THE red-coats! Nay, are ye sure, mistress?" exclaimed Mehitable valiantly.
Springing out of bed, she began to dress hastily, stopping every now and then to listen for a repetition of the sounds which had frightened her. Charity crept out on to the icy floor, shuddering and shaking with a nervous chill. Mehitable, noticing this, bade her go in and dress by their Cousin Eliza's fire; but warned her not to waken the sick woman.
"Aye, Hitty," returned Mistress Lindsley, after a pause. She stood motionless, as though petrified by fear, her head bent in an attitude of agonized listening, "Aye, can ye not hear them?" she whispered, with a strange sort of triumph. And now Mehitable had to admit that she could, that the sounds which came from the yard below were real sounds and not those of an overwrought imagination.
Men's voices, hushed yet vibrant with excitement, the trampling of horses' hoofs, the rattle and clash of muskets—these made their blood run cold At last, Mehitable could stand it no longer. Blowing out Mistress Lindsley's candle, she crept to the window which, inch by inch, she shoved up. Then, poking out her head, despite her hostess's whispered pleas not to, she stared down through the black darkness. When she gazed around at the older woman, who had come close, her blanched face gleamed white.
"I could not see, but 'tis a score or more below, I'm sure!" she said dully, in answer to the other's terrified question. "Are we—lost, think ye?"
At that moment came a tremendous knocking, echoing through the silent house. It was the imperative clatter of a sword-hilt upon the front door.
"Open!" cried a man's voice. "Open—inname!"
"What did he say?" muttered Mistress Lindsley, her breathing terrified.
"'Twas a mumble to me—something about a name!" said Mehitable.
"So I heard!" said Mistress Lindsley brusquely, because of her fright. "Oh, me! oh, me!" she wrung her hands. "If only Joseph were here!"
She started nervously as someone appeared, that instant, in the doorway; but it was only Charity—albeit a trembling, pale-cheeked Charity.
"Oh, Mistress Lindsley, what be ye a-going to do?" gasped the latter. "Cousin Eliza is awake," she added more calmly. "She says to open the door to the rogues and she will try to buy our safety by offering them her jewels!"
As Charity spoke, again came that brutal knocking. Typically the domineering British, Mehitable thought! She looked an inquiry at Mistress Lindsley, whose face, poor woman, even in the yellow candlelight, showed gray and shocked.
"Aye—open—the—door, Hitty!" said Mistress Lindsley, catching her breath. "We—we be lost, I fear! I do not think jewels will buy our safety after the—the way the British have shown us they can pillage, burn, murder!" Her words died away into a dreadful silence as she gazed ahead of her in stony despair.
Charity uttered a stifled cry as Mehitable started courageously toward the stairs. "Nay, let me go, Hitty!" she choked, running after her and attempting to pass her. "Let me open the door! They might bayonet you!"
Mehitable raised her arm and barred the younger girl's way. "Think you I could look our mother in the face an I hid behind your petticoats, Cherry?" she demanded sternly. "Nay, little sister," she looked down at the other with tender gaze, although the white, strained line around her own mouth and nostrils showed her dreadful fright, "I will ope the door!"
But Mistress Lindsley, attracted by their low-voiced words, came toward them swiftly. "Nay, Hitty—I did not think!" She parted them gently and went through the bedroom door. "I will ope the door, of course. It is my place to do so!" And the two girls dared not argue with her, because of the command in her tone.
They followed her down the stairs, however, step by step, for Mistress Lindsley went slowly, clinging as though for support against the wall as she went.
"An—an—they bayonet us, as—as—Mistress Lindsley thinks—they—might," whispered Mehitable to Charity between stiffened lips, "think—o' the soldiers—who—die for their—country!"
"Aye, Hitty!" answered Charity, her head up. And the rest of that slow, awful journey down the stairs there marched as brave gentlewomen as ever trod the path of danger.
A struggle with the heavy bar of the door. Another one with the great key—fully six inches long—in the lock. And Mistress Lindsley had flung open the door.
There was an instant of silence, then a courteous voice spoke out of the darkness.
"Pardon, mistress—is this Major Lindsley's house?"
Mistress Lindsley nodded mechanically, then realizing that her nod could not be seen, perhaps, for she had left the candle upstairs, she spoke huskily.
