Chapter II: Part 2

Higgs nodded. He had run the point of his bayonet through a lump of thick, greasy-looking meat and held it over the fire. “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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“And it better be we!” Gerry felt his own features soften in a smile.

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.

_Chapter Four_

THE COURAGE TO GO AND THE FEET TO GET HIM THERE

“Not that way, child!” cried Granny warningly. “Lord o’ mercy, Sally Rose, take care!”

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.

“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.

“I’m sorry, Gran,” said Sally Rose contritely.

Granny sniffed. “Sorrow butters no parsnips,” she retorted. “Well, it’s no use crying over spilt lead, I suppose. That’s 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.

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.

“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?”

“Don’t you think I’d better go with Kitty?” asked Sally Rose eagerly. “Lead’s apt to be heavy, you know, and--”

“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....”

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.

“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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.

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.”

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 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.

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. _Gorn to Cambridj till further notiz_, the sign said.

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.

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.

“What are you after, Kitty? ’Tisn’t no use looking for Dick,” he said.

“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?”

Eben nodded solemnly. “Ye-a, Dick’s gone.”

Kitty felt shocked in spite of herself. “But how could he? He doesn’t have a gun.”

“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.”

“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!”

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.

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.

She suddenly realized that a soft rain had begun to fall, cooling her checks and gathering mistily in her hair.

“Eb--en!” shouted a buxom woman from the back steps of the boardinghouse. “Take in my washing off the line! Step lively there!”

Eben muttered, and his face burned crimson as he walked away.

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.

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.

“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.

She smiled and shook the rain from her lashes. “How did you know my name was Kitty?” she asked him.

“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.

“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.”

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 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--”

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.

“--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?”

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.”

“There is a gun in the barn loft that belonged to my father,” she said slowly.

“You speak like your daddy’s dead,” he answered, not looking at her.

“Yes. He drowned in the river just below here, not long after I was born.”

“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.”

“My mother’s dead, too, and Granny would likely make a fuss, but I don’t think we’ll ask Granny.”

Kitty had finally made up her mind. “Come on,” she said, flicking her fingers lightly against his sleeve.

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.

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.

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.

“There it is,” she murmured, pointing, breathless and a little proud.

He strode forward and pulled down the short, thick-barreled gun. When he spoke she caught a note of dismay in his voice.

“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.”

Groping around on a shelf, Kitty found an empty powder horn, which he took a little more gratefully.

“There’ll be powder enough where I’m going,” he told her, “and I better be getting there.”

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 stood and stared at him. He paused and turned toward her.

“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.”

He took her by the shoulders and kissed her quickly on the mouth.

She gulped and felt the tears slip down her cheeks. Under his hands her shoulders were shaking.

“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?

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.

“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.

“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!”

_Chapter Five_

THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT

“I can’t 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.”

“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.”

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.

“Tom, Tom, the piper’s son/He ran away with Father’s gun!” sang Sally Rose under her breath.

“Hummp!” snorted Gran.

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. Everyone was frightened and apprehensive. Folk turned out everywhere to shade their eyes and watch the roads that led southward, Boston way.

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.

“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.”

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.

“Hoity-toity, so we call him ‘Tom’!” cried Granny.

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.”

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 dozen cows waited patiently at the bars, but nobody came to drive them off to pasture.

“Can’t be anyone at home,” said Granny, “’Bijah Davis lives here, and he’d never treat his animals so.”

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.

“Land’s sakes, Nance,” cried Granny. “You’re looking poorly this spring. Is ’Bijah round somewhere?”

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.”

Granny tut-tutted. “Many gone from around here?” she wanted to know.

“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.”

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.

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.”

“We’ll go,” cried Sally Rose eagerly. “Come on, Kitty.”

“You’d better take this basket,” said Gran, reaching under the wagon seat. “And don’t be gone long. It’s nigh on to 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.”

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.

“Folks is all upset at the Port, too,” said Gran soothingly, getting out of the cart to go to Nancy.

The girls scurried into the mossy-roofed rambling barn, climbed to the loft, and began searching through the hay.

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

“I don’t know,” said Kitty, adding two more eggs to their collection, “but I’m sure there’d be cups of tea for everybody.”

“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.”

