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 and showed the girls the recipe. "Nay," she smilingly waved away their thanks, "it be nowt."

"But, truly, it be nice!" insisted Mehitable, curtseying as she took the basket. "It has been so long since Mother used the bake oven—it needs mending, and we have had naught but hoecakes baked in the ashes for ever so long. Not," she added to herself, "that we would get cake an it were mended!"

As though she had read her young guest's thought, Mistress Wright blushed a little. "I feel guilty every time I mak' ma cake," she said in her soft old voice. "But Feyther must hae his bit o' sweetie, and sae I knit, knit, knit socks for oor poor men at Morris Town to mak' up for it."

Impulsively, Mehitable bent her dark head to kiss the ancient cheeks, which were yet as smooth and pink and white as a baby's. "Nay," she cried, feeling ashamed of the criticism she had allowed to creep into her gaze, "let the young people be the ones to sacrifice!"

Mistress Wright followed them to the door and watched them rather anxiously as Mehitable boosted Charity into the pillion on old Dulcie and, lightly as a boy, leaped into the saddle in front.

"Think yo' they will get hame before the storm?" she asked her husband over her shoulder, replying to Mehitable's wave as horse and girls disappeared around a bend in the lane.


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 "I hae ma doots," answered John Wright. He reached over and jerked his buckskin coat from the chair back. "Do 'ee close the door, Mither," he mumbled, struggling into it. "Lettin' out ma' gude heat, thus!"

But Dame Wright paused in the open doorway to watch her geese waddling home before the storm. "Yo' canna deny they be a bonnie sicht, Feyther!" she observed proudly.

"Aye—though the older ain do be growin' rather pert, I'm thinkin'!" replied old John's voice behind her.

Dame Wright turned around and stared at him. "Wha!" she exclaimed. "Wha, Feyther?"

"Why, 'tis Hitty I speak of," said Master Wright, in equal surprise, appearing at her side. "Were yo' not sayin' summat aboot Samuel Condit's lassies?"

Dame Wright burst into laughter. "Nay!" she gasped, when she could speak. Twas the geese, John!"

"A' the same," grinned John Wright, "geese and lassies—a' the same!"

"Now, Feyther!" protested his wife, chuckling, however. "Dinna be sae mean."

And the heavy door closed upon the two merry old faces.

Mehitable and Charity, meanwhile, trotted on through a storm which was fast increasing in vio-

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 lence; but so absorbed were they in that vast subject which concerned everyone—the war—for this was the exciting, perilous time of the American Revolution—that they did not notice the bitter wind or the sting of the sleety snow. The Revolution had dragged on for four long years. Long since had the Minute Men repelled the British at Lexington and Concord, long since had Washington crossed the Delaware at Trenton. The American army had passed the first winter at Morris Town and that dreary winter at Valley Forge. Soldiers and civilians alike were beginning the terrific winter of 1779–80 with grim dread and grimmer fortitude, lonely hearths with gaps in the family circles once occupied by fathers and sons were becoming more common, now, and the two girls were speaking mournfully of their brother, John Condit, who was a surgeon under Washington, and whom they had not seen for months, when all at once Mehitable exclaimed in a startled tone. They had descended abruptly from the lane into a meadow already white with snow!

"Why, Cherry, I vow 'tis a blizzard which hath swept o'er the Orange Mountain upon us!" She tried to peer through the baffling curtain of snowflakes. "We be off the lane and in someone's field, but whose, I know not! And which way lies the lane, I know not, either!"

"Oh, Hitty!" Charity, frail and timid, tried to


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 repress the fright she felt. "Are ye not feared?" She shuddered. "Oh, I wish we were home."

"Nay, Cherry," Mehitable spoke chidingly, "do ye not remember what our father and John have often told us about being lost in a storm?"

"Aye." Charity's face brightened. "Give the steed his head in case o'"

"Exactly!" said Mehitable triumphantly, throwing the reins down upon Dulcie's neck. "Let the steed guide us, in case we know not which way lies home. I have, mayhap, been guiding her entirely in the wrong direction. See," she added with a laugh, as the old horse turned completely around and started off briskly in the opposite direction, "it was so!"

A few minutes more found them back upon the road. But an hour or so later, Mehitable was not laughing. Instead, she was very, very sober, for night, settling down drearily upon them, found them still struggling on through the snow. It was slow going, indeed, for poor Dulcie, with her double burden! At last, feeling her sister shivering behind her, Mehitable turned in her saddle.

"Art so cold, Cherry?" she asked pityingly.

"No," answered Charity bravely. Then, an instant later, she burst into tears. "Ah, yes, Hitty, I am co-old! Oh, it be so dark and co-old!"

Mehitable longed to tear aside that harassing, blinding curtain of snow. If only she could see a


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 shelter, any sort of a shelter, she thought wistfully, as she heard Charity's teeth chattering together and felt her slight body shivering against her own stout one. But it was another hour before she cried out.

"Cherry, I think—nay, I be sure we are nearing a building at last! There, to our right!" Mehitable gestured excitedly, then picking up the reins, she guided Dulcie in that direction, and soon they were halting before a plain stone structure beside the road. "Why, it be the Ranfield Tavern!" she announced.

A figure, shapeless from many bundlings and wrappings, approaching them from the lee of the building, Mehitable made out the tavern host, himself.

"Ho, Master Ranfield!" she called.

"Good even to ye, mistress," answered Master Ranfield uncertainly, then, as he came nearer, his tone changed. Tis little Mistress Condit! Why, what be ye doing out in such weather as this? Here, let me help ye down!"

"Nay, I can assist myself!" laughed Mehitable, declining his proffered hand and leaping lightly to the snow-covered ground. She pointed to the drooping figure upon the pillion seat. "I fear it be Cherry who needs your help!" she continued, a note of anxiety in her cheerful young voice.

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 as Master Ranfield, with an exclamation of concern, turned toward her. "Nay, I need no help, either!" she said. "I was—was but waiting for ye to get down, Hitty—that be why I did not move and—and—I had my head bent because the snow kept getting into my mouth!"

In spite of her brave words, though, it was a stiffened, staggering little maid whom the tavern host lifted to the ground the next instant. "There," he bade kindly, "run into the house wi' ye! I will care for the nag!"

Protecting, as best they could, their faces from the icy wind and the sleety particles of snow, which hurt, the two girls made for the door and entered the taproom. But there they paused uncomfortably. Mistress Ranfield, they had just remembered, was reputed to be a Tory!

"Nay," whispered Charity, "let us not enter, Hitty!"

"We must!" returned Mehitable desperately. "Hush—there she is!"

A sallow-faced woman, standing idly before the fire, looked up peevishly as the door swung shut behind the girls. But she came forward civilly enough to help them remove their wet capes and to fetch the for the high boots which their mother sensibly made them wear in winter. It was only when Mehitable, stamping her aching feet, knelt to help Charity with her clinging boots


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 that, glancing up shyly, she caught a malevolent expression in Mistress Ranfield's eyes. Flushed and uncomfortable, Mehitable kept on with her task. At last the inn mistress spoke acidly.

"I wonder your mother allowed ye to be out in such weather as this!"

"We were upon an errand to Dame Wright's—we do love to call upon the dear old people!—and our mother gave us permission to do so this day!" explained Charity eagerly. "And—and the storm was upon us before we knew it!"

"Before ye knew it! H'm! Yet it hath been threatening for hours!" sniffed Mistress Ranfield disdainfully. "The Whigs talk o' saving and conserving! Yet do they risk their children's lives thus rashly, taking then the care and time o' a doctor who might be serving i' their wonderful army! All talk, say I—Whigs and talk which means nothing! 'Tis actions which speak! What good does it to gi' sons to fight an they take up the time o' someone else who might he helping their fine cause!"

Both girls turned scarlet, for they felt the enmity toward their mother—a brave and patriotic woman—which surrounded the tavern mistress's words, and Mehitable, especially, had hard work to control her unruly tongue. But she conquered the impulse to give utterance to the bitter words which might have caused trouble—perhaps a glance to-


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 ward the snow-dimmed window helped her to do so—and after a little, Mistress Ranfield, her face dark and sullen, caught up the wet capes and boots and stalked from the room.

"Oh, Hitty," whispered Charity, creeping closer to her, "I do wish we had not stopped here! That woman be in favor wi' the British—her inn hath never been touched! And, indeed, Mistress Katurah Harrison did tell our mother that, for a certainty almost, 'tis known she accepts recompense from the enemy for information she gets by prying and spying. Why, she be naught but a British spy—and the worst kind, for she takes money for her loyalty. She be as bad as the Hessians who fight for hire!"

"This be a public tavern, licensed as such, and here I intend to remain, welcome or not, until the storm permits our going on!" answered Mehitable loudly.

The door into the kitchen, at that, was pulled shut with a slam, and Mehitable chuckled rather naughtily to herself. But both girls turned with relief when their host, shaking himself at the entrance, came into the taproom from the inn yard and, closing the heavy door, approached the fire with smiling mien. He was a kindly mannered, good-natured man, neither Whig nor Tory, who was far more popular in the neighborhood than his shrill-voiced helpmate.


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 "Forsooth, ye came at just the right time—supper-time!" he told his young guests jokingly, holding out his great red hands to the heat. "Crimini, it be cold! Think, 'tis not yet the holidays! All signs point to a hard winter, and certes, this be a fine beginning!"

A knock interrupted him, then, as stamping feet proclaimed the arrival of more guests, and Master Ranfield started away from the fireplace to answer the loud summons of a second thundering upon the door, the sisters had just barely time to retreat to a corner nook when the door was flung open and three men entered the public room. Replying briefly to thieir host's pleased greeting—for he had anticipated a loss of business from the storm—the newcomers made directly for the warmth of the fireplace. Much bustling ensued, then—there was unwrapping of capes and great coats, of woolen mufflers and shawls, during which both host and hostess, with a grinning black or two, were kept busy carrying away the wet clothing and bringing back mugs of warm ale, ordered at once, from the kitchen fire. Mistress Ranfield's face was all smiles, now, and there was no lack of cordiality in her manner of helping one of the new guests, at least—a handsome, strapping youth in the silks and laces of adandy. The other guests were older men, dressed richly but more soberly.

Mehitable and Charity watched the scene si-


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 lently from their corner. At last, the eyes of the two girls met suddenly, significantly.