"Aye, sir!" She cleared her throat. "Aye," she repeated heavily.
"Then, mistress, we are under orders," the voice out of the darkness continued, "we are ordered to"
"To seize the house, I suppose, sirrah!" finished Mistress Lindsley, coming suddenly out of her daze of misery. She snapped defiant fingers. "To murder innocent women and children as ye have so oft done before!"
"But—but—madam," began the voice—rather astonished, Mehitable thought.
"To burn and pillage and commit what terrible crimes in the name o' warfare ye best wot of!" swept on Mistress Lindsley, now fully aroused. She barred her doorway dramatically. "But ye shall not enter here, except over my dead body!"
"Mistress, I" the voice tried again.
"Except, I say, over my fallen body!" cried Mistress Lindsley. Suddenly she screamed. "Run, Hitty, run! The way be open at the rear, mayhap!"
Mehitable, however, was too transfixed by terror and excitement to move, and the next instant Mistress Lindsley was gently but firmly shoved to one side.
"Is there any one in the house not hysterical?" demanded a desperate voice. "This poor lady be either demented or overcome by fright!"
Mehitable, at that, sprang forward and helped to support the half-fainting figure of her hostess. Between her and the young soldier who, entering then, had caught the lady as she had reeled, they carried her into the kitchen where they laid her down upon a bench. Straightening her back in the firelight, Mehitable saw, instead of the hated red, another color beneath the greatcoat of the man confronting her.
"Why," she stammered, "wh—why, ye are not red-coats!"
Before the young soldier could speak, a cry came from the door. There was a rush of little feet across the kitchen floor, a flurry of homespun skirts, and Mehitable blinked her eyes. For there was Charity standing with her hands caught in those of the young soldier, with her happy face uplifted to his in glad welcome, with broken words trembling upon her lips. Mehitable stared and blinked again. Then she, too, exclaimed with delight, and leaving Mistress Lindsley's side, ran across the room to where the other two were hurling excited questions at each other.
She was unnoticed. Neither turned at her approach, and rather taken aback, she stood silently watching them for a moment. Then the lad—for he was not much more than that—in swinging toward the door, as he remembered that his men were waiting out in the cold, stumbled over her. He grasped her hands, then, and pumped them up and down.
"Well, well!" he beamed. "'Tis you, Hitty! John told me naught o' your intended visit to Morris Town!"
"Forsooth, Young Cy," returned Mehitable dryly, looking over her and Charity's old playmate and neighbor with affectionate eyes, however, "I thought, mayhap, ye'd decided I was but another chair or table or something!"
"Nay, Hitty, ye jest!" said Young Cy, blushing. "I was but greeting Cherry—it has been so long since I saw you—her, I mean—you—you—understand."
"Aye, I understand!" thought Mehitable, looking after him as, blushing more than ever, Young Cy rushed away. She went over to Mistress Lindsley, beside whom Charity was already kneeling.
"What—Americans!" Mistress Lindsley was saying in a bewildered manner. She sat up, shaken and trembling. "They be not red-coats, ye say, Cherry?"
"Nay, dear Mistress Lindsley, they are a few of His Excellency's guard sent down from headquarters," responded Charity soothingly.
"Then there must be danger o' attack from the red-coats, an we are to be protected!" groaned Mistress Lindsley, passing a dazed hand over her brow.
"But think how much better we'll feel an the guard be near!" encouraged Charity. She got to her feet. "I think I had better go upstairs and appraise poor Cousin Eliza o' our relief!"
"Now, why could not I have been the one to think o' doing that!" murmured Mehitable to herself. "Here have I been standing like a great stupid, with never a thought o' poor Cousin Eliza lying frightened upstairs!"
She was about to follow Charity, after assuring herself that Mistress Lindsley was over her fright, when Young Cy, looking tall and handsome without the greatcoat, which he had removed and was carrying over his arm, reëntered the kitchen. After his first eager glance had told him that Charity was no longer present, he seemed to be able to turn his mind to other business, and looked worriedly at Mehitable.
"Know ye aught o' the powder mill's whereabouts, Hitty?" he asked in a low voice. "'Tis that I be sent to watch. I find, upon questioning my men, that no one is present who can lead us thither. I, myself, but recently arrived in Morris Town, do not know how to reach it!"
