“Do you think that he received it?” asked Clotilde.
Miles grinned.
“I know he did,” was his answer, “for, two days after, there was put into my hand a packet containing a toy wooden gallows, such as children use for the hanging in a Punch and Judy show. And to it was fastened a paper saying, ‘With the compliments of King George the Third.’”
CHAPTER XV
A MESSAGE FROM MASTER SIMON
In her laughter over Miles’ hearty disgust with himself, Clotilde, for a little time after his visit, forgot to grieve over the ruined garden. But when Spring came and there were no bright daffodils nodding by the gate, when the covering snow melted and showed once more the charred wreckage of the burned house, when the hedges displayed only a few green twigs coming up from the roots, and the linden tree, long after the whole green country was in abundant leaf and blossom, still stood a blackened skeleton against the sky, then her grief awoke afresh.
In the kitchen garden, the apple trees and the row of beehives beneath them had by chance been spared. Yet to see the apple trees blooming alone in a black and desert waste, to watch the bees flying about in bewilderment, looking for flowers that had once yielded such generous honey, was worse, almost, than to have had all perish together. Clotilde had need, through these days, of all her courage and of all Stephen’s shrewdly comforting sayings, to keep up even a show of cheerfulness.
Two great events, however, the Spring brought, which were of equal and joyful importance to the people of Hopewell. One was the abrupt departure from Boston of General Howe and all his soldiers, British and German. Early in March they had embarked upon their war vessels, had hoisted sail and cleared the port of Boston with loudly expressed hopes that they would never be so unlucky as to see it again. Many of those wise prophets who are always ready to tell any one who will listen, just what things are going to happen, protested loudly that the war was over and began to criticise General Washington for not sending his soldier boys home. But, strange to say, this eagerly offered advice seemed to fall unheeded upon the Commander’s ears and the Continental forces still remained under arms waiting for the next move.
The other event was the rebuilding of Master Stephen Sheffield’s house. By an odd chance of war that brings about so many unexpected happenings, the same hands that had burned it down were busied in building it up again. Many of the Hessian prisoners taken the same night of the burning had been quartered all winter in the Hopewell jail, much to their own discomfort and that of every one else. The village place of imprisonment, very little used of late, was now fairly bursting with the captives of war. The officers had been exchanged, but the German privates remained, a sore responsibility, although it must be owned that they were patient, tractable and showed no eagerness to escape. Those who had them under guard were glad to put their charges to work, while the prisoners themselves were delighted to labour in the open air at a trade in which many of them were skilled. Mustered into the army of some small German ruler, enrolled against their will, bewildered but yet obedient, they had been hired out to fight an enemy of which few of them had ever heard. After fighting that foe conscientiously, thoroughly and to the best of their ability, they were quite as willing, when so ordered, to labour for their captors with the same silent, heavy industry.
Stephen, during his stay in England, had learned to speak German, a language used about the court as much as English. When he went among the toiling workmen and spoke to them in their own tongue, it was pleasant to see the stolid faces light up, to see the men’s eyes grow brighter and their hands become more nimble in their enthusiasm to labour for the “gnädige Herr.”