“Well, I don’t know,” responded Lucia despondently. “But if it destroyed the town there wouldn’t be anyone left to capture it; and that is why we must push that liberty tree offshore.”
The girls were both strong, and Lucia had brought a sharp knife with which to cut the rope holding the tree to a stake on the bank, so it did not take them long to push the tree clear of the shore. They found a long pole near by, and with this they were able to swing the liberty tree out until the current of the river came to their aid and carried it slowly along.
“How slowly it moves,” said Rebecca impatiently, as they stood watching it move steadily downstream.
“But it will be well down the bay before morning,” said Lucia, “and we must get home as quickly as we can. I wish my father could know that there will not be a liberty pole set up in Machias.”
Rebecca stopped short. “No liberty pole, Lucia Horton? Indeed there will be. Why, my father says that all the loyal settlements along the Maine coast are setting up one; and as soon as the old British gunboat is out of sight Machias will put up a liberty tree. Perhaps ’twill even be set up while the gunboat lies in this harbor.”
“Well, come on! We have tried to do what we could to save the town, anyway,” responded Lucia, who began to be sadly puzzled. If a liberty tree was so fine a thing why should her father not wish Machias to have one, she wondered. Lucia did not know that her father was even then bargaining with the British in Boston to bring them a cargo of lumber on his next trip from Machias, in return for permission to load the Polly with provisions to sell to the people of the settlement, and that, exactly as Lucia had heard him predict, an armed British gunboat would accompany the sloops Polly and Unity when they should appear in Machias harbor.
The two friends whispered a hasty “good-night,” and each ran in the direction of home. Rebby pushed the big door open noiselessly, but she did not try to replace the bar. As she crept up the stairs she could hear the even breathing of her father and mother, and she slid into bed without waking Anna, and was too sleepy herself to lie long awake.
The unfastened door puzzled Mr. Weston when he came down-stairs at daybreak the next morning. “I was sure I put the bar up,” he thought, but he had no time to think much about trifles that morning, for, as he stood for a moment in the doorway, he saw Paul Foster running toward the house.
“Mr. Weston, sir, the liberty pole is gone,” gasped the boy, out of breath. “The rope that held it to the stake was cut,” he continued. “Father says ’tis some Tory’s work.”
Mr. Weston did not stop for breakfast. He told Mrs. Weston that he would come up later on, as soon as he had found out more about the missing liberty tree; and with Paul beside him, now talking eagerly of how his father had gone with him to take a look at the pine sapling and found no trace of it, Mr. Weston hurried toward the shore where a number of men were now gathered.