AND I do protest it be a shame, forsooth!" said Tabitha vigorously, facing the little group gathered in Mistress Lindsley's kitchen on the twenty-third of December.
"But, Tabbie—an he be guilty!" ventured Mehitable thoughtfully, after a pause during which the fire, snapping and cracking, seemed to echo the other girl's unusual tones.
"He is not guilty! I have good information that there are those who are persecuting him!" asserted Tabitha, with a spirit which amazed her listeners. In fact, they were not used to the quiet, work-driven Tabitha voicing any opinion whatsoever, and now to have her defend such a man as Benedict Arnold quite unexpectedly was surprising, to say the least. Yet, newly arrived from her aunt's house, Tabitha was but reflecting the interest this strange man's court-martial was arousing in officers' quarters and soldier huts on Basking Ridge alike. And she, like the majority, believed the heretofore brave general to be innocent of the charges preferred against him. Again and again had he proved his courage and loyalty, for Arnold had been the first among the colonists to espouse the cause of freedom. He had assisted Colonel Ethan Allen in that splendid capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. He had been wounded at the unsuccessful siege and assault at Quebec, and wounded again at Saratoga. He had shared hardships and dangers with General Sullivan, making war upon the retreating British troops under General Tryon from Danbury, Connecticut.
"How could such a man be guilty!" demanded Tabitha, continuing. "Why, they charge him, while in command o' Philadelphia, with permitting a Tory vessel to enter the port without acquainting either General Washington or the state officials of it so doing. They accuse him of tyranically closing the shops and preventing purchases by the town's inhabitants; but making personal purchases—oh, it be outrageous! They even accuse him o' transporting the private property o' Tories in wagons belonging to the state—he, who fought the enemy at Quebec and was wounded!"
"But, Tabbie!" exclaimed Mehitable, staring curiously, as were the others, at her, "why concern yourself with all this? And how know ye these charges?"
"My cousin be clerk o' the court which is to try General Arnold," said Tabitha. "He was discussing the matter wi' my aunt last night, and I overheard them. And I saw General Arnold this morning, crippled, maimed in the defense o' his country so that he must walk wi' a cane—one leg be shorter than t'other—and yet accused by that country o' such scurvy deeds! It be an outrage on American justice, say I!" And the girl stood with clenched hands, staring into space.
Mehitable, watching her, tried to discover within herself a reason for Tabitha's unusual agitation and confessed to herself that there seemed none except an exaggerated sense of justice possessed by the other. But, a little later, the reason was made apparent by Tabitha, herself.
"Let us talk o' more pleasurable things," said the Morris Town girl, turning smilingly to Mehitable. "I heard you went to a rout, Hitty."
"Aye, Cherry and I. But how did you know?" asked Mehitable in surprise.
"My cousin—that same one who is clerk o' the court—was present. Did you have a good time?" answered Tabitha, ending with a question.
"A—fairly—good time," hesitated Mehitable. "But, oh, Tabbie—hear what happened!" And she plunged into the story of Cousin Eliza's slipper buckle and the story of trapping the spy.
It was not until she had come to the end of the tale that she glanced at the other girl. Charity and Mistress Lindsley were chuckling, but Tabitha stood straight and tall, deathly pale, with her eyes staring, horror-stricken, at Mehitable, and her hands pressed against her heart as though to relieve an unbearable hurt.
"Why—why—Tabbie—what be the matter?" Mehitable sprang to her feet, upsetting the pan of apples she was peeling.
"You say he—he—stole the paper and escaped with it?" Tabitha seemed hardly able to enunciate the words.
"Aye. He proved himself unquestionably a British spy, as I claimed he was." Mehitable went over to the other and put her arms across the thin shoulders, while the others watched with wide eyes. "But why do you care, Tabbie? What be it to you what this Simpson did?"
With a bitter gesture, Tabitha covered her now burning face with her hands. "He—he is my brother!" Her voice was muffled. "My name be Simpson, too!"