"Is that not Hawtree?" whispered Charity noiselessly, her gaze full of horror, for the man, Hawtree, was a notorious Tory whom they had reason both to fear and to dislike.

At that instant, as though he felt their eyes upon him, Hawtree whirled around, and his cold, level glance rested upon them. There was no sign of recognition in it, however, and a second later he turned away with apparent indifference.

Charity's face was white, and she clutched at Mehitable spasmodically. "The other," she whispered, pointing wildly, "the other be Jaffray! Is it so?"

Mehitable stared, then her cheeks, too, paled. But she lifted her chin. "It be so, Cherry," she whispered steadily, "yet I defy them both!"

Charity, however, as she gazed at a villain into whose power the fortune of war had once thrown her, wrung her hands. "Three years, and here they return!" she panted. "Heaven forgi' me—I—had hoped they were both dead!"

Fortunately, amid the preparations for supper, her panic was unnoticed. The long table in the center of the room was covered by a snowy linen cloth—Mistress Ranfield, Tory or no Tory, was a notable housewife and cook—and spread with pewter dishes and flagons of ale and cider. A


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 platter of chicken pie graced the center of the board, and when that had been brought in, steaming, host and guests drew up their chairs hungrily. Only Mehitable and Charity, like shy country mice, remained in the background. Mistress Ranfield, at one end of the table, paid them not the slightest attention; but finally her husband, glancing up from his plate, spoke in surprise.

"How now?" he ejaculated. "Like ye not the food or the company, young mistresses? Which be it?"

"Neither, sir," answered Mehitable politely. She hesitated. Tis just that we feel our mother would—would not like us to eat wi' strangers in a public room," she tried to explain.

There was a sniff from Mistress Ranfield's end of the table, a mutter of "Fiddlesticks!" and Charity looked as though she were about to weep from embarrassment. Fortunately, however, the other guests were much too engrossed in the platter of chicken, which had begun to circulate about the board, to notice the little scene, and Master Ranfield, with true kindliness and a reproachful glance at his wife, soon had the two girls supplied with a little table of their own, with an ample and goodly supply of food to grace it which, despite Mistress Ranfield's scowl, the sisters proceeded to enjoy.

After supper, the three masculine guests, the


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 younger one of whom was now casting eyes in the girls' direction, drew up their chairs before the fireplace. In doing so, they showed not the least bit of consideration for Mehitable and Charity, completely cutting off the heat from their corner. Moreover, as time passed and more ale was consumed, they waxed quarrelsome, a phase which Master Ranfield and his wife were discreet enough not to notice.

Mehitable, perceiving the young dandy's blackeyed gaze upon her whenever she lifted her own eyes, at last grew uneasy. Master Ranfield, she felt sure, though affable and good-natured, was not one to interfere in case of unpleasantness, while his wife, the girl noticed indignantly, far from helping the disagreeable situation, was egging on the foolish youth with knowing smiles and glances.

Finally, discovering Charity nodding in her chair and feeling as though her last defence had crumpled, Mehitable stumbled to her feet and moved to a window near the door, both to escape the obnoxious stares with which the young dandy was favoring her and to discover whether the snow had stopped falling. To her joy and relief, upon clearing a portion of a pane of glass by rubbing the steam from it, she perceived that the weather was clearing, and she was about to turn away to tell Charity so when she felt, rather than saw, someone


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 stop beside her. The next instant, before she could speak, she was drawn roughly into an embrace and pressed smotheringly against a broad chest.

"Let me go, sir!" With blazing eyes, Mehitable spoke as soon as she was partially released. But the dandy, who had sneaked after her to the window and who had snatched her into his arms half in fun, merely simpered down into her face.

"What'll ye gi' me an I do?" he asked, after awhile, keeping his arm around her waist.

"Naught!" returned Mehitable shortly. "Release me, sir, I prithee!"

Tis not thus we play at forfeits!" The young man's tone was gravely injured and complaining. "Pay me a forfeit and I will let ye go, pretty spitfire!"

"Never!" Mehitable straightened her slender figure defiantly, which only made the other laugh.

"Alas!" he said lazily, with a prodigious sigh of mock patience. "Then must we stand here all night!"

Mehitable twisted herself in his grasp to glance despairingly around the room. Strangely enough, neither tavern host nor hostess were to be seen—poor Mehitable had not noticed Mistress Ranfield motioning her puzzled husband into the kitchen a few moments before, Charity was fast asleep in her chair, worn out by her hard afternoon, and the


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 two men who had accompanied Mehitable's annoyer were engaged in a noisy game of cards by the fire. The youth's gaze following hers, he burst into teasing laughter.

"No help anywhere, ye see, mistress!" he taunted. And indeed, he and the girl might have been ghosts and not visible to mortal eye for all the attention paid them by the gamesters.


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OME, come!" went on the young man lightly. "Pay the forfeit! My arm be tired o' encircling your waist!"

"Then," said a new voice grimly, as the door beside them opened and closed so swiftly that only the faintest draught of air swept past, "then I advise ye to keep your arm where it belongs!" And the dandy was forthwith torn from his nonchalant position beside Mehitable and sent spinning across the room.

"Now," continued the newcomer, when the reeling youth had brought up against the card table and the players had started to their feet, "an I mistake not, there be a lesson in politeness to be taught here! I saw you, sir, through the window as I approached the door! You were annoying this maid, and your manners"—his tone grew icy—"your manners, I repeat, sir, need to be whipped into shape!"

But here the newcomer was interrupted by a wild cry of "John!" and the next instant Mehita-


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 ble's head was buried against the buff and blue chest of her big brother. Dr. John Condit looked down at her dark curls in almost comical amazement; but when he lifted his own head, his face had darkened so ominously that the three men who watched him across the taproom, despite their combined numbers, felt odd little chills run up and down their spines.

"I did not know it was my sister whom I arrived in time to rescue from a bully and a coward!" said Doctor Condit, and there was that in his voice which made the others glance uneasily at one another. "It gives the matter a more serious aspect!"

In the instant of taut silence which followed, the hands of Jaffray and the youth sought their sword hilts. A quick glance from the third man, Hawtree, however, caused their hands to drop, although the young dandy folded his arms belligerently even as his companion spoke a suave apology.

"Ye must pardon a foolish lad, sir!" said Hawtree. "The ale, forsooth, must have gone to his head. He but jested wi' the young lady, I vow!"

"Did it go to your head, too, sir, and to the head of the other—gentleman?" asked John pointedly, placing insolent accent upon the last word and looking at them with steely eyes. "I noticed no attempt upon your part to release my sister from an embarrassing position and to administer de-


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 served reproof to a coward who would take advantage of a maid's helplessness!"

"Nay, sir," protested the other, "we were busy wi' the cards and noticed naught! We are more than willing to offer apology to your sister!" Then as Jaffray and the youth remained silent, Hawtree glanced at them with such furious threat that, very reluctantly, they imitated his bow.

John Condit hesitated, until Mehitable nudged him. "I accept the apology," she said impatiently, not glancing toward the fireplace, but speaking with her eyes anxiously upon her brother's frowning countenance. "Come, let us not waste more time here! Let us away!" she urged. "It clears, so I will waken Cherry!" And she sprang toward her sister's chair.

John Condit, at that, was forced to bestow a stiff half bow upon the three men, who then stood watching, from beneath crafty, lowered lids, his and his sisters' departure.

Mistress Ranfield, when summoned by Doctor Condit, was again all smiles and curtseys at his unexpected appearance, though she pretended hurt at his curt refusal of supper. Her hand, however, closed eagerly around the coins he dropped into her palm in payment of his sisters' refreshment, for coins were rare and much in preference to the paper money which had been issued by Congress.

"She did not deserve to be paid in coins," ob-


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 served Mehitable when, once more mounted, they were trotting off through the snow toward home. "I am sorry ye gave them her, John, for she not only said slighting things which showed her ill-will toward our mother and all the patriotic women o' Orange Valley; but she was partly to blame for this night's unpleasantness, urging the silly varlet on as she did!"

"Indeed, had I known that," said John Condit, "I would ha' given her naught, not e'en paper money, for she deserved to lose the price o' your suppers!"

Charity, who had wakened from her dreams to find herself being carried out to her pillion seat upon Dulcie by her big brother, patted his arm appealingly, for he had placed Mehitable upon his horse and had mounted himself upon Dulcie to lend support to the frail little sister.

"Nay—let us forget the unpleasantness!" she pleaded, snuggling sleepily against him. "Tell us, rather, what fortunate errand brings ye home again to us after so many months, John!"

The young army surgeon's weatherbeaten face softened as he reached behind him to pat the little, mittened hand that Charity placed confidingly in his strong grasp. "Cherry be always right, Hitty!" he suggested. "Why spoil this happy reunion? Why talk o' aught but pleasant subjects—such as my return?" he added drolly.


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 They all laughed and Mehitable, humming, fell to studying the star-specked dome above her, for the snow had washed the air, and the heavens seemed very close to earth.

"Besides," continued John mysteriously, after a pause, "I do, indeed, ha' something pleasant to discuss!"

He chuckled as he noticed the instant attention he received. Charity leaned forward eagerly, and Mehitable rode her horse close enough to him to stare into his face.

"Why, what" she began. She started as she felt something slipped into her hand when it brushed against his above Dulcie's fat side. Her tone changed. "A note!" she cried in rapturous amazement. "A really-truly note—for me! With—with—sealing wax and everything!"

"A note, Hitty!" Charity leaned sideways upon her pillion. "Let me feel the seal!" Then, as her sister obligingly obeyed her request, she gave an excited bounce. "It feels like the one ye got from Cousin Eliza that time from Trenton!"

Mehitable sighed gustily. "Must I wait until I get home to read it! Oh, an there were only lights along this dark lane instead o' just the stars!"

"Instead o' just the stars!" echoed John laughingly. "Be thankful, mistress, it be not cloudy and dark as last night! I had a fearful time o't,


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 riding on dispatch business, for I lost the road more than once. As for lights along this lane, Hitty—mayhap a hundred years or more will find some, as the lamps are hung on every seventh house i' New York Town to light the streets there. Yet—that would mean houses built as closely together, side by side, row after row, ye mind, as New York hath, and 'twill be more than one hundred years before this Orange meadowland and swampland and the Mountain be populated as thickly as a' that. More like three hundred years. Therefore I fear, Hitty"—he peered at her gravely through the shadows while Charity's tinkling laugh rang out—"I greatly fear ye will not live to see lights along the First Road, here!"

