Chapter III: Part 3

“You lie,” said Tom Trask steadily. “I can fix it myself, if you’re unable. All I ask you to do is prove you be a shoemaker.”

The teamsters, the landlord, even Nanny, were staring in silence at the two young men. Gerry Malory studied the boot in his hand. He frowned. “Well enough,” he said. He opened the small chest and fumbled inside it, took out a wooden last, hammer, and awl, a packet of pegs and nails. “Ah, this should do it,” he murmured judiciously. He selected a strip of leather and tried to fit it over the ragged hole Tom had pointed out.

All eyes were upon him. No lips made any comment. He gripped the boot with one hand under the instep. He fitted the leather over the hole with the other hand. Then he stood there, conscious suddenly that he had no third hand to set the nails in place, no fourth hand to wield the hammer. He put the boot down and started all over again.

But his face was growing hot and his fingers even more clumsy. Suddenly he ceased his efforts. “I am sorry,” he said. “I forgot my most needful tool. You must wait until you get to Cambridge, unless you can find another cobbler.”

Tom Trask stood up. He held the old gun lightly in his hand. “Your most needful tool is there,” he said, “but you don’t know enough to know it. Put the boot on the last, you should have. That would ha’ held it firm, and left your hands free to get on with your cobbling. Right enough, we’ll go to Cambridge, and we’ll take you along as our prisoner, Captain Malory o’ the Twenty-third. All the world can see you’re no shoemaker. Johnny Stark will know what to do with you. Landlord, have you a length of rope, or better, a few links of chain, about the place? For safety, we’ll tie him up now.”

Gerry Malory, of Barnstaple in English Devon, bit his lip and stared around him somewhat wildly. That cursed Yankee with the gun that looked as if it came out of Noah’s ark stood between him and the open doorway. He doubted if it would shoot, but even if it didn’t, its owner looked like no easy man to handle. And the Yankee had his friends about him.

While he hesitated, two old men ambled forward and bound his wrists together with a heavy length of clanking chain. Then they stepped back, and the whole company continued to stare at him.

“Captain,” said Tom Trask thoughtfully, “I be not so sure as I was that you come this way to see a girl. Likely you did, but likely, too, you might ha’ spread the false report that the British was upon us. It might ha’ been a word o’ yours that sent us flying over hills far and wide as if the devil was after. A fool’s prank, maybe--maybe a smart trick to spread confusion amongst us.”

Suddenly Gerry Malory remembered the scenes of the afternoon: lean spinsters rocking along like giraffes in the animal garden on Tower Hill, fat men waddling off, their faces red and their eyes popping with panic. He laughed aloud and looked down at his hands bound stiffly in front of him.

“In either case, it was fun while it lasted,” he said.

_Chapter Seven_

OFF TO THE WARS IN BOSTON

“Cousin, I see no future for us in this place,” said Sally Rose bleakly.

She was sitting in the soft grass on the hill behind the Frog Pond, looking down the dusty street that led through the Port, straight to the wharves and warehouses along the river.

Kitty pulled herself up on her elbow and let her glance follow her cousin’s. There appeared to be as many white sails in the channel as usual, the same blue spring haze on the far shore, and the familiar curve of sky overhead. But the town below them, commonly bustling with life on a warm May afternoon, looked strangely deserted and still. A brown dog slept in the middle of High Street, and two old men hobbled past the Wolfe Tavern in the direction of Market Square. A farm cart ground its slow way towards Old Newbury, and a group of children ran hither and thither across the training green with laughter and shrill cries.

Kitty pulled a golden dandelion blossom from the grass and began to tear it apart in her fingers. “I think I see what you mean, Sally Rose,” she said. “It is dull here with no one to talk to but grown folk--and of course, the other girls. I never realized how many girls there are in town. There never seemed to be so many before. I never thought I bothered myself much about the lads, but what a difference it makes--now they are all gone away.”

“Gone, and not likely to return very soon, from what I hear,” said Sally Rose thoughtfully. “A few have come home, but mostly the older men with families, or the fainthearted ones. Last night I heard Uncle Moses telling Granny they plan to stay where they are and form a mighty army that will circle round like a wall of iron to keep the British penned in Boston.”

“Then there’s no knowing when they’ll be home,” answered Kitty. It made her uneasy to admit to herself, as she had been forced to do, that all her eagerness and anxiety were not for her long-time friend, Dick Moody, but for that other one, the thin lad from New Hampshire who had taken her father’s blunderbuss away.

“No knowing,” agreed Sally Rose. “Three weeks it’s been since Concord Fight, maybe more. More than a month since I’ve seen Gerry. I thought he might write to me, but he never has. Some of the Tory girls in Boston are very fair,” and she sighed. “I thought I might find someone to take his place, but I should have known I never could--here in this dull, stupid, country town.”

“You’re better off not seeing him, since he’s British,” said Kitty sharply. “I’m sure, most times, you’d find better lads than him, walking down Queen Street any day. But just now--well, you know where they’ve all gone. They’ve gone to fight for the rights of our colony, and you ought to be proud of them, Sally Rose.”

“Ummmm,” said Sally Rose, chewing a dandelion stem and then making up a face when its bitter white milk puckered her mouth. “Of course I’m proud of them. How old does one have to be before they’re an old maid, Kitty? It seems like I might be approaching the time.”

“Oh no,” cried Kitty. “We’re only sixteen. No one would think that of us--not for at least two years more!”

Sally Rose stood up and tossed her bright hair in the sun. “Two years isn’t long,” she said. “Well, you can sit here in the Port and wither if you want to, but I’ve got other fish in the pan.”

