Chapter IV: Part 4

“That’s Old Put,” said Timothy proudly, for he and Gran had come to stand just behind them. “See! In the blue coat there! General Putnam. His wife must ha’ sent him his uniform.”

“Why would she have to do that?” asked Gran tartly. “Wouldn’t go off to war without it, would he?”

Timothy chuckled. “That’s just what he done! When he heard about Concord Fight, he was building a stone wall on his farm away down in Connecticut. But he come just as he was, in leather breeches and apron. Got here at next day’s sunrise, they say.”

“I guess there was others got here just as quick as he did,” answered Gran. “Yourself for one.” She peered over Kitty’s shoulder. “Who be that by his side?”

“That’s Dr. Warren. Best damn man, I say, that ever come out o’ Boston. Don’t know how General Ward would run Cambridge Camp without him. Figures out how to get supplies, and men, and money, and all. He’s got book learning and can talk to anybody. More’n that, he’s a good doctor.”

“Where are the prisoners, I wonder?” asked Sally Rose.

Kitty nudged her, and she subsided.

After the phaeton came two British officers, splendid in white and scarlet, and riding sleek horses; then another officer in a chaise; then a handful of officers on foot. They were escorted by a blue-uniformed guard that Timothy said looked to him like Connecticut men. By now the drummer had turned into Ferry Street, heading for the wharves at the waterside. Here and there stood a little cluster of men, here and there a woman’s head appeared at a gable window, but the spectators were few. At the very end of the procession a farm cart rattled along, drawn by two plow horses. A group of men sprawled on the floor of it, men in tattered British uniforms, pale and unshaven, unable to walk, apparently, because of wounds or illness. They looked so forlorn and miserable that Kitty felt tears start to her eyes.

“Oh,” she whispered to Sally Rose, “I’m sorry for the poor lads. I don’t care if they are British.”

“If they hadn’t come out shooting at us, they wouldn’t be in this pickle now,” growled Timothy. “Wonder where is our boys we’re supposed to get back in the exchange.”

“Mr. Bassett says they’re aboard the _Lively_,” said Sally Rose. “Oh--oh--Kitty--” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

For a moment Kitty did not see anything to exclaim about. The cart full of prisoners trundled slowly by. Close beside it walked a young man in a rough woolen shirt and homespun breeches. He carried a knapsack, and a large wooden bottle was slung from his shoulder by a leather strap. Just then the procession halted a moment. Up ahead, the drummer turned down Ferry Street on his way to the docks to meet the boats from the _Lively_. The phaeton bent its wheels sharply to round the corner. In the pause the young man unstoppered the wooden bottle and held it over the side of the cart so one of the prisoners could drink. The rear guard, another group of blue-coated Connecticut men, halted too. They were apparently the last of the procession.

Kitty glanced again at her cousin. Sally Rose stood up proud and smiling. The long lashes about her hazel eyes flickered provocatively. Sally Rose was watching the young man with the bottle. For that reason, and that reason alone, Kitty looked closer at him herself.

He turned just then and smiled at them. He had dark hair, she saw, and deep-set blue eyes. My, he was certainly handsome! Living all her life in Newburyport, she hadn’t realized how many handsome men there were in the world--drifting down the Merrimack on a log raft, walking the road that ran past Bunker Hill. They were everywhere, now that she had suddenly grown up enough to look at them. Sally Rose had always known. Sally Rose was born grown up.

She cast a sudden look at Dick, and knew instinctively that she would never kiss him good night again, or if she did, it would be with a difference. Their kissing days were over. Dick was an old friend now, and only that. Never again would he stir in her that strange tremulous feeling that went with a new moon and apple blossoms and the first warm nights of spring. She knew, but she did not know how it was that she knew.

The young man in the leather breeches was still smiling. He lifted his hand, oh so slightly, and motioned toward the docks. Then the cart wheels began to turn again, and the procession plodded on. The little group around the door of the Bay and Beagle watched until the last straggler was out of sight.

“Well, that’s over,” said Gran briskly, “It’s well past noon, and I expect we’ll have custom. If you’re leaving us, Master Dick, you might as well be off, and good luck to you--the same as I’d wish to the son of any neighbor. Timothy, you better bring up another keg of brandy from the cellar. You can tend the taps for awhile, Kitty, and Sally Rose--why, where is Sally Rose?”

They called and called and searched the bedrooms and the attic and the back garden, but the girl was nowhere to be found. Dick left, after a bit, taking his spare shirt with him, a small ham, and a hunting knife proffered by Timothy. The old man went on his errand to the cellar, and Kitty returned to polishing glasses. A few men drifted in to drink beer and cider and talk about the exchange of prisoners. Gran muttered a few dark words about the flightiness of the younger generation and went into the kitchen to put the bread to rise and make pease porridge for supper. Bread and beer and pease porridge folk had to have, thought Kitty, no matter if wars came about, and handsome young men went out to be killed in them, and girls grew up all too late.

* * * * *

Trade got brisker during the long hot afternoon, and Kitty was kept busy filling mugs and glasses. She learned from the talk of the men who happened in that the British prisoners had been sent out by boat to the great, threatening man-o’-war that swung at anchor in the channel, halfway to Boston. The officers in charge of the business had all come into town to take some refreshment and expected shortly to return to the dock to receive the American lads whose delivery would complete the exchange. Everything had been conducted in an orderly and courteous fashion.

