ANSWER the door, John!" said Squire Condit heavily. He did not move from his seat upon the bench beside his wife; but Mehitable saw his eyes travel to the flintlock hanging in its rack upon the wall near by. The next instant, however, the tension was lifted and once more knitting needles gleamed in the firelight and faces smiled, for John, at the door, was greeting someone heartily and drawing him across the threshold.
"Ye remember Sturgins, Mother?" he said inquiringly, turning to Mistress Condit. "I don't know whether or not I told ye he hath been my body servant these many months. Indeed, I cannot rid myself o' the silly fellow!" He laughed as he swung back to the squat, homely little man who, slowly drawing off his woolen tippet, stood with squint-eyed gaze fixed adoringly upon the young doctor.
"Eh! Now, do 'ee e'er be jestin' wi' me, sir!" rumbled Sturgins affectionately. Mehitable thought he resembled a shaggy, unkempt cur which has been kicked around from pillar to post until, at last, meeting a friendly hand, it attaches itself for ever to the owner of that kindly, careless hand.
"But, ne'ertheless, 'twas Doctor John, here, did save my sight one time I was blinded," continued Sturgins, turning to Mistress Condit with the honest tears starting to his eyes. "Doctor John and no one else!"
"Nonsense! I merely happened to be the first one ye looked at, Sturgins, when ye recovered your sight," said the young doctor frankly. "'Twas my old friend and teacher, Doctor Carter, who had your case forsooth—though now, I mind, ye got your sight back because a fall ye had released some bone pressure which had made ye blind because o' a blow."
"Nay, 'twas ye, sir—no use to tell me otherwise," insisted Sturgins earnestly, stamping the snow from his feet. "And ne'er will I forget, sir!"
"Then, guard him well, Sturgins," interrupted Mistress Condit softly.
"That will I! Wi' my life, mistress!" answered Sturgins solemnly.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed John Condit again, laughing. "What ha' ye there, Sturgins?" He motioned toward a paper in the other's hand.
"Oh!—I 'most forgot, sir! I would forget mine head an it were not fastened well to mine shoulders!" said Sturgins, with a loud, uncouth laugh. He held the paper out to Doctor Condit. "'Twas sent to your quarterings from headquarters, sir!"
No one spoke while the young man ripped open the missive and read it, stooping near the firelight to save lighting a candle.
"Ah, 'tis too bad!" he exclaimed when he was through. "I must return at once, Mother. There be news that His Excellency will soon arrive, wi' his staff, and General Greene desires my immediate presence. Did ye see anything o' Colonel Hamilton, Sturgins?" He turned back to his servant.
"Nay, sir." Sturgins shook his head.
"Mother, will you or Hitty give Sturgins a bite to eat? I will go up to mine room and pack some saddlebags—I know, of old, that there will be fresh linen in the drawer to the highboy!" John looked smilingly at his mother, who rose at once.
"Hitty will find some cold meat and bread," she said kindly. "I will go up wi' ye, my son—there be matters I would discuss wi' ye before ye leave for Morris Town." Her voice died away as she followed the young man upstairs.
Mehitable placed food upon the table and bade Sturgins sit down, then returned to a seat near the fire, for outside the wind could be heard howling, promising colder weather before morning, and making the inglenook seem unusually cozy and warm by its very ferocity.
Presently, Mistress Condit and John returned to the kitchen, the former with the refreshed look upon her face which always came after confidences with her boy, and soon the young doctor and his servant were off upon their long ride to Morris Town.
"Brrr!" shivered Charity, turning away from the open door, where they had all gathered to wave farewell. She ran back to the three-legged stool which she had dragged as near the heat as possible, the others, laughing and shivering, following her. When they were all ensconced once more in the circle around the fireplace that Mistress Condit loved, Charity continued meditatively: "Is it not strange that John did not mention Nancy this time?"
"He did, upstairs—mayhap to evade curious young ears," smiled her mother. "And I gave him the message which came by Mistress Harrison from New York Town, to his great delight."