She started walking quickly in the direction of Granny Greenleaf’s weathered house.

Kitty watched her with apparent unconcern for as long as she could. Then she jumped to her feet and hurried after.

“Where are you going?” she panted.

Sally Rose smiled at her. “Why,” she said, “I think I’ll go back to my father’s house in Charlestown. If there’s a war in Boston, we’ll be in the midst of everything there. Why don’t you come along, Kit? Tom Trask may not be back this way, you know.”

Kitty felt her face turning hot and red, but she chose to ignore the last part of her cousin’s remark. “You can’t go to Charlestown,” she said. “Granny won’t let you go where there’s likely to be fighting. You know that as well as I.”

They had turned in at the front gate now, and were walking under the budded lilac bushes, Sally Rose in the lead, Kitty following breathless, a few steps behind.

“A fig for Granny!” cried Sally Rose. “I love her, of course, but she’s a timid old lady, fit only to huddle in the chimney corner. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be bold and daring--the way a girl has to be these days. Of course she won’t let me go, and so I shan’t ask her. She drove out to see Nancy Davis this afternoon. When she gets back at suppertime, I won’t be here. I’ll be halfway to Rowley--or further on.”

She opened the unlocked kitchen door and ran lightly up the back stairs to their chamber.

Kitty followed, a little more slowly. She sat down on the edge of the high four-poster and dangled her feet over the side; watched while Sally Rose gathered ribbons, laces, and a few toilet articles and tied them up in a shawl.

“It’s a long walk to Charlestown,” she said tartly.

“Not so far for a horse,” answered Sally Rose.

“You have a horse then?”

“I know where to borrow one. I know where I can borrow two. Uncle Moses Chase keeps half a dozen in his barn on the Old Newbury road, and he’s gone with Granny, so he won’t know if we take them. He won’t care, when he finds out. Why don’t you come with me, Kitty? We’ll have a gay time in Charlestown.”

Kitty shook her head, but without much conviction. “I couldn’t go behind Granny’s back,” she said.

Sally Rose smiled sweetly. “I’m sorry you feel so, Cousin. Perhaps I do wrong to make a jest of everything, but that is my way. Have you never thought, when you hear all these preparations for war, that there is work for us as well as for the lads? Who’s to cook and wash and sew for them, and bind up their wounds when the fighting is over? I’m going where I can be of use to my country. If you’re afraid to come with me--well, you can stay here and sleep in the sun by the Frog Pond every afternoon. You’ll surely be safe enough--unless a horsefly bites you, or the dry rot settles in.”

She took a quill pen and inkpot from the mantelpiece, sat down at the dressing table, and began to write.

Kitty jumped from the bed and took a few turns up and down the room.

“Do you really think we ought to go, Sally Rose?” she asked. “Do you think--we might be needed there?”

“I certainly do think so,” said Sally Rose. “Don’t bother to pack any clothes, Kit. At home in Charlestown I have more than enough for two.”

Under Sally Rose’s urging, Kitty opened a top drawer in the old mahogany chest and began slowly to sort out the few possessions she wanted to take with her, if she did go; an ivory comb, a pleated linen fichu, her mother’s cameo brooch. Her fingers flew faster every minute, as her heart warmed to the plan.

Her throat grew tight, and she felt tears of eagerness and excitement sting her eyelids. She was going to serve her country, like Tom and Johnny and Dick, and all the Newburyport lads, all the lads of the Bay Colony, and maybe other colonies, too. She was going to take part in a serious, and a mighty, and a very grown-up thing. Wars were history, and she was going to help make history. It had been done before by other girls who were just as young. She was glad, she thought, that she was to have a chance to do it in her time. Her heart stirred just as it did in church when one or another of the old warlike hymn tunes rose on the air.

“You’d better take a cloak, Kit, for it’ll grow cold after sundown, and we may ride late,” advised Sally Rose, pulling her own fleecy shawl from the carved old press. “Come, let’s be off to the wars in Boston!”

On her way to follow Sally Rose’s bidding, Kitty caught sight of her cousin’s note as it lay open on the dressing table.

_Dear Granny_, the note began, in dainty, pointed script, _Forgive me for leaving you so suddenly, and practically forcing poor Kitty to go along. But I dare not travel by myself, and I find that a sudden yearning to see my father takes me...._

Kitty stood still for a moment and almost gave up all idea of this desperate journey.

“We’ll have a gay time in Charlestown.” “I want to serve my country.” “A sudden yearning to see my father takes me.”

Sally Rose could give many reasons for what she wanted to do. And she would always give the ones most likely to get her what she wanted. And what was her true reason? No one knew except Sally Rose.

Nevertheless, Kitty found she did not turn back, but folded her cloak over her arm and hastened downstairs after her cousin. After all, what was her own reason for wanting to go to Charlestown? She did want to serve her country, but she was quick enough to see that she could serve it quite as well at home, if she had chosen so. But she had not so chosen. Was not she, Kitty, slyer, more secret and stubborn than Sally Rose in getting her own way?

* * * * *

It was black dark when they rode into Ipswich, very few lights in the town, and very few people still awake. The moon was hidden away behind the clouds somewhere, and a light mist had begun to fall.

“I hoped we could get as far as Beverly,” said Sally Rose, “but we’ve come only half the way. Uncle Moses said he had plenty of horses in his barn, but he didn’t say they were plow horses. Well, there’s a light in the tavern. I’ve stopped there before, and I know the landlord’s daughter. A pert, homely little wench, but I’m sure she’ll find us a bed.”

