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 "But, and that be so, Mary, we will erase it!" ejaculated the Squire.

Twill do no good, I fear!" His wife shook her head. "We are doubtless marked in other ways, besides. But, hush! Not a word to the girls! They must not be worried, for life is dark enow for them, poor chicks!"

To glance at them, however, as they came giggling back into the kitchen, no one would ever think that life was gloomy for them. Mehitable's dark curls had slipped from beneath her cap as she stumbled merrily forward, her arms around a great wooden bowlful of apples and chestnuts. Charity followed more sedately with the cider jug and the candle; but her usually sober little face was gay.

"And now, Father, the story!" commanded Mehitable, when at last they were all seated before the fire, Charity upon her father's knee, her sister cross-legged at his feet to watch the chestnuts and the cider brewing beside some embers, while the mother, whose hands were never idle, knitted upon the opposite settle.

Squire Condit took several puffs at his pipe before he removed it from his mouth and held it so that its glowing contents would not spill.

"It was when I was a wee lad," he commenced obediently. And the girls exchanged delighted glances, Father, as a lad, was a most satisfying young hero!

"A rainy, windy day it was, I mind," he continued, "that the stagecoach drew up at the wharf and my mother got out of her inside seat, while I slid down from the box, and my father, already laden with some of our luggage, including Mother's precious bonnet box,

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 stood staring at the great sailing vessel that was to carry us to our new home in America. You may well believe I was excited! Not only was I clad in my brave black satin suit and my shoes with ye silver buckles; but I, too, was carrying luggage in the way of Poll, our parrot."

"Father, are those the silver shoe buckles John wears now?" interrupted Charity.

"Aye, lass—why?" The Squire took a hasty puff at his pipe.

"Nothing—she means nothing!" exclaimed Mehitable nervously, frowning at her sister. "Do let Father go on, Cherry!"

Mistress Condit, glancing up curiously, saw that warning glance and resolved to question Mehitable later; but as events turned out, the incident was forgotten in more exciting ones.

"Well, let's see. Where was I?" The Squire puffed contemplatively.

"The parrot, Father!" prompted both girls eagerly.

"Oh yes. I verily believe you know this tale better than I!" he laughed. "Well, I had pressed forvard most anxiously after my father when 'Polly wants a cracker!' said the bird, and 'Polly wants a cracker!' imitated a pert voice behind me. I turned around indignantly to see a little girl with very red hair staring at me saucily from behind her mother's skirts."

"Oh, Samuel, not very red hair!" protested Mistress Condit with a furtive pat at the auburn curls that peeped beneath her cap.

"Oh, yes, very red hair!" insisted the Squire im-

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 perturbably; but with a mischievous side glance at his wife, who tossed her head and laughed. "I was minded to speak reproof to the saucy wench; but her mother had already done so, and with a jerk, the little red-haired girl was led up the gangplank of the very ship my father and I had been gazing at, and I knew that she, too, was to venture across the water with us.

"It was a long voyage, that one to America; but as the days passed, I grew very fond of that little girl, whose name was Mary."

"Why, that's Mother's name!" exclaimed Charity, sitting up to stare at her mother.

"So it is!" agreed Squire Condit in solemn surprise.

"Of course it is, silly!" burst out Mehitable. "And the little red-haired girl was Mother, wasn't she, Father?"

"Now, that," said the Squire judicially, "is the question. Howbeit, to finish my tale before the apples burn." He glanced significantly at the row of scorching Jonathans which Mehitable promptly turned. "One day little Mary appeared with drooping face. 'My head doth ache!' quoth she, and she coughed, though it was a clear, warm day.

"Her mother bundled her down the ship's cabin, but not before I had stolen a kiss, for by that time I loved little Mary as dearly as ten years can love eight years. Then it was announced that little Mary had the measles!"

"Oh dear!" exclaimed tender-hearted Charity. "Did she really, Father?"

"Yes," nodded father, "really, Cherry! For

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 long days, then, I hung around the berth where lay Mary, until, one morning, I, too, woke with a headache and a cough.

Alas, Samuel, you have the measles! I wonder how ye caught them!' cried my mother. And so I did have them! I was a pretty sight, for measles are not beauteous! I was very ill, for the measles 'struck in,' and with them my love"—and here the Squire stole another look at his wife's curls—"for red-haired girls!"

"Oh, me!" sighed Charity, as her father stopped and puffed violently at his pipe. "What became o' the parrot, Father?"

"Why, I gave Poll to little Mary when she got well again."

"And she cherished her for years, until Poll died of old age," finished Mistress Condit, smiling and gathering up her knitting. "But come, girls!"

"Aye, 'tis late, lassies!" said the Squire.

"But our apples! We must have our apples!" And two pairs of wide-awake eyes were studying the apples calculatingly to see how long they could be made to last when through the merry chatter came a wild, long drawn out cry.

"Wolves!" Mistress Condit's hands flew to press against her heart as she gazed, terror-stricken, at her husband. Pausing, pipe in hand, he stood listening until above the crackle of the fire came again the cry. Then he shook his head.

"Nay, I think not! But we shall soon see!" And striding forward, he flung open the door.

Only the crazy howling of wind and storm came

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 to the listeners' ears. Silence reigned except for the gale.

"Nothing there, Samuel?" queried Mistress Condit tremblingly, at last.

From behind her voluminous skirts peered the frightened faces of the girls. Strange, dark war-times these were, when they never could be sure whether it was friend or foe or wild animal approaching!

"No one there, Father?" repeated Charity's sweet voice anxiously.

"Nay, I think not!" shouted back the Squire, moving forward to the edge of the doorstep, where he stood peering through the curtain of rain and sleet that beat upon him. "No one hereStay! What is that out by yon tree!"

And without another word, unarmed, he plunged off the doorstep to disappear into the teeth of the storm!

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OR long minutes the two girls and their mother stood there, minutes that seemed like months, that seemed like years. Then Squire Condit's voice hailed them from the dooryard and soon, as Mistress Condit took the candle that Mehitable had brought her and held it aloft, they saw him staggering toward them half-carrying, half-dragging a human form.

"Wine, Mary, for this poor fellow!" he gasped, stumbling past her into the kitchen.

As the firelight flashed upon the still figure their father had placed upon the floor, the two girls drew back with exclamations of fear.

"An Indian, Father?" faltered Mehitable.

"Aye—an Indian! But a human being like you or me, Hitty, and as such, subject to death as we!" answered her father reprovingly.

"Poor Indian!" said Charity immediately, in her gentle voice. Then she shrank back, for at that instant the Indian's eyes flew open and he stared at her with the uncanny alertness of a wild wood-thing caught in a trap.

"Here, take a sip of this, my man," said Squire Condit, raising the Indian's head to the pewter mug

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 Mistress Condit had handed him. "I'll warrant ye that will put new life into your veins!" he added half jokingly.

But the Indian's eyes searched the room, stared at the little group of householders around him with no abatement of tension in their depths, and at last, giving a sudden spring, he regained his feet and stood, tall and straight, before them.

"Ugh! I go now!" he grunted, turning toward the door. But the Squire seized him by the arm.

"What—out into that storm!" he exclaimed. "Nay, 'twould be sure death and that—Indian or no Indian—I'll see no man go to! So stay ye here before the fire. To-morrow ye may go." And he commenced laboriously to pantomime the act of going to sleep before the fire. Charity and Mehitable watching him with breathless interest.

The Indian, however, for the first time allowed a gleam of wintry amusement to flit across his face as he watched the exaggerated antics his host was performing to make his meaning perfectly clear.

"Spik English," he offered at last, when the Squire, worn out by his efforts, had dropped in exhaustion upon the fireside settle.

"Speak English! Well, gadzooks, why didn't ye say so!" roared the Squire indignantly. "Did ye ever hear the like, Mary?" he complained to his wife. "And I tiring myself out to give him understanding!"

Mistress Condit smiled. "Nay, he meant no harm, Samuel," she answered soothingly. "Let us to bed, now. It waxes late. The Indian may place the black

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 bearskin beneath him and wrap in that buffalo robe, an he likes. Charity, the warming pan!"

Charity, obediently taking down the brass warming pan and filling it with embers from the fire, was turning away when the Indian touched her lightly upon the arm. She shot a glance of half terror at him and then an imploring one at her parents and sister at the other end of the kitchen; but they were busily conversing and she stopped, tremblingly.

The Indian turned and pointed to the silhouette hanging over the chimney shelf.

"Him—John?" he muttered, in so low a tone that Charity had to incline her ear toward him to catch his words. She started back in astonishment.

"You know John?" Unconsciously she, too, whispered it.

She was wheeling toward her parents to acquaint them with this amazing fact when the Indian's swift fingers lightly touched her lips and glancing up at him she saw him give a slight, imperative shake of his head. Mistress Condit, turning soon afterward, stared in displeasure.

"What! Loitering, Charity!" she frowned. And Charity, with a little shiver of excitement, stepped past the strange guest toward the narrow stairs that led to the loft rooms above.

Upstairs there was no loitering. Swiftly the beds were warmed by means of the warming pan inserted between the icy sheets and moved up and dovm over the smooth surface of the lower one. Night attire, including snugly fitting nightcaps, was donned, and

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 stepping up the queer little wooden steps into their high four-posted bed, Mehitable and Charity sank almost out of sight in the feather mattress and were soon fast asleep.

But down below, lying upon the hearth with his eyes focussed upon the silhouette of young Dr. John Condit, the Indian lay for a long time awake, while the storm beat and howled at the door and the wolves upon the Newark mountain above him howled, too.

It was early the next morning that Squire Condit, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, caught the Indian in the act of stealing a silver candlestick holder, a cherished heirloom brought over from England which occupied the position of honor on the dresser. The Squire's bushy eyebrows met in displeasure over angry eyes and, with an agility beyond his years, he leaped for and secured his flintlock from its hook near the door before the Indian could turn.

