Chapter II: Preface (2)

Soon she was in her father’s arms relating her adventures, and as she received his chidings for mingling in such “unseemly crowds,” and his praise for her championship and protection of the little Phillipse, a kindly hand was laid upon her fair young head, and a voice whose tones she could never forget said: “So may our children be angels of peace, Mr. Duane. Few have suffered more, or deserved better from their country, sir, than you; but the possession of so rare a little daughter is a fairer recompense than aught your country can bestow. Heaven has given me no children, sir; but had I thus been blessed, I could have wished for no gentler or truer-hearted little daughter than this maid of yours.” And with the stately courtesy that marked the time, General Washington bent down and kissed little Dolly as she sat on her father’s knee. Touched by his kindly words, Dolly forgot all her awe of the great man. Flinging two winsome arms about his neck, she kissed him in return, and said softly: “If Mr. Duane were not my father, sir, I would rather it should be you than any one else.”

In all her after-life, though she retained pleasant memories of Sir Guy Carleton, and thought him a grand and gallant gentleman, Dolly Duane held still more firmly to her reverence and affection for General Washington, whom she described as “looking more grand and noble than any human being she had ever seen.”

Next to General Washington, I think she held the fireworks that were set off in the Bowling Green in honor of the Peace to have been the grandest thing she had ever seen. The rockets, and the wheels, and the tourbillions, and the batteries, and the stars were all so wonderful to her, that General Knox said Dolly’s “ohs” and “ahs” were “as good as a play”; and staid Master Clinton and jolly Cousin Ned threatened to send to the Ferry stairs for an anchor to hold her down. Both these young gentlemen grew to be famous Americans in after years, and witnessed many anniversaries of this glorious Evacuation Day. But they never enjoyed any of them quite as much as they did the exciting original, nor could they ever forget, amidst all the throng of memories, how sweet Mistress Dolly Duane championed and protected the lost “little lord of the manor,” and won the distinguished honor of being kissed by both the commanders-in-chief on the same eventful day.

OLD ESTHER DUDLEY[C]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The Province House in Boston was the home of the Royal Governors of
Massachusetts. This is the story of how the stately, spectre-haunted
old Housekeeper, even after the departure of the last Royal Governor
and the triumph of the Colonies, remained “faithful unto death” to
her Sovereign Lord King George.

The hour had come--the hour of defeat and humiliation--when Sir William Howe was to pass over the threshold of the Province House, and embark, with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself, on board the British fleet. He bade his servants and military attendants go before him, and lingered a moment in the loneliness of the mansion, to quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his bosom as with a death-throb. Preferable, then, would he have deemed his fate had a warrior’s death left him a claim to the narrow territory of a grave within the soil which the king had given him to defend. With an ominous perception that, as his departing footsteps echoed adown the staircase, the sway of Britain was passing forever from New England, he smote his clinched hand on his brow, and cursed the destiny that had flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon him.

“Would to God,” cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, “that the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A bloodstain upon the floor should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to his trust.”

The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.

“Heaven’s cause and the King’s are one,” it said. “Go forth, Sir William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a royal governor in triumph.”

Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith that it was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious that an aged woman, leaning on a gold-headed staff, was standing betwixt him and the door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial years in this mansion, until her presence seemed as inseparable from it as the recollections of its history. She was the daughter of an ancient and once eminent family, which had fallen into poverty and decay, and left its last descendant no resource save the bounty of the king, nor any shelter except within the walls of the Province House. An office in the household, with merely nominal duties, had been assigned to her as a pretext for the payment of a small pension, the greater part of which she expended in adorning herself with an antique magnificence of attire. The claims of Esther Dudley’s gentle blood were acknowledged by all the successive governors; and they treated her with the punctilious courtesy which it was her foible to demand, not always with success, from a neglectful world. The only actual share which she assumed in the business of the mansion was to glide through its passages and public chambers, late at night, to see that the servants had dropped no fire from their flaring torches, nor left embers crackling and blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this invariable custom of walking her rounds in the hush of midnight that caused the superstition of the times to invest the old woman with attributes of awe and mystery; fabling that she had entered the portal of the Province House, none knew whence, in the train of the first royal governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till the last should have departed. But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.

“Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?” asked he, with some severity of tone. “It is my pleasure to be the last in this mansion of the king.”

“Not so, if it please your Excellency,” answered the time-stricken woman. “This roof has sheltered me long. I will not pass from it until they bear me to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is there for old Esther Dudley save the Province House or the grave?”

“Now Heaven forgive me!” said Sir William Howe to himself. “I was about to leave this wretched old creature to starve or beg. Take this, good Mistress Dudley,” he added, putting a purse into her hands. “King George’s head on these golden guineas is sterling yet, and will continue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown John Hancock their king. That purse will buy a better shelter than the Province House can now afford.”

“While the burden of life remains upon me, I will have no other shelter than this roof,” persisted Esther Dudley, striking her staff upon the floor with a gesture that expressed immovable resolve. “And when your Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the porch to welcome you.”

