“Yes, he told me the truth, at least what seems like the truth. Then I came home. It’s very hard to learn suddenly that you are a descendant of a man whom his neighbors believe to be a traitor.”
“He was a traitor!” cried the old lady. “There never was a worse traitor.”
“When I came home, I went through the house, carefully, to see whether any papers belonging to him could have been stowed away and overlooked. I couldn’t accept this without doing something, could I?”
The old lady’s hand dropped from the door-latch and she leaned against the wall, a sign of relenting in her eyes.
“I didn’t find anything that referred directly to it,” went on Elizabeth, “but I did find some writing on one of the beams in the attic.”
“What writing?”
“It had nothing to do with the battle, but it had to do with John Baring. It said, ‘I have built this house the best I know. God bless those who go in and out.’ That didn’t look like the sentiment of a man who was a traitor, did it? So I thought I would try to see whether there were any persons who remembered him and who could tell me about him. Perhaps there is some mistake.”
“Why didn’t he come back?” demanded the old woman. “That was what finished him. There were some who couldn’t believe that he would do such a thing, but why didn’t he come back? He went away with them and having chosen his company he stayed. Even his friends gave up then.”
“So he had friends?”
“Of course he had friends. Everybody was his friend! But he was a traitor! He betrayed his own neighbors! My people lost everything but the actual ground of the farm. The crops were ruined, the barn was set afire, everything we had was taken, stock driven off. And this is a side road; they would never have known about it if they hadn’t been shown.”