"Hands up!" he ordered then, sternly. The Indian, his lips tightening to a single narrow line, carefully replaced the candlestick holder in its place before raising his hands.

"Ye thievin' varmint!" ejaculated the Squire. "Not an honest hair to your head! Here I give ye shelter from last night's storm and this is your gratitude. Gratitude!" He repeated it contemptuously. "Charity!" he called, raising his voice.

"Yes, Father." Charity came running down the stairs to stop and stare in puzzled wonder at her father with his aimed gun.

"Fetch me that rawhide from the wall!"

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 A spasm of resentment gleamed in the red man's eyes, but his face maintained its stoical expression and his hands high above his proud head did not waver. Charity brought the evil-looking strap to her father and held it out tremblingly.

"Now take this flintlock and aim at the rascal's heart. I'll have no thievin' on my premises and I'm going to teach this fellow a lesson!"

But Charity, instead of doing as her father directed, suddenly clasped her hands and burst into tears.

"Ah, no, Father—please!" she sobbed.

The Squire, who it must be confessed was already repenting his rash threat, lowered his gun promptly.

"Ye hear that?" he asked the Indian fiercely. "Go, then, ingrate, and know ye owe your escape to the tender pleading of this little lass!"

The Indian turned with one movement of his lithe body and, without a look of gratitude at anyone, stalked to the door Charity had run to open for him and passed silently out into the November dawn.

"I thought I heard voices, Samuel," said Mistress Condit, entering at this point and going over to the fireplace to begin her breakfast preparations.

"I hope Amos is through his chores ere now, though I doubt it! This rheumatism—if only John were home to cure it, so I could be out attending things myself!" The Squire hobbled toward the door, where he turned to glance at his wife. "So ye did hear voices, Mary! That thievin' varmint! Tell your mother, Charity," he bade his young daughter.

"My silver candlestick holder!" exclaimed Mistress

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 Condit, when, the Squire having disappeared in the direction of the stock barns, Charity gave her mother a hasty account of what had happened. Mistress Condit's thin cheeks flushed with anger. "And why did ye stop your father, since the scoundrel so well deserved his beating!"

Charity bit her lip at this reproof.

"I don't know why I did, Mother, in truth," she answered, a catch in her breath. "Except that—oh, he looked like a trapped beast of the woods here, to me—helpless—caught—I could not bear to have him hurt!"

"Humph! Remember, Charity, that these same wild things burn folks' houses i' the West and scalp women and children and dance their horrid war dances around the ruins," returned Mistress Condit grimly. "It were not wise to show too much sympathy for Indians!"

"But perhaps—he is a good Indian!" ventured Charity.

"There are no good Indians," answered her mother in a tone of finality. And with that the subject was closed.

The November days passed. Discouraging, indeed, was the war news that filtered across from the enemy, entrenched in New York City under Sir Henry Clinton, to the Newark Mountains, at the foot of which the Condit farm was situated. There were very few roads, or even paths, between the "Town by the River," as Newark was called then, and the outlying farms and plantations of the First and the Second

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 mountains. Swamps and woodland separated these meagre hamlets.

General Washington, John Condit had written his father, after his successful siege and capture of Boston in the early spring of 1776, had passed a summer that, except for Colonel Moultrie's fine victory at Charleston, South Carolina, in which the British had lost and had sailed for New York, and the Declaration of Independence which had been adopted by Congress, was rather a discouraging one. The Americans had suffered a heavy loss on Long Island, thereby losing New York, so that since September Washington had been slowly but steadily retreating in an effort to hold some of New Jersey. Rumor had started vague tales of the Battle of White Plains in New York; but as yet no definite word had come from Dr. John Condit to his anxious family.

The two girls, however, were almost too busy to note the passing of the eventful days. Their time was completely filled, now, from morning, when they rose by candlelight, to bedtime, with all of those laborious household tasks which even the very young girls had to share. There were candle-dripping, soap-making, spinning, weaving, cooking—and even the simple operation of dish-washing became an intricate one when the water had to be brought by the well sweep—a long pole so weighted at one end that a slight pressure brought up the bucket attached to the other end—from the well, carried into the house, heated more or less slowly over the open fire and dipped from its heavy iron pot into the dishpan. The dishes were rarely of

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 china—those were prized and saved. Trenchers of wood, perhaps beautifully turned and polished, gourds and pewter mugs, spoons and two-tined forks of pewter were the ordinary household essentials. But I am sure that the roasted meats served on the wooden trencher tasted exactly as savory as those now served on china or silver platters, and that the well water or icy spring water was fully as sweet as that now drawn from faucets.

One day, as it was growing dusk, Mistress Condit retired to the fireside settle and fell into a heavy, feverish sleep. The two girls had been invited to a sewing bee at Miranda Briggs's and had spent three happy hours there. But approaching their own home, what was their amazement to find the kitchen dark and still as they pushed open the door.

"Oh, Cherry, what do you suppose" Mehitable was beginning, when the blurred figure of her mother stirred in the shadows.

"Hitty?" asked Mistress Condit, in a hoarse voice.

Mehitable threw off her long cape to run over and stand beside her mother. "Yes, Mother, what is it? What is the matter?" she asked anxiously.

"I don't know," answered Mistress Condit vaguely. "I must have caught cold yesterday while out salting the pork and working around the smokehouse, for my head aches and my throat is sore—'tis doubtless a touch of chills and fever. Oh, how I wish your brother John were here!" She uttered a sudden exclamation of dismay. "Why the fire is out! However did that happen! And your father took the flint and steel with him to the north pasture to burn some stumps there!"

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 Charity was kneeling before the dark fireplace, tentatively poking among the dead embers.

"Why, even the back-log is out!" she said in a puzzled voice. "Whatever could have happened. Mother?"

"I remember now!" Mistress Condit dragged herself erect with a groan. "The soup upset, the bail slipped upon the crane—and such a hissing as took place!" She sat in rueful thought for a moment. "Well," she resumed, rousing herself with a sigh, "there is but one thing to do, Mehitable. We cannot wait until your father comes home—we must borrow some live coals from the Briggses. Take you the kettle and hurry, for I do dislike supper to be tardy when your father comes in from foddering the stock. You will not be afraid, Mehitable?"

"Why, Mother, indeed I am almost fifteen," answered Mehitable in a hurt voice. Her honest black eyes gazed at her mother in reproach. "But it won't take more than half an hour, I know. Sure, Miranda will be surprised to see me again so soon!" she finished, with an irrepressible twinkle.

Charity ran to get the iron bucket which was preserved for just such energencies, while Mehitable once more donned her heavy cape and pulled its hood well over her head.

"Don't you think I had better go, too?" asked the younger sister anxiously. "Won't you be afraid, Hitty? 'Tis monstrous dark outside and the path through the woods is a lonely one."

"Nonsense!" returned Mehitable sturdily, catching up the iron bucket. "Have I not trod that same path

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 a hundred times in daylight! Why should I be afraid of shadows, Charity?"

"But perhaps—that Indian, you know!" began Charity.

"Silly child!" And Mehitable laughed with the superiority of fifteen years. "Father says he was doubtless an Indian runner for the British Army. I'm sure he's far away by now."

"Do not put foolish notions into your sister's head, Charity," interrupted Mistress Condit. She laid her own head back against the settle with a weary little sigh of pain.

"You must stay with Mother, Charity" whispered Mehitable. "Better cover her with the buffalo robe; it grows cold in here without the fire. Good-bye, Mother," she added aloud cheerfully. "I shall not be gone long."

"Promise me to go by the lower road and not by the wood path. 'Tis better!" said Mistress Condit, rousing herself with an effort.

Mehitable hesitated. The valley road, barely wide enough for an ox-cart, following the foot of the First Mountain, was a good twenty minutes longer than the wood path. But reading aright the anxiety on her mother's face, she nodded her head and slipped lightly out the door.

It was indeed lonely along the road. But at last the welcome lights of the Briggses' farmhouse revealed themselves through the gloom, and it was not long then before Mehitable was back in the kitchen she had just quitted an hour or so before.

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 Everything was in its usual prim order there. Every vestige of the sewing bee had disappeared and Mistress Briggs and her daughter were hastily preparing supper against the arrival of Squire Briggs. As a matter of fact, Squire Briggs, being notably close-fisted and penurious, knew nothing whatever about the sewing bee. All the party viands—the pound cake, the pumpkin pies, the tarts—had been prepared in secret by his wife, and now nothing remained to tell the tale save the happy light in Miranda's eyes and the high red spots of excitement in Mistress Briggs's cheeks.

"Why, Hitty child, what brings you back?" exclaimed the latter as the kitchen door opened and Mehitable stumbled laughingly in.

"I came after coal," explained Mehitable. "Charity and I got home to find our mother ill and the fire out."

"Your mother ill! Dear me!" said Mistress Briggs. She stooped, tongs in hand, and deftly lifted some burning embers into the iron bucket Mehitable held out. "There," she said, "those ought to last until you get home, Hitty. Let me know if your mother is not better to-morrow."

"What's this? What's this?" asked a querulous voice from the door. Everyone seemed to shrink, to become self-conscious, as a sharp, spare figure stepped across the threshold and Squire Briggs's hard eyes, beneath ill-natured brows, peered at them furtively.

"Just coals, Father! The Condits' fire is out," explained Miranda hastily, noticing her parent's gaze fixed suspiciously upon the iron bucket.

"Quite Quite so!" answered Squire Briggs

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 peevishly. "Right to lend coals; but remember, sugar and flour are high and not to be borrowed."

"Indeed, Squire Briggs," commenced Mehitable spiritedly, then finding Mistress Briggs's eyes fastened upon her imploringly, she relapsed into silence and took up the bucket from the hearth.

"Young tongues should learn meekness," said Squire Briggs with a sour smile.

Miranda followed Mehitable to the door. "You must not mind Father," she said in a hasty whisper. "He is but peculiar."