“I hope so,” said Kitty dubiously, climbing down from her horse and following her cousin up the wide stone steps and through the low front door.

The taproom smelled of cider and fish and the smoky wood fire burning on it blackened hearth. It was dimly lit and empty, except for three old men who sat at a table with glasses in front of them, and a sharp-faced, sallow girl polishing other glasses behind a narrow bar.

When Sally Rose walked across the uneven floor, her head up, her eyes shining in the candlelight, her hips swaying ever so slightly, the heads of the old men turned toward her as sunflowers turn to follow the golden light of day. Kitty walked demurely behind her, but nobody noticed Kitty.

“Nanny,” cried Sally Rose, putting out her hand to the girl eagerly, as if there was no one in the world she would be gladder to see than Ipswich Nan. “Nanny, we’re o’ertaken with darkness, and we need a bed for the night, my cousin and I.” She drew Kitty forward, and they stood together at the bar. “We’ll need supper, too, Nanny,” she said.

Nanny curtsied. “Yes, Miss Sally Rose,” she answered, beaming adoringly at the pretty, smiling face turned toward her. “The bed in the east chamber is aired and ready. Should I serve you there, or....” She glanced about the taproom.

Sally Rose began to pull off her embroidered gloves, put up a hand to pat her golden hair. “Oh--at that table by the fire, please. It was chilly, coming the last mile through the swamp willows, and with all the fog about.”

Nanny lighted a candle in a pewter holder and carried it to the table by the fire. “I’ll bring you supper right off, Miss Sally Rose. We got dandelion greens and a ham bone--”

Sally Rose made up a face. “Oh Nanny,” she pleaded, “you know my stomach’s delicate.”

Kitty clapped her hand over her mouth so that she would not giggle. Sally Rose had never been sick in her life, and could probably digest brass nails if she had to.

“Couldn’t you find a bit of chicken, Nanny?”

“Chicken I’ve not got,” answered Nanny. “But there’s a piece of spring lamb I just been a-roasting for the minister’s wife. She’s got Salem company coming tomorrow.”

“The lamb will do nicely,” said Sally Rose, sitting down at table.

“About our horses,” asked Kitty, taking the chair across from her cousin.

“Oh, of course. I’ll speak to one of the men and have them seen to. I noticed the landlord as I came in.”

They turned to look at the three men by the table. The men were all staring at them and talking together in low voices. One of them now rose and came forward. He wore a leather apron tied around his middle and walked with a decided limp.

“Job Townsend’s daughter, ain’t you?” he demanded of Sally Rose. “Visit kin in Newburyport on occasion?”

Sally Rose smiled and dimpled. “Why, how clever of you to remember me! Of course I’m Job Townsend’s daughter,” she said. “And I’m on my way home from Newburyport right now. I’ve often told my cousin Kitty here, about your tavern--there isn’t a better one in the whole of Essex County.”

Strangely enough, the landlord was not smiling at Sally Rose, and he ignored her compliment.

“We had a young fellow here a short time back. A young fellow who said he hung around the Bay and Beagle some.”

He waited, his face expressionless, for Sally Rose to speak. In the silence Kitty heard the rattle of dishes from the kitchen. She caught the delicious odor of roast meat, the tang of crushed mint leaves.

Sally Rose’s smile grew no whit dimmer. “We’ve many young fellows who hang around the Bay and Beagle,” she said. “My dad would go poor, if we didn’t. They keep the till full. Did he tell you his name?”

The landlord spoke accusingly. “He said his name was Gerry Malory. He said he was going to Newburyport to see a girl.”

Sally Rose shrugged her graceful shoulders. “Plenty of girls in Newburyport,” she said.

“Do you know this Gerry Malory?”

“I might,” she answered cautiously. “Was he a dockyard hand now, or maybe a farmer from Breed’s hill--”

“This one was took up for being a British officer,” said the landlord grimly. “Took up, right here in my tavern. Irons put on his wrists--part of an old ox chain I had--and he was took to the camp at Cambridge under guard. Likely they’ll hang the damn redcoat. I hope they do.”

Sally Rose’s smile looked a bit frozen, but it did not vanish away. There was a tremor in her voice, but she spoke imperiously still. “All very interesting, Landlord, but your daughter has undertaken to fetch us a supper of spring lamb. We are tired with long riding, and if you could ask her to be spry about it, we should be grateful. Our horses, also, are at your door and in need of attention.”

She sat down and turned her back upon him.

Kitty watched the lame man shake his head. Then he stumped off toward the kitchen. She looked again at her cousin, and Sally Rose’s eyes were shining with more than the candlelight.

“He was coming to see me,” she murmured happily. “Gerry was coming to see me when they caught him.”

Kitty felt her face twist in a frown and spoke her disapproval. “Which he shouldn’t have been doing, of course. He belongs with the other British in Boston. Well, he’s got himself in trouble now. A prisoner of our men, and the landlord talked of hanging. Aren’t you worried about him?”

Sally Rose took off her bonnet and shook back her shining hair. “Not a little finger’s worth,” she said. “They won’t hold him long. He can come and go like a breath of east wind, Gerry can. My, oh my”--and she patted the front of her muslin gown--“I’m so hungry. I wish Nanny would hurry and bring that spring lamb!”

* * * * *

Twenty-four hours later they were hungry again, much hungrier, and very tired. But they were riding down Crooked Lane in Charlestown, with the Bay and Beagle almost in sight, and over the river the lights of Boston.