Gradually the excitement died down. Gran put on her second best straw bonnet and went out to look for Sally Rose. Timothy had trouble getting the brandy keg up the cellar stairs. Bees droned loudly in the hollyhocks, and gulls cried from the harbor. Slowly the sun moved over to the westward side of the roofs and gables. It was a summer afternoon like any other summer afternoon.

And then, all of a sudden, Sally Rose was back. She slipped in quietly, like a shadow. On her face was that cat-stealing-cream look that fitted her so well. She went straight to the kitchen.

Kitty hastily served a waiting customer, that same Mr. Bassett who had come back to Charlestown to cut his hay, and then she followed her cousin. Sally Rose stood by the water bucket, the dipper lifted to her mouth. She drank thirstily.

“My, that tastes good,” she said, licking her wet red lips. “It was hot down by the dockside. Not a sea breeze anywhere.”

“You’ve been to the docks?” asked Kitty curiously.

“Of course. Didn’t you see Gerry wave to me to follow him?”

“Gerry?”

“Oh, of course, Kit!” Sally Rose’s voice had a ring of impatience in it. “I tried to make signs to you. I thought by the look of your face you understood me. You were surely staring at him.”

“Staring at whom?”

“Oh Kitty! You saw him! Gerry was the lad in the homespun breeches who marched beside the prisoners’ cart. He was the only one able to walk, and so he had to wait on them.”

“But--but that lad--he looked like an American. His clothes--I thought--”

“Of course! Gerry was pretending to be an American when we captured him. That’s why he was looking so shabby. You should see him in his captain’s uniform! He’s been kept in a tent in Cambridge--a tent made of old sailcloth that the rain came through, and guards all around him. But he was exchanged this afternoon. I went down to the dock and talked to him while the boats were putting off. He’s gone safe to his own regiment in Boston now. But he says he’ll come back to see me--another day.”

“That’s nice,” said Kitty. “That’s very nice indeed.”

She felt cross suddenly. It must be the heat, or because she had been working so hard, or because she had forgotten to eat any dinner. It might be the outrageous behavior of Sally Rose. There are many ways to explain such a thing.

“And you know he said ...” Sally Rose rattled on.

Suddenly there was a hoarse cry from the cellar stairs--a burst of strong language, then a deep groan of pain. The girls looked at each other.

“Oh, it’s Timothy!” gasped Kit. “He was trying to bring up a brandy keg. He must have fallen.”

The groans continued. She ran to the head of the cellar stairs and looked down. Sure enough, the old man lay on the dank earth that served for a flooring, the heavy keg on top of his right foot, his left leg bent beneath him.

“We’re coming, Timothy,” she called. “We’ll help you.”

She gazed desperately around the taproom, but it was empty. The last customer had gone. Again she and Sally Rose stood looking at each other.

“He’ll need a doctor,” murmured Kitty. “He’s sure to need a doctor. Whether there’s one left in town or not, I don’t know.”

Suddenly her cousin’s face lighted. “Of course there’s one in town,” she cried. “Timothy himself pointed one out. That kind-looking man who rode in the phaeton with Old Put. Dr. Warren of Boston.”

“Oh--of course I remember. But he’ll be dining with the British officers. He’s an important official, I think, like a minister or a judge. He was wearing a fine coat, Sally Rose. He won’t want to leave his wine and go down in a dirty cellar to tend a poor old man.”

“You can’t tell,” said Sally Rose. “You can’t tell at all. He looked kind. I’m going to try to find him.” She ran through the doorway.

Kitty stepped gingerly down the cellar stairs to see if she could help the old man. He could only moan and grunt and utter inarticulate sounds when she tried to talk to him, but she managed to roll the heavy cask off his foot and drag him into a sitting position against the roots of the massive chimney. It seemed hours before she heard footsteps on the floor overhead, but later she realized it could not have been very long.

A moment later the fair-haired doctor in his neat coat and breeches stepped nimbly down the stairway. Four of the blue-coated Connecticut lads swarmed after.

Dr. Warren looked around him in the dim light, at the cobwebbed depths of the cellar: at the empty vegetable bins waiting for this year’s harvest, the shelves of preserves and jellies in stone crocks, the casks that held the stock in trade of the tavern above. He smiled briefly at Kitty, then he went down on his knees on the earth floor.

“A bad mishap, Timothy,” he said, bending over the old man. There was a note of cheery courage in his voice. Kitty felt it, and she knew that Timothy felt it too. The old man spoke weakly.

“Aye, sir. All the brandy in the house be not in that blasted keg there. Have the lass to fetch me a swig, if you will, sir.”

Kitty did not need to be told again. She ran upstairs to fetch a glass of brandy. When she came back, the doctor had cut Timothy’s boot away and bared the flesh beneath it. He shook his head, and there was a sober look on his face.

“’Tis somewhat crushed I fear. Drink up your brandy, sir, and I will patch it as best I can. Then the lads will carry you upstairs--where there should be a bed waiting.” He looked questioningly at Kitty.

“There will be,” she assured him tremulously. “I spoke to my cousin, Sally Rose. She’s getting it ready.”

She held the brandy glass to Timothy’s mouth, and the old man sipped feebly. Sometimes he flinched, as the doctor worked at the broken foot, reshaping it, applying splints and bandages. He did not utter a word, but his breath came in painful gasps, and he was shivering. The young soldiers stood looking on.

Dr. Warren talked as he worked, hoping, perhaps, to distract the old man’s attention.