"Think ye they will e'er be married, Nancy and John?" asked Mehitable impatiently, for it seemed to her, her brother's romance had been dragged out entirely too long. "Our turn should come soon now! Else we shall be old maids, eh, Cherry!"
Mistress Condit glanced sharply at the blooming young face which was bent over the gray knitting; but its innocence satisfied her, and she nodded reassuringly at her husband, whose gaze had anxiously followed her own. Mehitable, all unconscious of the little by-play in which she had had the leading rôle, looked up to repeat: "Think ye they e'er will be married, Ma?"
"Of course," answered Mistress Condit serenely. "But Nancy has been loath to leave her invalid mother, who needs her at home—'tis not as though there were a big family there, ye know—and then the war, with all its anxieties! Indeed, 'twould be a rash couple who would set up housekeeping wi' such an uncertain future as the war must produce!"
There was a little silence, then the mother went on: "I have arranged in my mind as to your new gowns, girls."
"How, Mother?" exclaimed Mehitable, vastly excited, though her flying fingers did not pause in their work.
"By using my blue silk gown and the creamcolored one, too. Combined, they ought to make up into two pretty party gowns."
"Oh, Mother!" Charity twisted herself upon the stool to gaze wide-eyed up into her mother's face. Her voice trembled. "Oh, Mother, not—not—your bride's 'walking-out gowns'!"
"Bye, Charity." From Mistress Condit's placid face, no one but her hearers could have guessed at the involuntary regret she felt and the very real sacrifice she was making. "Could I have a better way o' using my wedding clothes than to gi' my two little maids a happy time?" she said. She looked over at her husband. "Ye do not mind my cutting up the two gowns, Samuel?" she asked.
Silently, Squire Condit shook his head in answer. A swift memory of the young and lovely bride who, proudly attired in those same gowns, had walked out to church the first happy Sundays of married life came to him. But, too, there followed swiftly upon the heels of that memory the picture of barefooted men leaving bloody footprints in the virgin snow, of hungry men turning away from the quartermaster's office with half rations—a hunk of bread or a piece of meat; but never both together for days at a time—of a commander, greater than his country realized, pondering sadly, with careworn face, those problems which an unruly Congress hindered rather than helped to solve—all this came to Squire Condit's mind, and he knew that money, even for the most simple party gowns, was not forthcoming in that patriotic household. And that the only way Mehitable and Charity could go properly attired to any rout in Morris Town was as their mother was now planning.
The Squire's eyes, however, were very tender as they rested upon his wife, and he soon took occasion in passing her to pat the work-gnarled hand that held a knitting needle. It was only one of many humble sacrifices performed in that household, but how cheerfully done!
The next few days were busy ones. Upon the daughters' slender young shoulders fell the mother's household duties, now, for she had to turn seamstress. The two girls felt well rewarded when at last the dainty gowns were finished and hanging upon their wooden pegs in their little chamber beneath the eaves.
"We ought to secure partners easily enough at the routs, an we wear those gowns," said Mehitable, trying to gaze her fill.
"I do not know which one I like the better—yours wi' the blue skirt and the cream overskirt—or mine wi' it otherwise!" sighed Charity happily. But suddenly she shivered, for the little unheated chamber was icy in temperature. "Let us not stay up here longer. An we caught cold, Mother would not let us depart for Morris Town the morrow!"
"We are to leave immediately after midday, I heard our father say," announced Mehitable, shivering also as she followed Charity back to the warmth of the kitchen fire. "Isn't it lucky for us that Cousin Eliza broke her ankle at Morris Town instead of home at Trenton!" she continued naïvely. "Upon what a slender thread oft hangs our fate!"
"You mean, upon what a slippery piece o' ice!" said the literal Charity.