"He is," agreed Mehitable grimly. Then she suddenly laughed into the other's sober face. "But you're a dear, Randy, and thank you indeed for the coals!"

At the Briggs's gatepost she hesitated. Long and dark the road home stretched before her, while leading up and around back of the house, into the forest itself, she knew the shorter woodland path would take her but half the time.

"I promised Mother I would come by the road," she said to herself, "but I didn't promise I would return by the road."

Poor Mehitable, she did not realize that a promise half broken is nearly as bad as a promise broken all the way! But she soon learned that disobedience inevitably brings its own punishment.

It was quite dark now, as she hurried along the narrow path that familiarity helped her to pass over safely. Upon either side rose the sheer forest. The wind shook the dry leaves that rattled and sighed as

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 they fell. Far off a great owl hooted. But Mehitable was not in the least nervous.

She was thinking contentedly of the busy day planned for the morrow, of the happy afternoon she had just passed, hoping with the careless assurance and lack of worry of childhood that her mother would be better by the time she reached home, when all of a sudden, stepping lightly around a great boulder that centered the path, she stopped short—gasped—stiffened. A thrill of terror shot through her.

For facing her steadily, unmoving, menacing, two flaming eyes burned through the darkness, barring her pathway!

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T TOOK Mehitable but a moment to realize that it was an animal of some sort facing her. Then, as her vision focussed more acutely, she made out the huge, bulky outline, the grotesque haunch, and the inquisitive little head lifted more in curiosity than in threat. And almost instantly, automatically, she lifted her bucket with its fiery embers and hurled it directly into the eyes of a great black bear that barred her path not three feet from her!

With a snort of surprise and a grunt of disgust the big beast scrambled away into the dense underbrush. Mehitable, giggling half hysterically, actually stooped to retrieve the glowing embers before she, too, hurried on. Too precious were the coals to be thus wasted!

Ten minutes later found her breathlessly pounding the door to her mother's kitchen. And never had home, dark and cheerless as it was without the fire, seemed so safe and dear to her as on that November night, 1776.

And now came long, gloomy days for the two little Colonial maids, although Mistress Condit, contrary to her fears, was soon better and about her work once more. Good patriot that he was, Squire Condit had long since forwarded everything he could spare in the way of stock and food to the American Army, while

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 Mistress Condit's busy fingers flew, hour after hour, and her brisk step could be heard from dawn to dark at her spinning wheel. Her whole heart and soul were wrapped in the enterprise to which, uncomplainingly, she had given her only son.

Squire Condit was totally unlike his neighbor, Squire Briggs, whose parsimonious clutch refused to abandon any of his possessions without an enormous profit to himself. Indeed, it was common report that he, like the Tories in the village of Caldwell over the mountain, sold stock and grain, as well as wool, at immense profit to the British in New York. For during the winter of 1776–77 the residents of New York, as also the thousands of British troops there and on Staten Island, were in great straits for necessary supplies. Many articles of food could not be had at all, while others were so dear that even the most wealthy grew desperate. It was the Tory farmers who preyed upon these people and afterward became the first of the war profiteers. Thanksgiving Day passed quietly. Mehitable and Charity sat down silently to the corn-meal porridge and sparse slices of bacon with their parents and the men-of-all-work, Amos and Judd, trying not to think of bygone holidays when, with the brother now so far away, they had assembled around the cheerful board that had seemed to groan with all the good things Mistress Condit knew so well how to cook. They were delighted, however, by a large pumpkin pie which she produced with sparkling eyes.

"I could not bear to have the day pass without one bit of feast," she explained half apologetically to her

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 husband. "I saved the eggs, Samuel—old Milly has begun to lay again—and I knew such a few could do our army no good."

"But this is fine!" explained the Squire heartily. He looked as pleased as the two girls and the men-ofall-work, and Mistress Condit's throat suddenly contracted at the pathos of their pleasure, for barren, indeed, had been their board of everything but the necessities.

"I am glad art pleased," was all she said, however.

Afterward how glad she was that she had given them this pleasure, for as it turned out, even the necessities of life were almost taken from them.

They were peacefully gathered before their fire that Thanksgiving night when a voice hailed them loudly from the gatepost outside. The Squire answered the summons at once and the two girls and their mother could hear him at first exclaim; then came short, quick questions and answers. He soon returned to them, with a very grave face, while the hoof beats of the post rider's horse died away rapidly in the distance. The Squire, without enlightening his family, began to pace up and down the kitchen. Finally, Mistress Condit rose and went to him.

"What is it, Samuel?" she asked steadily, placing her hand upon his arm. At her gesture he stopped in his restless marching to glance tenderly down into her upturned face.

"It's—it's—not about John, is it?" faltered.

It seemed a thousand years to the two watching girls before their father shook his head.

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 "No, no! Forgive me, Mary," he said then. "I did not mean to alarm you. No, it's not John. 'Tis this! Young Cy Jones is riding to warn the farmers. His father and family, as well as the family of Jotham Harrison, have been forced to flee to the mountains this day. There is a Hessian raid afoot and he advises us to go, too. No telling what these Hessians will do, although ostensibly they are merely after supplies. They are an uncouth, rough lot. They have already taken possession of the Harrisons' place—Jotham told the Joneses—and he said, e'en before he had left, salt hay had been brought in from the barn and spread upon the floor of the house for the horses and their riders!"

"Poor Mistress Harrison!" Mary Condit clasped her hands in sympathy. "And 'twas a new floor just laid by Mr. Harrison last year. I mind how monstrous proud she was of it—how polished and waxed she kept it. But go on, Samuel! I interrupt!"

"That is all, Mary." Squire Condit resumed his restless pacing with a down-hearted gesture.

"But are we to flee, Father?" Mehitable, wide-eyed, crept from her corner.

Mistress Condit suddenly nodded her head decidedly.

"Aye, Hitty, we are to flee," she said.

Squire Condit paused to stare at his wife.

"Ye think it wise, Mary?" he questioned anxiously.

"One does not trust these Hessians," answered Mistress Condit grimly. And set to work at once to collect her valuables.

There ensued a busy hour. Back and forth trotted Charity Mehitable, their arms piled high with

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 household valuables. At last Squire Condit, who was checking over the valuables, raised his hand abruptly.

"Not the warming pan, Charity," he said unsmilingly. "What use would that be in the mountains? And, Mary"—he turned to his wife—"I am sorry, but we cannot load ourselves with silver and such. We must take only blankets and food for two or three days at least. 'Twill not be safe to return before that."

Mistress Condit, her precious silver candlestick-holders in her arms, stood pondering anxiously.

"Where can they be hidden?" she asked.

"In sooth, I do not know," answe ed the Squire, stooping to pull some blankets hastily into a tight roll. "But we must hurry. Hark, what was that?"

A moment of strained listening, then Mistress Condit relaxed with a wan smile. Tis only the wail of the wind. You are nervous, Samuel!"

"Aye, I am nervous! But the raiders, Mary, an they come to-night, will come soon. We must be away before many minutes more. Where can that Amos be with the horses?"

Suddenly Mehitable, who was collecting the family's wearing apparel, spoke excitedly.

"Why not store your things in the cellar-hole. Mother?" And she pointed at the trapdoor in the kitchen floor which led down to the small excavated space beneath that part of the farmhouse.

"The very place!" exclaimed Mistress Condit.

The silver, then their few precious books, and finally the feather beds, to hide the first-mentioned articles

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HIS treatise is a summary of detached notes collected by the writer since 1860. A desire to make it complete and exact has prevented its earlier publication. As an aid to this result each chapter has been revised recently by experts in different branches of printing. In its present corrected form it is believed that it will be found of use to all who seek for information about types which cannot be compressed within the ordinary manual of printing, or be gleaned quickly from the specimen books of many type-founders. The scope of the book has to be limited to plain types. Remarks concerning newspaper types, typographic decorations, and recent fashions in book-work, have to be postponed. The composition of titlepages may be the subject of another treatise. In making the numerous corrections demanded by changes of fashion and new methods of manufacture, I have not considered it judicious to change the earlier and best-known name of any type-


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 were all stored in the little space. Just as the ladder was being drawn up, Charity came with the great family Bible, and that was lowered on to the feather beds. Then the trapdoor was clamped down, the sand spread back upon the floor in a hastily wrought pattern, and the ladder carried away to be hidden by Amos.

"Let me ride Dulcie, Father!" begged Mehitable, when they had filed out of the kitchen door and the latch had clicked behind them. "Then Judd can ride General and all the horses will be safe."

The Squire hesitated; but to his surprise his wife's voice sounded in approbation from the farmcart where, amid blankets, she and Charity were seated upon its straw-covered floor.

"Aye, let her ride Dulcie, Samuel. She can manage the horse. Make her promise to ride close beside you!"

"Very well, Hitty!"

So, with beating heart, Mehitable, placing her heel in Judd's horny palm, sprang lightly to the horse's back. No saddle was there to help her—just a blanket folded and girthed tightly in place. But many times had the girl, in less exciting moments, guided her horse along the road, and now she trotted off beside her father in fine spirits. I fear that to Mehitable this adventure was so far merely a pleasant one.

The cart, with its escort, swerved to the right off toward the north, to gain the mountain pass that led over the First Mountain through Pleasant Valley and over the Second Mountain to Northfield. All solemn and still were the woods this night, upon either side,

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 as the horses began to mount higher. Once the gleaming eyes of a catamount struck fire from a neighboring tree branch as they passed, and once the distant howl of a wolf caused the horse, Dulcie, to shy a little and quiver beneath Mehitable. But for the most part only the sound of rolling stones cast aside by the hoofs of the horses and the creak and lurch of the cart broke the somber silence.

At last Squire Condit halted, in a low murmur, the little band of refugees.