Mehitable tossed her head. "I'll warrant ye there will be stranger sights around here than lights along this lane, John, before another century," she retorted. "Besides, I be old enough to wait until I get home to read the missive, I should hope!" A moment later, however, her tone changed to one of beseeching childishness. "Oh, John!" she cried inconsistently. "There be Samuel Munn's tavern, with a lanthorn swinging in front o' the door! Do let me stop beneath its light and read my note!"

"But ye said ye hoped ye were old enough to wait, Hitty!" teased her brother.

He might as well have spoken to the wind. Me-


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 hitable swerved her horse toward the tavern light and a moment later, seated in her saddle beneath its rays, she broke the note's seal with an eager thumb nail and spread it open upon her horse's neck. When she had painstakingly spelled out the fine, slanting handwriting which met her gaze, she glanced up excitedly.

"Listen, Cherry," she began, and stopped in vexed surprise. John and Charity had ridden on, and she was alone beneath the light. Because of the unbroken snow, though, the laughing pair had not gotten as far ahead of her as they had intended, and soon Mehitable's horse carried her abreast of them in the narrow road.

Twas a mean thing to do! A sorry jest, indeed!" she exclaimed wrathfully. But at John's grin her usual good-nature asserted itself, and she could not help grinning back at him. "Some folk ha' such childish notions o' fun!" she said, more mildly.

"And some people ha' such childish lack o' patience!" answered John promptly.

Tis true!" sighed Mehitable. "E'en as I was telling Master Wright this very afternoon. I suppose I might ha' waited until I reached home before reading my note! But, John," she hurried on, "know ye aught o' the contents?"

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 Cousin Eliza, for she gave it me to deliver to ye at my first opportunity."

"From Cousin Eliza!" interrupted Charity in surprise. "But she lives in Trenton and John comes from Morris Town! He but now told me so!"

"Cousin Eliza lives in Trenton, 'tis true," admitted Mehitable, before her brother could speak. "It seems, however—an ye give a chance, Cherry, I will explain!—it seems she hath been visiting her old friend, Mistress Lindsley, on the Whippanong Road out o' Morris Town, and while there—indeed, almost upon her arrival, she fell and broke her ankle. 'Tis a most painful and tedious injury, she says, and the ladies o' the household being very busy, she is left much o' the time alone, for her French maid, Felice, fell sick just before she started and so had to be left at home. Now, forsooth, she wants you and me, Cherry, to come and stay awhile, wi' Mistress Lindsley's permission, to act as her nurses and companions. She says John hath promised to implore our mother to allow us to go. She says also"—Mehitable looked obliquely at her brother and laughed—"that though the menfolk o' the Lindsley family be gone much o' the time, there is to be a gay winter in the village, from all reports, wi' the nice young officers quartered there, American and French! Indeed, she


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 hath heard already that Colonel Hamilton be planning some routs and assemblies. Would it not be wonderful!"

"Wonderful!" echoed Charity. "Oh, John, think ye Mother will let us go?"

"Why not?" asked John Condit kindly. "Besides helping poor Cousin Eliza, who hath always been good to us, I, myself, think it would be very nice to ha' my two little sisters comparatively near me for awhile."

"Then ye will help us to gain Mother's permission?" Mehitable looked at him eagerly.

"Aye," answered John laughingly, "if you think my word counts more than yours wi' our mother."

"It does!" answered Mehitable simply. "Mother thinks ye be almost perfect!"

"Nay," said John, laughing still more, "I've do not give our mother credit for good sense, Hitty, an ye say that!"

Tis true," returned Mehitable, "laugh as ye may, John. Mothers always like their sons better, I think," she added reflectively. "I shall, I know!"

"Hitty!" said Charity's shocked voice. Whereupon they all fell to laughing foolishly and happily.

The rest of the journey home beneath the bright stars, with the cold, crisp air reddening cheeks and—it must be admitted—noses as well, was made concocting all sorts of hilarious plans.


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 "It be so delightful living i' this year 1779!" exclaimed Mehitable blithely, following the others in through the Condit gate. "I would not live in any other time an I could! Think o' the past—a hundred years ago, wi' the people coming down to New Jersey in boats from Branford village in Connecticut—don't laugh, John, I ha' it all from Grannie Pierson, who hath heard her own mother tell about it. How desolate this mountain must have been then—no plantations here, no lanes, nothing but wilderness and forest and Indians! And think o' a hundred years hence, e'en wi' the lights in the lanes." She glanced saucily at her brother as she pulled up her horse and watched him dismount. "Mayhap they will not have war and any such exciting adventures as are apt to befall one now!"

"How do ye know!" jeered her brother, lifting Charity down from her pillion and approaching Mehitable's horse to lead him, with old Dulcie, to the barn. "Don't stand there shivering, Cherry—run right into the house!" he added over his shoulder. "And come, Hitty, jump down! All this beatitude," he chuckled, "because o' a most dreadful war! Fie, my foolish sister, think o' the ragged soldiers at Morris Town!"

"Oh, I do!" answered Mehitable reproachfully. "I knit ever so many socks for them, John—ye can't think! Besides," her bright face fell, "may-


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 hap Mother will not let us go to visit Cousin Eliza at Morris Town, after all!"

But Mistress Condit, when the girls had burst in upon her, both talking excitedly at once, seemed as pleased as her daughters upon reading the note, although she sighed and said:

"Poor Eliza—for all her wealth, she seems e'er to ha' bad luck! I mind that dreadful Christmas at Trenton when she had to have all those Hessians quartered in her fine house."

There was a moment's silence as she read on. Then she exclaimed in dismay:

"Routs and assemblies! But, my dear little maids, what o' clothes! Ye ha' both outgrown the party gowns Cousin Eliza did give to ye that same Christmas I wot of! And ye cannot attend balls in homespun!" She looked from one disappointed face to another. "Never mind," she went on kindly, "Mother will find a way, somehow! Ah, my son, 'tis good to see you again!"

She turned with brightening eyes to greet her boy, and Charity watched in sympathetic silence the long embrace which spoke so eloquently of the long, hard months of separation. Mehitable, as soon as she had heard her brother outside the door, and knowing then that the matter of a visit to Morris Town would be dismissed from her mother's mind in welcoming the young soldier, had hastily filled a brass warming pan with coals from the fire


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 and had departed to warm the beds. Charity, quietly hanging up on its wooden peg Mehitable's cape as well as her own, turned as her mother addressed her at last.

"My dear," questioned Mistress Condit, drawing her son over to a place beside her upon the fireside bench and pulling Charity down to her lap, "where were ye? Your father and I were indeed worried when supper-time came and went without any word from our little maids. We thought the storm might delay ye, but not as late as this."

"It was the snow, Mother," nodded Charity. Twas a bitter storm while it lasted. But, oh, such a tale as Hitty hath to tell ye—what happened as I slept i' my chair!"

Mistress Condit turned inquiringly to her son who, informed by Mehitable as they jogged toward home, was able to acquaint his mother with that which had taken place before his arrival at the Orange inn.

"Indeed, Mistress Ranfield shall hear o' this, forsooth!" exclaimed Mistress Condit indignantly, when he had finished. "I shall lay the matter before Parson Chapman when next he be home from the army. Mistress Ranfield's behavior, and her lack of protection for Hitty, is inexcusable. Oh, these Tory women—one would think they had no hearts! Common humanity should ha' kept her from encouraging such a varlet's actions!"


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 "Are ye sure she be Tory?" inquired John.

"Aye," answered his mother firmly. "It be common knowledge. She is, besides, a great friend o' the Williams o' the Corners!"

"Ben Williams, the Tory, ye mean?" said John thoughtfully. "Well, that may be so, yet would I take time and think the matter over. Neighbors' quarrels are apt to lead to serious things, indeed, these days."

"Mayhap ye be right, my son," returned Mistress Condit, tightening her arms around Charity. "But it angers me to ha' my little maids" she choked. "Ah, there is your father—he hath been out upon an errand. We shall hear what he doth think o' Mistress Ranfield's behavior!"

"Welcome home, John!" Samuel Condit said, in pleased surprise, blowing out the candle in the square tin lantern he was carrying, and laying hat and greatcoat hastily down upon perceiving his son by the fire. "What good wind brings ye this way?"

"One which is apt to blow two little maids back again with me whence I came, mayhap," laughed young Doctor Condit, rising to grip his father's hand and indicating the note his mother had once more picked up to peruse.

"First, however, Samuel, I must tell ye what Dame Ranfield did to our Hitty!" burst out Mistress Condit, laying down the note again. Pushing


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 Charity from her lap, she rose and went to place her hand upon her husband's arm.

"Nay, Mother, let the matter wait," interposed John Condit appealingly, wishing he had not told his mother so soon of the incident, as he realized how four years of warfare had affected her nerves.

"Be quiet, John!" answered Mistress Condit sternly. She turned back to Squire Condit, as her son, chuckling to himself at his mother's tone, subsided meekly upon the bench beside Charity. "Now, Samuel, ye shall hear the tale!"

"Well, Mary," said the Squire soothingly, when she had ended her recital, "no need to rush into trouble. 'Twas a mean thing for the woman to have done—heartless, certainly—yet this warfare hath brought worse things to pass; and since the matter turned out as it did, better to let it drop. It was partly our fault, for an we had not allowed the girls to start off i' the face o' the storm, they need not to ha' been caught thus, and nothing would then ha' happened."

"But the man Hawtree," began Charity tremblingly. "And, oh, Mother, that Jaffray" She broke off, shuddering.

"Hawtree!" exclaimed her parents and brother together. "Jaffray!" John looked at her, astonished.

"Why did not Hitty tell me those villains were present!" he said angrily.


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 "Mayhap—she was afraid o' what might happen an she did, John," answered Charity, in her timid way. "Hawtree affected not to know us—I think Jaffray really did not. Mayhap neither did, since it hath been three years or more they were here."

"Strange how war doth bring such villains to light," mused Squire Condit. "That man Jaffray was naught but a river pirate, masking his plunderings beneath the British flag. As for Hawtree, he is but a hanger-on o' the army—booted out, so I heard, from the service o' the enemy. The youth be a newcomer. I do not know him."

