Gerald Malory wore a private’s -uniform. Turning away deliberately, Tom leveled his -gun on a resplendent major. When he looked back again, his -one-time prisoner was gone.</p> - -<p>The British line wavered and fell back. He could hear the -shouts of the officers trying to rally their men. They lifted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span> -their guns and fired a volley, and Tom heard the shots -whistle high above.</p> - -<p>“Gunning for hen hawks, maybe,” he told himself with a -grin. “Won’t hit nothing else that high in air.”</p> - -<p>Now the red-coated line was drawing back, retreating -down the beach toward the point from whence they had come. -Now there were no redcoats within firing range any more.</p> - -<p>“Whew!” said Tom. He put down the blunderbuss and -mopped his forehead. Now he took time to look around him.</p> - -<p>All along the New Hampshire line men were standing up -to stretch, drinking water out of leather bottles, and beginning -to move about and talk together. He did not know the -grizzled oldsters on either side of him, but he soon learned -they were veterans of the Indian War, and no strangers to -powder and shot.</p> - -<p>“Think they’ll be back?” he asked, waving his thumb in -the direction of the retreating British.</p> - -<p>His companions nodded. They were starting already to -reload.</p> - -<p>Down at the open end beside the water lay a confused heap -of wounded. Those who could still stand up and walk were -helping to carry their less fortunate fellows away. The word -went round that a hospital had been set up at The Sign of -the Sun, a tavern on the back side of Bunker Hill.</p> - -<p>There came a hail from the bank above. Tom turned that -way and recognized the shaggy gray head and sturdy figure -of Old Put. The general was mounted on a horse, and had -several other blue-coated officers with him. Colonel Stark -and three of his captains strode over to the bank, and the two -commanders talked for a long time. Then Stark walked resolutely -back to the stone wall, with his head lifted, his gaze -fixed straight before him. Old Put’s party rode off toward -the redoubt.</p> - -<p>A bugle sounded far down on Morton’s Point. Once again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span> -the British must be coming on. Tom crouched and leveled -the blunderbuss. Just then the man on his left leaned over -and spoke.</p> - -<p>“Word’s gone down the line,” he muttered through a -thick wad of tobacco, “that Johnny Stark’s lost his boy.”</p> - -<p>“Caleb? How?” gasped Tom.</p> - -<p>“Stopped a British ball somewheres up by the fence, they -say.” The man spat brown juice on the trampled mud. “Don’t -like the look o’ things, lad. My powder horn’s getting low.”</p> - -<p>“So’s mine,” said Tom numbly. He looked between the -stones at the oncoming scarlet line. He knew the depth of -quiet love that lay between that father and son. “When they -told Stark—what did he say?”</p> - -<p>“Said he had no time now to talk o’ private affairs,” -answered the veteran. “Look there, in the front ranks of ’em! -That’s General Howe. I fought under him at Quebec in ’59. -I’d know him anywhere.”</p> - -<p>Tom looked where the other pointed, but he did not see -the proud pompous figure of the British general leading on -his men. He saw instead a New Hampshire mountainside in -the fall, young Caleb Stark walking under the golden beech -leaves, with his head up, laughing in the crisp air. He saw -Caleb skating on Dorr’s Pond in the winter moonlight; pitching -hay on a summer afternoon. And now at the rail fence -Caleb lay dead. By Jehovah, he’d fix the British for doing -that to his friend.</p> - -<p>“Here they come, lad,” warned the man at his side.</p> - -<p>“I’m ready,” said Tom. He gripped the blunderbuss, and -all his rage and vengeance sounded in the roar of it as it -spoke.</p> - -<p>The British were not so easily beaten back this time. Stepping -over their fallen comrades they marched up to the wall, -staggered back at the withering blast of fire, and came on -again. But at last their officers could no longer urge them forward.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span> -Once more Tom found himself staring at the redcoats -fleeing away.</p> - -<p>It was a long time before they formed again, and the whole -American line was jubilant. It began to seem as if a handful -of farmers with nothing but courage and gunpowder had -turned back the British Army. Tom climbed up the bank in -the interval and took a look at the redoubt. It was untaken, -and there were still, red-clad forms lying all over the -slope before it, and the gleaming brass of abandoned artillery. -In front of his own line the dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold.</p> - -<p>“We ought to send for more powder,” he muttered, as he -went back to his place and loaded the blunderbuss. “More -men, maybe.”</p> - -<p>“Prescott already sent for more men,” growled his neighbor. -“Been sending for ’em all day. Ward keeps ’em all close -to Cambridge because he thinks they’re in danger there. As for -powder, there was only ’leven barrels in the whole camp this -morning. Bet there’s powerful little of it left by now.”</p> - -<p>“I got three more loadings,” said Tom. “I’ll give ’em that. -Then I’ll have to bash their skulls if I bring ’em down.”</p> - -<p>“Bash their skulls then,” said the older man. “That’s as -good a way as any for the varmints to go.”</p> - -<p>When the British made their third charge, they sent only -a token force against the rail fence. Their main attack was -directed at the redoubt. Tom fired his last charge of powder -and then flung himself over the bank to the field above. -Many other New Hampshire men were doing the same, their -powder likewise being gone.</p> - -<p>At his side he saw Hugh Watts, who had driven with him -to Cambridge after the lead.</p> - -<p>“Bad news for the colonel,” said Watts.</p> - -<p>“Aye. Bad news for everyone who knew young Caleb,” -answered Tom with a gulp. “He was a friend of mine.”</p> - -<p>“Hope they got enough powder up there on the Hill,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span> -the Londonderry man went on. “Don’t seem as if they’re -firing as lively as they should.”</p> - -<p>Tom looked again at the redoubt. Black smoke was pouring -up the sky from over Charlestown way. The main -force of the British was driving toward the little fortress, -coming dangerously near. Now they passed the wooden fence. -Now a handful of them began to swarm up a locust tree that -stood in one corner of the earthen wall.</p> - -<p>“Great Jehovah!” gasped Hugh Watts. “They’re going -in!”</p> - -<p>It was true. A last frantic burst of firing came from the redoubt, -and then its guns were still. The British poured over -the low walls in a triumphant scarlet wave.</p> - -<p>“No more powder. Or they’re all dead,” said Tom grimly.</p> - -<p>“Out, lads!” he heard Captain Moore calling behind him. -“Spread over the field from Bunker Hill to the river and -cover the retreat!”</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Tramping back across Charlestown Neck in the sunset with -the last straggling ranks of the Great American Army, Tom -Trask slowly began to realize that he was not the same Tom -Trask who had marched out so confidently to Bunker Hill. -He had seen and heard too much that afternoon to remain the -same. He had seen the King’s troops firing at him, and he -had fired back, and he wanted no more of England and the -King.</p> - -<p>When the bells began to ring in Newburyport last April -and he heard the news of Concord Fight, he had gone to -camp because all the other men were going. Only a cripple or -a coward would stay at home. But he hadn’t thought much -about it, much about why there had been this Concord Fight.</p> - -<p>He’d learned a little more from the talk around the campfire -at Winter Hill, but nobody seemed to be sure whether -they were fighting to make the King treat them better, or to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span> -get the country away from the King. Well, for himself, he -was sure now. He knew when he heard John Stark say, “I -mean to live free or die.” For that was the way he meant to -live. He knew it for sure when he heard the news that Caleb -had been shot.</p> - -<p>And he had good hopes that the time would come when -he could live that way. Hadn’t he seen the British Army turn -and run—turn and run away twice?</p> - -<p>“We’ll fight them from now till Judgment,” he muttered -to himself. “But we’re going to be free.”</p> - -<p>A little group of his dusty, tattered fellows came toiling -up and overtook him where he plodded along, trailing the -empty blunderbuss. One of them hailed him, and he saw that -it was Johnny Pettengall.</p> - -<p>“Hey, Tom! We almost licked ’em, didn’t we?” he called. -“If our powder’d lasted one more time.... Where was you?”</p> - -<p>“At the rail fence and along the wall,” said Tom.</p> - -<p>“I was in the redoubt.”</p> - -<p>“We got slaughtered there,” said Tom.