“My poor old friend!” answered the British General; and all his manly and martial pride could no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears. “This is an evil hour for you and me. The province which the king intrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune--perchance in disgrace--to return no more. And you, whose present being is incorporated with the past--who have seen governor after governor, in stately pageantry, ascend these steps--whose whole life has been an observance of majestic ceremonies, and a worship of the king--how will you endure the change? Come with us! Bid farewell to a land that has shaken off its allegiance, and live still under a royal government, at Halifax.”

“Never, never!” said the pertinacious old dame. “Here will I abide; and King George shall still have one true subject in his disloyal province.”

“Beshrew the old fool!” muttered Sir William Howe, growing impatient of her obstinacy, and ashamed of the emotion into which he had been betrayed. “She is the very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could exist nowhere but in this musty edifice. Well, then, Mistress Dudley, since you will needs tarry, I give the Province House in charge to you. Take this key, and keep it safe until myself, or some other royal governor, shall demand it of you.”

Smiling bitterly at himself and her, he took the heavy key of the Province House, and, delivering it into the old lady’s hands, drew his cloak around him for departure. As the General glanced back at Esther Dudley’s antique figure, he deemed her well fitted for such a charge, as being so perfect a representative of the decayed past--of an age gone by, with its manners, opinions, faith, and feelings all fallen into oblivion or scorn--of what had once been a reality, but was now merely a vision of faded magnificence. Then Sir William Howe strode forth, smiting his clenched hands together in the fierce anguish of his spirit; and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely Province House, dwelling there with memory; and if Hope ever seemed to flit around her, still it was Memory in disguise.

The total change of affairs that ensued on the departure of the British troops did not drive the venerable lady from her stronghold. There was not, for many years afterward, a governor of Massachusetts; and the magistrates, who had charge of such matters, saw no objection to Esther Dudley’s residence in the Province House, especially as they must otherwise have paid a hireling for taking care of the premises, which with her was a labor of love. And so they left her, the undisturbed mistress of the old historic edifice. Many and strange were the fables which the gossips whispered about her, in all the chimney-corners of the town. Among the time-worn articles of furniture that had been left in the mansion there was a tall, antique mirror, which was well worthy of a tale by itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme of one. The gold of its heavily wrought frame was tarnished, and its surface so blurred that the old woman’s figure, whenever she paused before it, looked indistinct and ghostlike. But it was the general belief that Esther could cause the governors of the overthrown dynasty, with the beautiful ladies who had once adorned their festivals, the Indian chiefs who had come up to the Province House to hold council or swear allegiance, the grim, provincial warriors, the severe clergymen--in short, all the pageantry of gone days--all the figures that ever swept across the broad plate of glass in former times--she could cause the whole to reappear, and people the inner world of the mirror with shadows of old life. Such legends as these, together with the singularity of her isolated existence, her age, and the infirmity that each added winter flung upon her, made Mistress Dudley the object both of fear and pity; and it was partly the result of either sentiment that, amid all the angry license of the times, neither wrong nor insult ever fell upon her unprotected head. Indeed, there was so much haughtiness in her demeanor toward intruders, among whom she reckoned all persons acting under the new authorities, that it was really an affair of no small nerve to look her in the face. And to do the people justice, stern republicans as they had now become, they were well content that the old gentlewoman, in her hoop petticoat and faded embroidery, should still haunt the palace of ruined pride and overthrown power, the symbol of a departed system, embodying a history in her person. So Esther Dudley dwelt, year after year, in the Province House, still reverencing all that others had flung aside, still faithful to her king, who, so long as the venerable dame yet held her post, might be said to retain one true subject in New England, and one spot of the empire that had been wrested from him.

And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor said, not so. Whenever her chill and withered heart desired warmth, she was wont to summon a black slave of Governor Shirley’s from the blurred mirror, and send him in search of guests who had long ago been familiar in those deserted chambers. Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight or the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his errand in the burial-ground, knocking at the iron doors of tombs, or upon the marble slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within, “My mistress, old Esther Dudley, bids you to the Province House at midnight.” And punctually as the clock of the Old South told twelve came the shadows of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys, all the grandees of a bygone generation, gliding beneath the portal into the well-known mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she likewise were a shade. Without vouching for the truth of such traditions, it is certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the stanch though crestfallen old Tories who had lingered in the rebel town during those days of wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle, containing liquor that a royal governor might have smacked his lips over, they quaffed healths to the king, and babbled treason to the Republic, feeling as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still flung around them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor, they stole timorously homeward, and answered not again if the rude mob reviled them in the street.