"I like it not, their return!" exclaimed Mistress Condit uneasily. "It bodes ill for us and all patriots!"

"Well, let us not worry, my dear," said the Squire reassuringly. And for a moment there was silence in the old kitchen.

The kitchen was the living room of the Condit family, as it was in most of the farmhouses scattered along the foot of the Newark Mountains at this time. There was carried on all the routine of ordinary life; its mud-plastered walls witnessed most of the comedies and many of the tragedies of which family existence was composed, then as now. A big room, it was dwarfed by the enormous fireplace in which Charity, for all her sixteen years, could still stand upright, as well as by the nearness


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 of the dark, smoked rafters across the low ceiling, Still, with its shining pewter upon the dresser, with a cheerful begonia plant flourishing away at every small-paned window, and the firelight playing over humans and furniture brightly and impartially, it was a room that any one could call Home.

"Father!" Mehitable's eager voice was heard calling down the stairs. The next moment, she entered and hurried to her father's side. "Hast Mother told ye aught o' Cousin Eliza's note?" she asked with shining eyes.

"Nay, not yet. Put down the warming pan, my child!" bade her father. "Take care, Hitty!" He started as Mehitable, turning too hastily toward the fireplace, allowed the hot pan, at the end of its long, clumsy handle, to graze his hand.

"Oh, Father!" She looked at him with such a mixture of alarm and remorse that the Squire had to laugh, so that, relieved, she dumped the live coals back upon the fire, and hanging up the implement, came to his side.

"Cousin - Eliza - who - be - in - Morris - Town - a-visiting - Mistress - Lindsley - hath - asked - Charity - and - me - to- stayto - stay [sic] - wi' - her - because - she - hath - a - broken - ankle," she recited rapidly. "May we, Father?"

The Squire held up his hands helplessly, while the others looked on laughingly. But before he could answer Mehitable, a loud knock sounded


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 upon the door and reverberated through the house like thunder!

Instantly, the tension of a war-torn country settled upon the kitchen. Faces grew grave and anxious. The poor people never knew whether it was friend or foe who knocked upon their doors in New Jersey in 1779!


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NSWER the door, John!" said Squire Condit heavily. He did not move from his seat upon the bench beside his wife; but Mehitable saw his eyes travel to the flintlock hanging in its rack upon the wall near by. The next instant, however, the tension was lifted and once more knitting needles gleamed in the firelight and faces smiled, for John, at the door, was greeting someone heartily and drawing him across the threshold.

"Ye remember Sturgins, Mother?" he said inquiringly, turning to Mistress Condit. "I don't know whether or not I told ye he hath been my body servant these many months. Indeed, I cannot rid myself o' the silly fellow!" He laughed as he swung back to the squat, homely little man who, slowly drawing off his woolen tippet, stood with squint-eyed gaze fixed adoringly upon the young doctor.

"Eh! Now, do 'ee e'er be jestin' wi' me, sir!" rumbled Sturgins affectionately. Mehitable thought he resembled a shaggy, unkempt cur


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 which has been kicked around from pillar to post until, at last, meeting a friendly hand, it attaches itself for ever to the owner of that kindly, careless hand.

"But, ne'ertheless, 'twas Doctor John, here, did save my sight one time I was blinded," continued Sturgins, turning to Mistress Condit with the honest tears starting to his eyes. "Doctor John and no one else!"

"Nonsense! I merely happened to be the first one ye looked at, Sturgins, when ye recovered your sight," said the young doctor frankly. Twas my old friend and teacher, Doctor Carter, who had your case forsooth—though now, I mind, ye got your sight back because a fall ye had released some bone pressure which had made ye blind because o' a blow."

"Nay, 'twas ye, sir—no use to tell me otherwise," insisted Sturgins earnestly, stamping the snow from his feet. "And ne'er will I forget, sir!"

"Then, guard him well, Sturgins," interrupted Mistress Condit softly.

"That will I! Wi' my life, mistress!" answered Sturgins solemnly.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed John Condit again, laughing. "What ha' ye there, Sturgins?" He motioned toward a paper in the other's hand.

"Oh!—I 'most forgot, sir! I would forget mine head an it were not fastened well to mine shoul-


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 ders!" said Sturgins, with a loud, uncouth laugh. He held the paper out to Doctor Condit. Twas sent to your quarterings from headquarters, sir!"

No one spoke while the young man ripped open the missive and read it, stooping near the firelight to save lighting a candle.

"Ah, 'tis too bad!" he exclaimed when he was through. "I must return at once, Mother. There be news that His Excellency will soon arrive, wi' his staff, and General Greene desires my immediate presence. Did ye see anything o' Colonel Hamilton, Sturgins?" He turned back to his servant.

"Nay, sir." Sturgins shook his head.

"Mother, will you or Hitty give Sturgins a bite to eat? I will go up to mine room and pack some saddlebags—I know, of old, that there will be fresh linen in the drawer to the highboy!" John looked smilingly at his mother, who rose at once.

"Hitty will find some cold meat and bread," she said kindly. "I will go up wi' ye, my son—there be matters I would discuss wi' ye before ye leave for Morris Town." Her voice died away as she followed the young man upstairs.

Mehitable placed food upon the table and bade Sturgins sit down, then returned to a seat near the fire, for outside the wind could be heard howling, promising colder weather before morning, and making the inglenook seem unusually cozy and warm by its very ferocity.


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 Presently, Mistress Condit and John returned to the kitchen, the former with the refreshed look upon her face which always came after confidences with her boy, and soon the young doctor and his servant were off upon their long ride to Morris Town.

"Brrr!" shivered Charity, turning away from the open door, where they had all gathered to wave farewell. She ran back to the three-legged stool which she had dragged as near the heat as possible, the others, laughing and shivering, following her. When they were all ensconced once more in the circle around the fireplace that Mistress Condit loved, Charity continued meditatively: "Is it not strange that John did not mention Nancy this time?"

"He did, upstairs—mayhap to evade curious young ears," smiled her mother. "And I gave him the message which came by Mistress Harrison from New York Town, to his great delight."

"Think ye they will e'er be married, Nancy and John?" asked Mehitable impatiently, for it seemed to her, her brother's romance had been dragged out entirely too long. "Our turn should come soon now! Else we shall be old maids, eh, Cherry!"

Mistress Condit glanced sharply at the blooming young face which was bent over the gray knitting; but its innocence satisfied her, and she nodded re-


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 assuringly at her husband, whose gaze had anxiously followed her own. Mehitable, all unconscious of the little by-play in which she had had the leading rôle, looked up to repeat: "Think ye they e'er will be married, Ma?"

"Of course," answered Mistress Condit serenely. "But Nancy has been loath to leave her invalid mother, who needs her at home—'tis not as though there were a big family there, ye know—and then the war, with all its anxieties! Indeed, 'twould be a rash couple who would set up housekeeping wi' such an uncertain future as the war must produce!"

There was a little silence, then the mother went on: "I have arranged in my mind as to your new gowns, girls."

"How, Mother?" exclaimed Mehitable, vastly excited, though her flying fingers did not pause in their work.

"By using my blue silk gown and the creamcolored one, too. Combined, they ought to make up into two pretty party gowns."

"Oh, Mother!" Charity twisted herself upon the stool to gaze wide-eyed up into her mother's face. Her voice trembled. "Oh, Mother, not—not—your bride's 'walking-out gowns'!"

"Bye, Charity." From Mistress Condit's placid face, no one but her hearers could have guessed at the involuntary regret she felt and the very real


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 sacrifice she was making. "Could I have a better way o' using my wedding clothes than to gi' my two little maids a happy time?" she said. She looked over at her husband. "Ye do not mind my cutting up the two gowns, Samuel?" she asked.

Silently, Squire Condit shook his head in answer. A swift memory of the young and lovely bride who, proudly attired in those same gowns, had walked out to church the first happy Sundays of married life came to him. But, too, there followed swiftly upon the heels of that memory the picture of barefooted men leaving bloody footprints in the virgin snow, of hungry men turning away from the quartermaster's office with half rations—a hunk of bread or a piece of meat; but never both together for days at a time—of a commander, greater than his country realized, pondering sadly, with careworn face, those problems which an unruly Congress hindered rather than helped to solve—all this came to Squire Condit's mind, and he knew that money, even for the most simple party gowns, was not forthcoming in that patriotic household. And that the only way Mehitable and Charity could go properly attired to any rout in Morris Town was as their mother was now planning.

The Squire's eyes, however, were very tender as they rested upon his wife, and he soon took occasion in passing her to pat the work-gnarled hand that held a knitting needle. It was only one of many


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 humble sacrifices performed in that household, but how cheerfully done!

The next few days were busy ones. Upon the daughters' slender young shoulders fell the mother's household duties, now, for she had to turn seamstress. The two girls felt well rewarded when at last the dainty gowns were finished and hanging upon their wooden pegs in their little chamber beneath the eaves.

"We ought to secure partners easily enough at the routs, an we wear those gowns," said Mehitable, trying to gaze her fill.

"I do not know which one I like the better—yours wi' the blue skirt and the cream overskirt—or mine wi' it otherwise!" sighed Charity happily. But suddenly she shivered, for the little unheated chamber was icy in temperature. "Let us not stay up here longer. An we caught cold, Mother would not let us depart for Morris Town the morrow!"

"We are to leave immediately after midday, I heard our father say," announced Mehitable, shivering also as she followed Charity back to the warmth of the kitchen fire. "Isn't it lucky for us that Cousin Eliza broke her ankle at Morris Town instead of home at Trenton!" she continued naïvely. "Upon what a slender thread oft hangs our fate!"

"You mean, upon what a slippery piece o' ice!" said the literal Charity.


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 The next day, a gray, wintry one, found them traveling along behind old Dulcie and her team mate, General, in the farm sled. Both girls were yet young enough to enjoy the novelty of sitting upon the blanketed floor, where they shared the comfort of a foot warmer—a small square stove with a handle in its lid that was used at that time to carry to church where, in the cold, unheated pews, the ladies enjoyed its protection against frosted feet. Each girl held a squirrel muff against that portion of her face not covered by her cape hood—they would have stared askance at any one's suggesting that they wear the beautiful feathered bonnets reposing that moment in the bonnet boxes beside them. Their mother's timeworn trunk, which had come from England with her, was tied on as it stood upright behind them, and the slithery, sliding sound whenever the sled went over a bump in the snowy road mingled with Squire Condit's cheerful whistle as he halloed at his horses.