Too surprised to speak for a moment, Mehitable stood silent until Mistress Lindsley, laying down her knitting, hurried to Tabitha's side.
"It be true," she said, patting the sobbing girl upon the arm, nodding to Mehitable over the other's bowed head. "Tabbie, when an orphaned baby, was placed in the care o' this aunt in Morris Town, and for convenience' sake, took her name. Her brother kept the name o' Simpson—you did not mention him by name, Hitty dear, or I should have known him at once—though he was placed in the care of another aunt in New York Town. The New York aunt was wealthy and a Tory. Tabbie and I had been hoping against hope that her brother would remain true to his own country; but it seems he has not—mayhap, because too imbued with his aunt's viewpoint!"
"Then it be not his fault an he is a Tory!" retorted Mehitable generously.
But Tabitha shook her head. "He hath reached the age o' wisdom. He is no babe, despite his youthful face. He t-told me, though, he was a patriot." She sighed. "I must have known he was not—I have had my suspicions. And now I be convinced he is an enemy. Oh, the wretches who will not help their own in time o' need! But what chance, think you"—she fixed burning eyes upon the other's face—"hath a person like my brother when stern justice would try such a man as General Arnold! I shudder to think what may be his end!" And with another gesture of despair, poor Tabitha escaped from the room.
She had no sooner gone than a cheerful knock sounded upon the door and John Condit entered.
"Hitty," he said, greetings over, "how would ye like to go home to Orange for the day?"
"Alone with you—without Cherry, I mean?" answered Mehitable, longing to accept, yet not wishing to be selfish.
Both Charity and John at once reassured her, John declaring that the little sister was not strong enough to travel express as they must, and Charity explaining contentedly that Young Cy was to take her over the army encampment that afternoon, anyway. So Mehitable ran joyfully upstairs to acquaint Cousin Eliza with the news of her day's trip. She stumbled upon Tabitha, a forlorn heap, weeping desolately in a dark corner under the eaves.
"Poor Tabbie, do not weep!" Mehitable bent over her pityingly.
"Yet would you weep an it were your brother!" sobbed Tabitha.
Baffled, Mehitable turned slowly away, confronted by the old, old mystery of each one having to live his own life. Why should she, Mehitable, be about to start happily off upon an unexpected trip with a brave, fine, strong brother, while poor overworked Tabitha, whose life was drab at its best, was left at home to mourn a delinquent one!
It was not until they were well upon their way that the depression left by Tabitha's misfortune disappeared. But bright sunshine, fresh air, and rapid motion at last dispelled it, and Mehitable could once more be her sunny self. Their trip back to the Orange Mountain farm was an uneventful one. Mistress Condit was duly and happily surprised by her daughter's unexpected appearance and would have detained her son, also. But he, saying that he would be back in mid-afternoon and that his sister must be ready, then, for the long trip in return to Morris Town, rode on to Newark. The Masonic brethren, greatly elated by the presence of their most famous lodge member, General Washington, were planning to celebrate the festival of St. John at Morris Town. Not having the necessary paraphernalia, John Condit was sent in advance of Captain Thomas Kinney and Major Jeremiah Bruen to Newark to see if the Morris Town chapter could borrow the required articles from the former chapter. He returned, elated, at the time set, saying he had been successful in his business.
It was hard for the father and mother to bid farewell to their children when John started for the kitchen door. Traveling, in those days, was fraught with perils. The New Jersey Indians, wisely treated by the first settlers, had always been more or less friendly, it is true; but dangers of war, of nature, and even from wild animals were always at hand during these dark years of the Revolution.
"I stopped to assure Master Jones and his wife o' Young Cy's safety," said John incidentally, helping his sister to mount to her saddle.
"That be right," commended his mother. "I am glad ye stopped at the Jones's farmhouse. Good-bye, my son!" she added, as he turned back and caught her in his arms, then wrung his father's hand. "May Heaven keep ye and Hitty safe!"