</p> - -<p>“Aye, many slaughtered,” agreed Johnny, falling into -step beside him. “We was bayoneted like so many cattle. -This’ll be remembered forever in New England as a terrible -black day.”</p> - -<p>“I guess it will,” Tom said.</p> - -<p>“I saw them shoot Dr. Warren,” continued Johnny. “Shot -him in the head just as he was leaving the redoubt.”</p> - -<p>“I seen him once in Cambridge,” muttered Tom. “He was -a good man, I guess. It’s worse for me that we lost young -Caleb Stark.”</p> - -<p>“The Colonel’s son?” asked Johnny, and his face brightened. -“Oh no! That was a false report, Tom. I heard Putnam -himself telling Prescott that. Said he was sorry the boy’s -father ever got the word—but it didn’t make no difference in -the way he led his men. He said Stark’s a soldier all the way<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span> -through. Likely you and Caleb will be drinking beer together -tonight on Winter Hill.”</p> - -<p>Tom drew a long breath. He looked out at the blue hills -to the west, with the red hot ball of the setting sun behind -them. He was glad that his friend was alive, but the good -news hadn’t changed his mind about one thing. He still -wanted to live free.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>Chapter Sixteen</i><br /> - - -<small>HANGING AND WIVING</small></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">“Do</span> you feel afraid now we’re really here?” asked Kitty. -She put her hand to Gerald Malory’s sleeve with a -light, possessive touch and looked up into his face anxiously. -Gerry smiled down at her.</p> - -<p>He still wore his country clothes and a bandage round his -head, but the healthy color was coming back into his face -now. She had tended him for a week at the field hospital -below Medford Bridge, and for a week after that he had been -able to go walking with her in the sunshine every afternoon. -She and Sally Rose slept at the house of Mrs. Fulton who directed -the hospital. But Sally Rose was making new friends, -and spent less and less time among the wounded men, even -though Gerry himself was there.</p> - -<p>“Not half so afraid as I was that night we went back to -Charlestown to dig up the silver,” Gerry said.</p> - -<p>They stood in the highroad in front of the old Royall -House where Colonel Stark had his headquarters. In a few -moments they would go in. Gerry would confess that he was -not a New Hampshire man who had got knocked on the head -at the rail fence and couldn’t remember what company he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span> -came from. He would admit that he was Gerald Malory of -the Twenty-third. But they would not go in just yet. It was -a soft summer night with the fragrance of garden flowers in -the air. He drew her down beside him on the low brick wall.</p> - -<p>“What were you afraid of that night?” she asked him. -“When we went to The Sign of the Sun to get a pass from -the British major so we could go into town, I thought he -seemed like a very kind man.”</p> - -<p>Gerry grinned down at her. “He was kind to you, certainly. -From the look in his eye, he’d have given you Boston Common -and Long Wharf too, if you’d asked for them. You’ve -a way with us menfolk, Kitty.”</p> - -<p>Kitty let her long lashes fall across her cheek, then she -looked up at him suddenly and smiled. “Do you know, it’s -the strangest thing, I do seem to have a way with them lately. -But before I knew you, I never had any way with them at -all.”</p> - -<p>He cleared his throat and looked away from her. “Yes, -you’re blooming out, my girl,” he said.</p> - -<p>Kitty sighed happily. “Oh I do hope so! For so many years -nobody noticed me at all beside Sally Rose.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, Sally Rose!” he muttered. “Honestly, I feel guilty -there. How am I ever going to tell her that I—that I—have -taken a fancy to you, Kitty?”</p> - -<p>“Is a fancy all you’ve taken?”</p> - -<p>“A deep down kind of fancy.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “If -you feel guilty about Sally Rose, how do you think I feel -about Tom Trask, the New Hampshire boy? How am I -going to tell him I’ve taken a fancy to you?”</p> - -<p>He did not answer, and after a moment she repeated her -earlier question. “What were you afraid of when we went to -Charlestown that night? It was sad, really, but I didn’t see -any reason to be afraid.”</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>She remembered the forlorn look of the town, its cellar -holes still smoking, only a few old houses left near the millpond, -the moss on the gravestones scorched away. But they -had found and brought back the silverware.