Tis about here," he said, looking keenly at the giant pine trees that stood sentinel upon the very ridge of the mountain, which they had now reached. Tis just beyond these great pines that Parson Chapman told me he had fashioned a rude hut which, in case of alarm, we were to use. Yes, see!" He leaped from his horse to stride forward and pace a rough twenty feet from one of the pine trees. "Here is the opening to the forest depths!"

He parted the thick underbrush to disclose a narrow path.

"Think ye the cart can get through that opening, Samuel?" asked Mistress Condit, peering at it doubtfully as it stood revealed beneath the bright starlight.

Tis only an ambush, cleverly contrived by Parson Chapman," answered the Squire triumphantly. With one sweep of his arm he pushed aside the sticks and bushes which had been placed there to hide the path.

So the cart passed jokingly upon its way along the mountain ridge where, had it been daylight, New York

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 town itself might have been seen thirteen miles away, far beyond the swamps and woodland, beyond the shining strip of Hudson River.

Then, at last, there was another pause while Squire Condit rode forward alone toward the dim outline of a low cabin. Mehitable, waiting upon her horse, felt a little shiver of excitement, of apprehension go over her. Suppose the cabin could not be used? What could they do? Suppose some other refugee family were already encamped there? All sorts of fears and worries ran through her active young mind now. In the cart Charity's little hand stole into her mother's firm, comforting grasp. It seemed so strange to be up here on this forlorn, wind-swept mountain top instead of snuggling down into her own cozy bed at home!

Then the Squire and Amos who had dismounted also, came back.

"It is a better shelter than I had anticipated," announced the Squire cheerfully. "A right snug cabin with hard dirt floor and bunks already bedded with fresh leaves. In faith, if I did not know the Parson had 'listed, I'd swear him to have been up here this afternoon, so spick and span is it inside. However, come, Mary! Come, Charity! We'll soon have candlelight and perhaps a wee fire in the fireplace."

The girls, entering the little hut, stared around them curiously as soon as their father had lighted the candle Mistress Condit had provided so thoughtfully. Makeshift, indeed, were the furnishings, even the fireplace having been rudely constructed from small boulders

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 set in clay. The four bunks against the walls were filled, as the Squire had reported, with freshly gathered leaves. In the center of the room, upon which Amos and Judd were unloading the contents of the cart, was a roughly built table.

Twill not be long before we shall all be sleeping soundly," observed Mistress Condit brightly, noting with motherly eyes the pathetic little droop of Charity's mouth and the strained pallor of Mehitable. And soon, as s'e had promised, the girls were climbing gigglingly into their bunks, where they sank into the soft bearskin and buffalo robes Amos had spread over the leaves for them.

Amos and Judd rolled themselves in some blankets, and stoically lying down upon the earthen floor before the fire they had kindled, soon snored in loud duet. Mistress Condit and the Squire were also asleep in no time.

But for many minutes Charity's eyes gazed dreamily at the scene before her. The firelight rose and fell, sputtered and died away, causing the shadows of various articles upon the table to dance grotesquely upon the mud-plastered walls behind them. It was just as her tired eyelids were drooping sleepily for the last time that a slight noise at the unbarred door drove all slumber from her brain.

Tense alertness settled over her recumbent form, the sort of tension that can only come at night when one listens in the dark or the half dark. How glad she was that her bunk was in the shadows, with the firelight, which had flared up momentarily, throwing the door

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 into full relief so that she might watch it undetected by any one entering.

With creeping horror, as she watched, she saw the door begin to swing open to the night, saw then a stealthy hand slide across it to steady it so that it would not creak. There was a pause. Nothing moved. Only Charity had the feeling that just without that door was someone, something, watching and waiting!

Suddenly Amos snored. Charity had an hysterical desire to laugh, but fought the inclination, and conquering it, lay in deathly quiet for an interminable period.

At last, just as she thought she must move, must get relief from the strain of not moving, without a sound, an Indian in full war paint stepped into view!

As he stood absolutely immobile, the girl had time to stare at him. Just so, she thought shudderingly to her self, must the painted warriors have looked who had come to set fire to the frontier cabins her mother had told her of. Just as helpless, just as much at their mercy, were they at the mercy of this Indian, she and Mehitable and her father and mother. For now she knew that Mehitable, too, was asleep, worn out by excitement, and that only she, alone, was awake to realize the horror and the utter helplessness of their position.

As the Indian continued to stand there, continued to peer into the firelit cabin interior, the girl's heart beat against her breast. His eyes, terrible beneath the war paint, moved past Mistress Condit's bunk, dropped lightly to study the two men sleeping before the fire, glanced at Squire Condit's unconscious figure

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 flung across his bunk, leaped to Mehitable's bunk and at last, as the watching girl had dreaded, came to rest upon Charity's face with its great, staring, frightened eyes.

But as their eyes met and clashed a strange thing happened. The fierceness died in the savage gaze, and it seemed to the terrified girl that something kindly entered the cabin at that moment. The fear which had been beating at her heart, which had held her paralyzed, disappeared. For the Indian, she recognized, was the Indian whom her father had threatened and whom she had supplicated not to have punished. And she seemed to feel, as he stood there for a moment longer, protection!

Then he turned and vanished into the silent night. The door swung shut. And Charity, a smile upon her face now, fell asleep.

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6 foundry which has introduced a new face of type. Many of them are now branches of the American Type Founders Company. To accredit each face of type toa great company which has branches in many widely separated cities would not properly specify the maker or the place of manufacture.

Acknowledgments for valuable information in the preparation of this matter are due, and are here gratefully made, to the late David Bruce, Jr., the late James Lindsay, and their successor Mr. V. B. Munson, of the New York Type Foundry; to Mr. J. W. Phinney of Boston, Mr. L. S. Benton of New York, and Mr. Henry Barth of Cincinnati, of the American Type Founders Company; to Mr. Charles T. Jacobi of the Chiswick Press, and Mr. T. W. Smith of H. W. Caslon & Company, London; to Messrs. Theodor Goebel of Stuttgart, Claude Motteroz of Paris, V. Deslandes of the Imprensa Nacional of Lisbon, and William E. Loy of San Francisco.


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HE next morning the two girls, feeling stiff and lame, took their share of corn bread outside the hut to eat. Charity perched herself upon a great rock that stood outside the door; but Mehitable strode back and forth briskly as she ate.

"Better walk, too, Cherry," she said. "Best to get the blood a-going!"

"Nay, I feel warm enough in this thick cape. But I am so thirsty, Hitty! And I would like to wash my hands and face."

"Your wish will soon be granted. Daughter," said the Squire's voice, as he joined them. "Judd has gone to Rock Spring for water."

His keen glance swept the underbrush around them as he spoke. Suddenly he started and bent forward to scrutinize the ground more closely.

"It grew warmer in the night; the frost has melted from the ground and here are tracks—Indian tracks!" he exclaimed.

He straightened up and at that moment Charity spoke, as though to herself.

"Then it wasn't a dream!"

Squire Condit and Mehitable turned to look at her.

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 "What wasn't a dream, Charity?" asked Mehitable curiously.

"The Indian!" answered Charity, her eyes upon the tell-tale tracks. "You were all asleep, Father," she hurried on before the Squire could speak. "I saw the door pushed open and—and—that Indian whose life you saved in the last storm—he stepped in. But he only stayed a moment and did no harm"

"Did no harm!" echoed the Squire. "But, gadzooks, girl, he might have come back with some of ye drunken Hessians and done us harm as we slept!"

"Oh, no, Father!" interrupted Charity with a little shake of her head. "He isn't that sort at all, I'm sure. He is a good Indian!"

"There are no good Indians," said the Squire shortly, exactly as his wife had said. He, too, could tell of Indian raids upon white men's outposts, tales of barbaric cruelty.

Mistress Condit, who had appeared in the doorway in time to hear them conversing, nodded her head at her husband's last remark.

Tis true, Samuel," she said. Then her face paled. "Think you he will return to-night?" she asked.

Squire Condit looked grave, but shook his head.

Tis doubtful," he answered, "knowing that we are warned. But Amos shall build us a stout bar for the door to-night."

"Then we can have no fire to-night?" inquired Mehitable dismally, who foresaw a series of cold meals stretching drearily away into the future.

Twere better not," returned her father. "An Indian

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 —not counting this one who knows our whereabouts—scents wood smoke where a white man notices nothing, and our fire might attract some British runner."

"Oh, suz!" sighed Mehitable. "That means horrid old cold corn bread again!"

Her parents laughed, for Mehitable's healthy young appetite was ever a source of amusement to them.

Twill not hurt you, this cold, plain fare," said her mother sensibly. "Perhaps ye will not grumble at hot porridge upon our return, Hitty."

But their alarm was for nothing, for the Indian did not return that night, nor any following nights, and on the third day Young Cy's cheerful face beamed at them from behind the great rock as he approached them up the narrow path.

"The Hessians have departed," he announced. "My parents have already started for home from the Heddens' farm, where they had fled—over in Pleasant Valley, you know, Squire. But, alas, such a mess as they made of things, the dirty Hessian pigs! And nothing left of stores at all!"

Mistress Condit groaned. "All of my preserves, doubtless!" she said in dismay. "I had meant to send them on to our men at headquarters, denying ourselves for that purpose!"

"I fear 'tis in vain you saved them, mistress," answered Young Cy sympathetically, "if your storeroom has fared as my mother's. I peeped in to make sure no tardy Hessian had lingered behind, and it is an empty cupboard and store closet my poor mother will confront shortly."

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 The tears stood in Mistress Condit's eyes.

"Ah, Samuel," she exclaimed piteously, turning to her husband, "if they are all gone! I have been denying you and the poor girls everything, hoping to get these supplies to John's company and perchance to General Washington himself!"

"Ah, well, Mary, do not cross bridges until they are reached," answered the Squire consolingly.

"Perhaps the Hessians did not reach our place," offered Charity, whose tender little heart was wrung at sight of her mother's agitation.