Mehitable hesitated. It seemed strange to her that General Washington could have sent out a guard for such an important building as the powder mill without adequate and explicit directions for reaching it. Had Young Cy been a stranger to her, she would have doubted him, perhaps even dubbed him spy, and would have defended the secret of the powder mill's location to the best of her ability. But knowing him as she did, she was sure he was telling the truth.
Mistress Lindsley, however, busily lighting the candles in their tin holders on the chimney-shelf, now turned around.
"The powder mill, sir?" She looked at Young Cy very keenly as she came forward and in her eyes Mehitable read suspicion, which at once became spoken words. "It seems not right that His Excellency should have sent a man in charge o' such an expedition who did not know how to reach his destination," she remarked unbelievingly.
Young Cy's cheeks flushed, and he drew himself up. Mehitable had to grant him both dignity and manly charm as he looked his questioner straight in the eye.
"It be true, nevertheless, madam. I am the officer in charge o' this guard, and I do admit my ignorance how to reach our destination," he answered, his firm young voice trembling a little with anger. "I understood from His Excellency that Major Lindsley would lead us thence!"
Mistress Lindsley, at that, bit her lip. "Mayhap ye be right, young sir," she admitted, after a pause. "Major Lindsley is absent from home just now upon personal business, of which His Excellency may not have been informed, which would account for his so telling ye what he did."
Mehitable started forward impetuously. "Nay, I can vouch for Young Cy! Why, he has been our friend at home since—since we played mud pies together!" she exclaimed, with a little breathless laugh. "I know that he—and his father, also—be true patriots!"
Both she and Young Cy stood for a moment with their gaze riveted anxiously upon Mistress Lindsley's face until she turned to him with sudden disarming graciousness.
"Ye must pardon a nervous, suspicious woman, sir," she apologized frankly. "I will lead ye and your guard to the powder mill."
Mehitable sprang after her. "Let me lead them!" she begged. "Nay, why should you expose yourself this night to cold and darkness when I am young and strong! I know the way—Tabbie did show me, ye mind!"
Mistress Lindsley hesitated with her hand upon her cape, as it hung upon its peg behind the door. "But you were only there once, my child. I fear ye would find it hard to retrace your steps at night an it is dark!"
But Mehitable begged so hard that she at last yielded, and a moment or so later, the young girl was out beneath the starless heavens. Straight as a fox to his lair she led Young Cy and his men, although there was a pause at the start while the young officer protested at her walking ahead of his horse.
"I cannot find the way, otherwise," Mehitable explained patiently.
"I like it not!" Young Cy shook his head. "To let you walk while I ride, Hitty! It seems like a man and his slave! Yet must I take my horse and the men must have theirs, in case o' sudden attack!"
"Of course!" Mehitable started off. "Do not be foolish, Young Cy!" she threw back over her shoulder.
They were an odd procession—quite a company of men and horses following the slim, debonaire figure of the girl. Once through the thickets, Young Cy placed his guard around the mill and held out his hand.
"There are no words to thank ye, Hitty!" he said steadily. "Had ye not come to my rescue, my first important assignment might have been a failure!"
"Nay," smiled Mehitable, "Mistress Lindsley could not have withstood your honest face for long. She would doubtless have been convinced! 'Twas only a question o' time!"
"Yet in that time," pointed out Young Cy triumphantly, "the British might have found and blown up the powder mill!"
"Think you there is serious danger of attack this night, then?" asked Mehitable quickly.
"As long as there is a powder mill here, and war exists, there will be danger o' enemy attack," answered Young Cy simply. "I will inform you, for your comfort, however, that it was only a very vague rumor of British approach which did reach General Washington and it be almost a certainty that nothing will come of it. And mayhap you perceived I posted two sentry around Mistress Lindsley's house, so tell Cherry not to fret."
"I will, Young Cy," promised Mehitable, and nodding again, she ran across the bridge and plunged recklessly through the thickets. It was not long, then, before she was back at Mistress Lindsley's house, before she was snuggling, once more, down beside Charity in their great feather bed. The last thing they heard as they drifted off to sleep for the second time that night was the tramp, tramp, tramp of the sentry's feet beneath their window.