"We shall return the first week o' January, I feel sure!" called back Mehitable, as they trotted away. "Cousin Eliza be planning to return to Trenton that day!"
So they were off! Up over the Mountain they went, one horse following the other on the narrow trail, for they were to return to Morris Town through Hanover and Whippanong. It was dusk when they reached the latter village. Mehitable, peering through the shadows, uttered an interested exclamation.
"Look, John, what be that?" She pointed up the road where an odd-looking vehicle was slowly approaching them.
"Nay, I cannot tell!" answered her brother, staring.
"Is it not an oxcart?" remarked Mehitable. Then, as they neared the outfit, which had now stopped before a house, whence two women had flown out to greet the cart's occupants, she added, "Why, it be Mistress Rhoda Farrand and her son Dan, whom we met at Mistress Lindsley's one morning! Such a queer, fiery old lady, John! What can she be doing? She hath an armchair in the back o' the cart and she be knitting furiously, as though she were sitting before her own kitchen fire. Now, she hath laid down her knitting and taken up a paper. She be reading something to those two ladies standing in the road!"
Mistress Farrand looked up, as the brother and sister drew abreast her oxcart, and nodded in a neighborly fashion.
"This be a letter from my son at Morris Town," she said briskly, seeing Mehitable's curious gaze upon it. "It is getting so dark, I scarce can see to read it; but having read it to every farmer's wife all the way from my home, I almost can recite it." And while the two ladies and Dan Farrand kept a respectful silence, the old lady acquainted the others with its contents.
It was a pitiful letter from Lieutenant Farrand, written from the camp at Morris Town, telling of the destitution among the soldiers of his own company who, at home, were the sons of neighbors. The young man ended by imploring Mistress Farrand to "tell their mothers."
"So I made my daughters Hannah and Betsy fetch me my cloak and then set stockings upon their needles and Dan and I started out with our steers, rousing the countryside like Paul Revere. Only we be rousing the mothers and sisters, instead of the Minute Men," ended Mistress Farrand with a jolly laugh, yet with a tear in her eye as she spoke a moment later of how the men, looking back, could trace their tracks to the army camp by their bloody footprints and how, at roll call, they had to take off their caps and stand on them to keep their feet from freezing.
"This be Prudence and Mary Ball." The old lady introduced the two ladies suddenly.
"Our three brothers are in Lieutenant Farrand's company," cried Mistress Prudence, looking over at Mehitable with wet eyes. "Why—we—we did not dream they were so needy!" she stammered. "We shall not sleep this night before we have finished those stockings!"
"So every mother and sister hath said!" Mistress Farrand nodded encouragingly. "I knew they would respond thus! Drive on, Dan—we still ha' many places to visit! Ye must pardon my not getting out o' the cart, for it doth save my time!" she called back, as Dan chirped to his oxen, and the funny contraption moved ponderously away.
"Aye!" the ladies called back, waving cordially. "And now to work, Prue," added Mistress Mary as, nodding hastily to the two on horseback, they turned and hurried into the house.
"I'll warrant stockings will pour down Jockey Hollow Road to our army camp in a steady stream on the morrow!" observed John Condit laughingly yet in moved tones. "Think you an appeal to mothers could fail!"
Mehitable nodded silently, for, somehow, there was a great lump in her throat, as she thought of the candles which would flicker that night on the brave, worn faces of the Continental mothers as, hour after hour, from dark to dawn, they would sit up to knit the socks for the cold, bruised feet which once, tiny and pink and cunning, they had held in their hands to kiss.
"What an uneventful trip this has been!" remarked the girl presently, as they went jogging along the road where, leaving Whippanong village, it curved to begin an ascent between wild, lonely hills.