“My, it’s been a tiresome day,” sighed Sally Rose. “Losing my purse, horse going lame, taking the wrong turn in Danvers--I don’t see how I could have been so stupid as to do that.”

“The black flies were the worst,” complained Kitty. “I’m bitten in a dozen places, I vow. And I don’t dare scratch the bites, for if I do, I’ll look as if I had smallpox.”

She thought back over their long day’s riding: village greens with white steeples--Wenham, Beverly, Salem; long stretches of salt marsh with the sea beyond it; then Lynn and Malden, as the towns drew closer in. It was already night when they came to Medford, and there a constable had ridden with them through town, straight to the Penny Ferry. Part of the great New England Army was camped on the hills about and overflowing the streets and taverns, he said, and he feared for the safety of young maids abroad so late. What were their folks thinking of, anyway?

For once Sally Rose had been too tired to be charming. She bowed her head meekly and accepted his rebuke. But her spirits rose as they left river and causeway behind them and took a field path so as not to have to pass the Sign of the Sun tavern where there were apt to be British officers about.

“My, but Daddy will be surprised,” she said. “I want a glass of Spanish wine and a meat pasty. And then, bed! Oh Kitty, think what it’ll be like to have a featherbed under us again! I swear, I’ll roll and wallow in it! Why--why here we are, and there aren’t any lights in the windows!”

They drew up their horses uncertainly in the deserted street. All the houses were dark around them, and the cloudy sky was dark overhead. A lantern burned at the top of a pole a little way off, so that Kitty could make out the weathered sign before her uncle’s tavern, the wooden profile of a tall bay horse pawing the air, and at his feet a trim, alert hunting dog. But as Sally Rose said, the diamond-shaped panes were dark. Peering closer, however, she noticed some letters traced in whitewash on the iron-bound door.

“Look, Sally Rose, there’s a sign, but I can’t read it,” she said.

They got down from their horses and walked closer. “Neither can I,” said Sally Rose. She tried the door. It was locked tight.

“I know how to climb in by the buttery window,” she murmured, for once a little crestfallen, “but I still want to know what is written on the door. I wonder where Father can be. He always keeps late closing time.”

She stood irresolute a moment. Then she drew a quick breath as if something pleased her, and ran down the street to the lantern swinging on its pole. Reaching, stretching, pulling herself up, she managed to lift it down and hurry back, holding it proudly aloft, flashing it on the paneled door.

In the light that flared uncertainly behind the thin panes of horn, the two cousins bent close and read aloud the words, “Closed. Gone to the wars till the damn British be beat. J. Townsend.”

They stood still and looked at each other. A salt-smelling wind blew down the old street, and a wisp of fog came with it. Fog was dimming the lights of Boston, that even now, close to midnight, still burned on the other side of the river. The lights looked unfriendly, Kitty thought, as she remembered that Boston was in the hands of the enemy. Down by the wharves men were shouting and the shouts had an angry sound. A burst of musket fire broke out, somewhere off Medford way. The girls looked at each other and shivered. They were hungry and tired and fly-bitten. They were a little frightened, maybe.

“What will we do now?” asked Kitty. The tone reminded Sally Rose that she was to blame for the plight they were in, even if the words did not.

“I--don’t--quite know,” faltered Sally Rose. “We can get into the house. We’ll have a roof over our heads, and a bed to sleep in. Maybe there’s something to eat in the cupboard. We’ll be safe for tonight. But it’s after that I’m thinking of. We can’t run the tavern alone, without father, and how are we to live if we cannot run the tavern?”

“We could send for Gran,” said Kitty a little mockingly. “Of course she’s a timid old lady, but I notice she’s able to do most everything that comes her way. I’ll bet she’d be able to serve up cider, or rum toddy, or hot grog--or whatever it is they drink.”

Suddenly Sally Rose was smiling again. “Kitty, that’s a wonderful plan. Let’s climb into the house now, and have supper, and sleep forever. When we wake up we’ll send her a letter by the first post. The buttery window’s around here at the back, under the apple tree. Come along. I can unfasten the catch, but you’ll have to hoist me in.”

_Chapter Eight_

SAVED BY A PIPE-SMOKING MAN

Standing in the wet salt grass at the end of Chelsea Neck, Tom Trask shifted the old blunderbuss from one shoulder to the other.

“Wisht I had my own gun,” he said to himself. “I’d rather try to lug a young pine tree, roots and all, than this critter here.”

Then he smiled sheepishly as he thought of the pretty girl who had loaned him the aged weapon. She was a pretty girl, too. Likely he’d go to her house and see her when he went down river with the logs next spring. Guess she wouldn’t have any eyes for the Newburyport lads when he was about. This fuss would all be over by then, and folks back where they belonged, plowing their own ground.

He shivered with the cold that goes before sunrise and tried to peer through the blackness and mist around him to see if the others were getting as restless as he. There were three hundred or more of them, New Hampshire and Massachusetts men, here where the Neck narrowed down. Not a torch, not a lantern, General Putnam had warned, and if any man felt the need of tobacco, let him cut plug and chew, like an old cow with cud. It was worse than being lost in the devil’s pocket, but even at that, it was better than sitting around camp playing cat’s-cradle, like they’d been doing for the past month. A man could get gray whiskers before his time, that way.

Some of the lads who came a-running so quick after Concord Fight had got tired of the game and put for home already, but Tom hadn’t quite been able to convince himself he ought to go along. No, so long as Colonel Stark saw a reason to sit around waiting for the British to jump, he guessed he, Tom Trask, could wait too. He himself hadn’t been far from the camp at Medford, but he’d heard Boston was all ringed round with Massachusetts and Connecticut men keeping the redcoats shut up tight.