The next day, a gray, wintry one, found them traveling along behind old Dulcie and her team mate, General, in the farm sled. Both girls were yet young enough to enjoy the novelty of sitting upon the blanketed floor, where they shared the comfort of a foot warmer—a small square stove with a handle in its lid that was used at that time to carry to church where, in the cold, unheated pews, the ladies enjoyed its protection against frosted feet. Each girl held a squirrel muff against that portion of her face not covered by her cape hood—they would have stared askance at any one's suggesting that they wear the beautiful feathered bonnets reposing that moment in the bonnet boxes beside them. Their mother's timeworn trunk, which had come from England with her, was tied on as it stood upright behind them, and the slithery, sliding sound whenever the sled went over a bump in the snowy road mingled with Squire Condit's cheerful whistle as he halloed at his horses.
At first, Mehitable's and Charity's gay voices had defied the bitter wind that beat against them; but, as mile after mile was traversed, with snow and yet more snow on every side, they fell silent. Up hill and down dale they went, following the ridge road to Millburn village, skirting the Short Hills, over the incline known as the Sow's Back—where General Washington had established a beacon signaling station, well fortified by cannon, through the village of Chatham, where the brave Colonel Ford had caught his death cold during a skirmish there, that same Colonel Ford whose fine new house at Morris Town had been selected as headquarters during the coming winter for the commander-in-chief and his staff—past Bottle Hill, and then north to the straight-away road leading from Whippany or Whippanong, as it was then called.
It was growing dusk when Squire Condit looked around from the driver's seat at the huddled figures behind him.
"Wake up, Hitty! Bestir yourself, Cherry lass!" he called in his jolly voice. "We be nearing the end o' our journey, an I mistake not!"
Both girls groaned and stretched. "I vow I can't walk again!" grumbled Mehitable, trying to wriggle her cramped feet beneath the heavy blankets.
"How much farther is it, think ye, Father?" asked Charity wearily. More frail than her older sister, she was ever the first to experience fatigue, though fifteen miles or more in a farm sled was a trip to try a stronger physique than hers.
"Almost there, now!" answered Squire Condit cheerfully. "We shall all be the better for the good supper Mistress Lindsley will doubtless have ready for us!" he added.
"Think ye Cousin Eliza will have secured invitations as yet to any o' the dances?" queried Mehitable, endeavoring to smooth her tumbled black locks with mittened fingers, for even a moment's exposure to the air would have made them ache.
"An she has not, John or Captain Freeman will have done so," answered Charity rather mischievously. And laughed to see the blush that mantled Mehitable's cheek at the last name.
"Indeed, Mistress Smarty, I ha' not e'en heard o' Captain Freeman for a year or more, as ye very well know," retorted Mehitable. "Besides," she interrupted herself to say, "Captain Freeman thinks me yet a babe, I suppose!"
"Well, he would be right—were ye not but fifteen or sixteen when last he saw ye?" admitted Charity, far too quickly to suit Mehitable. "Of course, that was vastly young for twenty-one, Hitty!"
"Indeed, Mother was but sixteen when she was married!" Mehitable tossed her head.
"She says, now, 'twas much too young!" responded Charity promptly. She fell into a reverie, out of which she roused herself with a troubled face. "Hitty," she spoke tremulously, "I ha' been thinking over recently a fairy story Nancy once told me when I was a little girl, that time she did visit our house and she and John had had a quarrel. It was woven around hers and John's story, though, of course, I did not then know that. But puzzling over it these many years, I ha' solved all its little quirks and points. Would—" she hesitated, hurried on abruptly—"would ye like to hear this fairy story?"
Mehitable, who had been watching her sister's sober face with puzzled eyes, nodded. "An ye want to tell me, Cherry," she said.
"I—I—think ye ought to hear it," answered Charity slowly. She spoke carefully, as though choosing her words. "A—a—friend o' yours was i' the story."
"What part played this friend—the hero's?" laughed Mehitable nervously. But she kept her gaze upon her sister's downcast face, for she felt instinctively that the story was going to displease her in some way, so much had she gathered from Charity's hesitant manner. The younger girl, as Mehitable had often said jokingly, was "cursed with a conscience," and now she felt that her sister had another reason than simply passing the time, in relating this fairy story.
"Nay." Charity shook her head. "John played the hero's rôle and Nancy the heroine's." She waited a second, as though to gather all of her courage together; then, keeping her eyes averted, she plunged into her tale.