</p> - -<p>“I was afraid I might be recognized and sent to rejoin my -regiment. You know I don’t want that to happen to me, -Kitty.”</p> - -<p>Kitty slipped out of his encircling arm and jumped to her -feet. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I coaxed you to come -and tell the whole thing to Colonel Stark. If he says you can -stay here and be an American, then you’ll have no more cause -to be afraid.”</p> - -<p>“Suppose he says I’m a deserter and an enemy, and ought -to be hanged on Cambridge Common? He may even think -I’m a spy, Kitty.”</p> - -<p>He stood up and held out both his hands. “I don’t think -he’ll do that,” said Kitty slowly. “Colonel Stark ought to -understand any man who wants to be an American. You can’t -go on pretending always—always being afraid.”</p> - -<p>They heard a throat cleared sharply on the other side of -the low wall.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you young folks have any other place to do your -courting?” asked Colonel Stark.</p> - -<p>Gerry turned quickly round, and Kitty drew a deep breath.</p> - -<p>“We—we were on our way to consult you, Colonel—about -a small matter.”</p> - -<p>Colonel Stark inclined his head. “Come inside then,” he -ordered. “I trust the young woman has no complaint against -you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh no!” cried Kitty in embarrassment and alarm.</p> - -<p>The three of them walked together up the broad graveled -path between the boxwood hedges, and in at the wide front -door. Kitty had heard much about Isaac Royall, the owner -of the house, a rich Tory who had fled to Boston, but she was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span> -not prepared for the carved elegance and panelled wainscot of -the great hall. She had never before seen a room like the -white and gold parlor where Colonel Stark seated them. It -reassured her a little to see his somewhat battered musket -leaning against the rosewood desk, a cartridge box flung down -on a brocade chair.</p> - -<p>“O’erlook the disorder if you will,” he said, picking up the -cartridge box. “I been at Cambridge all day, and Molly’s -housemaids are forbidden to meddle with my field equipment. -Well, lad,” and he turned to Gerry, his mouth severe, -but a twinkle in his cold blue eye. “You say you come here -to see me about some matter.”</p> - -<p>“Yes sir,” said Gerry, clenching his fists and leaning forward. -“Colonel Stark, sir, I been abed in your field hospital -ever since the battle at Charlestown. I said to all that I came -from New Hampshire, but since I was wounded I couldn’t -remember my town or the name of my captain. I told a lie, -sir. I am Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third.”</p> - -<p>“I know it,” said Stark quietly. The twinkle in his eye -deepened.</p> - -<p>“You—you know it? How?”</p> - -<p>“Haven’t forgotten you was our prisoner after the Ipswich -Fright, have you? I won’t question you about the Fright too -much. That’s water under the bridge. Might have enjoyed it -myself, when I was a lad.”</p> - -<p>Gerry hung his head, and the Colonel went on. “You was -recognized by more’n a dozen men when we carted you back -from the Hill.”</p> - -<p>“Then—why?”</p> - -<p>“Why didn’t we clap you back in gaol again? Well, maybe -we should have. I decided instead to have you watched. I -wanted to find out your game.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t any game,” said Gerry miserably.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>“So it was beginning to seem,” agreed Stark. “What are -you? Tired of fighting? A deserter?”</p> - -<p>“I—I suppose so,” said Gerry. “I never meant to be a soldier. -But after I got in trouble at home, it seemed the best -way.”</p> - -<p>Stark cleared his throat. “You got a father?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“A father? Yes, sir.”</p> - -<p>“At home in England?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“How do you think he’d feel if he knew you was behaving -so?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe he’d care,” said Gerry. “After my mother -died, he took a young wife and has other sons. New one every -year. ’Twas getting so there was no room at home for me.”