"If only I had stayed and—and—rawhided the brutes!" exploded Mehitable, doubling her fists, her cheeks turning scarlet.

Young Cy paused to chuckle at her warlike attitude. Then he turned to Mistress Condit.

Tis useless to hope the Hessians did not reach your house," he said, pity in his manly young voice. "I passed there on my way up here."

"And how was it?" asked the Squire eagerly.

"Wait and see. I cannot do more than warn ye," answered Young Cy evasively, plainly fearing tears upon the part of Mistress Condit.

So they hurriedly packed the cart, and with Charity and her mother again riding and Mehitable once more astride Dulcie, with the others mounted as before, they descended from their mountain retreat.

Desolate silence reigned as they involuntarily stopped when their home first came into sight. Then Charity hid her face in her mother's shoulder and commenced to weep quietly.

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 The house was indeed a sorry sight. Precious windowpanes had been wantonly smashed, every door hung dubiously ajar or was entirely wrenched away from its hinges, even the very stepping stones which had led through the orderly garden and around to the kitchen door had been torn up and strewn in wild abandon.

"Those—those" stammered Mehitable.

after a while. She was too angry to be coherent and her furious words died away in a sputter.

"Well," said the Squire, after a silence during which they had all stared forlornly at their once neat, well-kept home, "better get in and set to work. Sooner started sooner mended."

His sorry little attempt at jocularity deceived no one. It was in utter spiritlessness that his family and servants followed at his heels into the erstwhile clean, bright kitchen. Now it seemed to greet them sadly, a monument of reproach to the uncouth enemy who had recently inhabited it.

Mehitable soon uttered an exclamation.

"Oh, Mother, they must have found the silver!" She pointed to the trapdoor which stood open in the center of the kitchen floor.

"Ah!" Mistress Condit drew a sharp breath and, running over to the hole, peered into its depths.

"The ladder, Amos!" she ordered.

But the men, leaving the kitchen to the womenfolk, had tramped off to the stock barns, although they had turned the stock loose before their flight. They were eager to see what damage the enemy had wrought there.

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 It was Mehitable who presently came, dragging the stout little ladder in from its hiding place outdoors.

Mistress Condit hastily descended the ladder; but at its foot the girls could hear her exclaim in a low voice, and soon she had climbed up with a puzzled face.

"Everything seems intact; but the beasts have emptied the dye pot down there," she announced. Her gaze flew to the fireside corner where the dye pot, that necessary adjunct to colonial life, had been wont to stand. But the corner was empty. "Everything is covered with dye—the feather beds and the big Bible—alack, I doubt we shall ever be able to read from it again!"

Mehitable, who had climbed down into the cellar as soon as her mother was out of the way, now returned carrying the big book.

Tis true, Mother," she cried, holding out the Bible, still damp from the dye. "But I think the inside pages have escaped! 'Tis my belief the Hessians became angry at not finding more valuable articles and thought to make these things we had hidden, which they were doubtless too lazy to carry up, useless to us by emptying the dye pot's contents upon them."

"And all that good dye wasted!" mourned Mistress Condit. "But mind, not a word to your father of this to-day! Poor man, he has enough to worry over now!"

Thus bravely did the good wives and daughters of that time endure the fortunes and ravages of their war-stricken country.

When Squire Condit returned, however, he was not as cast down as might have been expected.

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 "The stock barns were untouched," he said in answer to his wife's anxious question. "The Hessians seemed to wreak their wantoness solely upon the house. Most of the stock is safe, too, having wandered away, fortunately for us, toward the woods. Amos and Judd are rounding them up, now."

"If only I had moved our vegetables and preserves to the cellar when you advised me thus, Samuel," said Mistress Condit sorrowfully when she returned from her empty storeroom. "Everything is gone!"

"Ah, well, we will manage somehow Be thankful our lives are spared, Mary, and the roof over our heads is still intact," returned the Squire. His great bams safe, the rest of the havoc the marauders had created seemed not so irremediable. Twill not take Amos and me long to mend the house."

"Well, I am glad that we had that pie for Thanksgiving, anyway," remarked Mistress Condit, satisfaction in her voice. "And that the silver is safe," she added.

Squire Condit kept his word, even sending Amos across the s'vamps to Newark to get new window glass to replace that broken by the raiders. Upon his return Amos reported that no serious damage beyond theft and petty wrecking had been done the countryside by the Hessians.

"Though every cupboard do be as bare as our'n," he added ruefully, "and stores, now, are as skerce as they say they are in New York Town."

"Ah," sighed Mistress Condit, "how long will this wretched warfare last! If only General Washington

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 could have bottled up the enemy in New York and starved them out!"

But General Washington was already commencing his dreary retreat through New Jersey. And one exciting day Mehitable burst into her mother's kitchen, which now stood as clean and neat as ever.

"Mother! Charity!" she called hysterically. "Yonder comes riding up the road General Washington and his stafF!"

Charity came tumbling down the stairs from the loft bedroom, and the mother, pale faced, appeared in the doorway of the lean-to.

"Oh, Hitty, how do you know?" squealed Charity.

"One of the officers—a fine-looking man—came riding ahead," stammered Mehitable. And as if in verification, a tall young man in buff-and-blue uniform appeared that moment in the doorway behind her'

He smiled a little at the expressions upon the faces before him—Mehitable's triumph, Charity's awe, their mother's surprise—before he swept off his tri-cornered hat and made a low bow.

"General Washington's compliments," he said ceremoniously, "and he desires to know if he and his staff may rest here awhile, with perchance a bite to eat?"

"My compliments to General Washington," returned Mistress Condit, in such a stately manner that her daughters' gaze flew, amazed, to her. "And I shall be most honored to entertain him and his staff in my home."

The young officer smilingly bowed again and withdrew.

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 "But weren't you frighted at all, Mother?" whispered Mehitable, as she hurried to "blaze" the fire and start dinner preparations.

"Why should I be?" returned her mother composedly. "Go you to the barn, Charity," she directed calmly, "and acquaint your father with this unexpected honor. Also tell him to have Judd bring in the rib chops from that porker he slew. I fear we can only give them fried pork and the cabbage which is on boiling. If only the Hessians had not taken all our fowls!" she added regretfully.

Then she turned with a start to curtsey deeply as the heavy door swung open and a group of officers in buff and blue, led by a tall, noble figure, entered her kitchen.

They were handsome men who stopped there that day, but inevitably the gaze was caught and held by the stem majestic face of the commander-in-chief, so that the others' countenances faded into mediocrity.

"I assure you we are indeed grateful, madam," said General Washington, removing his hat with a flourish and returning his hostess's curtsey with a bow.

He then walked toward the fireside settle. "May I be seated? We have been riding since this mom across swamps from Cranetown."

He sank down upon the settle with a weary sigh at his hostess's quickly bestowed permission; but he soon smiled at Mehitable, who was watching him across the table she was laying.

"Come here, little maid," he said, for he ever loved young folk, "and tell me your name."

Mehitable, with a frightened glance at her mother

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 who, assisted by a group of laughing officers, was preparing the usual corn-meal bread from meal they had been forced to buy from Squire Briggs, moved over to stand before the great man.

"My—my—name is—Mehitable," she stammered huskily.

Her voice came only with an effort.

"Mehitable," repeated His Excellency. "A strong, sensible name."

"But I hate it!" said Mehitable unexpectedly. She spoke in a fierce little whisper. "Why couldn't my mother have named me Angeline or Janice or even P-Polly!" Then she stopped in confusion. Oh, what would her mother say to her speaking thus to a stranger and such a famous stranger! Whatever had possessed her to blurt out that which she had never breathed before, even to Charity—her secret dislike of her "strong, sensible name."

She stood silent, then, with downcast eyes, while the scarlet flooded her cheeks, waiting for the words which, in all justice, should rebuke her. But instead, there was a pause, and at last she raised her eyes.

"Ah, my child," said General Washington, then, and his eyes twinkled above his grave mouth, "lean forward while I whisper thee a secret!"

Mehitable obediently turned her pink ear toward him.

"I do dislike my name, too!" whispered His Excellency, chuckling.

She started back in surprise; but General Washington shook his head.

Tis a secret between you and me," he said gently.

"A secret!" said a laughing voice behind them, and

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 one of the young officers stood smiling there. "May not the rest of us share this amusing secret with Your Excellency and the young lady?"

"Nay, 'tis only for little Mistress Mehitable and me!" protested the General, also smiling, now, and the young man surrendered at once with a quick, polite little bow.

Mehitable, in after years, loved to tell of her mother's famous dinner, of how the men gathered eagerly about the long, hospitable board, of how they enjoyed each and every appetizing dish placed before them, of how at last the gallant company had mounted their horses to ride away with doffed hats and waving hands.

General Washington had not offered to pay for the sincere hospitality; but had accepted it with the graciousness of the truly great-hearted. A few days later, however, a soldier galloped up the the Condits' gatepost and hailed Charity, who was chasing a kitten around the winter-blasted garden.

"Squire Condit's?" he inquired. And upon Charity's replying in the affirmative, he dismounted and handed her three packages—a bulky one addressed to Mistress Condit, a smaller one for Charity herself, and one for Mehitable.

She ran excitedly indoors with them.

"And what is yours, Charity?" asked Mistress Condit, when she had opened her gift and rejoiced over the welcome additions to the food she had been lately forced to purchase.

"A bit of bright ribbon for my cap, perhaps from Lady Washington's own store. Who knows!" said Charity happily.

"And mine is a silver chain! Is not lovely!"

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 exulted Mehitable. She held the dainty piece of jewelry out for her mother's and sister's admiring inspection. But she did not show the little note which had accompanied it, for that was a secret. Written upon the white card was, "For the little maid who would be named Angeline!"

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HE first part of December found snow upon the ground around the Condit farm. There had been that early-season gale of rain and sleet, with subsequent freezing, on the night the Squire had rescued the Indian; but the frost had soon melted and for days thereafter the weather had been crisp and bright. Now, however, after two days and nights of steady snowing, the sun came up one morning to slant glaringly across an earth blanket of dazzling snow.