Yet Esther Dudley’s most frequent and favored guests were the children of the town. Toward them she was never stern. A kindly and loving nature, hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand rocky prejudices, lavished itself upon these little ones. By bribes of gingerbread of her own making, stamped with a royal crown, she tempted their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the Province House, and would often beguile them to spend a whole play-day there, sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop petticoat, greedily attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these little boys and girls stole forth again from the dark, mysterious mansion, they went bewildered, full of old feelings that graver people had long ago forgotten, rubbing their eyes at the world around them as if they had gone astray into ancient times, and become children of the past. At home, when their parents asked where they had loitered such a weary while, and with whom they had been at play, the children would talk of all the departed worthies of the province, as far back as Governor Belcher, and the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It would seem as though they had been sitting on the knees of these famous personages, whom the grave had hidden for half a century, and had toyed with the embroidery of their rich waistcoats, or roguishly pulled the long curls of their flowing wigs. “But Governor Belcher has been dead this many a year,” would the mother say to her little boy. “And did you really see him at the Province House?” “Oh, yes, dear mother! Yes!” the half-dreaming child would answer. “But when old Esther had done speaking about him he faded away out of his chair.” Thus, without affrighting her little guests, she led them by the hand into the chambers of her own desolate heart, and made childhood’s fancy discern the ghosts that haunted there.

Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and never regulating her mind by a proper reference to present things, Esther Dudley appears to have grown partially crazed. It was found that she had no right sense of the progress and true state of the Revolutionary War, but held a constant faith that the armies of Britain were victorious on every field, and destined to be ultimately triumphant. Whenever the town rejoiced for a battle won by Washington, or Gates, or Morgan, or Greene, the news, in passing through the door of the Province House, as through the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into a strange tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton, or Cornwallis. Sooner or later, it was her invincible belief, the colonies would be prostrate at the footstool of the king. Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that such was already the case. On one occasion she startled the townspeople by a brilliant illumination of the Province House, with candles at every pane of glass, and a transparency of the king’s initials and a crown of light in the great balcony window. The figure of the aged woman, in the most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and brocades, was seen passing from casement to casement, until she paused before the balcony, and flourished a huge key above her head. Her wrinkled visage actually gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within her were a festal lamp.

“What means this blaze of light? What does old Esther’s joy portend?” whispered a spectator. “It is frightful to see her gliding about the chambers, and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company.”

“It is as if she were making merry in a tomb,” said another.

“Pshaw! It is no such mystery,” observed an old man, after some brief exercise of memory. “Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the King of England’s birthday.” Then the people laughed aloud, and would have thrown mud against the blazing transparency of the king’s crown and initials, only that they pitied the poor old dame, who was so dismally triumphant amid the wreck and ruin of the system to which she appertained.

Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that wound upward to the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward and countryward, watching for a British fleet, or for the march of a grand procession, with the king’s banner floating over it. The passengers in the street below would discern her anxious visage, and send up a shout, “When the golden Indian on the Province House shall shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow, then look for a royal governor again!”--for this had grown a byword through the town. And at last, after long, long years, old Esther Dudley knew, or perchance she only dreamed, that a royal governor was on the eve of returning to the Province House, to receive the heavy key which Sir William Howe had committed to her charge. Now it was the fact that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to Esther’s version of it was current among the townspeople. She set the mansion in the best order that her means allowed, and, arraying herself in silks and tarnished gold, stood long before the blurred mirror to admire her own magnificence. As she gazed, the gray and withered lady moved her ashen lips, murmuring half aloud, talking to shapes that she saw within the mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies, to the household friends of memory, and bidding them rejoice with her, and come forth to meet the governor. And, while absorbed in this communion, Mistress Dudley heard the tramp of many footsteps in the street, and, looking out at the window, beheld what she construed as the royal governor’s arrival.

“O happy day! O blessed, blessed hour!” she exclaimed. “Let me but bid him welcome within the portal, and my task in the Province House, and on earth, is done!”

Then with tottering feet, which age and tremulous joy caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand staircase, her silks sweeping and rustling as she went, so that the sound was as if a train of spectral courtiers were thronging from the dim mirror. And Esther Dudley fancied that, as soon as the wide door should be flung open, all the pomp and splendor of bygone times would pace majestically into the Province House, and the gilded tapestry of the past would be brightened by the sunshine of the present. She turned the key, withdrew it from the lock, unclosed the door, and stepped across the threshold. Advancing up the courtyard appeared a person of most dignified mien, with tokens, as Esther interpreted them, of gentle blood, high rank, and long-accustomed authority, even in his walk and every gesture. He was richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe, which, however, did not lessen the stateliness of his gait. Around and behind him were people in plain civic dresses, and two or three war-worn veterans, evidently officers of rank, arrayed in a uniform of blue and buff. But Esther Dudley, firm in the belief that had fastened its roots about her heart, beheld only the principal personage, and never doubted that this was the long-looked-for governor, to whom she was to surrender up her charge. As he approached, she involuntarily sank down on her knees, and tremblingly held forth the heavy key.

“Receive my trust! take it quickly!” cried she; “for methinks Death is striving to snatch away my triumph. But he comes too late. Thank Heaven for this blessed hour! God save King George!”

“That, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a moment,” replied the unknown guest of the Province House, and, courteously removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged woman. “Yet, in reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven forbid that any here should say you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge his sceptre, God save King George!”