</p> - -<p>Gradually, under the Colonel’s shrewd questioning, Gerry -Malory’s whole story came clear. Kitty had heard much of -it before, but not all. He told about his mother, the strolling -player; how after her death he had left grammar school, and -ranged with a wild group of friends about the farms and the -town. Then he was taken up for poaching in the squire’s -woodland—caught the first unlucky time he set a bit of a -rabbit snare. And the recruiting sergeant came by in the thick -of the trouble, and there you were. No, he wasn’t a captain -and never had been. He never thought pretending to be one -was a dishonest trick, since he never gained thereby. He -thought it was like taking a part in a play, and better to -choose a leading part. He wasn’t even twenty years old, as -he had said; wouldn’t be eighteen till next December came.</p> - -<p>Stark pondered. “All that I can see,” he murmured. “I -been a lad myself, though, thank God, none such a foolhardy -one. But after the battle—what did you do with the boots you -wore when they brought you in, the boots that went with -your British uniform?”</p> - -<p>“My boots?” asked Gerry. He looked down at his feet.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span> -He was wearing a pair of cowhide shoes Kitty had bought for -him at a shop in Medford Square. “Why, I don’t know what -became of my boots.”</p> - -<p>“I hid them,” said Kitty defiantly. “I was afraid—if the -doctors thought he was British—they’d just let him die. I -pulled them off, and took them outside, and threw them -down the well.”</p> - -<p>Colonel Stark slapped his knee and laughed with a quiet, -wry kind of mirth. “So I suppose from now on the water at -The Sign of the Sun will taste o’ British leather,” he said. -Then he turned to Gerry. “Well, a spirited lass is none so bad -to have for a wife. I got one myself. Do you mean to marry -her for her kindness to you—if you don’t have to hang, of -course?”</p> - -<p>“Not for her kindness,” said Gerry Malory firmly, his eyes -lighting. “I mean to marry her—well, because I mean to -marry her.”</p> - -<p>“Well enough said,” agreed the colonel. “But I mentioned -the other, the hanging matter. Can you think of any reason -against it?”</p> - -<p>A tragic look came over Gerry’s face, and his voice took -on a deep vibrant note of pleading. It seemed to Kitty that -she could see and hear his actress mother there.</p> - -<p>“You wouldn’t hang a man for a mistake, would you, -Colonel? A mistake that was made a hundred and fifty years -ago?” He paused and shut his eyes dramatically.</p> - -<p>Colonel Stark gave Kitty a slow, solemn wink, and she -knew that he was thinking of the actress mother, too.</p> - -<p>“What was the mistake, lad,” he demanded, “and who -made it? You weren’t making mistakes a hundred and fifty -years ago. Yours were all ahead of you then.”</p> - -<p>“It was an old ancestor of mine, sir, who went down to -the docks in Plymouth and thought to sail with the folk who -came here to found your own Plymouth Colony. He thought<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span> -he would come with them and be an American, but he -changed his mind and went back to Barnstaple, and the -family’s been there ever since. That was the mistake he made. -If it hadn’t been for him—I might ha’ been fighting on your -side in this war.”</p> - -<p>Colonel Stark gazed sharply at the young man and saw -what Kitty hoped he would see: that for all the pretentious -manner, the words were true. Then he turned away for a -moment and stared through the window where the moonlight -was turning white flowered stalks to silver in the garden.</p> - -<p>“My folks didn’t make that mistake,” he said abruptly. -“They come here on a ship, like all the rest of us, except -those who be Injun bred. Come out o’ Scotland, my folks. -Had five young ones die on the voyage, and raised another -five to replace ’em. Yes, your ancestor made a mistake, lad. -But how do you think to right it? Peace time, you could come -here like other Englishmen always did, and settle down and -be one of us. But not now, now that we be at war.”</p> - -<p>“Couldn’t I, Colonel? That was what I was hoping for. -It’s not that I’m afraid of fighting. But I don’t want to fight -against you. And I can’t fight against my own.”</p> - -<p>“And what would you do, Private Malory, if I said, ‘Go -to! Clear out of my camp and make your way as best you -can?’”</p> - -<p>Gerry’s face lit up, and there was no play-acting about him -this time. “Why, I’d thought about that, Colonel. Do you -know what I’d do? I sailed from Plymouth myself, for my -regiment took ship there, so for old times’ sake, I’d take the -highroad and go down to your Plymouth in Massachusetts, -and see if I could make my way there and settle in, and -become a Plymouth man.”