At first, Mehitable's and Charity's gay voices had defied the bitter wind that beat against them; but, as mile after mile was traversed, with snow and yet more snow on every side, they fell silent. Up hill and down dale they went, following the ridge road to Millburn village, skirting the Short Hills, over the incline known as the Sow's Back—where General Washington had established a


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 to the flour mill and have it ground, and if his wife hasn't forgotten how to bake, he may eat the bread. But raw cotton, cannot be worn, eaten, or used as fuel; therefore no other class of farmers are more dependent upon the capitalist class than the cotton raiser.

It is claimed that the cotton raisers suffer greatly from the hook worm, but it is hard to believe that even a hook worm can make a living out of the cotton raiser after the capitalists get through with him.

Suppose you own a fiddle and I own the bow. How much music will you make? Suppose you own the well and I own the pump. How much water can you get? Even a free owned farm with all its implements, animals and machines form only the first link in a long chain of production. Those who own the other links between the farmer and the consumer determine the wages and the mode of living of the farmer as effectively as the owner of the factory determines the wages of his employes.

But not all the farmers own even the first link of this chain. The farm land itself is gradually slipping away from the farmer. It may be well for some people to point to the automobiles and carriages as sure signs of prosperity among the farmers, but as long as it can be shown that the farmer is losing the very foundation on which he rests; if it can be shown that mother earth itself is becoming capitalist property—that is, a means of exploitation—then all this prosperity talk is idle wind. A farmer without land is a good deal like a fish without water, and so it may be well to give a little study to the land question.

The private ownership of land has been condemned by every thinker and prophet from Moses to Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx and Henry George. Even God has declared himself in favor of the common ownership of land when he said: "You are strangers and sojourners on this earth. And the land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine." For many centuries the Jews heeded the divine injunction and divided the land every fiftieth year among the children of Israel. But in the course of time real estate agents and land boomers settled among them. The common land of God's children became the private property of the few, and the many found themselves landless. Thereupon God waxed wroth, as they used to say when a person got huffy, and he said to his chosen people, "Woe unto you, for you have built house on


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 beacon signaling station, well fortified by cannon, through the village of Chatham, where the brave Colonel Ford had caught his death cold during a skirmish there, that same Colonel Ford whose fine new house at Morris Town had been selected as headquarters during the coming winter for the commander-in-chief and his staff—past Bottle Hill, and then north to the straight-away road leading from Whippany or Whippanong, as it was then called.

It was growing dusk when Squire Condit looked around from the driver's seat at the huddled figures behind him.

"Wake up, Hitty! Bestir yourself, Cherry lass!" he called in his jolly voice. "We be nearing the end o' our journey, an I mistake not!"

Both girls groaned and stretched. "I vow I can't walk again!" grumbled Mehitable, trying to wriggle her cramped feet beneath the heavy blankets.

"How much farther is it, think ye, Father?" asked Charity wearily. More frail than her older sister, she was ever the first to experience fatigue, though fifteen miles or more in a farm sled was a trip to try a stronger physique than hers.

"Almost there, now!" answered Squire Condit cheerfully. "We shall all be the better for the good supper Mistress Lindsley will doubtless have ready for us!" he added.


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 "Think ye Cousin Eliza will have secured invitations as yet to any o' the dances?" queried Mehitable, endeavoring to smooth her tumbled black locks with mittened fingers, for even a moment's exposure to the air would have made them ache.

"An she has not, John or Captain Freeman will have done so," answered Charity rather mischievously. And laughed to see the blush that mantled Mehitable's cheek at the last name.

"Indeed, Mistress Smarty, I ha' not e'en heard o' Captain Freeman for a year or more, as ye very well know," retorted Mehitable. "Besides," she interrupted herself to say, "Captain Freeman thinks me yet a babe, I suppose!"

"Well, he would be right—were ye not but fifteen or sixteen when last he saw ye?" admitted Charity, far too quickly to suit Mehitable. "Of course, that was vastly young for twenty-one, Hitty!"

"Indeed, Mother was but sixteen when she was married!" Mehitable tossed her head.

"She says, now, 'twas much too young!" responded Charity promptly. She fell into a reverie, out of which she roused herself with a troubled face. "Hitty," she spoke tremulously, "I ha' been thinking over recently a fairy story Nancy once told me when I was a little girl, that time she did visit our house and she and John had had a quarrel. It was woven around hers and John's story, though,


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 of course, I did not then know that. But puzzling over it these many years, I ha' solved all its little quirks and points. Would—" she hesitated, hurried on abruptly—"would ye like to hear this fairy story?"

Mehitable, who had been watching her sister's sober face with puzzled eyes, nodded. "An ye want to tell me, Cherry," she said.

"I—I—think ye ought to hear it," answered Charity slowly. She spoke carefully, as though choosing her words. "A—a—friend o' yours was i' the story."

"What part played this friend—the hero's?" laughed Mehitable nervously. But she kept her gaze upon her sister's face, for she felt instinctively that the story was going to displease her in some way, so much had she gathered from Charity's hesitant manner. The younger girl, as Mehitable had often said jokingly, was "cursed with a conscience," and now she felt that her sister had another reason than simply passing the time, in relating this fairy story.

"Nay." Charity shook her head. "John played the hero's rôle and Nancy the heroine's." She waited a second, as though to gather all of her courage together; then, keeping her eyes averted, she plunged into her tale.

"Once upon a time there lived a Princess who


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 was i' love wi' a Prince from a distant country. The Prince, so Mistress Nancy said, was visiting the Princess's city to study medicine."

"Like John!" interrupted Mehitable. Tis easy enough to see Nancy was telling ye her own story."

"Aye," nodded Charity soberly, "easy enough, now, to see that; but not so easy when I was little. Well—'tis thus she told the story. This Princess and the Prince were very happy until another maid from a distant country came a-visiting and she, too—so the Princess thought—fell in love wi' the Prince. She was a flighty maid, not fine and strong and wonderful as was the Prince, not good enough for him; but she had the art o' making young men to like her and one day the Princess caught her own young man, the Prince, smiling at her, walking and talking, too, and she was very angry, then. She said naught, however, and time passed until came the eve o' a masked ball. The Prince told the Princess he would come to that ball masked as Night, in somber garb o' black, so she went as Starlight, in gown o' silver.

"When the Princess arrived, she looked most eagerly around for the Prince, and at last she spied him at the far end of the garden. She knew him at once, despite his mask, for he was the only one i' black. Thus she went to him confidingly; but when she drew near she saw"


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 Here, just as Mistress Nancy had once paused to stare unseeingly ahead of her, so Charity stopped and stared, until Mehitable moved impatiently.

"Yes?" said Mehitable. "She saw what?"

"She saw that the Prince was not alone; but walking wi' a lady gowned in silver, prettier e'en than the Princess's own dress. Then as they neared a bower, the Princess knew that this maid was the unworthy one from overseas! They stopped—the Princess was upon them, for she had been hurrying toward them—and then she saw the Prince stoop and kiss this unworthy maid and heard him whisper, 'I love you!

"Oh!" Mehitable's voice was shocked, just as Charity's had been that long-ago time when poor Mistress Nancy's voice had trembled and she had caught the little girl to her, so that the rest of the story had come tumbling to its end through Charity's fair curls.

"But, you see," went on Charity's voice now, as she sat with her eyes fixed carefully upon the hands she was clasping so nervously in her lap, "you see, Hitty, the story ended much nicer—for Nancy—than she knew at that time it would. For the masker i' black was not the Prince! Someone had borrowed his mask suit o' black—it seems he, himself, had been called out upon a case o' sickness at the last minute—and this other man had kissed the unworthy maid."


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 There was a little silence, then Mehitable spoke very low: "Who—was—the other—man?" she asked, her young face rather pale and strained, for all the whipping of the wind upon her cheeks.

"Don't ye remember?" Charity turned and looked at her sister suddenly. "Don't ye remember how Nancy's and John's misunderstanding was straightened out at last? It seems" Again Charity hesitated.

"It seems?" Mehitable repeated it in a whisper, her eyes upon the other's face.

"It seems that Captain Anthony Freeman was the man who borrowed John's mask suit that night," Charity told her quietly. And silence fell.

Now the road led through deep forest. Ghostly shadows turned out to be stark, winter-stripped trees over and over, yet the primeval solitude, the dusk, and the war all made even Squire Condit's gaze very alert as he glanced from side to side, urging his horses into a trot that caused the old sled to creak and to clatter in aged protest.

It was when they had reached the utmost depths of the forest that Mehitable, glancing back over the snowy road, uttered a startled exclamation.

"Father—back there—do ye see?"

The Squire glanced over his shoulder. Dim figures, barely discernible through the twilight, were galloping after the sled.

"Zounds!" he muttered more to himself than to


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 Mehitable. "I like not to be caught in the woods thus!"

"What mean ye?" Mehitable's heart began to flutter. There was something ominous in those flying figures which, little by little, gained upon the sled.

Charity's hand grasped Mehitable's arm through its thick fold of cape. "Think you our father fears Indians?" she whispered.

"Nay, not Indians, Cherry! I fear," Mehitable gave another terrified look at the rapidly approach ing horsemen, "I fear he thinks they be red-coats!"


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HE red-coats!" Charity's face paled. "Yet are we not too near the American encampment to be molested by the British? Would they dare pursue us this far from their own base on Staten Island?" she whispered presently.

"The red-coats would dare anything!" returned Mehitable fiercely. "Besides, mayhap they be lone Tories, out to see what mischief they can bestow on honest patriots!"

But presently, straining her gaze backward over the twilight-lit road, she uttered a cry, half hysterical, half joyful.

"Father! Father! 'Tis John, not red-coats, pursuing us! I vow 'tis John and another man!" And at that instant, as though to confirm his sister's words, John Condit's voice could indeed be heard hailing them.

Squire Condit promptly pulled his horses to a standstill, and taking out his kerchief, wiped away the perspiration that was streaming down his brow.

"I' faith!" he ejaculated angrily. "It seems a


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 pity the boy should ha' thus played such a trick upon us! How now, sirrah!" He greeted his son irately as that young man rode up behind them laughingly. 'What mean ye by frightening your sisters thus! Tis not my idea o' a jest!"