“Well, sir,” he said, “to tell you the truth, sir, I was glad enough when the young lady came to fetch me here. I was in the act of quarreling with Old Put as we partook of a roast goose and glasses of claret. Somehow, in spite of the present triumph of more cautious gentlemen, I fear the General may yet have his way.”

Timothy grinned faintly. “I be sorry for ye,” he whispered, “if ye quarreled with Old Put.”

“Yes, and I felt I was getting the worst of it, though it seems that at the moment all the greatest powers in our Great American Army be on my side. Steady, Timothy! This will take but a minute. There! As I was saying, the whole camp has been in an uproar the past month, as to whether or not we should fortify Bunker Hill and make a stand against the British there. Some say we must fight them, and it better be soon rather than late. Old Put and Prescott go with that way of thinking.”

“Fortify Bunker Hill?” whispered Timothy manfully through his pain. “Why, that be close by!”

“Very close,” said the doctor. “General Ward and I have talked much about it. I have been housed at his Cambridge headquarters of late, where I can easily visit the Provincial Congress in Watertown. He and I think our men are not yet ready to make a stand. We are against such an incautious display of valor. Later, perhaps, but not until we have a better equipped and conditioned army.”

“I wisht,” muttered Timothy, “I had displayed less incautious valor with that brandy keg. In God’s mercy, I do, sir.”

Dr. Warren tightened the last bandage and got to his feet.

“Take him up carefully, lads,” he said, “and carry him above stairs. The little golden-head will show you where.”

Kitty thought fleetingly that even the great doctor had been enough like common men so that he had an eye for the beauty of Sally Rose. She had hardly noticed what he said about a battle on Bunker Hill.

But she thought about it later when she was standing at the tavern door in the hot dusk, looking past the roofs of Charlestown at the green countryside rising behind it. Gran was at home now, alternately tending Timothy and scolding Sally Rose. The doctor and the soldiers had long since gone, and the exchange of prisoners was probably complete.

Bunker Hill rose smooth and round and green. Breed’s Hill, not so tall, was nearer the point, and the third hill, away to the southeast, she could not see. The hills were criss-crossed with rail fences and stone walls, divided into orchards, gardens, and pasture land. Daisies and buttercups bloomed all white and gold in the hayfields. The locust trees rose tall, and the elm trees taller. Hard green fruit clung to the apple boughs, and tassels were coming on the stalks of Indian corn. Gulls cried from the harbor, and a bat swooped down from the eaves above her head, and darted off, winging its way from side to side of the crooked street.

Away to the eastward a low-lying cloud bank merged with the dim sea. There were clouds in the west, too, and thickening round the hills and steeples of Boston. But over Bunker Hill the sky was clear, lighted with one pale star. She took it to be a good omen--that there would be no battle there.

It seemed to Kitty the most peaceful landscape she had ever seen in her life. And yet, the talk was, “Fortify Bunker Hill! Make a stand against the British there!” She was glad Dr. Warren did not favor it, and she hoped he would have his way. She thought maybe she would have liked the young man by the prisoners’ cart, if she had ever come to know him. But then, she had never dreamed that he was not an American. And he had turned out to be her cousin’s British Gerry. He probably wouldn’t have looked so handsome to her if he had been wearing his red coat.

_Chapter Ten_

A TRYST WITH THE ENEMY

“But what makes you so sure he will be there, Sally Rose,” asked Kitty, “if you haven’t had any word?”

She was curled up in the middle of the four-poster bed which she shared with her cousin. Sally Rose sat at the dressing table. A candle burned at each side of the mirror, and she was studying her reflection in its glass. She wore nothing but a thin cambric shift, and her feet were bare.

“He told me he would come in a week’s time, if not before. He promised it wouldn’t be more than that. When he got aboard the boat to go to the _Lively_, he promised me.”

Kitty stared past Sally Rose’s golden head into the dark street. Their bedroom was over the kitchen, and she could hear Gran’s brisk footsteps trotting about below. Gran was roasting mutton to feed tomorrow’s customers, but she had sent the girls upstairs to get their beauty sleep.

“I’ve slipped out to our old meeting place in the graveyard every night, but he was never there,” she went on. “But tonight it’s Tuesday again, so he has to be. He just has to be there tonight.” She pulled on a pair of delicate thread stockings, and thrust her feet into high-heeled slippers with roses on the toes.

Kitty eyed them disapprovingly. “As I remember the old graveyard, it’s full of holes and hummocks,” she said. “You’ll trip and fall in those shoes, if you go walking there.”

“I don’t expect to do much walking,” said Sally Rose.

Then a mischievous light shone out of her hazel eyes. “Kitty! Wait till you see what I bought today. The shops are full of bargains, with all the Tories gone out of town. You’ll have to help me, I think.”

She scurried to the clothespress, reached inside it, and brought out the most hideous contraption Kitty had ever seen. It was a pair of stays, she supposed, but what a pair! A long cruel case of whalebone and stiff buckram, high in the back, very low in the front, pinched and pointed like the body of some vicious insect. That it was covered with white velvet and sewn with brilliants did not make it any the less frightening. Kitty got a cramp in her stomach as she looked at it. Her chest tightened, and for a moment she had trouble in breathing. But Sally Rose had a gleam in her eye.

“I got this at the staymaker’s this morning,” she said. “He ordered it for a rich Tory lady, but she fled away to join the British in Boston, so he let me have it cheap.”

“I should think he might,” said Kitty. “Why it’s hardly a foot around the middle. You’re slender, but not that slender, Sally Rose. How do you think to lace it up?”

