PAGE
- The Song of a Single Note—[Frontispiece.]
- Maria lay dressed upon her bedfacing [100]
- The drummers and fifers in front did not see himfacing [208]
- He caused the small boat to put him on shorefacing [320]
PROLOGUE.
"Love, its flutes will still be stringing,
Lovers still will sigh and kneel;
Freedom sets her trumpets ringing
To the clash of smiting steel."
So I weave of love and glory,
Homely toil, and martial show,
Fair romance from the grand story
Lived a century ago.
A Song of a Single Note
CHAPTER I.
RED OR BLUE RIBBONS.
It was the fourth year of the captivity of New York, and the beleaguered city, in spite of military pomp and display, could not hide the desolations incident to her warlike occupation. The beautiful trees and groves which once shaded her streets and adorned her suburbs had been cut down by the army sappers; her gardens and lawns upturned for entrenchments and indented by artillery wheels; and some of the best parts of the city blackened and mutilated by fire. Her churches had been turned into prisons and hospitals, and were centres of indescribable suffering and poisonous infection; while over the burnt district there had sprung up a town of tents inhabited by criminals and by miserable wretches whom starvation and despair had turned into highwaymen.