Esther Dudley started to her feet, and, hastily clutching back the key, gazed with fearful earnestness at the stranger; and dimly and doubtfully, as if suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes half recognized his face. Years ago she had known him among the gentry of the province. But the ban of the king had fallen upon him! How, then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, excluded from mercy, the monarch’s most dreaded and hated foe, this New England merchant had stood triumphantly against a kingdom’s strength; and his foot now trod upon humbled royalty as he ascended the steps of the Province House, the people’s chosen governor of Massachusetts.

“Wretch, wretch that I am!” muttered the old woman, with such a heart-broken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger’s eyes. “Have I bidden a traitor welcome? Come, Death! come quickly!”

“Alas, venerable lady!” said Governor Hancock, lending her his support with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a queen. “Your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around you. You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless--the principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and acting, which another generation has flung aside--and you are a symbol of the past. And I, and these around me--we represent a new race of men--living no longer in the past, scarcely in the present--but projecting our lives forward into the future. Ceasing to model ourselves on ancestral superstitions, it is our faith and principle to press onward, onward! Yet,” continued he, turning to his attendants, “let us reverence, for the last time, the stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering Past!”

While the republican governor spoke he had continued to support the helpless form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his arm; but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The key of the Province House fell from her grasp, and clanked against the stone.

“I have been faithful unto death,” murmured she. “God save the king!”

“She hath done her office!” said Hancock solemnly. “We will follow her reverently to the tomb of her ancestors; and then, my fellow-citizens, onward, onward! We are no longer children of the Past!”

BETTY’S RIDE: A TALE OF THE REVOLUTION[D]

By HENRY S. CANBY

The story of a brave little Quaker girl’s perilous ride. How she
saved the lives of many hard-pressed patriots, and won praise from
the lips of General Washington, himself.

The sun was just rising and showering his first rays on the gambrel roof and solid stone walls of a house surrounded by a magnificent grove of walnuts, and overlooking one of the beautiful valleys so common in southeastern Pennsylvania. Close by the house, and shaded by the same great trees, stood a low building of the most severe type, whose time-stained bricks and timbers green with moss told its age without the aid of the half-obliterated inscription over the door, which read, “Built A. D. 1720.” One familiar with the country would have pronounced it without hesitation a Quaker meeting-house, dating back almost to the time of William Penn.

When Ezra Dale had become the leader of the little band of Quakers which gathered here every First Day, he had built the house under the walnut trees, and had taken his wife Ann and his little daughter Betty to live there. That was in 1770, seven years earlier, and before war had wrought sorrow and desolation throughout the country.

The sun rose higher, and just as his beams touched the broad stone step in front of the house, the door opened, and Ann Dale, a sweet-faced woman in the plain Quaker garb, came out, followed by Betty, a little blue-eyed Quakeress of twelve years, with a gleam of spirit in her face which ill became her plain dress.

“Betty,” said her mother, as they walked out toward the great horse block by the roadside, “thee must keep house to-day. Friend Robert has just sent thy father word that the redcoats have not crossed the Brandywine since Third Day last, and thy father and I will ride to Chester to-day, that there may be other than corn-cakes and bacon for the friends who come to us after monthly meeting. Mind thee keeps near the house and finishes thy sampler.”

“Yes, mother,” said Betty; “but will thee not come home early? I shall miss thee sadly.”

Just then Ezra appeared, wearing his collarless Quaker coat, and leading a horse saddled with a great pillion, into which Ann laboriously climbed after her husband, and with a final warning and “farewell” to Betty, clasped him tightly around the waist lest she should be jolted off as they jogged down the rough and winding lane into the broad Chester highway.

Friend Ann had many reasons for fearing to leave Betty alone for a whole day, and she looked back anxiously at her waving “farewell” with her little bonnet.

It was a troublous time.

The Revolution was at its height, and the British, who had a short time before disembarked their army near Elkton, Maryland, were now encamped near White Clay Creek, while Washington occupied the country bordering on the Brandywine. His force, however, was small compared to the extent of the country to be guarded, and bands of the British sometimes crossed the Brandywine and foraged in the fertile counties of Delaware and Chester. As Betty’s father, although a Quaker and a non-combatant, was known to be a patriot, he had to suffer the fortunes of war with his neighbors.

Thus it was with many forebodings that Betty’s mother watched the slight figure under the spreading branches of a great chestnut, which seemed to rustle its innumerable leaves as if to promise protection to the little maid. However, the sun shone brightly, the swallows chirped as they circled overhead, and nothing seemed farther off than battle and bloodshed.

Betty skipped merrily into the house, and snatching up some broken corn-cake left from the morning meal, ran lightly out to the paddock where Daisy was kept, her own horse, which she had helped to raise from a colt.

“Come thee here, Daisy,” she said, as she seated herself on the top rail of the mossy snake fence. “Come thee here, and thee shall have some of thy mistress’s corn-cake. Ah! I thought thee would like it. Now go and eat all thee can of this good grass, for if the wicked redcoats come again, thee will not have another chance, I can tell thee.”