Mehitable, who was a true out-of-doors girl, revelled in the depths of the drifts.

"Why, 'tis as high as the fence along the road by the north pasture," she was saying excitedly, unwinding her long woolen tippet and shaking her homespun skirt. She leaned over to pull from her feet an old pair of boots, which had belonged to her brother John.

"B-r-r!" shivered Charity, looking up from her knitting as she sat huddled by the fire. "I don't see how you can like it so well, Hitty! 'Tis most uncomfortable, I think, to be out in the snow!"

Tis monstrous pretty, the snow is," returned her sister, moving over to the fireplace to warm her cold hands before the blaze. "It sparkles so, and the shadows cast by the pines are as as can be!"

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 Tis monstrous cruel!" retorted Charity, with unwonted spirit. "The snow would smother you, freeze you, kill you, an it could!"

"Why, Charity!" observed Mehitable, her eyes widening. "I never heard you speak thus of the snow before!"

"I do dislike it!" muttered Charity, with another shiver. "I wish it were summer again!"

She started nervously as a shutter banged against the house somewhere.

"Well, I like it," answered Mehitable decidedly, "and I"

Her voice stopped suddenly. Charity, who was counting the stitches in her knitting, glanced up curiously after a while and found her sister staring at something over her shoulder. She turned immediately and at that instant a cold draught struck her. Thereafter, the sand in the quaint hourglass must have run through its tiny hole a full minute before either girl moved. For through the crack of the door two eyes were looking at them!

Then Mehitable, whose natural courage never long forsook her, recovered from her fright and strode forward indignantly to fling the door open.

"Why do you not knock or come in?" she demanded irritably.

The Indian who had been standing outside stepped across the threshold with unruffled dignity and looked around the room inquiringly.

"Father?" he asked.

"Father out foddering stock, I suppose,"

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 answered Mehitable shortly. She looked at the tall, straight figure contemptuously, for her father had told her of his trying to steal her mother's candlestick holders. But Charity, whose quiet eyes were more observant, uttered a little cry.

"Why, you are hurt!"

The Indian swayed a little; but shook his head in denial.

"But you are!" insisted Charity. "See, there is blood upon the floor!"

Mehitable's slower gaze had just verified this fact when the Indian, as though at the end of his endurance, staggered and slowly sagged into the chair the girls were quick-witted enough to push toward him.

"Ugh, hurt!" he acknowledged, then. His blanket fell away at that instant and Charity gave another pitiful cry, for the Indian's brightly beaded hunting shirt was rapidly crimsoning beneath his heart.

"Oh, Hitty, what shall we do?"

Mehitable's round cheeks were pale as she gazed; but not for nothing was she a pioneer's daughter.

"Do!" she repeated scornfully. "Why, bind it up, of course!"

"Can't—can't we wait for Mother? She will be back in another hour," stammered Charity, shrinking. But Mehitable shook her head sturdily.

It was only when the hard task was finished, the open wound washed and dressed, that the Indian, who had sat in stoical silence all through the operation, spoke again.

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 "Hessians," he announced. "Signal fires—mountaintainmountain [sic] top—me hurt!

"You go?"

Mehitable, who had been on her knees before him, about to lift the basin of warm water she had been using, set it down again and sank back upon her knees to stare at him open-mouthed. It was as amazing as though the brass warming pan, hanging innocently upon its hook beside the fireplace, had spoken.

The younger girl crept to her sister.

"What does he mean?" she whispered.

"Signal fire!" repeated the Indian impatiently, in his guttural voice.

"You mean those great heaps of branches and leaves on top of the First Mountain?" asked Mehitable slowly. "You mind the ones Father told us Parson Chapman had arranged for signals across Pleasant Valley to the Second Mountain, Charity?" turning to her sister.

The Indian nodded.

"Are you with General Washington's army?" asked Mehitable shrewdly. "How can I tell whether you are truthful or not?"

With a quick gesture, the Indian now held out an object that glittered and sparkled in his hand. Mehitable took it from him with a little cry.

"John's silver shoe buckle, Charity!"

The two girls bent over the shining thing with bated breath. It was as though their brother had spoken to them from far away! Then Mehitable raised her head to gaze searchingly at the strange visitor.

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 "How do I know that you did not steal this?" she asked sternly.

The Indian's eyes met hers unflinchingly.

"No!" he said. And in his voice rang the truth.

"I believe him, Hitty," said Charity suddenly, as the older girl still hesitated. "I am quite sure that the time has come when we must do as John wished, as we promised, for this is surely the sign that he must have our help. The buckle has come back to us, as we agreed!"

"But how can we reach the mountain top through this snow?" Mehitable now got slowly to her feet to carry away the basin. Tis growing dark," she went on worriedly. "And 'tis too late to get Young Cy to help us!"

The Indian's eyes watched her anxiously as she paced up and down the kitchen in unconscious imitation of her father.

"Go away down to the meeting house and back for Young Cy!" It was now Charity who had suddenly assumed the lead.

"No good—too late!" The Indian shook his head.

"He is right! We must be the ones to go!" As she spoke, the little sister caught up her cape, and fifteen minutes later found the two girls well upon their way.

It was settling into early dusk, as Mehitable had said, with the still cold of deep snow cutting into their cheeks and biting their nostrils until they felt as though they were breathing pepper! It was almost impossible walking, too, for the drifts were very deep, and once off

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 from the road they would have floundered to their waists. They had chosen the wood path, which was shorter and apt to be more protected from the snowfall.

As they neared the Briggs's farm, which they had to skirt, Mehitable suddenly spoke.

"Charity, think you we are nearing that old cistern behind the Briggs house?"

"Oh, Hitty!" Charity stopped short to look around her fearfully. "We are in the pasture north of their house, where Grandfather Briggs's house once stood, and that is where the cistern is. However did we get off from the path!"

"The snow is so deep," said Mehitable, stopping, too, to gaze around her with troubled eyes. "I am sure it is just about here! And the last time we passed throught the pasture, I remember—'twas last Fall—the hole was uncovered, Miranda was vexed and said how her father begrudged both the time and the wood to cover it. He said that any one trespassing deserved to fall down into it!"

"How could he be so mean!" Charity spoke with unusual bitterness; but she was thoroughly frightened at their plight.

"Well, 'tis no use to stand here. We must go on, Charity! The only way to get out of the pasture and on to the path again is to walk out!"

So saying, Mehitable started forward in her usual impetuous way and was laughing triumphantly as she neared the edge of the snow-covered field when a strangled cry sounded behind her and she turned around to see two upflung arms disappearing through

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 the snow. Then what appeared to be a great blot of ink showed against the white of the snow. And silence reigned!

Too stunned at what had befallen to move at first Mehitable stood motionless with horror for a moment. Then she turned and stumbled back through the snow, moaning as she ran.

"Charity, Charity, are you killed?"

At last a weak voice came wavering up to her.

"No, but I'm pretty nearly killed!"

Mehitable stopped upon the edge of the hole just in time, for the treacherous snow began at once to cave in beneath her weight. She stood there sobbing frantically.

"What shall I do! What shall I do!"

Then her common sense reasserted itself and some inner voice seemed to speak to her.

"Get help! Run for help!"

She leaned forward and tried to steady her tones, her heart torn by the faint, pitiful whimpers that came up to her from the cistern's depths.

"Art listening, Cherry? I am going for help! Keep up your courage—it will not take me long!"

"Oh, Hitty, hurry! It is so cold down here in the water. And—and—I told you the snow was cruel!"

"I will hurry!" promised Mehitable, her lips white with fear. She turned and ran toward the Briggs's dwelling.

It was a hard struggle and one that Mehitable did not soon forget, that plunging and rising and falling again and again through the heavy snow. But finally

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 she was leaning weakly against the Briggs's kitchen door, almost too exhausted to knock. Miranda soon appeared.

"Why, Hitty," she began in delight. "Art come to spend the afternoon with me? I am alone!" Then she stopped short at sight of the other girl's face. "What is the matter?" she faltered in sudden terror.

"Cherry—oh, Randy!—Cherry" gasped Mehit able.

"Yes, what about Cherry?"

"Cherry—down—your father's cistern!" And Mehitable reeled against the other girl.

Miranda uttered an exclamation of horror. Then she shook her visitor roughly. "I will get Father's rope. Stand up, Hitty! We must get Cherry out ourselves, for no one is home but me. Stay, however—I'll call to make sure." She stepped back into the kitchen and sent her clear, frightened young voice ringing through the house. "Father! Fath-er! Help!"

But only the echoes of her own fright came back to her, and soon she had rejoined Mehitable upon the doorstep, a thick rope coiled over her arm.

When they arrived at the edge of the cistern Mehitable strove to call. But from sheer terror her voice would not come and she looked piteously at Miranda.

"Cherry! Cherry! Art still there?" called Miranda in unconscious irony, answering the appeal in her friend's eyes. To their joy, a faint little voice answered from the cistern and the two girls could hear the terrible chill in it.

"Ooh—I am so-o-o co-old!"

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 "Now, Hitty," said Miranda, assuming charge of the rescue as she recognized Mehitable's frantic state, "I am going to try to tie this rope around that big boulder which I know is near here, then we will lower the other end to Cherry, holding the tied end so that it cannot possibly slip. Do you understand?"

"Ye-es. But suppose she is too weak to climb the rope," faltered Mehitable, cheered, in spite of herself, however, by Miranda's assured manner.

"She can climb!" repeated Miranda inexorably. And advancing as near as she dared to the edge of the hole, she called down her instructions to the imprisoned girl in a short, imperative voice. This manner and her precise instructions had the effect she sought, doing much toward restoring poor Charity who, in spite of her constant shivering from having stood in icy water to her boot tops for so long, managed to wrap her feet around the rope and commence to climb.