</p> - -<p>“We got a Plymouth in New Hampshire,” said Stark -thoughtfully. “I don’t know whether all the land be taken -there or no.” Then the lines in his face hardened.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>“I got the power tonight to send you on your way,” he -said. “Tomorrow, I may be plain Johnny Stark, headed back -to the sawmill again. We got a new commander coming up -from the South to take over the whole army. Name o’ Washington. -A Virginia man. Can’t tell what he’ll do.”</p> - -<p>On that July night the name of Washington meant nothing -to Kitty Greenleaf and Gerald Malory.</p> - -<p>“Then let me go, Colonel Stark. Let me go tonight,” -Gerry pleaded.</p> - -<p>The colonel looked down at the rich woven rug on the -floor. His eyes seemed to be tracing the scrollwork pattern. -Then he turned to Gerry again. “There’s only one thing still -bothers me, Private Malory,” he said. “I believe you when -you say you’d like to be an American, and settle down in -America and make your way there, and do no harm to anyone. -I commend you for it. But how do you feel toward your -own people? Don’t you believe in Parliament and the King?”</p> - -<p>“I believe in them—over there,” said Gerry slowly. “But -not over here. They rule fine in England, it seems to me. But -in America—the way I’ve come to see America—they don’t -know what they’re doing at all.”</p> - -<p>Stark’s grin told Kitty that he had heard the answer he -wanted to hear, but he had one more word of caution. “Remember, -you been knocked in the head, lad. Are you sure you -know what you’re about? That you won’t wake up in a daze -some morning and wish you was back with the Twenty-third?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Gerry. “I won’t wish myself back.”</p> - -<p>Stark got to his feet. “Might happen,” he said mildly, “if -you was to slip out of camp long about midnight, sentry -would be looking the other way.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you, sir,” said Gerry fervently.</p> - -<p>“Thank me in ten years,” said Stark, “if you still want to -then. It’s a crazy venture, and we can’t tell how it’ll turn out.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span> -But if it’s what you want, get on with it. They say hanging -and wiving goes by destiny. And I guess you’re lucky in both -o’ them matters, lad.”</p> - -<p>He led them toward the front door, and as they passed by -a small parlor opening off the hall, Kitty caught sight of a -couple inside it. They sat on a peacock-colored sofa, locked -in a deep embrace. Startled at the sound of footsteps, they -drew apart. Stark shot a quick look in their direction and -grinned widely. “No harm in it,” he said, “they’re a betrothed -pair.” He would have kept on down the hall, but -Kitty stood still, gasping.</p> - -<p>The man on the blue sofa was Tom Trask, and the girl was -a stranger to her; small and delicately formed, with a beautiful -cameo face and shining red hair. Under their scrutiny -Tom stood up. Some men would have been embarrassed, but -not he. He scooped the girl to her feet and led her forward.</p> - -<p>“Well,” he greeted them, “so it’s Kit herself, and <i>Private</i> -Malory. I’d like you to meet Jeanie Morrison.” He looked -down at the red-haired girl, and there was a tender merriment -in his eye.</p> - -<p>“I kissed with all the girls some,” he continued. “But I -always knew I’d marry Jean.”</p> - -<p>“Listen to the man!” trilled Jeanie. She gave him an enchanting -smile that showed a dimple in her cheek.</p> - -<p>“Jeanie come down from Derryfield with my wife a few -days back,” explained the colonel, sensing some tension in the -air he could not understand. “She came to see Tom and bring -him his gun. A Brown Bess, British made, one of the best guns -in the army.”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Tom mockingly. “I got my own gun. You -can have your blunderbuss back, Kitty. I’ll bring it to the -hospital tomorrow.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t bother,” said Kitty, but Gerry’s eyes lighted.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>“Is there any way we could get it tonight?” he asked.</p> - -<p>Kitty knew what he was thinking, and she saw the rightness -of it. He meant to go to Plymouth, armed with the Plymouth -blunderbuss.</p> - -<p>Tom shrugged, “If you want it that bad,” he said. “As a -matter of fact, I brought it with me. You’ll find it standing -among the lilacs to the right of the front door.”