“I should think King and Parliament would have enough to do at home,” answered Kitty. “What’s that? I thought I heard someone shouting.”

Both girls sat up in the shadowy mow to listen.

“Turn out! Turn out! For God’s sake!” thundered a hoarse voice from the highway.

“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.

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.

“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!”

He paid no attention to the huddled group of women, but galloped past.

“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.

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--”

Then a chaise hurtled down the road, swaying from side 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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

“Where is everyone going?” she cried.

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.”

He urged his old horse forward again.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Women, and a few old or feeble men, were toiling across the farmyards here and there, carrying favorite gowns, or 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.

“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.”

“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.”

“Well, I do not think they would cut and slash me,” said Sally Rose, smiling confidently in the dark. “Oh, Kit, look there!”

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!”

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.”

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.”

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?”

“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.”

“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.”

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....

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 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.

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.

“Are you headed for Newburyport? Is the battle over? Where are the British?” she wanted to know.

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.”

“I suspected as much,” said Gran, tightening her mouth.

“Ho hum!” said Sally Rose.

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.

“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.”

“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?”

“I feel sure of it,” declared Gran firmly. “Well, the Bible 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.”

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.

“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.”

Nancy sat down on the step, carefully pulled the shawls away, and bent her head while the others stood looking on.

Suddenly she screamed. They peered closer.

“God save our souls alive!” gasped Granny.

Sally Rose giggled. Kitty swallowed and made no sound at all.

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.

_Chapter Six_

FUN WHILE IT LASTED

The 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.

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.

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.

“Not a sign o’ the British yet, be there, lad?” he asked anxiously.

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?”

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.”

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.

“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?”

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.

“Barnstaple,” he said. “Gerry Malory of Barnstaple, shoemaker.”

“Barnstable? Down Cape Cod, ain’t it? A fair ways from here.”

“Yes, Barnstaple’s a fair ways off,” said the young man.

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.

The landlord went to the hearth and stirred the dwindling fire. “What’s in the pot, Nanny?” he asked.

“Dandelions,” said Nanny pertly. “Dandelion greens and a ham bone. But the ham bone don’t smell like it should, Father.”

“Warm up the chowder then,” he ordered, and turned to his guest. “Are ye handy with firearms, Gerry?”

“I’ve a pistol in my chest here, among my shoemaker’s tools. Guess I know what to do with it.”

“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?”

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.”

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?”

“’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.

“Yes,” said Nanny flatly, stepping back into the kitchen.

He sat down on a bench, picked up a ladle, and tasted the chowder gingerly.

“None for me, Nanny,” called her father. “I be that worried about the British, I wouldn’t relish victuals none.”

“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.”

“Slice up a loaf of bread, Nanny,” called the landlord.

Nanny’s thin piping voice came back from the kitchen. “The bread’s moldy. All that wasn’t, we sent to Cambridge.”

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.”

The landlord himself brought a pitcher of milk and poured two glasses full.

“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.”

The young man shook his head. “I haven’t been near Cambridge, and it’s a long time since I went Barnstaple way.”

“Where ye been, then?”

“Oh--round Charlestown most of the time, I guess. You know Job Townsend’s tavern there?”

“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.”

“Yes, he’s got a pretty daughter,” said Gerry Malory, draining his glass. “I been around the Bay and Beagle some.”

“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....”

The young man shook his head solemnly. “You got no chance against the British,” he said.

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 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.”

“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.”

He put down his empty glass and leaned forward, his hands clenched before him on the table. “How can _we_ 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?”

“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.

“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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

“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?”

“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.”

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.

“Who’s that there belong to?” he asked suddenly.

“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.

“‘G. Malory,’ it says here. And Landlord says G.’s for Gerry. Gerry Malory--going to Newburyport to see a girl.” He sounded thoughtful.

The landlord noticed that the young shoemaker from Barnstable had edged his stool further back into the shadows. He said no word.

“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.”

His voice deepened, and there was a sharp edge to it that caught the attention of everyone in the room and made them listen.

“That’s her!” cried the landlord excitedly. “Sally Rose! Job Townsend’s daughter! He said he hung around the Bay and Beagle some!”

Still the young man in the shadows did not speak.

“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.

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?”

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.”

“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!”

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 pair when you arrive in Cambridge. That is the best advice I can give you.”