Daisy whinnied and trotted off, while Betty, feeding the few chickens (sadly reduced in numbers by numerous raids), returned to the house, and getting her sampler, sat down under a walnut tree to sew on the stint which her mother had given her.

All was quiet save the chattering of the squirrels overhead and the drowsy hum of the bees, when from around the curve in the road she heard a shot; then another nearer, and then a voice shouting commands, and the thud of hoof-beats farther down the valley. She jumped up with a startled cry: “The redcoats! The redcoats! Oh, what shall I do!”

Just then the foremost of a scattered band of soldiers, their buff and blue uniforms and ill-assorted arms showing them to be Americans, appeared in full flight around the curve in the road, and springing over the fence, dashed across the pasture straight for the meeting-house. Through the broad gateway they poured, and forcing open the door of the meeting-house, rushed within and began to barricade the windows.

Their leader paused while his men passed in, and seeing Betty, came quickly toward her.

“What do you here, child?” he said hurriedly. “Go quickly, before the British reach us, and tell your father, that, Quaker or no Quaker, he shall ride to Washington, on the Brandywine, and tell him that we, but one hundred men, are besieged by three hundred British cavalry in Chichester meeting-house, with but little powder left. Tell him to make all haste to us.”

Turning, he hastened into the meeting-house, now converted into a fort, and as the doors closed behind him Betty saw a black muzzle protruding from every window.

With trembling fingers the little maid picked up her sampler, and as the thud of horses’ hoofs grew louder and louder, she ran fearfully into the house, locked and bolted the massive door, and then flying up the broad stairs, she seated herself in a little window overlooking the meeting-house yard. She had gone into the house none too soon. Up the road, with their red coats gleaming and their harness jangling, was sweeping a detachment of British cavalry, never stopping until they reached the meeting-house--and then it was too late.

A sheet of flame shot out from the wall before them, and half a dozen troopers fell lifeless to the ground, and half a dozen riderless horses galloped wildly down the road. The leader shouted a sharp command, and the whole troop retreated in confusion.

Betty drew back shuddering, and when she brought herself to look again the troopers had dismounted, had surrounded the meeting-house, and were pouring volley after volley at its doors and windows. Then for the first time Betty thought of the officer’s message, and remembered that the safety of the Americans depended upon her alone, for her father was away, no neighbor within reach, and without powder she knew they could not resist long.

Could she save them? All her stern Quaker blood rose at the thought, and stealing softly to the paddock behind the barn, she saddled Daisy and led her through the bars into the wood road, which opened into the highway just around the bend. Could she but pass the pickets without discovery there would be little danger of pursuit; then there would be only the long ride of eight miles ahead of her.

Just before the narrow wood road joined the broader highway Betty mounted Daisy by means of a convenient stump, and starting off at a gallop, had just turned the corner when a voice shouted “Halt” and a shot whistled past her head. Betty screamed with terror, and bending over, brought down her riding whip with all her strength upon Daisy, then, turning for a moment, saw three troopers hurriedly mounting.

Her heart sank within her, but, beginning to feel the excitement of the chase, she leaned over and patting Daisy on the neck, encouraged her to do her best. Onward they sped. Betty, her curly hair streaming in the wind, the color now mounting to, now retreating from, her cheeks, led by five hundred yards.

But Daisy had not been used for weeks, and already felt the unusual strain. Now they thundered over Naaman’s Creek, now over Concord, with the nearest pursuer only four hundred yards behind; and now they raced beside the clear waters of Beaver Brook, and as Betty dashed through its shallow ford, the thud of horses’ hoofs seemed just over her shoulder.

Betty, at first sure of success, now knew that unless in some way she could throw her pursuers off her track she was surely lost. Just then she saw ahead of her a fork in the road, the lower branch leading to the Brandywine, the upper to the Birmingham Meeting-house. Could she but get the troopers on the upper road while she took the lower, she would be safe; and, as if in answer to her wish, there flashed across her mind the remembrance of the old cross-road which, long disused, and with its entrance hidden by drooping boughs, led from a point in the upper road just out of sight of the fork down across the lower, and through the valley of the Brandywine. Could she gain this road unseen she still might reach Washington.

Urging Daisy forward, she broke just in time through the dense growth which hid the entrance, and sat trembling, hidden behind a dense growth of tangled vines, while she heard the troopers thunder by. Then, riding through the rustling woods, she came at last into the open, and saw spread out beneath her the beautiful valley of the Brandywine dotted with the white tents of the Continental army.

Starting off at a gallop, she dashed around a bend in the road into the midst of a group of officers riding slowly up from the valley.

“Stop, little maiden, before you run us down,” said one, who seemed to be in command. “Where are you going in such hot haste?”

“Oh, sir,” said Betty, reining in Daisy, “can thee tell me where I can find General Washington?”

“Yes, little Quakeress,” said the officer, who had first spoken to her, “I am he. What do you wish?”