</p> - -<p>After they had retrieved the old weapon and taken their -leave of Colonel Stark, they walked quietly through the -streets of Medford hand in hand.</p> - -<p>Kitty should have been relieved that she would have no -painful scene with Tom, but she could not help feeling rueful -at the knowledge that he had preferred red-haired Jeanie -all the time.</p> - -<p>“You’re lucky,” Gerry assured her. “I wish—I wish I -could get out of it so easy with Sally Rose.”</p> - -<p>He kissed her on the steps of the Fulton house.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know when I’ll be back, Kitty,” he said. “It may -take me a long time to make my own way. And you—now -your grandmother’s dead, where will you go?”</p> - -<p>“I think I’ll go back to her old house and wait till you -come for me. You’ve never been to Newburyport, but you -can find the way. You’ll be gone tomorrow, and I’m going to -Cambridge and get old Timothy and take him home.”</p> - -<p>“Will Sally Rose go with you?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“What do you think?” said Kitty. “Look there!” She -pointed to the parlor window just to the left of the front -door.</p> - -<p>Sally Rose was standing inside the parlor. She was smiling -up into the eyes of a tall young captain who wore the blue -and white of the Connecticut line. She let her lashes veil her -eyes and opened her pretty lips. “We’ve none such handsome -lads in Massachusetts—” she said.</p> - -<p>Gerry Malory swallowed. Then he began to laugh.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span> -“Where, oh where,” he exclaimed, “have I heard those -words before?”</p> - -<p>After he had left her, Kitty slipped into the house and up -to the little chamber that she shared with Sally Rose. She -went to the window and stood there, looking at the still town, -and the moonlit river, the campfires on Winter Hill, the -lights of the warships far down the dim bay.</p> - -<p>Less than three months back, it was, that they had all -played hide-and-seek in Newburyport, but they would never -play hide-and-seek again. Never again would they be that -young.</p> - -<p>Even she and Sally Rose, Gran had said, would be great-grandmothers -some day. How glad she was that Gran had -had that last cup of tea.</p> - -<p>She turned from the window and began to undress, laughing -as she remembered the struggle to get Sally Rose out of -the stays. Never again, she thought, would they be as young -as that.</p> - -<p>She was just climbing into bed when Sally Rose opened -the chamber door.</p> - -<p>“Kitty,” she said, “there’s going to be handsome men in -uniform about for ages. Captain Davenport was just telling -me that he expects a long war. He says that since Bunker -Hill, the word’s been in everybody’s mouth that we’re going -to live free or die—and that will take a long time.”</p> - -<p>“Live free or die? What does that mean?” asked Kitty, -bewildered.</p> - -<p>“Well, I don’t understand it myself,” said Sally Rose, -taking the ribbon out of her curls, “but I have an idea of one -man who might know. I think you’ll be likely to find out if -you go and speak to Tom Trask.”</p> - -<p>Kitty lay in the wide bed and watched her cousin slip out -of her dainty garments and fling them carelessly across a -chair. Yes, she thought, there was, after all, some sort of unconscious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span> -wisdom about the pretty featherbrain. Hanging and -wiving goes by destiny, Colonel Stark had said, and she had -known that Gerry was her destiny, almost from the day she -had seen him first from the door of the Bay and Beagle as -he marched past with the prisoners’ cart. And she would not -have it otherwise, for she loved Gerry. He would be as good -an American as most others, some day. He had many virtues, -and she would rejoice and be proud of them all her life, -most likely. But when it came to a matter of living free, Sally -Rose was right. Tom Trask was the man who would know.</p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="transnote"> -<p class="ph2">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p> - - - -<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p> - -<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p> - -<p>The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain.</p> -</div></div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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