“Can you hear me, lads?” bellowed a gruff voice up ahead.

“Aye,” came a dozen shouts from the tall reeds around him, and an equally gruff voice added, “Aye! We be listening all.”

“Volunteers! Old Put wants volunteers!” roared the first speaker. “There’ll be an officer come amongst you. There’ll be....” His voice grew fainter as he turned to deliver his message in another direction, but the words still sounded plain.

Tom put his blunderbuss down and leaned on it. He spoke to the man who stood in the marsh grass just ahead of him.

“Got any idea what this is about?” he asked.

The other man took his time in answering. He was older, Tom sensed, and more heavily built. In the silence they heard shouting and the rattle of musket fire. A ship’s gun flashed on the dark waters of Chelsea Creek.

“Yea--a,” said the man slowly. “I was down by the ferry stage awhile back.”

“Was there fighting there?”

“Fighting there was. The British ships firing at us, and our men waist-deep in water shooting back--even the General himself, Old Put.”

“Did you hear what the volunteers be for?”

“Maybe. You haven’t been here all along? You’re one o’ the reserves who come in late last night? One o’ Stark’s men?”

“Aye. One o’ Stark’s men, and proud of it.”

The man was chewing tobacco, Tom’s keen nose told him. He spat suddenly into the reeds, his own mouth tasting rancid.

“Likely some day you may have something to be proud of. You done no more yet than anyone else, as I can see.”

Tom ignored the rebuke. “Volunteers now,” he murmured. “If I knew what ’twas about, likely I might take a notion to go.”

“Likely they wouldn’t want you,” sneered the older man. “If I was Putnam--which I ain’t--I’d give the job to one o’ the Essex County boys.”

“Why?”

“Because ’tis a seafaring operation, of a sort, and there be none like the Essex men for maneuvers at sea.”

The firing from the river was steady now.

“Maybe,” said Tom. “What is this operation that takes such a picked crew? I never see salt water yet will fight a man as hard as old Merrimack when the freshets come down.”

“Volunteers!” sang out a voice nearby. A man, bareheaded, wearing a torn brown coat, stood before them holding a carefully shielded lantern in his hand.

“Eleven picked men I got. I need one more.”

“Twelve men, you got,” said Tom, shouldering his blunderbuss. “Where do I go?”

The man held up his lantern so that the dim light shone on his new recruit.

“Built for it, you be,” he said after a moment. “Long, and lean, and tough, by the look of you. Are you tough, lad?”

“Tougher’n a biled owl,” said Tom imperturbably.

“Can you swim?”

“Like a muskrat.”

The man grinned. “What’s your trade?”

“I’m a timber man. Floating logs downstream out of the Hampshire woods is my trade.”

“Good! Come along then. Down by the water. Ike Baldwin has charge o’ the action, and he’s gathered his men there.”

Tom followed as he was bidden, down a rough path to the border of Chelsea Creek. Looking over his shoulder once, he saw in the sky a long streak of sunrise, salmon and silver-gray.

The Neck ended in a narrow strip of shaly beach, and as Tom moved out of the protecting reeds he drew his head down turtle-fashion. A British ball whined past him, and then another. Half an hour now, and it would be broad daylight. Whatever this seafaring operation was, they’d better get it over, and soon. Then a little group of men loomed up in the thinning mist ahead of him. Eight, nine, he counted, most of them no older than he. They were stripped to the waist and unarmed, save for their leader, a stalwart man in a blue coat and knee breeches who leaned on a musket. Tom and his guide approached the group.

“Here’s your twelfth, Ike,” said the brown-coated man. “Swims like a muskrat, tougher’n a biled owl, and is used to riding log rafts down the Merrimack. Think he’ll do.”

Ike cleared his throat and spat into the water lapping gently along the beach. “Have to, now,” he said. “We’ll be sitting ducks in fifteen minutes more. Cal and ’Lisha’s gone for a keg of pitch.” He turned to Tom. “You one o’ Stark’s men?”

“Aye. Tom Trask of Derryfield.”

“Good. Get rid of your gun and strip down.”

Tom looked around and found an outcrop of ledge where he thought he could probably leave the blunderbuss in safety. Then he peeled off his hunting shirt. British mortar fire still droned overhead--too high; he had heard back in camp that the British usually shot that way. As he shook his hands free from the loose sleeves and flung the garment down, he lifted his head and looked at the man nearest to him. Then a wry smile twisted his mouth.

“I think I seen you before,” he said.

The other lad peered through the thinning mist, then his eyes widened in recognition and he smiled.

“Aye,” he answered jauntily. “Last time I seen you, you was playing hide-and-seek. You grown up yet, I wonder?”

“There was others playing it, too,” retorted Tom.

“Yes, others. Kitty Greenleaf, you’ll likely remember.”

“Kitty Greenleaf! So that’s her name. I never did know the whole of it. Promised her I’d call by and see her, if I ever happened back that way.”

“Don’t take the trouble. Kitty’s closer now. She’s in Charlestown with her cousin, Sally Rose. I went home to get some clean shirts and a better gun, and ’twas there I heard it.”

“In Charlestown?” asked Tom in surprise. “Charlestown’s not held to be very safe these days. ’Tis thought the British may strike at us from there. I heard there be only a couple hundred people left in the town, and most of the women sent away.”