Betty, too exhausted to be surprised, poured forth her story in a few broken sentences, and (hearing as if in a dream the hasty commands for the rescue of the soldiers in Chichester Meeting-house) fell forward in her saddle, and, for the first time in her life, fainted, worn out by her noble ride.

A few days later, when recovering from the shock of her long and eventful ride, Betty, waking from a deep sleep, found her mother kneeling beside her little bed, while her father talked with General Washington himself beside the fireplace; and it was the proudest and happiest moment of her life when Washington, coming forward and taking her by the hand, said, “You are the bravest little maid in America, and an honor to your country.”

Still the peaceful meeting-house and the gambrel-roofed home stand unchanged, save that their time-beaten timbers and crumbling bricks have taken on a more sombre tinge, and under the broad walnut tree another little Betty sits and sews.

If you ask it, she will take down the great key from its nail, and swinging back the new doors of the meeting-house, will show you the old worm-eaten ones inside, which, pierced through and through with bullet-holes, once served as a rampart against the enemy. And she will tell you, in the quaint Friends’ language, how her great-great-grandmother carried, more than a hundred years ago, the news of the danger of her countrymen to Washington, on the Brandywine, and at the risk of her own life, saved theirs.

THE FIRST BLOW FOR AMERICAN LIBERTY[E]

(A STORY OF THE BUNKER HILL POWDER)

By EMMA W. DEMERITT

Two little New Hampshire boys play a part in the patriots’ capture
of a quantity of King George’s powder, and this very same powder was
afterward used to fight the redcoats at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Tony sat on a bench in the corner of the great stone fireplace watching the big logs as they sang and crackled and the flames leaped upward filling the room with a cheerful glow. Now and then he turned his head and glanced at a tall woman who was bustling about, getting supper ready.

“Aunt Mercy?”

No answer.

“Aunt Mercy,” he said, a little louder.

But his aunt did not reply. She probably did not hear the boy so occupied was she with her thoughts. Her usually pleasant face wore an anxious look and several times Tony fancied from the movements of her lips that she was speaking to herself.

“Oh, dear!” he thought. “I wonder what it is that has made Aunt Mercy so sober for the last day or two! She doesn’t answer me when I speak. She hardly notices Larry and me, and it’s just the same with Uncle Eben. They whisper together, and some of the neighbors have been here, and they have all been shut up in a room together, and they all look so solemn! I only hope that dreadful war isn’t going to come that they talk about.”

“Tony,” said his aunt, as she took two shining pewter platters from the dresser and placed them on the table, “have you or Larry come across my spectacles anywhere?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, perhaps I left them at meeting last Sunday. Never mind. I want you to go up garret and bring me that big bunch of herbs hanging by the east window.”

Tony glanced toward the kitchen window and was relieved to find it was still quite light. He was always shy of the old, open garret even in the daytime. He never liked to play there as well as his brother Larry and the other boys. The long rows of cloaks and coats and gowns swinging from their pegs in the dimly lighted space under the rafters had a look that made him feel as if they might spring out at him as he passed.

And there were certain other things there which helped to increase Tony’s dread of the garret. There were an old chest in the corner containing the uniform of Tony’s great uncle who had served as captain in the early French and Indian wars, and a rusty sword and tomahawk hanging from a nail in the huge beam overhead. The sword had two or three suggestive notches in the long blade, and on the wooden handle of the tomahawk which had once belonged to a ferocious Indian chief were several suspicious-looking brown stains. Larry liked to handle these relics, but the mere sight of them always sent shivers creeping down Tony’s back.

“Make haste, Tony, and bring the herbs before it grows any darker,” continued his aunt. “I never like to go up garret with a light; it’s dangerous business. I am worried and nervous, and I want a bowl of hot herb tea.”

Tony stopped, his thumb on the latch. “What is it that worries you so?” he asked in his sweet, sympathetic voice.

“A thousand things, child, you wouldn’t understand if I told you--the dread of what’s coming--the loss of property and friends--life itself perhaps. But we’ll hope for the best. The king may yet repent and try to do what is right by us. But we don’t know--we don’t know.”

It was the December of 1774, five months before Lexington, the first battle of the American Revolution. Throughout the colonies there was a growing feeling of uneasiness and indignation. The colonists were too much attached to the mother country to wish for war. Morning and night they prayed that God would show them some peaceful way out of the trouble. But the king had taken away so many of their rights and laid taxes so heavy and unjust upon them that it began to look as if the only thing to do was to fight him. The people of New Hampshire, where Larry and Tony lived, were especially excited and alarmed, for they were so near Boston that they sympathized heartily with that much-wronged city which seemed to have been singled out as a mark for special spite.

Tony passed through the cold hall and upstairs, and opening the garret door stumbled hastily to the top step. As he reached the landing his heart gave a sudden thump. He fancied he heard a noise. He stood listening, but there was not a sound. “I guess it was the branches of the big elm scraping against the roof,” he thought. Mustering his courage he darted by the row of clothes and was just reaching up for the herbs when a figure suddenly stepped from behind the chimney.