"Nay, Father, be not angry!" apologized Doctor Condit, the mirth dying out of his eyes as he saw how seriously the three travelers were upset. He rode his horse close to the side of the sled and snatched a kiss from Charity, who was still trembling. "Poor little maid!" he said remorsefully. "We thought to stop you at the junction o' the roads back yonder," he continued in explanation, turning back to his father. "When we saw ye not, we thought we had missed you until Tony, here—ye remember Captain Freeman, do ye not, Hitty?—until Tony spied you ahead o' us. Then, all unwittingly, we galloped after the sled."

"And a most desperate gallop it was!" added Captain Freeman, laughingly riding forward in turn to greet Squire Freeman and his daughters.

The three responded to him in various ways: Squire Condit in a hearty manner, for he liked the young man who was his son's friend; Charity agitatedly offered him her hand with a surreptitious glance at Mehitable as she did so, while that young lady, to Captain Freeman's obvious surprise, bestowed upon him only a frigid little bow. Puzzled, he glanced at her more than once during the rest


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 of the journey into Morris Town, for he and Mehitable had parted the best of friends three years ago.

Squire Condit reined in his horses at last before a comfortable-looking farmhouse whose great chimneys at either end gave it an air of hospitality and welcome which the hostess, Mistress Lindsley, verified by her friendly smile as soon as she opened the door. But, indeed, the whole place, with its tidy fence, its sprucely trimmed trees, its neat fieldstone-walled well with the long well sweep, its kitchen ell offering two additional windows in the house front, added grace to her greeting, while the candlelight, streaming out through the windowpanes beside her, dispersed the cold gray shadows without and seemed to urge them to hasten within.

Mehitable, helped to the ground by her brother, turned to follow Charity up the walk to where Mistress Lindsley stood outlined against the light in her wide doorway. But she found her path blocked and Captain Freeman standing there, his three-cornered hat in his hand.

"Nay, Mistress Hitty, can we not part more cordially than this?—for John and I must go on to our own quartering. Why, what hath become o' the little friend who waved to me o'er the fence when I rode away three years ago?" he asked reproachfully, as Squire Condit drove his horses toward the barn, and John, passing them, ran up


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 to pay his respects to Mistress Lindsley before going on.

Alone beneath the dusky wintry sky, Mehitable looked up at the handsome, wistful face bending eagerly toward her and opened her lips to speak. A rush of generosity, of forgiveness enveloped her. After all, what had this young man's, or any other young man's, philanderings to do with her! Surely friendship was made of better stuff than of doubt and distrust and suspicion. But glancing up, at this point, into Captain Freeman's dark eyes, she saw—was it an amused twinkle, a condescending, what-a-silly-little-maid-yet-must-I-humor—her expression?

Back came the anger and the injured pride and the real shock which the ending of Charity's fairy tale had aroused in her, so that, instead of answering him, she closed her lips tightly together, a thin, straight line of prim disapproval. Then, giving him a level look, she stepped around him and pursued her way with dignity up the path.

It was too bad that the young man, standing where she had left him to stare after her with amazed, angry eyes, could not have seen the tears which sprang to her own and the trembling lips which she was endeavoring to steady before coming into the yellow circle of light thrown by the open doorway. Perhaps, if he had, he might not have strode back to his horse, a moment later, with such


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 stern tread, or, mounting abruptly, have ridden away so furiously into the twilight!

As for Mehitable, tremulously returning Mistress Lindsley's greeting and straining her ears to hear the last of those retreating hoof-beats, she was filled with a mixture of feelings and hardly knew what she was saying. Her relief was proportionate when, bidding farewell to John Condit, who left then, Mistress Lindsley caught up a candle which had been sputtering upon a table behind her and led the way through a dark hall and a series of small, ill-planned rooms into a big, bright kitchen, full of goodly odors, warm with firelight, and reassuring with its promise of supper upon a long, candle-lit table in the center of the room. Mehitable found, then, given a few precious seconds to regain her self-possession, she could enter the kitchen her own smiling, debonaire self.

"Well," said Mistress Lindsley, "your cousin will indeed be glad to see ye! Poor thing, she hath been much alone, so busy are we wi' the baking we must do for His Excellency, who hath now arrived at the headquarters."

"Do ye indeed bake His Excellency's bread?" asked Mehitable, with a sort of awe in her voice.

Mistress Lindsley laughed as she motioned to her young guests to remove their capes and mittens and tippets and advance to the fire. "I do hate to disappoint ye first thing," she replied dryly,


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 "yet truth compels me to admit we bake only for his guard, General Washington having his own cook at Mistress Ford's. But the guard contains two hunderd and fifty men, so we are kept busy, you see."

"Two hundred and fifty!" Mehitable's jaw dropped. "Why, where do they all sleep? Surely Mistress Ford's house—fine and large as I ha' heard it to be—is not that large!"

Again their hostess laughed. "The guard sleep across the lane from headquarters in huts which have been built for them," she answered.

"What about the rest o' the army? What do the soldiers do for bread?" asked Mehitable inquisitively.

Mistress Lindsley sighed. "There has been much suffering for lack o' bread and already mutinies," she returned sadly. "A good patriot, Christopher Ludwick, was appointed by Congress to take care o' the matter; but always he hath been handicapped by the army not remaining long enough in one place to erect his ovens to bake the bread and afterward, too, he hath had difficulties in getting the bread delivered to the troops. Too, hundreds of pounds of bread, fresh from Master Ludwick's ovens, once delivered, hath been allowed to spoil upon the ground, exposed to noonday sun or night damp, because an officer hath not been properly assigned to care for it, I've heard. 'Tis


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 also common report that poor Master Ludwick hath been expending his private means to pay his bakers, money he made from his gingerbread business before the war, and that he hath lost much because, before he was reimbursed by the military paymasters, our Continental currency did depreciate!"

"What a pity!" ejaculated tender-hearted Charity.

"Is it not!" nodded Mistress Lindsley. "The men," she continued, "drew rations o' flour for awhile and baked their own hard bread—for only the officers like soft bread, it seems; but now a company o' bakers, to help Master Ludwick out, hath been raised in Boston Town, under John Torrey, and ovens hath been erected at Springfield, Massachusetts, in addition to those here. Yet," Mistress Lindsley shook her head pessimistically, "I've heard, too, this hath been costly, that Master Torrey, though well-meaning, hath been bewildered by his difficulties. Time alone can tell what will happen. Ah, Tabitha," she interrupted herself to glance toward the inglenook beyond the fireplace, "wilt not leave your bashful corner and come welcome our young guests?"

A sweet-faced, quiet-looking young girl, at whom Mehitable and Charity had been glancing askance ever since they had entered, got up at this and advanced to them. Giving them a little work


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 roughened hand, she bade them welcome in a low voice.

"Tabitha be staying here to help me," said Mistress Lindsley, smiling at her. "Ah, Squire Condit," she turned toward the door which led into the side yard, "I hope ye be planning to stay over night?"

"Your health, mistress!" Entering briskly, Squire Condit bowed low over the hand Mistress Lindsley gave him. "An it would not inconvenience ye," he went on, straightening himself and glancing involuntarily toward the supper table. His long ride had given him a sharp appetite.

"Nay—rather would we rest better this night to have once more a man i' the house," responded Mistress Lindsley cordially. "It hath been a trial to have Major Lindsley away, for all they say the red-coats would not dare venture into Morris Town. Still, ye never can tell, and I be nervous!"

Squire Condit threw out his chest. "Indeed, mistress," he answered encouragingly, "ye need not be nervous this night an I remain!"

Here, his daughters' glances crossed mischievously, Mehitable, indeed, almost giggling as she remembered the perturbed glances her father had cast over his shoulder that afternoon at the pursuing figures he had not recognized as John's and Anthony Freeman's, and the perspiration, though it was a bitter cold day, he had afterward wiped


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 away. They said nothing, however, being dutiful daughters—not many children criticized their parents in those days!—and a moment later all moved toward the supper table at Mistress Lindsley's invitation.

"Ye must be well-nigh starved," said their hostess hospitably. "What is it, my child?" For Charity had remained standing uncertainly beside her chair.

"Would ye greatly mind," hesitated Charity, "if I asked first to see dear Cousin Eliza, mistress? I know she must have heard our arrival, and it be hard to lie waiting—I know, for once I was very ill, too."

"And may I also be excused?" exclaimed Mehitable, springing to her feet and wondering why she had not thought of her cousin, lying helpless upstairs.

"Nay, sit ye down, Cherry! You, too, Hitty lass!" bade the Squire frowningly. "Your suppers will be cold, forsooth, an ye go, now! Cousin Eliza minds not waiting, I am sure!"

"May they not go for one moment, Squire Condit?" begged Mistress Lindsley unexpectedly. "Indeed, 'tis sweet o' you, child, to remember. Poor Lizzie—I did forget she was waiting upstairs to see her little cousins!"

"Aye, since ye ask it, they may go," consented the Squire, his mouth full of venison pie. "For-


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 sooth," he added, "this be wondrous tasty! Is it rabbit or chicken or what, an I may ask?"

"It be venison, sir," smiled his hostess. "One o' the neighbors shot a buck up Dover village way. We have very little game hereabouts, since the army took up encampment here in Morris Town, for the soldiers, poor, hungry fellows," she paused and sighed, "ha' already scoured our woods. Won't ye ha' more o' the pastry?" she urged, shoving the dish toward him and well knowing that such a treat was not often available in Mistress Condit's frugal, patriotic household.

"Thank'ee, madam, I don't care an I do!" returned the Squire hungrily, feeling as though it were a holiday, as holidays had been celebrated before the war with a feast of good things.

Mehitable and Charity, meanwhile, had followed Tabitha upstairs. "Mistress Lindsley said your name was Tabitha?" said Mehitable inquiringly.

"Aye." The girl nodded over the candle she was carrying. "But folks mostly call me Tabbie."

"As they call me Hitty and they do Charity by the name o' Cherry," returned Mehitable, laughing. "Well, Tabbie," she went on saucily, when they had reached a door beneath which showed a gleam of light, "an ye return to the supper table,'see that Father does not eat up all the meat pie, for I be ravenously hungry, while Cherry, here, is a monstrous eater!"


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 "Hitty, how can ye!" protested her embarrassed sister, glancing sidelong at Tabitha.

