She flushed to the temples and looked at my left hand. The scar was there. I raised my hand and kissed the blessed mark.
"Dear, dear Michael," she whispered, "truly you were ever the dearest and noblest and best of all!"
"Unfit to kiss thy shoon's latchet, sweet—"
"Yet hast untied the latchets of my heart."
A stillness fell on the old tavern; the Minute Men stood silently at the loopholes, the barefoot drummer sat on his drum, hands folded, watching with solemn, childish eyes the nuggets of lead sink, bubble, and melt.
A militiaman came down-stairs for a bag of bullets.
"They be piping hot yet," said the drummer-boy, "and not close pared."
But the soldier carelessly gathered heaping handfuls in his calloused palms, and went up the bare, creaking stairs again to his post among the pigeons.
The heat of the brazier had started the perspiration on Silver Heels's face and neck; tiny drops glistened like fresh dew on a blossom. She stood, dreamily brushing with the back of her hand the soft hair from her brow. Her dark-fringed eyes on me; under her loosened kerchief I saw the calm breathing stir her neck and bosom gently as a white flower stirs at a breath of June.
"The scent of the sweet-fern," she murmured; "do you savour it from the pastures?"