Perhaps a city girl of that time, with her false idea of a lady's delicacy, could not have achieved this remarkable feat of climbing a rope from the cistern's depths; but as Miranda had said, Charity could climb, for the three girls had practised this stunt many times in secret. And now their country training came in good stead. After an agonizing period of suspense, Charity's head appeared at the edge of the hole, and the other two, bidding her hold on tightly, managed to drag her across the soft snow toward them to firm ground. And soon Mehitable's arms were wrapped thankfully around the shivering, weeping little figure.

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 "Run, Charity!" Miranda, noting anxiously the other's blue lips and chattering teeth, gave her a little push in the direction of the house. But Charity tarried a moment and spoke through her tears.

"Oh, Hitty, you must go on alone! See, it grows darker even now! And we promised!"

"But I cannot leave you, Charity! Mother would never forgive me an anything happened to you. You must have hot blankets and something warm to drink!" Mehitable looked at her in misery and indecision.

Randy will help us, won't you, 'Randy?" Charity shook her head.

"Where is she to go?" asked Miranda in astonishment. "I thought you were on your way to spend the rest of the afternoon with me!" Then, as the two sisters looked at her, she suddenly flushed. "I know, you were on your way to do something for the patriots," she concluded keenly. She lifted her head proudly. "Well, you can trust me, for I am a patriot, too! Do you think just because my father is—is—what he is that my mother and I do not know what is right!" And the hot tears stood in her eyes.

Instantly both girls embraced her. Then Charity started to run toward the house and Mehitable, feeling the tinder box in her pocket, swung resolutely In the other direction, knowing that Miranda would give her sister all needful attentionattention. [sic]

And now how cold It was! And how the wind sighed and moaned in the bare branches of every forest tree! Rapidly, too, it grew dark, so that mounting steadily

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 in much the same direction she and her family had fled not so long ago, Mehitable could scarcely make out, through the openings of the woods, the valley below.

But her face and her heart were turned upward, ever upward, toward that goal to which she had been sped by the simple pleading of an Indian's eyes and the memory of her promise to her big brother.

She reached, at last, the great sentinel pines upon the mountain ridge, underneath which had been prepared the signal mounds of brush and logs. But arrived there, she gazed in acute dismay at the snow which covered them until each mound looked like miniature mountains of snow. However, she set to work grimly to drag away the wet branches and pile the drier brush on top.

Then how her fingers ached with the cold as she knelt and patiently worked with flint and steel in her tinder box to get a spark, the one little spark necessary to complete this great task she had undertaken.

Lonely and solemn it seemed up there in that vast, white, still world of ice and snow. Not a living creature stirred, not even the ever-active jack rabbit. Night settled down, and star by star the heavens above began to be illuminated. And now she had to stumble to her feet and stride up and down to get the blood once more circulating in her chilled veins. Then back at her discouraging task again, striking, striking, to get that vital spark.

At last it came. The tinder caught! Swiftly, but not too swiftly, she applied it to the dry brush she had arranged. It caught, in turn! A little tongue

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 of flame curled around a brittle leaf, another flame shot across to a second leaf and finally the great pile of brush was flaring, roaring toward the silent sky.

Mehitable stepped back and watched anxiously. And drew a quick breath after a while. For, far across Pleasant Valley, from the Second Mountain flamed the answering signal!

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T WAS Saturday morning and a gray, dismal day as to weather. But inside the Condits' big kitchen Mehitable's clear voice could be heard singing cheerily from the buttery where she was churning, the huge fire crackled and hissed in the fireplace, the teakettle bubbled joyfully beneath its crane, and even Charity, much as she disliked the lesson task her mother had set her, smiled every now and then to herself as though she had a delightful secret. Charity must needs learn to read and write and acquire the simple rudiments of arithmetic at home, for the nearest school was far across the swamps, in Newark, and that only for boys. Dame schools had not as yet come into existence in many of the New Jersey colonies.

Finally Mehitable's singing stopped abruptly and she spoke through the buttery door, which stood ajar, above the clop-clop of her churn.

"What, think you, Cherry, ever became of that wounded Indian that day? 'Twas so strange that when Father and Mother came home at dusk there should be not a trace of him!"

"It was indeed strange, Hitty!" Charity looked up gravely from book. Her eyes became dreamy.

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 "But what, think you, was the meaning of the signal fire you had set upon the mountain?"

"In sooth, I do not know. I would I did!" answered Mehitable regretfully, whom curiosity had tormented since that twilight she had climbed the First Mountain to set ablaze the great signal mound prepared by their fighting parson, the Reverend Jedediah Chapman, one of the three signal stations so prepared by him and such of his parishioners as were Whigs.

"The signal, whatever it was for, was flashed on toward the military station at Morristown," went on Mehitable, after a short pause. "Young Cy who was out hunting beyond the Second Mountain, over toward the Short Hills, told me he saw another flame far away through the night answering that flame, which was kindled in response to mine on the First Mountain. So much," and Mehitable stopped to chuckle, "so much have we learned from the barbarous Indians—the art of signaling long distances, I mean."

Tis true," agreed Charity, absently. But it was plain to be seen that her thoughts were neither upon the subject under discussion nor upon her lessons. After a while she leaned forward to glance cautiously at the door leading to the loft stairs; then she called Mehitable in a low voice.

"Yes?" Mehitable craned her neck to peer through the buttery door at her sister, although her stout little arms did not cease their manipulation of the churn dasher. "What is it, Charity?" she repeated, her eyes resting with some astonishment upon the other's sparkling face.

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 Charity gave another cautious glance at the stair door before she answered.

"Knowst aught of a trip to Trenton, Hitty?" she asked, then.

Mehitable's gaze widened. "A trip to Trenton!" she cried incredulously.

"Hush!" Charity frowned in quick alarm. "Yes, I heard Mother and Father talking of it," she went on in a low voice. "Cousin Eliza's letter came a day or so ago. And, Hitty, she wants us to come to Trenton to spend the holidays with her!"

"La! La!" Mehitable's butter activities almost ceased in her delighted and surprised acceptance of this piece of news. "And what did they decide, Cherry—Mother and Father, I mean?"

For this was before the days when young people were allowed their own opinions upon projects, even when those same plans intimately concerned themselves.

"They had not yet decided," Charity answered. "Mother said it would take a monstrous lot of thought, deciding to let us go to a very hotbed of Hessians, e'en though we should be under the protection and care of so rich a lady as Cousin Eliza."

"And what did Father say?" asked Mehitable eagerly.

"Father said that a trip to Trenton"

"And who talks of a trip to Trenton, I should like to know?" said an unexpected voice abruptly as Mistress Condit entered the kitchen. She smothered a smile at Mehitable's hasty disappearance around the

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 edge of the buttery door and Charity's quickly assumed air of studiousness. Not for nothing had she been the mother of those two little maids for a number of years. "Come, come," she repeated sternly, "who speaks of Trenton?"

"Indeed, Mother, I did not mean to" began Charity. Then her sharp eyes detected the smile that lurked in her mother's dark ones and she broke off excitedly.

"Yes, 'tis true. Charity, as I know from your sharp gaze you have guessed," nodded Mistress Condit, laughing. "Your father and I have decided to let you and Mehitable accept Cousin Eliza's invitation, and I have been upstairs looking over your wardrobes—and scant enough they be!"

"Oh, Mother!" both girls exclaimed simultaneously. Mehitable stuck her head around the buttery door again, and now her arms paused in their task. But at Mistress Condit's sharp reproof she defended herself.

"Indeed, the butter has come. Mother." And set to work, forthwith, like the expert little dairymaid she was, to lift the pale, smooth mixture from the churn, wash it, salt it, and pat it into shape.

How the time flew then to that eventful day of departure. What mending of shabby gowns! It seemed hardly any time before the exciting moment was actually upon them when they were seated, snugly wrapped against the bitter wind, beside their father on the farm cart. What a number of last-minute errands then ensued! Mistress Condit must run down the garden path numberless times with forgotten

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 articles—Charity's squirrel muff, the foot warmer, even the lunch all nicely wrapped in one of the best napkins. But at last they were off, with the girls waving to their mother until they were out of sight around the bend in the road.

Over the First Mountain they went and across Pleasant Valley to the beautiful brookside road that wound beneath the lee of the Second Mountain. Then through the little village of Millbum and south to the Morristown road, where they were to meet the stagecoach and continue the rest of their journey in that.

The girls' hearts thumped when, sitting in the cart, waiting, far off in the distance they descried the great lumbering coach with its four galloping horses.

"Quick, Father!" cried Mehitable, beginning to scramble down from her seat and reaching for her many bundles.

"Nay, Hitty, do not hurry, lass! There's time a-plenty!" And the Squire laughed at this extremely inexperienced traveler. "The stage will wait! Besides, 'tis yet some distance away!"

He turned to lift the rugged little cowhide trunk, the very same which had come over from England with his mother's clothes in it so many years ago, when his eyes rested upon an unexpected sight. It was an Indian watching from behmd a tree! But the Squire went quietly on with his task of carrying the trunk over to the side of the road, and when he stole another look, the savage had vanished.

And now the stagecoach was near. The two little Colonial maids grew pale as the enormous thing, drawn

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 by its four prancing steeds, rumbled and swayed down the road toward them, to stop with a tremendous jerk and clatter directly in front of them. A postilion swung himself down to come over for the trunk, while the coachman, a fat, jolly-looking man in greatcoat and raccoon cap, nodded to the Squire from the box.

"Take good care of these young ladies, Dan!" shouted Squire Condit jovially, when, the fares having been paid, the girls had settled themselves inside the coach with much bustling and many farewell kisses. "They are prize possessions of mine!"

"I'll warrant ye! I'll deliver 'em safe and sound, never fear!" The girls heard the driver answer with a deep laugh. Then, with a shout to the horses, a crack of the whip, they were off. And the Squire, in the middle of the road, was left staring rather disconsolately after them.