"Now, Cherry, deny it not! Be truthful, be honest!" insisted the tease. Then, as Tabitha smilingly promised to save them their share of supper, Mehitable pulled her face to solemn length, for sympathy, and tiptoed into Cousin Eliza's sick room after Charity. To her enormous relief, however, they found the invalid reading by the light of a candle and not at all inclined to be self-pitying, as she took off her narrow spectacles and greeted them in a cheerful voice.

"Welcome to Morris Town, my dears!" she said affectionately. "So ye did remember your old coz!" Giving them a smooth, fragrant cheek to kiss, she patted their hands with a tiny, ring-ladened one, for she was a very fine lady, indeed, who had never known work as the girls' mother, her cousin, had. "Methought ye but now arrived! Have ye supped thus quickly?"

"Not yet," answered honest Mehitable.

"It does not matter, indeed," began the more polite Charity.

"But it does!" replied Cousin Eliza. She waved them away. "Good-night, little maids! Greet your father for me and tell him I hope to see him e'er he departs the morrow." She nodded at them smilingly. "Mistress Lindsley was hoping he would plan to stay the night, so that she might


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 rest in peace. Poor woman—she generally sleeps mortal fear o' a British raid, because o' the powder mill so close by!"

"Powder mill?" Interested at once, Mehitable turned back at the door. But her cousin, clapping a hand over her mouth, waved at her silently, and the girl, sensing that the other had told more than she should have, ran down the narrow stairs after Charity. Seated at the supper table, however, Mehitable did not scruple to ask about the powder mill, for Cousin Eliza's words had aroused her wildest curiosity.

Mistress Lindsley glanced around the room uneasily before answering, and when she spoke, she did so in a lowered voice, as though she feared her words might escape to listening Tory ears outside the closed windows.

"Aye, there be a powder mill on the Whippanong River i' the woods behind us," she admitted. "Colonel Ford and his father built it about three years ago. Colonel Benoni Hathaway be in charge, wi' my husband acting as his assistant when he is home. I must warn ye, however"—she turned solemnly to her wide-eyed young guests who, too interested to eat, hungry though they were, were staring at her, breathless—"I must warn ye that no one knows the mill's whereabouts, so hidden is its site i' the woods, and no one must know—for Tories and red-coats—aye, we have


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 occasional spies, Squire—while they may know o' its existence, yet are unaware o' its location. That be why, ye understand, I am e'er nervous at night, with Joseph away, for any attack o' the British will naturally be aimed at the headquarters or—the powder mill!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Mehitable, "what a lovely spot! Think o't, Cherry—spies and the powder mill and—and—the routs we are to attend! 'Tis too heavenly to be true!" She sighed ecstatically.

They all joined in the Squire's burst of laughter, even the quiet Tabitha, who chuckled over the stocking she was knitting at the girl who liked such a conglomeration of things.

As Mistress Lindsley predicted, everyone slept soundly that night, and early the next morning Squire Condit headed his team and the farm sled toward home.

"Tell our mother we be thinking o' her," begged Charity wistfully, evincing a desire to linger near her father.

"And tell her not to forget to water my plants!" Mehitable called after him when he departed. The Squire nodded and smiled, and his two daughters waved to him until he was out of sight and then turned back in rather a homesick fashion toward the house.

They were met at the kitchen door by Mistress


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 Lindsley, whose face was drawn into a worried expression.

"Hitty," she said abruptly, "a heavy package arrived but now for Colonel Hathaway from headquarters, and the messenger returned at once. Now, Colonel Hathaway be over at the powder mill, and the package requires two people to carry it, for it is heavy. I cannot leave my bread, which is still i' the oven. Think you"—she looked at Mehitable hesitatingly—"think you, you could help Tabbie carry it to the mill?"

"Oh, indeed and I could, Mistress Lindsley!" Mehitable followed her joyfully into the kitchen, where Tabitha was already donning her heavy cardinal. "Don't you want to come, too, Cherry?" she asked, loath to have her sister miss any of the fun.

But Charity shrank back in dismay. "Nay," she faltered. "Why, the old powder mill might blow up while I was there! Oh, Hitty, do not go!"—she whispered imploringly, when Mistress Lindsley's back was turned. "I like it not! Suppose a Tory caught ye going thither! He might shoot ye!"

Mehitable laughed at her. "Little silly!" she murmured affectionately. "Stay you here wi' Cousin Eliza, then! Indeed, I would not miss this trip for worlds!"


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 Chattering blithely in the bright, cold sunshine, Mehitable and Tabitha soon emerged from the Lindsley house and wended their way toward the secret place of the mill. They carried the package between them, suspended from a long wooden stick that the Morris Town girl produced, each end of which rested upon a thin girlish shoulder. Tabitha, looking carefully around, at last held up her hand for silence, then she struck off from the narrow wagon trail, which led toward the river, into an almost impenetrable thicket. Mehitable, struggling along after her, trying to protect her eyes from the vicious back-springing branches and receiving a dozen scratches while so doing, trying, too, to keep the awkward bundle they were carrying from sliding along its stick into Tabitha, thought, whimsically, that Charity had been the wiser of the two, after all. But when they had fought their way beyond the thicket into a small open space, and had traversed to the very door of the mysterious mill, she caught her breath with excitement and would not have exchanged places with Charity if she could have.

She was doomed to disappointment about seeing the interior of the mill, however, for a man answered their knock and stopped them upon the threshold and though he thanked them courteously, they were not invited to enter. Tabitha, apparently used to this treatment, turned quietly


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 back toward the thickets to retrace her steps; but Mehitable, as soon as she had retreated to a safe distance, vented her ire in words.

"In good sooth, they take a maid's service for granted here, Tabbie!" she exclaimed with a low, angry laugh.

Tabitha, crawling along through the underbrush, glanced around at her in mild surprise. "What did ye expect, Hitty?" she asked soothingly.

"I expected, at least, to be invited to inspect the powder mill and see how they made gunpowder!" retorted Mehitable, dodging an especially vicious briar which, though stripped and dried by wintry winds, could yet deal wounds with its thorns. "After carrying the heavy package to them through—through this awful place!" she added bitterly.

"Nay!" Tabitha's voice was shocked. "They cannot stop to dance attendance upon chance Visitors, these men who work here, Hitty! Why," she went on earnestly, "surely ye know that most, if not all, o' the gunpowder used by our Continental Army in New Jersey is made i' this very mill!"

There was huffy silence upon Mehitable's part; but she was too sunshiny of temper to sulk long, and at last her better nature came to the fore.

"I vow ye be right, Tabbie," she said then, good—haturedly. "Have ye ne'er been in the mill, then?"


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 "Nay," answered Tabitha firmly. "No woman has, to my knowledge, save, mayhap, Mistress Lindsley!" And the two girls fell silent, Tabitha because she was naturally so, and Mehitable because of astonishment at the lack of feminine curiosity in Morris Town.

But, after a little, turning to glance back through the thickets as they proceeded down the bank of the river, where a barge, loaded with barrels, was frozen into the ice, Mehitable exclaimed in a low voice and clutched Tabitha to an abrupt standstill.

"Hawtree!" she gasped, pointing.

Tabitha stared at her. "Hawtree?" she repeated in astonishment. "What mean ye, Hitty?"

"There!" Mehitable's finger still pointing wildly, Tabitha followed its direction with her eyes, and in doing so, caught a glimpse of a cruel, crafty face just disappearing among the thickets on the opposite bank. "Hawtree is a Tory!" Mehitable was wringing her hands now. "Oh, what a pity—I saw him counting the barrels on yon barge!—what a pity for him to be able to carry news o' their number to the British and there dispose o' such information at his own price!"

But Tabitha smiled quietly. "Can ye keep a secret, Hitty?" she demanded. At Mehitable's wondering nod, she smiled again triumphantly. "The information concerning the output o' the


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 mill on yon barge, while it may earn your Tory spy his unworthy fee, will help instead o' hinder our cause! Those barrels be loaded wi' sand instead o' gunpowder, as is Colonel Hathaway's practice, as I happen to be almost the only one to know—I heard him and Major Lindsley talking by chance o' the matter one time when I approached the mill—'tis thus he deceives the enemy! The larger they think our supply o' powder, the less apt they are to attack us here."

Tabitha's voice died away, but the next instant it was her turn to cry out.

"Oh, Hitty"—trembling, she, too, pointed across the little river—"I saw—I saw the face o' a savage!"

This time it was Mehitable's eyes which followed Tabitha's pointing finger. "Gray Hawk! It must be Gray Hawk!" she cried. "Ah, then," her hands flew to her heart and she turned a pale face toward the other girl, "then danger must be lurking near! Ever Gray Hawk appears when danger threatens! Come, we had best depart! Mayhap, danger is threatening e'en while we stand here!" And, hurriedly, she struck back through the thickets toward the rough wagon trail she knew now led from the Lindsley house to the powder mill.

"Who is Gray Hawk?" demanded Tabitha, almost querulously, stumbling after her. "Ye be so queer wi' your 'Hawtrees' and your 'Gray


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 Hawks'! Indeed, I like not such mysteries! One would think we were out i' the wilderness instead o' right here i' Morris Town!"

Mehitable, her eyes resting at last upon the reassuring protection of Mistress Lindsley's house, slackened her hastening steps momentarily.

"Nay, I meant not to anger ye, Tabbie, by not telling ye at once who Gray Hawk is," she said apologetically. "He is John's 'blood brother'—an Indian who, since the beginning o' the war, because o' certain Indian rites he and John performed together, call themselves so. And he it hath been who hath watched o'er our family because John could not be home to do so. More than once"—Mehitable's voice grew tremulous with real gratitude—"he hath rescued me, hath Gray Hawk!"

The two girls fell silent. Safety near, it was a temptation not to break into a run for shelter. They walked along quickly, however, and both were panting when they burst into the kitchen. But they said nothing about their adventures, having agreed to this by mutual consent for fear of making Mistress Lindsley more nervous than she was.

After supper that evening, Tabitha donned her cardinal and, somewhat to the sisters' surprise, bade them farewell.

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 be ill," she explained, in her sober voice. "I usually live wi' my aunt, both mine parents being deceased."

"Are ye not afraid, then, to go through the dark, Tabbie?" asked Mehitable significantly, glancing, with a repressed shudder, through the black square that was the window.

But smilingly Tabitha shook her head. "Nay, why should I be afraid to walk along village lanes that I have known all my life?" she asked gently. Tis only the unknown which terrifies, Hitty."