“I heard so, too. But Sally Rose took a notion to go home and nothing would stop her, so Kitty went along. I ain’t got over there yet to see them, but I mean to. I heard Granny Greenleaf went legging after them, mad as time.”

Tom laughed in spite of himself as he remembered the thin old voice quavering excitedly, “Stop, thief, stop!”

“Maybe I’ll just go along with you, when you do go,” he said. “What’s your name now? Eben, was it?”

“Eben! No! You’re thinking of Eben Poore. He’s naught but a foolish little lad. I be Johnny Pettengall.”

“So,” said Tom. In the river ahead of him he could see two low green islands getting plainer every minute as the mist cleared away. “Well, Johnny, for old times’ sake then, tell me what’s afoot and what are we down here for?”

Johnny’s face brightened and his voice grew eager, now that he was intent again on the business in hand.

“Likely, being a New Hampshire man, you come in with Stark’s reserves last night.”

“No. I wasn’t detailed to go--nor to stay, either. Couldn’t sleep, and long in the night sometime, I thought I’d just wander this way.”

“I been here all along. We was sent over to Noddle’s Island yesterday to drive the cattle off. Farmers who pasture there have been selling beef to the British. We’d cleared off Noddle, burned the house of one man who resisted, and was on our way back across Hog Island, when a sloop and a schooner sailed close in. Fired on us, they did, and o’ course we answered back.”

“O’ course,” agreed Tom.

“Been firing ever since, except for the schooner--the _Diana_, she is, one of our men said who recognized her. She’s run aground and been abandoned. It’s her we’re going out to burn.”

Tom looked where the other lad pointed. Sure enough, there in the gray light, not very far from shore, rode a two-masted schooner, listing badly to one side. Her foresail hung in long streamers that stirred as the morning wind blew through them. Her colors had been shot away, and the lower side of her deck was all awash with sea.

“All right, boys!” Ike Baldwin straightened them to attention with his command. “Here’s Cal and ’Lisha with the pitch. Now we can go.”

Two young men, dark-haired and muscular, came panting up with a heavy keg between them, swung in a cradle of stout rope. Baldwin went on, speaking rapidly.

“Cal and ’Lisha will tow the pitch out to the schooner. Got that now?”

General murmurs of assent passed among the little group.

“Aye,” murmured Johnny brightly, like a smart lad repeating catechism.

Tom inclined his head and chewed nervously at a bit of grass he had picked up somewhere. It had a rank salty taste. He wished he knew exactly what he was supposed to do.

“The rest of you ain’t going along for the swim, remember,” the relentless orders went on. “You’re there to help get the pitch aboard and spread it around on whatever parts of her is driest and most likely to burn. Don’t want her to go back into British service again. Don’t want the British to think they can come shooting amongst us any time they choose without having to pay.”

He stood still for a moment, in a defiant attitude, waiting for his words to take effect.

“How we going to kindle the pitch, Ike?” asked a voice at the rear of the group. “Flints and tinderboxes’ll be wetter’n a drowned cat ’fore we get there.”

Isaac Baldwin frowned. Then his face cleared and he waved a nonchalant hand. “Likely there’ll be a cookfire in the galley,” he said. “She ain’t been abandoned long. Likely you’ll find a tinderbox there--or somewhere else aboard. Her crew must ha’ had some means to light a fire.”

“Maybe,” said Tom. He stood thoughtfully for a moment, wondering how much time he would have before Ike Baldwin ordered them into the water. It would take a few minutes, the thing he wanted to do.

Luck was with him, for Baldwin bent over just then to speak with Cal and ’Lisha who were tightening the cradle ropes about the keg. He looked up the hill in the direction he had come, then back at the creek again. Out beyond the stranded _Diana_, the guns of the sloop were still firing harmlessly away. After a moment of indecision, he turned and ran up the hill.

He found the man he had been talking to a short time before, seated now on a tuft of marsh grass, his gun beside him. He was just in the act of filling a pipe, as Tom had gambled he would be. The New Hampshire man loped up and accosted him.

“You with that pipe there!”

The man did not look up. His fingers moved leisurely with flints and tinder. He lit the pipe, drew on it deeply, then took it from his mouth and asked, “Was you speaking to me?”

“Yes. General Putnam gave out the word there was to be no smoking amongst the men. He sent me to collect every pipe I found lighted. Like this.”

Tom’s hand reached forth lightning quick and snatched the pipe from its owner’s startled jaws. Then he sprinted off, down the Neck.

“Hey! Give me back my pipe!” yelled the man, scrambling to his feet, his arms flailing the air. “Them orders against pipes was night orders only. It’s safe enough, now day’s come.”

“Tell it to General Putnam,” called Tom over his shoulder. He did not slow his pace until he reached the beach. Cal and ’Lisha had waded out waist-deep, floating the keg between them. The others plunged in now, and began swimming toward the schooner. Their officer laid his musket down and shed his clothes, obviously intending to follow them, like a shepherd after his sheep.

Tom stood still, put the pipe in his mouth, and took a pull on it. Great Jehovah, it tasted worse than sulphur and molasses that the old women dosed you with in the spring. It tasted worse than wormwood and bear’s grease, worse than dragonroot tea. Ike Baldwin stepped into the water now, and Tom followed at a little distance. By and by he felt the river floor sloping away under his feet, but he managed to keep on wading, though the others launched forth and swam. He held his head high and his neck still, and kept puffing on the pipe. The schooner was only a little way off, stranded in shallow water, but it seemed to Tom as if he would never get there, with the ill-smelling wooden bowl and its little treasure of fire. Maybe they wouldn’t need it, he thought, but if they did they would need it bad, and he meant to have it on hand.