Sally Rose smiled engagingly and stepped into the dreadful garment, dragging it over her hips and around her slight form. “Oh, you’ll have to lace it for me, Kit,” she announced. “I’ll have a truly fashionable figure now. I always wanted one. Remember, Gerry’s been looking at those rich Boston ladies all the week long. I don’t want him to feel disappointed when he sees me.”

Kitty climbed down from the bed and went to her cousin. She picked up the ends of the lacings and began to weave them into the metal hooks. Sally Rose stood there beaming, holding the stays in place.

“Hurry and lace them up, Kit,” she urged. “It will be easier if I can slip out while Gran is still at her work. Before she comes upstairs, I mean to be gone.”

With a great effort Kitty drew the stays together at the bottom, clamping her cousin’s slim hips and belly into a frighteningly narrow space. The garment had been designed for a much taller girl, and came well down over the thigh, almost to the knee. It fastened at the bottom with a tiny jeweled padlock, and Kitty noted a similar one at the top. She hesitated.

“Does this unlock with a key?” she asked.

Sally Rose held up a tiny bit of gold on a satin ribbon. “Oh, it does, Kitty, and I have the key here. Isn’t it all deliciously clever?”

“I don’t know,” muttered Kitty. “Hold your stomach in.”

Sally Rose compressed herself to the utmost and closed her eyes. Kitty fastened the padlock and struggled with the lacings.

“Tighter! Tighter!” gasped Sally Rose.

Kitty pulled at the strong cord until it almost cut her fingers. It was waxed, and it had a toughness about it that made her think of wire.

After a moment she shoved Sally Rose up against the wall, sat down in a chair in front of her, braced her knees, and laboriously threaded and pulled till the task was over and she could snap the jeweled padlock at the top. Then she stood off to view her work.

Sally Rose looked like a long white worm standing up on its tail--or like a white candle, if you wanted to be poetic--but more like a worm. Her face was flushed, and she could take only the shortest, shallowest breaths, but there was triumph in her eye.

“Now my dress and petticoat, Kitty, if you’ll be so good. Oh wait till Gerry sees me! He’ll be so o’ercome with admiration he’ll scarce know what to say!”

“He’ll be o’ercome, I don’t doubt,” said Kitty. “Especially if he tries to put his arm around you. You feel like a stick of cord wood.” She fastened the gauze petticoat over the stays and then brought the sky-blue muslin gown Sally Rose had laid out on a chair.

Was life going to be like this always, she wondered somewhat wistfully; helping Sally Rose to dress, letting Sally Rose in when the evening was over; herself never dressing up, never meeting anyone, never going anywhere? She wished that Tom Trask the logger had the daring British Gerry had. Gossip said that the New Hampshire men were in camp in Medford, and Medford wasn’t much farther than Boston. But he had no way of knowing she was so near him, of course. Perhaps when things got quieter after Concord Fight, he’d gone back to Newburyport to return her father’s gun. But now it seemed that battles were threatening again. Perhaps--

“Now my gold gauze kerchief and my scent bottle,” panted Sally Rose.

Kitty brought them. “Are you ready now?” she asked, trying to keep the envy from her tone. It wasn’t Sally Rose’s fault that she felt lonely and neglected, not Sally Rose’s fault at all.

“Yes, I’m ready,” sighed Sally Rose. “I’ll go down the back stairs, I think, and through the garden. Good-by, dear.” She held up her soft cheek.

Kitty brushed her lips against it. “Good-by, Sally Rose,” she said. “Don’t get into any trouble, and come home soon.”

Sally Rose laughed a little uneasily and made an awkward motion to step forward. But she did not step forward. She stopped suddenly, twisted her body, or tried to, and put her hand to her side.

“My, a bone jabbed me,” she said.

After a moment she tried again to move forward. This time she succeeded in taking three little hobbled steps. Then she swayed clumsily, tripped, and fell on the rag rug. There she lay like an overset turtle, unable to rise.

Kitty stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to choke back her laughter. Then she ran forward and struggled to hoist Sally Rose to her feet.

“I--I don’t think I can walk in this thing,” gasped Sally Rose. “It’s like having two feet in one breeches leg. And the bones hurt me. And it’s getting late. Take it off, Kit. Take it off at once. Here’s the key.”

Still trying to keep back her laughter at the other girl’s ridiculous plight, Kitty pulled off the blue dress and the petticoat and fitted the tiny key into the jeweled lock. It refused to turn, and she twisted it gently.

“You’ll be in a pickle,” she muttered, “if it should break.”

“Don’t you dare break it!” squealed Sally Rose.

Kitty worked the key this way and that. Below in the tavern kitchen Gran’s voice lifted up the words of an old hymn. Through the open window drifted the scent of garden flowers in the warm dark. Her hands got sticky with sweat. She kept dropping the wretched little key.

“Hurry!” pleaded Sally Rose. “I’m afraid he’ll come and not find me. I’m afraid he’ll go away.”

Desperately Kitty twisted the bit of metal.

“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” she said at last. “I can’t make it work. What will we do?”

“Cut the lacings, I suppose,” sighed Sally Rose, “and I’ll try to wiggle out through the gap in the middle. I don’t care much. I never should have bought it. Maybe the staymaker will take it back. Get my shears. They’re in the workbox in the top drawer.”

“But you left your workbox in the kitchen,” said Kit. “I saw it there when we were scouring the pots after supper. All the other shears and knives are there too, and if I went down, I’d have to explain to Gran.”

