"Yes. Patty will be best. We can trust her, and she will hardly be noted. And thou?"
"I must get out of the town in some sort of disguise. There is much behind this that I do not know."
Patty was dispatched on her errand. "Sit still, child, with thy book, and presently thou shalt know what is meet," said she.
Andrew Henry went briefly over his inner life for the last two months, his desire to enlist in the Continental army, his shrinking from the pain it would be to his parents.
"But now, madam, it would bring greater trouble on them for me to go home. The British would likely arrest me."
"Yes, I see. And thou hast resolved to be a soldier lad? Not from the teasing of little Primrose, I hope."
"No, madam, though I shall be her soldier as well. But those brave men at Valley Forge have been before my eyes night and day. I should have done this a little later, anyhow. My father and mother are in good hands."
"Heaven keep thee! But better a hundred times perish on the field of battle than be thrust into that vile den, the Walnut Street Jail, where that fiend in human shape, Cunningham, works his cruel will on helpless men. Not a day but dead bodies are carried out, some of them bruised and beaten and vermin-covered. Faugh! The thought sickens me! Yes, thou must escape. Primrose, child, come in."
She ran eagerly to Andrew, who greeted her with a smile. Then Patty returned breathless.
"It is all right. They will find nothing from cellar to the top layer of the chimney. But Master Evans says get out of the town as fast as you can."