Once a British ball struck close by, throwing up a shower of spray that left him shaken and half blinded, but he kept puffing away at the pipe and forged steadily ahead. Then another ball struck even closer. The British were finding the range, he thought. They must have realized what their opponents meant to do.

When he reached the schooner, she was so sharply tilted that he found it as easy to climb aboard her as it would have been to swarm up a sloping beach. The other lads were there ahead of him, busy spreading pitch on a pile of canvas mattresses and hammocks fetched up from the sleeping quarters below, spreading it on the dry parts of the deck above water line.

A brisk wind sang through the _Diana’s_ broken rigging. It struck cold on Tom’s bare shoulders and drove the last of the mist away. Sounds of firing came from the British sloop, but he forgot the sloop. He cupped his hands about the pipe bowl to shelter its living contents from the wind. He took a long puff.

“So this is the way Stark trains his lads!” Isaac Baldwin’s voice lashed out at him. He turned sharply and looked into the grim, angry face of their leader.

Tom took the pipe cautiously from his mouth. “’T hasn’t got nothing to do with Stark,” he said.

“If this were a regular engagement, you could be court-martialed. Smoking a pipe! Skulking here smoking a pipe! Look at the other lads!”

Tom stared miserably at the busy group who were still heaping up whatever inflammables they could find. Then he put the pipe back in his mouth and gave another dogged puff.

“Here! Give me that!” Livid with rage, Ike Baldwin made a grab for the pipe.

Tom put one hand up before his face and ducked away. The deck under his feet was worn by the tramp of many men, and it was slippery with morning dew. He fell, half recovered himself, and then went down on his knees, his teeth still clamped to the pipestem.

From the hatchway that led below came confused cries.

“Oh, Captain! Tell the Captain there’s not a spark aboard her! Galley fire’s been put out and the ashes raked over! Not a flint! Not a tinderbox! How’s to have a burning without fire?”

Tom felt his pulses quicken. It was as if there were shooting sparks of triumph in his blood. His guess had been right, then. He lifted his head. Baldwin had turned away, having greater troubles now.

“There must be flints somewhere,” he exclaimed crustily. “Have you searched the officers’ quarters? The mess cabin? The hold?”

“Aye, sir. Everywhere.”

Tom got to his feet and looked around him. The men were standing idle now, about the heap of mattresses. They looked bewildered and--well, not afraid--uneasy, maybe. Turning his head a little, he saw the green shores of Hog Island with Noddle’s Island just beyond it, and far beyond that, the roofs of Boston touched with the morning sun. In the foreground hovered the British sloop. Her guns were silent now, but her sails were spread and she seemed to be drawing close. Perhaps this was the time for him to speak.

“Give me that pipe!” Isaac Baldwin’s command had a different tone to it this time. Before he had been angry and somewhat scornful. Now his voice was full of eagerness, quick and keen.

Tom took the pipe from his mouth. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I thought we might need it, sir. That’s why I brought it along. I--I’m not much of a smoking man.”

“Good boy,” said Isaac Baldwin.

He walked quickly across the deck, knelt down, and ripped a bit of tow from a mattress, testing the dryness of it with his fingers. Then he placed it lightly across the bowl of the pipe.

The other men were holding their breaths as they looked on. Tom watched, too, but he felt a strange dizziness coming over him, so he went and clung to the rail.

At first nothing happened. Then it was as if the tow began to melt away. Ike held a larger piece of tow above the first one--a fluffed-out piece. Suddenly the fluff burst into open flame. Someone started to cheer and quickly choked the sound back. From the fluff, Ike lighted a still larger piece of tow and dropped that on the heap of bedding. The men watched, fascinated. First one little tongue of flame leaped up and then another. Then a tiny roaring sound began, growing louder every moment.

When he saw that there was a splendid bonfire a-going, Tom turned to the rail and hung weakly overside. He knew now that his trick had worked and the British schooner would soon be a seething mass of flame. Soon his comrades, their mission accomplished, would be leaping overside and swimming back to Chelsea Neck. When that time came, he knew, he would straighten himself up and go with them, but right now there was a rancid taste in his mouth and the smell of burning pitch in his nostrils. He’d had enough of pipe-smoking to last him a lifetime, and he didn’t feel very well--in fact, he didn’t feel well at all.

_Chapter Nine_

NO CLOUDS ON BUNKER HILL

“Never expected to see you keeping a public house, Ma’am Greenleaf--leastwise, not one with a strong drink license.”

Old Timothy Coffin’s voice had disapproval in it, Kitty thought, as she turned from the small oak bar where she was polishing glasses. The warm June sunshine struck through the diamond-shaped panes and lay in pools of light with rainbow edges on the sanded floor, on the worn tables and benches. A gentle breeze stirred the tall hollyhock stems outside the window. Sally Rose was weeding the hollyhocks--or supposed to be. Now that Gran had come to take charge, there was a task for everyone.

“You’re a-going to see a deal of things you never expected to see,” said Gran tartly. She was seated by the hearth shelling peas, while Timothy swept the tiles with a birch broom.

“Happen you’re right, Ma’am,” agreed the old man. “Never expected to see the King’s men shooting at us--and we going to meeting, praying for the King, all the while.”

“Yes, it’s a strange state of affairs, Timothy,” answered Gran. Her voice had turned suddenly thoughtful, and her fingers played idly with the empty pods as she stared through the open door at the empty house across the way.