The two girls looked at each other in dismay. Sally Rose bit her lip. “Yes, you would,” she said. “And whatever excuse you made, she might come back upstairs with you, and then I’d never get away. Can’t you break the lacings?”

“I doubt it,” said Kitty. “It’s the toughest cord I ever saw.”

“Try.”

So Kitty yanked and tugged and twisted, but the cord refused to break. Sally Rose was hopelessly trapped.

They were silent for a moment. Then she clenched her soft hands and stiffened her mouth. “I’ll have to go just as I am,” she said, and tried to walk again. Again she fell.

Kitty helped her up and led her to a chair. “Sit down, Sally Rose,” she said gently. But Sally Rose could not sit down.

“I guess it’s no use,” she murmured, reluctant, almost tearful. “You’ll just have to go and tell Gerry I’m sick, or something. Tell him to come back tomorrow night. I’ll surely be there.”

Kitty hesitated. She didn’t know quite why. Was it because Gerry was British and she disapproved of the British? Or was it a deeper, stranger thing--a sort of foreboding? A fear, and yet an eagerness, too.

“Are you sure you want me to, Sally Rose?” she asked.

Sally Rose stamped her foot, or tried to, then writhed as a whalebone jabbed her. “Of course I do,” she cried. “Go quickly, do, and come back and tell me what he has to say. Then we’ll have to get the shears and cut me out of this thing. Oh Kitty, go now!”

And so it was that Kitty Greenleaf slipped away to Charlestown’s old graveyard that night to meet her country’s enemy, her cousin’s exciting young man.

* * * * *

An eerie little wind was blowing through the town that night, a warm wind, and it had the tang of sea salt in it, and the heavy sweetness of the new mown hay on Bunker Hill. It ruffled Kitty’s hair and cooled her hot face as she walked through the empty streets, past the Two Cranes, the courthouse, and the meeting house with its tall white spire rising against the dark. Few of the windows were lighted, but down by the docks she could hear the familiar cry of the watch, and over the bay the lights of Boston shone out bright and clear. It was hard for her to remember that Boston was no longer a friendly town.

When she reached the graveyard she felt her way along the low wall that protected it from the street. Shadow lay thick about the grassy mounds inside, and crooked elm boughs meeting overhead shut out the thin glow of the starlight. There was no moon.

Leaving the wall she blundered forward, now and then brushing against one of the old headstones. She knew what they looked like well enough: short thick slabs of greenish slate with a death’s head at the top; some of reddish sandstone; beyond them the granite tombs where the great families lay. But she could not seem to find the path that would lead her through. And then, somehow she did find it, and groped her way to the wall on the far side with the open fields beyond. He was standing there, just as she knew he would be.

He carried a dark lantern, half open now to let a little light shine through, and he wore the rough shirt and breeches of an American farmer. Sally Rose would have been disappointed had she hoped to see the scarlet coat. As he heard her footstep on the worn grass he drew in his breath sharply.

“Ah, Sally Rose!” he whispered, and turned the lantern full upon her.

“I--I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’m her cousin Kitty. She sent me to tell you--”

And then suddenly, to her own horror, in spite of the awe she felt for this handsome young stranger from the enemy camp, in spite of the need to keep this tryst in silence and secrecy, she began to giggle. She couldn’t help it when she thought of Sally Rose trapped in the stays; of her pretty, angry face on top of the body of a pinched white worm. She put both hands to her mouth and rocked and rocked with stifled mirth.

Then she realized that he was shaking her. “Stop it, Kitty, if that’s your name,” he said. His voice was firm but not unkind. “Where’s Sally Rose? Tell me what you are laughing at? I want to laugh, too.”

He had put the lantern down and was holding her by both shoulders. She could not see his face, and yet she knew what he looked like. She would always remember him, she thought, from that day when he marched past the Bay and Beagle and she was standing at the door. Suddenly she found herself telling him all about the stays and Sally Rose.

He kept very quiet until she had finished, but then he did not laugh as she had expected him to do. When he spoke again, his voice had an impatient sound.

“I’ve often heard the men in barracks say--the married men, that is--that women have no sense at all. And I guess they be right. I’m sorry Sally Rose did such a foolish thing. I--I wanted--tonight it really mattered that I should see her.”

“But she will be here tomorrow night, sir,” answered Kitty, not quite sure how one addressed a British officer who pretended not to be a British officer. “It will be such a little time till then.”

“A little time,” he muttered, “but much may happen in it. I may be here tomorrow night--but I trust she will not be.”

“What do you mean?” faltered Kitty.

A bough rustled a few yards off, and he flashed his lantern that way and listened. After a moment he spoke again in a lower tone.

“How does it happen you womenfolk are still in Charlestown? I understood that it had been evacuated.”

“Oh, it has been--nearly. But Granny says she will not abandon my uncle’s property here until she must. She says she will stay and try to keep it intact for him, if she can.”

“It’s been known since April that we might burn the town any day.”

“I know. But time goes on, and you do not do it, and we grow less afraid. And all the while our Army is growing larger and more strong.”

“So is ours,” he retorted. “Three new generals arrived from England; martial law proclaimed in Boston yesterday. General Gage denounced you for rebels and traitors. If you don’t disband and go your ways in peace soon, we’re coming out to make you go.”

“Then I suppose there will be a battle,” sighed Kitty. “I’ll never know why it is men can’t settle a squabble without trying to kill each other.”

Again he flashed the lantern on her face and held it there a moment. Then he spoke to her from out of the dark, and his voice had a different sound.