"Once upon a time there lived a Princess who was i' love wi' a Prince from a distant country. The Prince, so Mistress Nancy said, was visiting the Princess's city to study medicine."
"Like John!" interrupted Mehitable. "'Tis easy enough to see Nancy was telling ye her own story."
"Aye," nodded Charity soberly, "easy enough, now, to see that; but not so easy when I was little. Well—'tis thus she told the story. This Princess and the Prince were very happy until another maid from a distant country came a-visiting and she, too—so the Princess thought—fell in love wi' the Prince. She was a flighty maid, not fine and strong and wonderful as was the Prince, not good enough for him; but she had the art o' making young men to like her and one day the Princess caught her own young man, the Prince, smiling at her, walking and talking, too, and she was very angry, then. She said naught, however, and time passed until came the eve o' a masked ball. The Prince told the Princess he would come to that ball masked as Night, in somber garb o' black, so she went as Starlight, in gown o' silver.
"When the Princess arrived, she looked most eagerly around for the Prince, and at last she spied him at the far end of the garden. She knew him at once, despite his mask, for he was the only one i' black. Thus she went to him confidingly; but when she drew near she saw"
Here, just as Mistress Nancy had once paused to stare unseeingly ahead of her, so Charity stopped and stared, until Mehitable moved impatiently.
"Yes?" said Mehitable. "She saw what?"
"She saw that the Prince was not alone; but walking wi' a lady gowned in silver, prettier e'en than the Princess's own dress. Then as they neared a bower, the Princess knew that this maid was the unworthy one from overseas! They stopped—the Princess was upon them, for she had been hurrying toward them—and then she saw the Prince stoop and kiss this unworthy maid and heard him whisper, 'I love you!'"
"Oh!" Mehitable's voice was shocked, just as Charity's had been that long-ago time when poor Mistress Nancy's voice had trembled and she had caught the little girl to her, so that the rest of the story had come tumbling to its end through Charity's fair curls.
"But, you see," went on Charity's voice now, as she sat with her eyes fixed carefully upon the hands she was clasping so nervously in her lap, "you see, Hitty, the story ended much nicer—for Nancy—than she knew at that time it would. For the masker i' black was not the Prince! Someone had borrowed his mask suit o' black—it seems he, himself, had been called out upon a case o' sickness at the last minute—and this other man had kissed the unworthy maid."
There was a little silence, then Mehitable spoke very low: "Who—was—the other—man?" she asked, her young face rather pale and strained, for all the whipping of the wind upon her cheeks.
"Don't ye remember?" Charity turned and looked at her sister suddenly. "Don't ye remember how Nancy's and John's misunderstanding was straightened out at last? It seems" Again Charity hesitated.
"It seems?" Mehitable repeated it in a whisper, her eyes upon the other's face.
"It seems that Captain Anthony Freeman was the man who borrowed John's mask suit that night," Charity told her quietly. And silence fell.
Now the road led through deep forest. Ghostly shadows turned out to be stark, winter-stripped trees over and over, yet the primeval solitude, the dusk, and the war all made even Squire Condit's gaze very alert as he glanced from side to side, urging his horses into a trot that caused the old sled to creak and to clatter in aged protest.
It was when they had reached the utmost depths of the forest that Mehitable, glancing back over the snowy road, uttered a startled exclamation.
"Father—back there—do ye see?"
The Squire glanced over his shoulder. Dim figures, barely discernible through the twilight, were galloping after the sled.
"Zounds!" he muttered more to himself than to Mehitable. "I like not to be caught in the woods thus!"
"What mean ye?" Mehitable's heart began to flutter. There was something ominous in those flying figures which, little by little, gained upon the sled.
Charity's hand grasped Mehitable's arm through its thick fold of cape. "Think you our father fears Indians?" she whispered.
"Nay, not Indians, Cherry! I fear," Mehitable gave another terrified look at the rapidly approach ing horsemen, "I fear he thinks they be red-coats!"