Early the next morning, before it was yet light, there was a tapping at the silver knocker and Clotilde, slipping down with a candle in her hand, opened the door and found David Thurston on the steps. It was a raw, cold November dawn with gusts of rain and a sharp, merciless wind. Yet there stood David and, on the driveway below, mounted on shivering horses, were twelve village lads, muffled in their high-collared homespun coats and fur caps.
“Tell the master when he awakes,” said David hurriedly, “that we are off to the wars again, to fight for General Washington, since his need is so great. Say that when we heard Master Sheffield’s words and saw him grown old and broken in this struggle for Liberty, we were ashamed to sit warm and comfortable at home and let others win our battles for us. And, Mistress Clotilde,” he added, his voice breaking, “will you look to my poor old mother now and again? I doubt that she will be here when I return, for we are not coming back until every redcoat has been swept from America.”
He pressed her hand in a rough, trembling clasp of farewell, strode down the steps, mounted his horse and, followed by the others, rode away into the face of the whistling, sleety wind. Among the group that pressed forward with bent shoulders and bowed heads, Clotilde recognised the broad backs of three of the German prisoners, who had given up their chance of exchange and return to their own homes, and were now to fight, for the first time in their lives perhaps, on a side of their own choosing.
November passed, and December, with still the depressing news of retreat and ever retreat before the overwhelming numbers of the British. Clotilde long remembered that dreary Christmas night when the wind shrieked down Master Simon’s chimney and banged and shook at the heavy wooden shutters, while she, Stephen and Mother Jeanne huddled about the fire and tried to smile at Stephen’s merry stories and cheerful talk. All three of their hearts were so heavy with thoughts of the struggling army, of freezing soldiers crouching over camp fires, of the desperate struggle against almost hopeless odds, that it was Stephen alone who managed to speak confidently and to see in the blazing fire pictures of hope, victory and peace at last.
On New Year’s day came the tidings of that marvellous crossing of the Delaware and the capture of Trenton. People brightened then and began to speak more cheerily. Strange to say, it was only Stephen who shook his head over the news.
“A General who must take such fearful risks as that,” he said, “is plainly in such dire necessity that he must win, or lose all. May Heaven help him!”
On an afternoon in April came a messenger, covered to his eyes with splashings of mud, clay and gravel, and bearing a letter from General Washington to Stephen.
“Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England have combined to decorate them,” he said, displaying his great jack boots, “but there was naught of bad roads or hidden enemies could stay me on an errand that, so His Excellency said, was desperate in its need for haste. Things have come to a fearful pass with the army!”
Stephen, however, although he read the letter carefully, seemed in no hurry with his reply.
“See that the man is well cared for,” he directed Clotilde. “It is too late for him to set forth again to-day, so let him lodge here and receive my answer in the morning.”