“Oh!” gasped the frightened boy, stumbling back over the big chest and bumping his head with a clatter against the dreaded sword and tomahawk. Larry’s arm raised him to his feet and Larry’s bright face bent over him.

“Why, Tony! how little it takes to scare you! I was up here and heard some one coming and thought it one of the men and that I’d have some fun with him. See!” and Larry took down the rusty tomahawk and gave a whoop that made the rafters ring, and flourished the old relic in a way that caused Tony’s curly hair to stand on end. “This isn’t such a terrible thing, after all--it can’t hurt you.”

He got the herbs for his young brother and as he did so, happened to look out of the window. “Whew!” he whistled softly, “there are two men going into the meeting-house. And how queerly they act, looking all around as if they were afraid some one would see them.”

“Oh, Larry! can’t you run up and see if Aunt Mercy’s spectacles are in the pew? She thinks she left them there last Sunday.”

“All right! you take the herbs downstairs and I will.”

On his return to the kitchen Tony found that his aunt had left the room, and he sat down in the chimney corner to wait for supper. In a few moments the door opened, and Larry stood before him, his eyes flashing, his cheeks flushed.

“Did you get the spectacles, Larry?”

“Spectacles! I haven’t even thought of them. Listen, Tony! I have a secret--a _great_ secret. After I left you I hurried up to the meeting-house and as I stepped inside the entry I thought I heard a queer noise, as if some one were digging. So I opened the door softly and peeped in--and there--_as sure as you are alive, I saw two men digging a great, deep hole under the pulpit_. They were talking so low I couldn’t hear more than half they said. But I made out that uncle and Captain Sullivan and some others are going to meet there to-night and go off in boats on some wonderful expedition. And, Tony, I am going to find out what it is. We’ll go to our room as usual after supper, but instead of going to bed, we’ll creep downstairs and go up to the meeting-house and hide inside, and wait there.”

“But will it be right to listen, Larry?” asked Tony gravely. “You know Aunt Mercy says ‘Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves.’”

“But this isn’t eavesdropping, Tony. Listening is a mean trick. But this is different. Uncle is going into danger of some sort and I _ought_ to learn what it is. I can’t believe _that_ is wrong.”

Tony finally consented, thinking he would rather watch with Larry in the church than stay in his room at home alone in the dark.

When Aunt Mercy returned, she filled the big iron pot with water, hung it on the crane and swung it over the blazing logs. “We are going to have pudding and milk for supper,” she said, “and we won’t wait for your uncle; he’s away, and may not be back until late into the night.”

At these words Larry glanced significantly at Tony and gave a wise little nod.

* * * * *

With the going down of the sun the cold rapidly increased. The night was clear and frosty. In front of the little wooden meeting-house on Durham Hill stood the two brothers shivering with cold and excitement. “Whew!” exclaimed Larry, pulling his cap down over his ears, “it’s a sharp night, Tony. Come farther this way; the meeting-house will keep off the wind.”

“Shall we have to wait long, Larry?” asked Tony.

Larry glanced at the moon just rising above the treetops. “I think it’s past the time now. Oh, I wonder what it is they are going to do.”

“P’raps they are going to cross the ocean and take the king prisoner. I don’t think he treats us very well nowadays,” said Tony plaintively.

Larry laughed. “I guess they won’t go quite as far as that. Oh, Tony! if I were a man, they would take me. It’s so provoking to be only a boy. I’m just big enough to want to be of some use, but not old enough to be trusted.” He drew Tony back in the shelter of the church and waited with his eyes fixed on the flowing Piscataqua which swept around the base of the hill on which they stood, and at the next turn widened into the broad expanse known as “The Great Bay.”

It was upon the banks of this river that some of the bloodiest scenes of the early Indian wars had been enacted. Again and again had its shores resounded with warwhoops as the red men under cover of night rowed their canoes up to the infant settlements of New Hampshire and spared neither man, woman, nor child in the slaughter which followed. Across the river, in full view of the meeting-house, was a log fort known as the “Old Block House” which had served on many occasions as a refuge for the early settlers and enabled them to keep their savage foes at bay.

“It’s cold--and--lonesome out here,” said Tony with a shiver, glancing involuntarily at the “Block House.”

“You don’t mean to say you’re afraid of the Block House, Tony! Why, you are always glad of a chance to play there, afternoons.”

“Yes--but that was in the daytime. Out here in the dark I don’t like to think of the people who have been killed there.”

“Tony! If we come to blows with England you won’t make a very good soldier. Now I’d like no better fun than to be in the Block House with a lot of screeching Indians outside. But we mustn’t talk so loud--and remember--if we hear the least noise we are to scamper into the meeting-house and hide.”

The moon climbed higher and higher in the heavens, and soon there came to the ears of the watchers by the church the plash of oars. Larry bent forward, and his keen eyes detected a small black speck on the surface of the river. At the same time the sound of rapid footsteps was heard, and the two boys hastily entered the church and stumbling through the dark entry felt their way along the aisle and crouched down in one of the pews.