"Art disappointed?" commenced John, laughing, then he paused and his sister, glancing at him questioningly, saw him draw his reins all at once to greet a silent figure which had appeared beside the road as though by magic, out of nowhere.
"Gray Hawk!" exclaimed Mehitable breathlessly.
The Indian turned to her with hand up, palm outward, in stately welcome; but his glance flew back to John's face and, pointing to the road which led forward, he shook his head.
"Danger!" he grunted.
John nodded. Without knowing in what the danger consisted, he accepted the red man's statement without question. Then, as all three remained silent, they heard, far off, thundering toward them, the sound of a horse's hoofs!
It was now quite dark. Snow was threatening again, with the advance of night, the bright sunshine having been dimmed by gathering clouds even before they left home. Mehitable, sitting motionless in her saddle, suddenly shivered at the penetrating dampness and perhaps because of the wild loneliness of the hills and the blackness of the night and the mystery of those ever-nearing hoof-beats.
"Art cold, Hitty!" asked John concernedly, noticing her shiver. "Yet we had best remain here forthe nonce. We will ride hard, later, to get your blood warm, but now those hoof-beats portend evil. Is it not so, Gray Hawk?" He glanced at the Indian, who nodded in the darkness.
"It is so, my brother," returned Gray Hawk in his own language.
"Aye, I do not mind" Mehitable broke off with a gasp. For, as they waited beside the road, where they had withdrawn, a horse flashed out of the night, passed them like a flying thing, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. Gray Hawk galloped after it, and before the others realized he was gone, he returned, leading his trophy.
Mehitable peered uneasily at the captured runaway beast. "Why, John, what be on this horse's back?" she asked in a shocked voice.
John Condit hastily dismounted and approached the horse, which the Indian was quieting. "'Tis Sturgins!" John told her presently. His voice was strained and hoarse. "Some Tory fiends hath tied him head downward on his horse and sent him off, thus!"
Mehitable uttered an exclamation of pity as Doctor Condit, whipping out his knife, cut the cruel knots of hemp around Sturgins and lifted his limp figure to the ground. Gray Hawk led the bodyservant's horse to a near by sapling in the little glen in which they were hidden, and there secured the beast.
"Can ye stay here, Sis, while I ride back a short ways to the river and get poor Sturgins some water?" asked John Condit, rising after a short examination of the unconscious man.
Mehitable shrank back instinctively. "Can ye not use snow, John?" she asked quickly.
Her brother shook his head. "He cannot drink snow, Hitty," he said quietly. He stood waiting for a moment; but only a moment. The next instant Mehitable had squared her shoulders.
"I'll stay, John," she told him bravely. "Only—" her voice broke a little—"only hurry, won't ye?"
"Aye." Nodding his head at her approvingly, John hurriedly mounted his horse and headed him back for the river. "Gray Hawk will watch o'er ye!"
But Mehitable, glancing at the Indian's aloof, silent figure beside the road, thought wistfully that he was not much company. She slipped from her horse and went over to kneel beside the injured man. Pityingly she unfastened his coat collar and loosened it. Whether it was the icy touch of her fingers or because he was at that moment recovering consciousness, Sturgins uttered a groan and spoke.
"Captain!"
Mehitable bent over him. "He be gone for water to help revive ye, Sturgins," she told him.
"Captain!" Unheedingly, Sturgins repeated it. Suddenly, gasping, staring, he half raised himself from the snowy ground. "The Tories—the Tories" he panted wildly.
Mehitable tried to soothe him. "Captain Condit will return i' a moment, Sturgins. Nay, rest ye easy!"
"The Tories—I overheard—Kemble" Sturgins fell to muttering deliriously.
Mehitable, listening impatiently for her brother's return, paid not much attention until a random name caught her ear.
"Hawtree!" She bent over the servant again. "Said ye Hawtree, Sturgins?"