Kitty looked at the empty house, too. Most of the houses in Charlestown were empty now, and scarcely any women left in the town at all. The men came back sometimes to cut hay and weed their gardens, but they had sent their families away to the inland towns, and swore they would leave them there till this fuss with the British soldiers was ended, one way or another.

This was bad for business, of course. Here it was, nearly ten o’clock of a fine hot Tuesday morning, sixth of June by the almanac, and she hadn’t served a single customer.

Everything seemed to be set up in terms of this “fuss,” nowadays. For instance, she and Gran and Sally Rose living here in Charlestown and running the Bay and Beagle, while Uncle Job was away with the Massachusetts troops somewhere. Not knowing they were here, thinking Sally Rose was safe in Newburyport, he hadn’t come home. Then when Gran came to join them, hopping mad at the trick Sally Rose had played, she brought Dick Moody and Timothy along to do the men’s work about the place. They hadn’t stayed in camp long, for Dick was young and couldn’t shoot well enough, and Timothy was old, and his bones creaked. But all they wanted to talk about was the camp and the goings-on there. But they didn’t call it a “fuss” like Gran did. They called it a war. And that had a much more important and terrible sound.

War was terrible, Kitty knew, so terrible that it couldn’t be going to happen right here in front of her eyes, to people she knew, maybe to herself--not really.

Dick came in from the backyard with an armful of wood and stacked it carefully beside the hearth. Then he stood silent and respectful, looking at Granny.

Dick had grown taller, Kitty thought, and next time he went to camp, as he threatened to do every day or so, it wasn’t likely they’d send him home for being too young. Sometimes he and Timothy went to the cow pasture at the foot of Bunker Hill and practiced a little with Timothy’s gun--not much, though, because they didn’t want to waste powder and ball. Suddenly she realized Dick was speaking. He looked at her, but he addressed himself to Granny.

“I thank you for bringing me down here, near where I wanted to be. But I’m quitting your service now, Ma’am Greenleaf.”

“Oh, go get yourself a slice of bread and molasses, and you’ll think better of it,” said Granny. “You can put maple sugar on it, too,” she added.

Dick’s face grew red, and his young voice had an unfamiliar harshness in it. “You’ve fed me well enough, Ma’am. It’s not on account of the food and wages I’m leaving.”

“What is it then, and what do you think to do?” asked Gran, with an air of rapidly exhausting patience.

“Up the Mystic a ways--in one o’ the swamps there--some men from Gloucester are building fire boats. I been in the ship-building trade. They said I could help them.”

“Fire boats!” Granny tried to laugh, but there was no merriment in the noise she made. It sounded like a cackle. “And what do you think to do with fire boats, pray?”

“Why, what do most folk do with fire? Burn something. Maybe one o’ the British schooners, or men-o’-war, even. Maybe burn Boston, for all I know. Whatever our orders say.”

“You can’t burn Boston,” retorted Granny severely. “Boston don’t belong to the British soldiery. Houses and shops and all belongs to Americans, as good as you be. True, they’ve most of them fled from it now, but they’ll be back some day--when this fuss is over, and God send that happen right soon. Now whatever is that drum a-beating for?” She held up her head and listened. “I’ve heard fife and drum music enough to last me a long time.”

“You’ll hear more of it before you hear less, Ma’am,” muttered Timothy.

Dick hurried to the door and stared up the road that led to the Neck, from which the sound came. Kitty went to stand beside him.

“Are you really going back to be with the Army, Dick?” she asked, in one of the brief pauses between the slow beats of the drum.

Dick cleared his throat. “Seems like I have to,” he murmured. “Would it matter to you, Kit, if I--” His voice broke off, and his hand just brushed her shoulder.

“Oh Kitty! Kitty!” cried Sally Rose as she came flying down the street, her bright hair loose on her shoulders and her cheeks flushed with excitement. “They’re bringing the prisoners! There’s going to be an exchange! Perhaps Gerry will be in it!”

She dropped down on the broad doorstone and sat there, trying to get back her breath.

“How do you know?” asked Dick quickly. He was not looking at Sally Rose, but up the winding street that led to Charlestown Neck and the towns beyond it on the mainland.

Kitty looked, too. Down the narrow way between the gabled houses came a slowly moving procession. First the drummer stepped out, a scrawny lad not much taller than Dick. He walked all alone, beating a brass-bound drum, and behind him followed a black horse drawing a phaeton with two men in it. After the phaeton rode two British officers on horseback. She could see nothing more at the moment because of a crook in the street. A little crowd was beginning to gather in the direction of Market Square. Sally Rose finally got back her breath and answered Dick’s question.

“When I heard the drum I ran down to Mr. Bassett’s wine shop. He’s back in town, you know, to cut his hay on the Point Road, and I asked him what was happening. He said he heard--”

The drummer had come even with the Bay and Beagle now, and his steady beating drowned out the girl’s excited voice. Sally Rose stopped talking and got to her feet. She and Dick and Kitty stood together in the tavern doorway and watched the slow procession advance and pass close by them.

The two men who rode in the phaeton behind the drummer were in odd contrast to each other, and yet there was the same air of dignity and purpose enveloping both of them. One was old--not so old as Timothy, but not young any more. He was broad-shouldered and sturdy and had a round, good-natured face and a shock of tousled gray hair. He wore a blue uniform. His companion was younger, fair-haired and blue-eyed, with a ruddy face and a fresh, scrubbed look about him. He was not a soldier, apparently, for his coat was fawn-colored with a white-fringed waistcoat underneath.