Meantime, a man closely wrapped in a military cloak had taken their place in front of the church and stood looking out on the water. He, too, saw the dark object. Raising his fingers to his lips he gave a shrill whistle, which was promptly answered from the river, and in a short time eleven men, armed with muskets, came creeping stealthily up the hill, single file.

“We are late, Captain Sullivan,” called out a gay voice, “but His Majesty has several devoted subjects hereabouts, and we did not dare venture within range of their prying eyes until after dark.”

“Peace, Scammel, or that merry voice of yours will be starting some of these same good folks from their firesides,” returned Sullivan. “My trusty men!” there was a triumphant ring in his voice as he greeted them each by name--“Captain Winborn Adams, Eleazer Bennett, Ebenezer Thompson, John Demeritt, Alpheus Chesley, Jonathan Chesley, John Spenser, Micah Davis, Isaac Small, Benjamin Small, Alexander Scammel--thank God! not one of you is missing. And now, is everything ready yonder?” He pointed to the church.

“See for yourself, Captain,” answered one of the men; and opening the door he paused to light a lantern which stood in the little entry. The eleven men followed him, their heavy boots clattering on the bare floor--down the aisle, to the pulpit. Here he stopped, and held the lantern high above his head. By the dim light they saw the deep pit, the loosened boards, and the pile of earth standing ready for filling in again.

“’Tis well planned,” said the Captain, nodding approvingly. “It is the last place the British will think of searching for their lost powder. When Paul Revere came riding in hot haste into Portsmouth town last night, bearing despatches from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety saying the king had ordered the seizure of all the powder and arms in the provinces, and that two of Gage’s regiments were on their way to garrison Portsmouth and Fort William and Mary here in Piscataqua harbor, I made up my mind that what was done must be done quickly. For if England forces us to fight--and it looks that way now--’twere well to have something to fight with.”

“In good sooth, Captain Sullivan,” returned Scammel, “we should have to fight with the butt-end of our muskets, for powder and bullets are as scarce as roses at Christmas.”

Sullivan continued: “I made up my mind that if I could get a few trusty men to join me I would make a dash for the fort on my own responsibility, for the possession of that powder means _everything_ to us. But I do not want one of you to stir a foot unless you have counted the cost. This is a deliberate assault on a royal fortress, and it exposes every one of us to the penalty for high treason. If any man shrinks, let him turn back now before it is too late.”

“We have counted the cost,” answered John Demeritt, “and we are ready.”

“Follow me, then,” cried Sullivan, “and may God speed the right!”

At that instant Tony, who was doubled up under the seat like a jackknife, had a cramp in his leg, and in trying to move his foot hit a wooden stool--and over it went with a loud crash, causing the utmost confusion. The men began searching the church while Larry’s uncle rushed around shouting savagely: “A spy! A spy! Seize him! Take him, dead or alive!”

“It’s only us--Larry and me,” piped Tony, frightened almost out of his wits by his uncle’s fury. “We wanted to find out what was going on. And won’t you please take Larry with you? He is so brave and wants to fight so much.”

“Go home, boys, and to bed, both of you!” ordered Larry’s uncle. “I’ll settle with you for this to-morrow. Do not look so disturbed, Captain Sullivan--I’ll answer for their secrecy.”

“Oh, uncle! Oh, Captain Sullivan!” begged Larry in an eager, excited tone, “do let me go. I know I can help in some way. I want to be of some use, and I’m not afraid any more than you are.”

Sullivan was touched by the boy’s earnestness. “We cannot take you, my boy. It would not be prudent--but you can help if you really wish it--there _is_ a way.” He turned and whispered with some of the men. “We may need a pair of oxen to cart the powder. We ought not to bury it all in one place.”

“If the lad will have the oxen and some straw ready for us in yonder barn, I’ll cart the powder wherever you say,” said John Demeritt. “I’ll bury it in my own cellar if you can think of no better place.”

Sullivan noted the disappointment in Larry’s answer. “We are trusting much to you, my boy,” he said gravely; “and remember, Larry, if you want to be a soldier you must first learn to _obey_. Now go take your little brother home, and then have the team ready for us by the time yonder bright star reaches that line of woods by the Block House.”

When the boys left, the men quickened their pace almost to a run in order to keep up with the Captain as he strode down-hill to the “gondola.”

“Gondola” was the name given by the colonists to the broad, flat-bottomed scows used on the Piscataqua in the transportation of stone and other heavy material.

The members of the little party quietly took the places assigned them, and the scow swung off into the middle of the river and moved slowly down-stream. The only sounds to be heard were the moaning of the wind through the bare forests and the measured dip of oars. The trip was made for the most part in silence, the men bending eagerly over the oars too much engrossed with their thoughts to indulge in idle chat. As the scow approached Portsmouth and the lights of the town glimmered in the distance, Sullivan ordered the men to row slowly.