The horseman stayed his horse at Fulling Mill Brook to give him a drink, and Polly reached the brook just at the instant the horse buried his nose in the cool stream.
“Do you live near here?” questioned the rider.
“My father, Mr. Thomas Porter, keeps the inn yonder,” said Polly.
“I can’t stop,” said the horseman, “though I’ve ridden from New Haven without breakfast, and I must get up to the Center; but you tell your father the British are landing at West Haven. They have more that forty vessels! The new president was on the tower of the College when I came by, watching with his spy-glass, and he shouted down that he could see them, landing.”
At that instant, Ethel reached the brook. “What’s going on?” he questioned.
“You’re a likely looking boy—you’ll do!” said the horseman, with a glance at Ethel, cutting off at the same instant the draught his horse was enjoying, by a sudden pull at the bridle lines. “You go tell the news! Get out the militia! Don’t lose a minute.”
“What news? What for?” asked Ethel, but the rider was flying onward.
“A pretty time we’ll have celebrating to-day,” said Polly, to herself, dipping the corner of her 183 apron into the brook and wiping her heated face with it, as she hurried to the house. Meanwhile, her brother was running and shouting after the man who had ridden off in such haste.
As Polly entered the house the big brick oven stood wide open, and it was filled to the door with a roaring fire. On the long table stood loaves of bread almost ready for the oven. Her sister Sybil was putting apple pies on the same table. Sybil was a beautiful girl of twenty years, much admired and greatly beloved in the region.
“What is Ethel about so long this morning, that I have his work to do, I wonder!” exclaimed Mr. Thomas Porter, as he lifted himself from the capacious fire-place in which he had been piling birch-wood under the crane—from which hung in a row three big iron pots.