“You know--Kitty--I don’t think I understand it either. I never really wanted to be a soldier.”

“A captain,” she corrected him. “A captain in the Twenty-third.”

“Ah yes, a captain. I can hear the watch coming down the street, and we cannot leave here until he is gone. Sit down on the grass.”

Indeed it was the watch, and she could hear him shouting as he turned the corner by the brick well. “Ten o’ the clock, this thirteenth night o’ June, and the weather fair. Town’s empty, Sons o’ Liberty gone to camp, Rogues and Tories to Boston!”

The young Englishman drew her down in the shadow of a flowering quince tree. She sat there straight and proper and he sprawled with careless grace beside her, not alarmingly near.

“No, I never meant to bear arms, and how I came to do it is no matter, but I, too, wish England and America could settle their differences without spilling blood. Do you think I am a coward, Kitty?”

“No,” she said slowly. “I do not think that.”

The voice of the watch grew louder. He must be passing very close by.

“I have cursed the Americans, and yet I am not sure I was right when I did it. I have gone amongst them some, even been kept in gaol by them, and yet I can’t see that they’re any worse fellows than I. I cannot help thinking that I myself might have been an American. Except for a choice a man made some hundred and fifty years ago. The right choice, of course--and yet--”

Kitty felt her blood stir in a different way now. She had been thrilling to his strangeness and his handsomeness, and the excitement of this secret meeting. But now she had the uncanny feel that there were ghosts about. Mighty ghosts, ghosts of countries coming together, here in the dim starlight in the shadow of Bunker Hill.

“You an American? How?”

He settled comfortably in the grass. “Listen, Kitty, I’ll tell you more of myself than I ever told Sally Rose. I do not know why, unless it is because you are less distractingly fair. Alas, I am afraid I like overwell to talk, Kitty.”

“So does everyone, it seems,” murmured Kitty. “But what happened--a hundred and fifty years ago?”

“I like to talk, I suppose, because my mother was a strolling player, and famous for the way she spoke her lines as well as her good looks. She traveled the fairs and market towns, and everywhere she was made welcome and a stage set up for her. My father was a West Country farmer, and a dull husband I think he made her. I cannot recall her too well. But it was through his blood that I might have been born an American.”

The voice of the watch was fading now, down by the tannery and the distilleries, but Gerry Malory kept on talking.

“My father would shake his head, I remember, whenever anyone mentioned America. ’Twas a legend in our family that once an old grandsire of ours, about the time I mention, had journeyed to Plymouth and watched a shipful of people leaving that country to settle in this one. That he thought for a time to go with them, but decided against it. Sometimes I wonder if he had gone--”

The watch was coming back. They saw the light he carried. It wavered to and fro. Then it stopped just at the wall of the graveyard. Gerry Malory sprang hastily to his feet. “Kitty,” he whispered, “go back and tell Sally Rose--I don’t know when I’ll see her--but tell her to get out of Charlestown. We’re getting ready to move against the Americans. I don’t know when. At least by the end of the week. Some say we’re for Dorchester Heights, and some say Bunker Hill. Tell her to be gone. And you go with her--Kitty.”

He vaulted over the low wall and disappeared in the darkness between the fields and the flats along the river. Kitty peered after him, but she saw only a scatter of fireflies and a light mist rising from the earth. She was not afraid of the watch, but he did not challenge her as she crept back to the Bay and Beagle. He did not know she had been keeping a tryst with the enemy. Well, she had been, and felt herself none the worse for it.

She, too, was wondering what would have happened if old Grandsire Malory had taken that ship so many years ago.

_Chapter Eleven_

A GREAT SECRET

“We been long enough getting here,” said Tom Trask, as he dragged the prow of a small rowboat up the shaly beach. “Are you sure this be Charlestown Neck, Johnny?”

Tugging away at the other side of the boat, Johnny Pettengall answered him. “Charlestown, sure enough. Hold on. Give me your hand. I got my foot caught in a patch of eel grass or summ’at like.”

Tom did as he was bidden, and in a moment the two were climbing up a steep bank into the hayfield above. Just to their left loomed a low hill, sharp on its eastern side. A taller, more gently rounded hill stood up behind it, and through the thick, fragrant grass around them a rail fence wound away toward higher ground. Tom could see no lighted windows anywhere.

“You ever been here before?” he asked doubtfully.

“No,” said Johnny, “but I come by here yesterday when I was aboard our sloop that went up to the Penny Ferry to meet the supply carts from the eastward. I had it pointed out to me. This is Breed’s Hill just ahead of us, and Bunker Hill’s behind.”

“Charlestown’s said to be a village,” Tom continued to object. “I can see orchards, and what looks like a brick kiln over there, and by the smell there’s clay pits somewhere about. But I don’t see any houses at all.”

“Town’s the other side of the hill,” Johnny reassured him. “Come on. We got to get to the Bay and Beagle before Ma’am Greenleaf locks up for the night.”

Uncertain and on his guard, Tom followed his companion up the slope through the firefly-studded grass. More than a week now, he and the Newburyport lad had been sleeping at night with their feet toward the same campfire--when they did sleep--sharing the same ration of salt pork and corn meal. He had not gone back to Medford after they burned the _Diana_, for he and Johnny kept telling themselves that they would borrow a boat and row over to Charlestown to see the girls, but not until tonight had they been able to get away. They had not wasted their time, though. They had gone with the raiding parties that constantly scoured the islands all the way from Chelsea Neck to the deep sea. They had helped to burn Tory barns and steal Tory cattle. Tom felt he could give a good account of himself when he got back to his own company, but he was not so sure Captain Moore would consider it a good account. He was even more dubious about the attitude of the Colonel, his old friend, Johnny Stark. That they were old friends wouldn’t make any difference at all, when there was business in hand.