"Well, we hope your aunt will soon be recovered, Tabbie, and that ye will be back here wi' us once more," responded Mehitable cordially, echoed, as usual, by Charity.

Mistress Lindsley had already retired when the girls, having barred the heavy door after Tabitha, went slowly upstairs. Unconsciously, as they left the warmth of the kitchen behind, their steps quickened. They peeped into their Cousin Eliza's room; but finding her asleep, with the firelight playing upon her placid face, they went on to their room and soon they, too, were donning nightcaps and climbing into their high feather bed. There, after a few desultory giggles, convulsive wriggles, pokes, and various bits of girlish gossip, they fell asleep, and all was silent in Mistress Lindsley's house.


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 It seemed hours later that Mehitable awoke. She jerked straight out of her first sound sleep into the awful, strained, listening attention which an unexpected or a seemingly inexplicable noise can produce at night.

"Cherry!" Mehitable, resting cautiously upon one elbow, leaned over and put her lips to her sister's ears. "Cherry," she said noiselessly, "wake up!"

Charity uttered a little moan, shifted her position. "No, no," she muttered incoherently. "Stop tickling, Hitty! Ugh—le' me 'lone!"

"Cherry!" Mehitable shook her desperately. "Oh, please waken, Cherry!"

Charity, in answer, rolled over upon her back, stretched, yawned, adjusted the nightcap Mehitable had disarranged in whispering to her, and with that, became awake.

"What is it, Hitty?" she asked then. Receiving no answer save a spasmodic clutch from Mehitable, she, too, started up, and they both sat motionless in bed, shivering from cold and fear.

At that instant, their door opened, and Mistress Lindsley entered hurriedly. She was a comical-looking figure, with her curl-papers sticking out from beneath her nightcap, with her shadow dancing grotesquely on the wall behind her from the candle she carried as she advanced upon the girls' bed. But grim tragedy stalked at her heels,


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 peeped out of her staring eyes, spoke in her gasping voice.

"Ge—get up!" she stammered. "The—the—the house be surrounded! We are attacked! The—the—red-coats have—have come!"


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 house and laid field on field until you dwell as strangers in the land of your own."

From all this it may be seen that the Heavenly Father was bitterly opposed to the landlord, and the language in which he condemned the private ownership of land was plain enough and strong enough for most people to understand. So strong, in fact, that if a modern preacher repeated the utterances of the Lord on the land question before a congregation of Christian landlords he most likely would lose his job.

The Old Testament is rather hard on the private ownership of the land and the New Testament holds still less consolation to the landlord.

Long before the war there lived a man in the Holy Land by the name of Ananias. This man must have been a great admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, for the latter named many of his friends after him. About that time Christianity got started, and Mr. Ananias, who was somewhat of a progressive, concluded to join the new party. Now, these early Christians were a queer set, and nothing like them has ever been seen again in Christendom. In the first place, they believed in dividing up, going even so far as advocating the common ownership of clothing. "We hold everything in common except our wives," said one of them. At meal time they assembled around the common table. Everyone brought all he had to the table, and if the fellow who fetched the least eat the most no one raised a kick. This looked mighty good to Mr. Ananias and he decided to get in on the ground floor.

Now, the by-laws of the organization stipulated that those who had land must sell it and bring the proceeds thereof to the common table. Well, this Ananias man owned a good farm in Palestine County, and he sold it. But when it came to fetching the money to his Christian brothers he hedged. "No one knows how much I got for my farm except the man who bought it, and I told him to keep mum," said Ananias to himself. So he knocked down some of the money.

But it appears that St. Peter, the chairman of the meeting, smelled a rat, and he spake unto the new convert thusly:

"Ananias, is this all the boodle thou got for thy farm?

And Ananias looked Peter square in the eyes, and said, "Sure, Pete." Thereupon God smote him dead, and some young fellows wrapped him in a blanket and dumped him on the outside.

Then they called in Mrs. Ananias and cross-examined her. And she swore up and down that the money on the table was


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HE red-coats! Nay, are ye sure, mistress?" exclaimed Mehitable valiantly.

Springing out of bed, she began to dress hastily, stopping every now and then to listen for a repetition of the sounds which had frightened her. Charity crept out on to the icy floor, shuddering and shaking with a nervous chill. Mehitable, noticing this, bade her go in and dress by their Cousin Eliza's fire; but warned her not to waken the sick woman.

"Aye, Hitty," returned Mistress Lindsley, after a pause. She stood motionless, as though petrified by fear, her head bent in an attitude of agonized listening, "Aye, can ye not hear them?" she whispered, with a strange sort of triumph. And now Mehitable had to admit that she could, that the sounds which came from the yard below were real sounds and not those of an overwrought imagination.

Men's voices, hushed yet vibrant with excitement, the trampling of horses' hoofs, the rattle and clash of muskets—these made their blood run coldcold. [sic]


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 At last, Mehitable could stand it no longer. Blowing out Mistress Lindsley's candle, she crept to the window which, inch by inch, she shoved up. Then, poking out her head, despite her hostess's whispered pleas not to, she stared down through the black darkness. When she gazed around at the older woman, who had come close, her blanched face gleamed white.

"I could not see, but 'tis a score or more below, I'm sure!" she said dully, in answer to the other's terrified question. "Are we—lost, think ye?"

At that moment came a tremendous knocking, echoing through the silent house. It was the imperative clatter of a sword-hilt upon the front door.

"Open!" cried a man's voice. "Open—inname!"

"What did he say?" muttered Mistress Lindsley, her breathing terrified.

Twas a mumble to me—something about a name!" said Mehitable.

"So I heard!" said Mistress Lindsley brusquely, because of her fright. "Oh, me! oh, me!" she wrung her hands. "If only Joseph were here!"

She started nervously as someone appeared, that instant, in the doorway; but it was only Charity—albeit a trembling, pale-cheeked Charity.

"Oh, Mistress Lindsley, what be ye a-going to do?" gasped the latter. "Cousin Eliza is awake," she added more calmly. "She says to open the


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 door to the rogues and she will try to buy our safety by offering them her jewels!"

As Charity spoke, again came that brutal knocking. Typically the domineering British, Mehitable thought! She looked an inquiry at Mistress Lindsley, whose face, poor woman, even in the yellow candlelight, showed gray and shocked.

"Aye—open—the—door, Hitty!" said Mistress Lindsley, catching her breath. "We—we be lost, I fear! I do not think jewels will buy our safety after the—the way the British have shown us they can pillage, burn, murder!" Her words died away into a dreadful silence as she gazed ahead of her in stony despair.

Charity uttered a stifled cry as Mehitable started courageously toward the stairs. "Nay, let me go, Hitty!" she choked, running after her and attempting to pass her. "Let me open the door! They might bayonet you!"

Mehitable raised her arm and barred the younger girl's way. "Think you I could look our mother in the face an I hid behind your petticoats, Cherry?" she demanded sternly. "Nay, little sister," she looked down at the other with tender gaze, although the white, strained line around her own mouth and nostrils showed her dreadful fright, "I will ope the door!"

But Mistress Lindsley, attracted by their low-voiced words, came toward them swiftly. "Nay,


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 Hitty—I did not think!" She parted them gently and went through the bedroom door. "I will ope the door, of course. It is my place to do so!" And the two girls dared not argue with her, because of the command in her tone.

They followed her down the stairs, however, step by step, for Mistress Lindsley went slowly, clinging as though for support against the wall as she went.

"An—an—they bayonet us, as—as—Mistress Lindsley thinks—they—might," whispered Mehitable to Charity between stiffened lips, "think—o' the soldiers—who—die for their—country!"

"Aye, Hitty!" answered Charity, her head up. And the rest of that slow, awful journey down the stairs there marched as brave gentlewomen as ever trod the path of danger.

A struggle with the heavy bar of the door. Another one with the great key—fully six inches long—in the lock. And Mistress Lindsley had flung open the door.

There was an instant of silence, then a courteous voice spoke out of the darkness.

"Pardon, mistress—is this Major Lindsley's house?"

Mistress Lindsley nodded mechanically, then realizing that her nod could not be seen, perhaps, for she had left the candle upstairs, she spoke huskily.


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 "Aye, sir!" She cleared her throat. "Aye," she repeated heavily.

"Then, mistress, we are under orders," the voice out of the darkness continued, "we are ordered to"

"To seize the house, I suppose, sirrah!" finished Mistress Lindsley, coming suddenly out of her daze of misery. She snapped defiant fingers. "To murder innocent women and children as ye have so oft done before!"

"But—but—madam," began the voice—rather astonished, Mehitable thought.

"To burn and pillage and commit what terrible crimes in the name o' warfare ye best wot of!" swept on Mistress Lindsley, now fully aroused. She barred her doorway dramatically. "But ye shall not enter here, except over my dead body!"

"Mistress, I" the voice tried again.

"Except, I say, over my fallen body!" cried Mistress Lindsley. Suddenly she screamed. "Run, Hitty, run! The way be open at the rear, mayhap!"

Mehitable, however, was too transfixed by terror and excitement to move, and the next instant Mistress Lindsley was gently but firmly shoved to one side.

"Is there any one in the house not hysterical?" demanded a desperate voice. "This poor lady be either demented or overcome by fright!"


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 Mehitable, at that, sprang forward and helped to support the half-fainting figure of her hostess. Between her and the young soldier who, entering then, had caught the lady as she had reeled, they carried her into the kitchen where they laid her down upon a bench. Straightening her back in the firelight, Mehitable saw, instead of the hated red, another color beneath the greatcoat of the man confronting her.

"Why," she stammered, "wh—why, ye are not red-coats!"

Before the young soldier could speak, a cry came from the door. There was a rush of little feet across the kitchen floor, a flurry of homespun skirts, and Mehitable blinked her eyes. For there was Charity standing with her hands caught in those of the young soldier, with her happy face uplifted to his in glad welcome, with broken words trembling upon her lips. Mehitable stared and blinked again. Then she, too, exclaimed with delight, and leaving Mistress Lindsley's side, ran across the room to where the other two were hurling excited questions at each other.

She was unnoticed. Neither turned at her approach, and rather taken aback, she stood silently watching them for a moment. Then the lad—for he was not much more than that—in swinging toward the door, as he remembered that his men were waiting out in the cold, stumbled over her.