Mehitable and Charity, however, were all of a flutter as the stagecoach whirled them away from their father. First they had to settle all of their various small belongings, which had been piled pell-mell upon the seats beside them, the trunk having been swung on top of the stage. Then they had to take stock of their fellow passengers, of whom there were three—a rather fussy old lady seated in the center of the coach and much disturbed about draughts, and two men facing each other at opposite windows. Charity, who did not mind riding backward faced her sister at the other end of the coach so that they each had a window, too.

For a while their natural shyness kept them silent and ill at ease; but finally, discovering that no one paid

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 them the least attention, the two men conversing in low tones, the old lady continuously readjusting her voluminous skirts and nodding occasionally in the depths of her poke bonnet that completely hid her face, the two girls began to lay happy plans.

"Think you Cousin Eliza will give us a party?" began Mehitable.

Charity gave an excited little bounce in her seat.

"Oh, I do hope so! Don't you, Hitty?" she exclaimed vivaciously.

"Yes, if only John might be there to dance the minuet with me," sighed Mehitable.

Tis no use a-wishing," answered Charity sensibly.

"Well, I wish so, anyway." Mehitable looked out gloomily at the passing landscape. But not for long could her spirits droop amid such an adventure. She was soon laughing and chatting again with her sister, so that it seemed no time at all before, with a great rattling and clattering, they swung aside from the post road into an inn yard and everyone except themselves and the old lady descended for dinner.

"Oh, Hitty!" Charity, who was peering into the depths of the napkin Mistress Condit had wrapped their lunch in, gave a cry of delight. "Here is white bread to eat with our cheese. How, think you, Mother could have gotten the flour? She must have bought It the last time she went to Newark! And here—oh, Hitty!—here are some cherry tarts!"

"Truly, Charity?" And Mehitable's dark curls brushed her sister's cheeks as they bent together over he enticing dainties Mistress Condit had prepared

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 for them with such loving care. Neither of them, as it happened, saw the expression upon the old lady's face as she watched them from the depths of her poke bonnet. But Charity, glancing up a moment later, noticed that the former's hands, in their mitts, were lying idle in her lap and that she had no sign of a lunch parcel with her. She nudged her sister, whose quick glance took in that same fact.

"Will you not share our lunch, mistress?" asked Mehitable respectfully, offering her some of the bread and cheese.

The old lady, nodding her gray curls, murmured, "Thank'ee," and ate the offered viands hungrily. The girls then divided the cherry tarts, of which there were six and gave their fellow passenger two—an act of real self-denial on their part, for the tarts were small and each could have eaten three as easily as two. But their little act of kindness was accepted as a matter of course by the old lady who, after devouring the tarts almost at one gulp each, settled herself back in her seat and went to sleep.

Her chin was, in fact, drooping upon her chest so that her face was entirely hidden under her bonnet when the remaining two travelers came out of the inn and clambered back into their seats.

"Well, our ancient friend has gone a-nodding," remarked one man in a low voice, with a keen glance at the bobbing old head. "Continue, Hawtree."

"Hush!" And the man named Hawtree shot a suspicious look at the two girls and the old lady. "Even the trees seem to have ears these days!"

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 "Eh? Nonsense, nonsense!" And the first traveler, who was in high spirits after his delicious warm dinner at the inn, laughed hilariously. After the coach had started he drew a little map from his pocket.

"Let us go over these points once more," he said briskly. "You say that the White residence in Trenton is occupied by Von Wagner while Colonel Rahl is located here?"

The man addressed as Hawtree, after another surly, suspicious stare at his unconscious companions—the two girls were engaged in an engrossing conversation of their own, now, and the old lady was actually snoring—reluctantly nodded his head. But he need not have worried for, though the edge of a scarlet uniform showed once in a while beneath his greatcoat, neither the two girls nor the sleepy old lady appeared to notice it.

So the afternoon passed and at last they began to draw near the Hessian outposts stationed around Trenton.

"You have our papers, Hitty?" asked Charity nervously, as the coach stopped and a bewhiskered face appeared in the window beside the man named Hawtree. An examination of the two men's papers brought a quick salute from the sentinel, which caused a sullen frown to show upon Ha's tree's face, while he looked furtively at the others.

Then the sentinel appeared upon the girls' side of the coach and Mehitable handed him their passports. These, to Charity's obvious relief, were found to be in order, and the soldier, handing them back to Mehitable, looked inquiringly at the old lady.

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 But the old lady was sound asleep. Not only was she sound asleep, but she was still snoring.

"Huh?" the Hessian grunted. And then, reaching a long arm past Mehitable, he plucked at the old lady's cape. "Passpor'," he shouted in a loud voice.

The old lady awoke with a great start and stared at him in fright. Impatiently he repeated his question and the old lady turned to Mehitable inquiringly.

"Passport! He wants your passport," explained the girl, showing hers and Charity's in an effort to lend understanding.

Then the old lady nodded and drew out her reticule, while the sentinel watched in visible disgust and sighed in mock patience.

But the old lady's passport was not in her reticule. Incredulously she reached in again, groping around and pulling out a kerchief, a pair of white mitts, a few coins and three peppermints. In a sudden flurry, she commenced feeling in other pockets of her gown. At last, in dismay, she stumbled to her feet and started toward the coach door.

"Nein, nein!" grunted the soldier at that, barring her exit. "Where you go, huh?"

"I must have room!" returned the old lady in a high, excited voice. "I must have room to search for the passport. I cannot reach all of the pockets of my gown in this small space. Let me pass, sir!"

The Hessian, at this, looked suddenly and unaccountably at the man named Hawtree, who gave an imperceptible nod. Whereupon the sentinel stepped aside from the coach door and the old lady crowded past

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 Mehitable and Charity with no apology at all. Then a strange thing happened!

No sooner were that old lady's feet firmly planted on terra firma than she gave the sentinel a powerful shove that sent him sprawling backward into the road and lifting her skirts high, she set off at a gallop up the road.

For an instant, so swiftly had this taken place, everyone sat appalled. Then the man named Hawtree gave an angry shout and struggled to open the coach door at his side, while the other man, drawing his pistol, leaned far out of his window and fired it after the astonishing old lady.

It did not stop her, however. She only lifted hei skirts higher in order that she might run faster and at last she disappeared into the woods that lined the road at this point.

Hawtree held up his hand. "Go on," he ordered the coachman furiously and slammed shut the coach door.

"Didst see?" whispered Mehitable to Charity, as they sat staring at each other. "Didst see? That old lady was a man!"

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HARITY nooded speechlessly.

A long silence ensued during which the traveler who had been the more jovial bit his finger nails and cast chagrined glances at his morose companion.

"Deuce take it, Hawtree!" he exclaimed, after a while. "Don't take it so bitterly. No one was exactly to blame!"

The man named Hawtree turned around and stared angrily.

"I told you even the trees had ears these days!" he thundered fiercely. "Yet you must needs give the enemy full details of our private affairs!"

The other man relapsed into silence at that and the rest of the journey was finished in absolute speechlessness upon the part of everyone, the girls hardly daring to breathe lest they bring the ire of their unpleasant companion upon their heads. They were more than relieved when they finally rumbled into the inn yard at Trenton and the others were deposited there.

Then the coach continued upon its way, out through the town along the banks of the lovely Delaware River that even the bleakness of December could not rob of

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 its charm. The fine estate and the mansion belonging to the girls' Cousin Eliza was situated rather upon the outskirts of Trenton, with a beautiful view up and down the river from the great garden behind the house.

"I am so glad our journey is ended. Aren't you, Hitty?" yawned Charity, as they approached the house itself. It was almost midnight, and they were tired and hungry.

"Delivered safely!" shouted Driver Dan drawing up with a flourish. And the two girls, laughing, got out and saw their Cousin Eliza upon her front steps.

"Well, little travelers!" she exclaimed, smilingsmiling. [sic] Tis good to see your bright faces once more!"

She drew them within doors, whither two colored footmen were carrying the little cowhide trunk.

Mehitable, after greeting her cousin, stared around her in astonishment. Every sconce was lighted, there was a sound of music from the parlors, gay voices laughed and sang snatches of song, while from the dining room on the other side of the wide center hall came the sound of silver clinking against china.

"Why, are you giving a party?" she asked in innocent wonder.

Her Cousin Eliza laughed rather bitterly, then motioned to the girls to follow her. They turned obediently as she began to ascend the stairs, and mounted after her in embarrassed silence. Why had she laughed so queerly?

Not at the first landing did their hostess pause; but on they went, up to where of old the servants' quarters had been. There Cousin Eliza led the way into a little

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 low-ceilinged room and, sitting down in a low chair, gazed at them sadly.

"A party, you asked, Mehitable?" she said sorrowfully. "I would to Heaven it were a party of my own I was giving to-night! No, girls, the party is that of my guests—she stressed the word "guests" scornfully—"of my guests' giving! 'Tis not I who am mistress in my own home any more!"

"Poor cousin!" Charity went to her and softly stroked the other's white arm. "But this is a nice little room—as nice as ours at home," she went on, looking around her cheerfully. Tis as spotless as can be!"

"Dear child!" Cousin Eliza bent to kiss her affectionately, "I, too, room up here on this same floor, crowded out of my own apartments. The servants are in quarters outside, now. But come, when you have washed some of the stains of travel away, descend, I pray you, and meet—some of my guests!"

The girls stood for a little while in silence when her slow footsteps had died away upon the stairs. Then Charity moved over to her sister.

"Think you Mother would have let us come, Hitty, had she known the Hessians were actually encamped in Cousin Eliza's own house?" she whispered.

"Nay!" Mehitable shook her head. "But now that we are here, I, for one, am going to enjoy myself!" she added with youthful relish.

Later, however, the two little maids paused in agonized bashfulness at the foot of the stairs in the big hall. But their Cousin Eliza spied them at once and

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