"They are under the stairs."
Over your shoulder you slung your drum. With her own hands Mother belted your sword around you and set your cocked hat on your curls. Then twice she kissed you, and you marched away to the music of your drum. She watched you from the open door.
It was a windy morning, and you were bravest in the wind. From the back fence to the front gate, from the beehives to the red geraniums, there was a scent and stir of battle in the air. Rhubarb thicket and raspberry wood re-echoed with the beat of drums and the tramp of marching feet. Far away beyond the wood-pile hills, behind the trellis mountains where the morning-glories clung, tremulous, in the gale, even the enchanted garden woke from slumber and the flowers shuddered in their peaceful beds. On you marched, through the wind and the morning, on through Middlesex, village and farm, till you heard the cannon and the battle-cries.
"Halt!"
You unslung your drum. Mounting your charger, you galloped down the line.
"Forward!"
And you rode across the blood-stained clover. Into the battle you led them, sword in hand—into the thickest of the fight—while all about you, thundering in the apple-boughs, reverberating in the wood-pile hills, roared the guns of the west wind. Fair in the face of that cannonade you flung the flower of your army. Around you lay the wounded, the dead, the dying. Beneath you your charger fell, blood gushing from his torn side. A thrust bayonet swept off your cocked hat. You were down yourself. Tut! 'Twas a mere scratch—and you struggled on. Repulsed, you rallied and charged again ... again ... again, across the clover, to the mouths of the smoking guns. Afoot, covered with blood, your shattered sword gleaming in the morning sun, you stood at last on the scorched heights. Before your flashing eyes, a rout of redcoats in retreat; behind your tossing curls, the buff and blue.
A cry of triumph came down the beaten wind:
"Mother! Mother! We licked 'em!"
"Whom?"