Yes, tonight after he’d seen Miss Kitty again and stolen a kiss or two, he thought he’d better make for Medford, with or without young Pettengall. Maybe he’d better ask now just what his companion intended to do.

At that moment they reached the crest of Breed’s Hill and paused to look down.

“Them lights over there must be Boston,” Johnny told him. “You ever been there, Tom? I heard it’s the greatest city in North America. The best anyway.”

“Didn’t know we had any other cities,” said Tom, grinning in the darkness.

Johnny took him seriously. “Course we have,” he hastened to protest. “There’s New York, and Philadelphia where the Great Congress meets. Some others further south, I guess, and all of ’em sending help to Boston. There’s talk they’ll even send their soldiers here.”

“Believe it when I see them,” said Tom skeptically. “But you ask me, and I say no, I never been to Boston. I live a sight of a ways off, you know, up the Merrimack.”

They stood there together a moment in the starlight and cool sea wind, the sweetness of ripe hay.

“I know,” said Johnny. “You didn’t go back there, ever--after we got news of Concord Fight, did you? Ain’t you got some folks waiting for you to come home?”

Tom shrugged. “Folks is all dead,” he told Johnny. “Won’t nobody miss me. Well--maybe a girl or two.”

Then he spoke more quickly and in a lighter tone. “But I know where I will be missed, I bet, and that’s back in Medford. My company was less than half full strength when I left, and I better be getting myself over there. How about you?”

“I ought to be in Cambridge, I guess, with Captain Little’s company.”

“Moses Little? Heard he’d been made a colonel, just like Stark.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear.”

They were starting down the hill now, toward a cluster of roofs and gables with a tall spire in the midst of it, toward a shadowy line of wharves along the shore.

“I know sure enough about Johnny. I was there in the tavern when we chose him by a show of hands. They say some voted twice. I know I did. He was my neighbor up in Derryfield. I worked in his sawmill some and went hunting with his son Caleb. Caleb’s a right smart lad.”

It was harder going down Breed’s Hill than going up, for the western side was as steep as the eastern, and they had to hold back. There were stone walls to climb, and the dew-wet grass was hard to wade through, but Tom scarcely noticed that. Funny, he thought, as he heard his tongue run on, how he never had very much to say, unless it was about John Stark.

“Oh, Johnny’s the man for you,” he was saying. “Once when the Indians captured him and put him to hoeing their fields, he cut down the corn and left the weeds standing. When they made him run the gantlet, he whacked them as he went through, instead of t’other way. Kept singing while he ran that he’d kiss all their women. He never liked the British either, after he fought beside them at Quebec. ’Fore I was high as a rail fence, I heard him say we’d have to fight against them sometime. There was folks who laughed at him, but I guess they ain’t laughing now.”

“Here we be,” said Johnny as they came to the beginning of a street that led past the darkened windows of Charlestown. “I got no idea where the place is. Likely there’ll be a horse and a dog on its sign.”

But Charlestown was no very extensive metropolis, and after a little wandering through its dim lanes and uncobbled streets, they found the tavern they were seeking. The door stood open to let in the night breeze, and the two boys stepped uncertainly through.

A few candles burning in iron holders lit the dim taproom. Clean mugs and glasses stood neatly on shelves behind the bar, and the long brown braid of tobacco leaves hanging near it swayed gently in the draft from the open door. Tom thought that the braid looked like a cow’s tail. He made up a face when he remembered the pipeful of tobacco he’d had to smoke the night they burned the _Diana_. Here was one customer of Ma’am Greenleaf’s who wouldn’t ask her to cut off a few inches for him, that was sure. But where was Ma’am Greenleaf? Or Kitty? Or the other girl? The room was empty, so far as he could see.

Johnny, too, was looking around him. “Don’t see where they could have gone to,” he muttered, “and left the door open and the lights burning.”

Just at that moment there came an anguished wail from somewhere overhead.

“Stop it! Oh stop! You’re killing me!”

“Robbers!” gasped Johnny.

“Or them British devils!” cried Tom, looking desperately for the staircase. He finally saw it, winding up from a little alcove that led to the kitchen, and in a flash he and Johnny pounded up the narrow treads, bursting breathlessly into a long hall at the top. From a room on the side toward the river emerged another half-stifled cry.

“In here!” shouted Tom, flinging the door open.

Then he stood quite still. The sight before him was such a one as he had never seen by the falls of Derryfield. Johnny’s astonished gasp told him that his friend was as taken aback as he.

Sally Rose Townsend sat precariously on the edge of a four-poster bed, her face flushed and distorted. Granny Greenleaf stood in front of her, her hands busy about the girl’s dress--except that Sally Rose wore no dress. Her shoulders were bare and gleamed whitely in the candlelight, but her entire body below her shoulders seemed to be shut up in some sort of cage. The cage gapped apart in the middle to show an expanse of some white fabric underneath. It was gripped firmly together at a point just above the girl’s waist, and again below.

“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” Gran was muttering. “I can’t get this foolish contrivance apart, and there isn’t a locksmith left in town. I believe there’s a blacksmith, though. We’ll send Kitty to fetch the blacksmith. Mercy, where is Kitty? I never thought of her before. Where has Kitty gone?”

