At sight of the emaciated face of her once handsome boy, the mother turned away and wept. Five long years in the prison ship had done its work. Five years, where every day at dawn the dead were brought out in cartloads. Stifled in crowded holds and poisoned with loathsome food, in one prison ship alone in eighteen months eleven thousand died and were buried on the Brooklyn shore. And then came the General, George Rogers, and Captain Richard, from the garrison of Kaskaskia where he had helped to hold the Illinois.
In tattered regimentals and worn old shirts they came,—the army of the Revolution was disbanded without a dollar.
"And I, worse than without a dollar," said General George Rogers. "My private property has been sacrificed to pay public debts."
But from what old treasure stores did those girls bring garments, homespun and new and woolly and warm, prepared against this day of reunion? The soldiers were children again around their father's hearth, with mother's socks upon their feet and sister's arms around their necks.
Jonathan, famous for his songs, broke forth in a favourite refrain from Robin Hood:—
"And mony ane sings o' grass, o' grass,
And mony ane sings o' corn,
And mony ane sings o' Robin Hood
Kens little where he was born.
"It wasna in the ha', the ha',