She looked mechanically at the portrait, which had escaped from its silken bag. "Is this a lady who is waiting for you to come back from the fighting?" she asked, with sudden softness of tone and countenance.
"Yes," lied Dick, promptly; "as you also doubtless wait for some one!"
The girl blushed, and looked sympathetically at the portrait, then at Dick.
"Stop that rebel!" The voice had turned the corner of the Common, but its owner was still concealed from view by the trees and bushes of the garden. "The open gate yonder," it added; "search that place!"
"Sit down," quickly whispered the girl to Dick, handing him the portrait. "There,—under that bench!"
Dick obeyed, from lack of other choice, at the same time losing hope, for the space beneath the bench was open to the view of any one entering the porch.
A moment later he felt and saw himself closed in from sight, by the skirts and petticoat of the young lady, who had taken her seat on the bench immediately over him.
In this novel hiding-place he lay, half stifled, while the girl politely answered the questions of the Irish officer, whom she directed to a rear alley, whither, she said, the fugitive must have betaken himself; and when the last soldier had gone from the premises she blushingly arose and faced her equally flushed guest, who stammered the thanks he could better look than speak. Not waiting for talk, she immediately conducted him to the garret of the house, where he passed the rest of the day, and the ensuing night, on a pile of old bedclothes behind some barrels. Next afternoon, she brought him a pass obtained from Major Urquhart, the town-major, permitting one Dorothy Morrill to pass the barriers at Boston Neck. She gave Dick a maid-servant's frock and cap, showed him how to put up his hair in feminine fashion, and led him out of the house and grounds by a back way while the family sat at supper.
"'Tis all for the sake of the lady who is waiting for you," were her last words, and Dick, bowing low so as to avoid her eyes, took the way she had described, to Boston Neck. In the streets he was chucked under the chin by certain jocular soldiers, which demonstrations he took as evidence of the excellence of his disguise.
His heart was in his mouth when he showed his pass to the sergeant of the guard, at the gate in the barriers, for failure at the last moment is a sickening thing. But he was passed through without special question, and went on his way rejoicing to Roxbury, past the George Tavern, and so to the American lines, where, taking off his woman's garb before the astonished sentries, he was recognized by one of General Thomas's officers, and allowed to proceed through Brookline to Cambridge.