“Quick! Cover me up, Gran!” gasped Sally Rose frantically, her breath short, her words not quite clear.

Gran glanced backward over her shoulder. Then she turned completely round and faced the intruders.

“Johnny Pettengall! And you--” she peered closer, “the thief who made off with my son’s musket! What are you doing in the bedchamber of a decent lass?”

“We didn’t mean no harm, Ma’am Greenleaf,” explained Johnny. “We just came from camp to see the girls, and walked into the taproom like--like anybody would. Then we heard Sally Rose scream she was being killed--” He broke off and stared again at the bent golden head of his adored one. Sally Rose was beginning to weep tears of embarrassment.

“I see,” replied the old lady grimly. She stood protectingly in front of her granddaughter. After a moment she seemed to come to a decision. “Well, since you’re here, you’re here. And it’s plain some male critter will have to help us. ’Tisn’t as if the girl weren’t decently covered underneath. Can you boys get her out of that contraption?”

Johnny swallowed and made inarticulate sounds.

“We can try,” said Tom. “What is it? What’s it made of?”

“It’s a pair of stays. An outlandish pair brought from New York for some Tory hussy.”

“My mother’s stays are laced together,” said Johnny, his embarrassment lessening a little. “Won’t they come off if you unlace them?”

“I cut the laces--first thing I did when I came upstairs and heard her moaning,” snapped Gran. “But these are fastened with locks at top and bottom. Come and look at them.”

Gran motioned the boys forward and they gingerly approached Sally Rose.

Tom reached out coolly and fingered the jeweled padlock.

Sally Rose sucked in her breath and closed her eyes. Johnny looked the other way.

“I could force it apart,” said Tom thoughtfully, “but it’s too small for me to get a grip on. What we need is a file. You got one about the place somewhere?”

“Does your father keep a tool chest handy?” demanded Gran of Sally Rose.

“I think--in the barn--out the back way through the garden,” Sally Rose whispered.

“Go find it, Johnny,” ordered Tom.

Johnny dashed for the stairway, and the Derryfield lad walked to the window and stood there with his hands behind him, gazing into the summer night. Nothing could be done until Johnny came back, and he had no wish to embarrass the poor girl further by staring at her.

He looked at the gable windows of the house across the street, and then down the narrow way that led to the market place. Then he craned his neck at what he saw, and felt a little smile crooking the corners of his mouth. Miss Catherine Greenleaf was coming hot-foot home from somewhere, and he guessed he’d see she got a proper welcome. He turned back to Gran who still stood in front of Sally Rose, tapping her slippered foot on the pine floor.

“Think I’ll go help Johnny hunt for the file,” he said.

He stepped into the taproom of the Bay and Beagle just as Kitty entered from the street. He had the advantage, for he had expected the meeting. She stopped still and gave a little gasp, but he spoke calmly enough.

“You ought to stay to home when you have company, Miss Kitty,” he rebuked her mildly.

Kitty recovered herself quickly, lifted her head, and smiled.

“Perhaps I would have,” she said, “if I had known. Wherever did you come from?”

“Sit here,” he said, and drew her down beside him on the wide ledge that ran under the window. “I come from Chelsea Neck on my way back to the camp in Medford--”

“You--you’re going back to camp?” she interrupted him.

He looked at her keenly. Something was the matter with her. She was all upset like, but trying not to let him see. He’d thought to steal a few kisses, but he felt pretty sure she wasn’t in the mood for kissing. Too bad. Well, another night, maybe. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Yes, I think likely they can use me there. I been away driving cattle off the islands the last week or two. Met up with Johnny Pettengall and he told me you was here. Tonight we borrowed a boat and rowed over the Mystic. But I didn’t see you anywheres as I come across Breed’s Hill and through the town. Where you been tonight, Kitty?”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “I don’t know that--but maybe I ought--”

“Here ’tis!” cried Johnny triumphantly, rushing into the room with a small iron file in his hand. He paid no attention to Kitty. “Come on, Tom! Let’s go file Sally Rose!”

Tom waved him away with a flippant gesture. “You go file Sally Rose,” he said. “She’s your girl. I got business with Kitty.” He turned his back on the other lad.

Kitty put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I forgot!” she gasped. “Sally Rose is still in the stays!”

“Sure enough she is,” agreed Tom. “Johnny’s got a file, and he can shave the lock away. I asked you where you’d been tonight, Kit. Walking out with some other lad, maybe. No moon, but it’s sweet-aired and warm. A good courting night.”

Kitty sat twisting her hands in her lap and did not answer. Johnny made a pitiful noise of dismay and turned reluctantly toward the staircase.

“Where’s Gran?” asked Kitty.

Tom smiled widely. “With Sally Rose,” he said. “Likely to stay there awhile, wouldn’t you think so?”

“Oh, of course. She wouldn’t leave Sally Rose like that--and with Johnny. I--I--” she stopped again.

“What’s on your mind, Kitty? Something, I can tell.”

“Yes. Yes, there is. I don’t know--maybe I should--or maybe I should wait and tell Sally Rose first. But maybe you’re the one.”

“You better tell me,” he said, trying to put strength into his voice, and a little tenderness, but not too much. He didn’t want her breaking down.

“Yes,” she said after a moment, lifting her head and looking straight into his eyes. “Yes, I think I should probably tell you, for you’ll know what to do about it. If you’re going back to camp--it ought to be made known to the officers there.”