"Aye, mistress!" For the first time Sturgins looked at her rationally, with clearing gaze. It was dark, so that they could scarcely see each other's faces; but as they looked, the moon eluded the baffling snow clouds and, like a curious spectator, remained to stare down at the scene. And now, kneeling there, Mehitable caught a new tone to Sturgins's voice and was convinced that he no longer wandered in his mind. "Hawtree caught me—I got wind o' their meetin' in Kemble's barn—Mr. Richard Kemble did take the oath; but he and his old father both be Tories at heart, oath or no oath—'twas done jes' to save their property from confiscation. Hawtree and Jaffray caught me"
Mehitable's heart had given a leap of terror. "Jaffray, too?" she faltered. "Art sure? Then I did see Hawtree t'other day! Oh, how dared they come to the very army camp!"
"Spies do be everywhere, mistress!" Sturgins, strengthened by excitement, sat up. "And ye can see," he made an eloquent gesture, "the result o' their catchin' me—the captain will ha' some bother fixin' me up this time, though I ain't afeared but what he kin do it! Nay, mistress, I be not afeared o' that." He faltered. "Jaffray," he went on in a weaker tone, "Jaffray lashed me—allus he hated me, e'en when I worked for him on the river—then—then he tied me upon my horse as ye found me. He gave it a kick, too, the varlet—hurtin' my beast thus! And he said—'Go,' he said, 'tell your mas ter worse awaits him for his insolence at Ranfield's!'"
Mehitable caught her breath and glanced nervously around the moonlit glen. Yonder waited the Indian, cold, aloof, impassive. What could be delaying her brother? she asked herself. Why did he not return? The Whippanong River was only a short ways back. Surely John had not been intercepted upon that short stretch of road. Then, as she listened, the sound of hoof-beats came to her ears, and she turned in acute relief to Sturgins.
"There be the Captain!" she said, brightening. But Sturgins fell back upon the ground with a bitter groan, and, glancing at Gray Hawk, Mehitable was alarmed to see him crouched forward in an attitude of tense listenings.
"It be more than one horse! Can't ye hear? Gad, an it be the Tories again!" All at once, to Mehitable's fright, he turned over and pounded the snow with convulsive hand. "We be lost! Hawtree and Jaffray—they threatened to follow me—I was not going to scare ye by telling ye so—but now what matters it? 'Tis them—'tis them!"
"Ah, no, Sturgins!" Mehitable half sobbed it. But before she could say more, before she could move, horsemen galloped past on the road, coming from the direction of Morris Town.
Now, all would have gone well, in spite of the moonlight, for Gray Hawk, like a flash, had withdrawn behind a tree, where he and his horse melted imperceptibly into the background and the others were close to the ground; but Mehitable's horse neighed. Instantly, as though they had been listening with sharpened ears as they galloped, the horsemen wheeled and returned to the glen.
The girl, springing to her feet, stood in frozen horror as the newcomers threw themselves from their steeds. It was Hawtree who seized her! It was Jaffray who kicked the prone figure of Sturgins, moaning in fright upon the ground! But the next moment Mehitable gave a bitter cry, for John galloped unsuspectingly into the glen!
Everything seemed to happen at once, then. There was a blow. Was it upon Mehitable's head? Sinking into oblivion, the girl thought dully it must have been delivered by Hawtree's cowardly fist. The wild voice of Sturgins came to her dimly through vast distance, as he struggled to his feet, dodging Jaffray, and ran weakly toward his master. John had leaped from his horse, and now, with drawn pistol, stood crouched behind the beast.
Mehitable, her senses swimming, felt the earth rock.
"Captain, run—run, sir! I'll fight them! Only run, sir!" It was Sturgins's voice again.
A flash came from Jaffray's gun, there was the whir of a tomahawk, there was another flash from John's pistol and poor Sturgins, between the three, threw up his hands, spun a quarter of the way around, and fell upon his face. All this Mehitable saw darkly, as though through a smoked glass, before smothering blackness swooped upon her and she knew no more!