“If you’re going to think about a lad at a time like this,” she said, “why don’t you think of Johnny? You’ve gone about with Johnny for a long time, Sally Rose, and Johnny’s on our side. Don’t you wonder if maybe he isn’t up there—in that earthworks on the Hill? Right there in the thick of the cannon balls?”
“Well, I do wonder about Johnny,” she answered plaintively, “and about Dick, even about that New Hampshire boy with no manners—Tom what’s his name.”
Kitty, too, had wondered about Tom, but not too much. There was a cold certainty in her heart that Tom Trask would be in the thick of whatever fighting there was to come. She knew that as well as if she could see him there.
“Girls!” called Gran’s voice from the kitchen door. “Girls! come here to me!”
Kitty let go the windlass suddenly, and the handle spun creaking round. Sally Rose set down her pail.
Just then there was a loud whine somewhere overhead, and then a whoosh, a shower of splinters about them, and a roaring wind that flung them hard against the turf. For a moment they lay there, not daring to move. The smell of burning powder filled the air. Then another roaring wind went by, but not so close, and higher overhead.
Kitty sat up. A cannon ball was bouncing across the grassy yard of the house next door. It had passed through the garden and shattered the pointed roof of the well-house where they stood. She reached out and grasped Sally Rose by the shoulder.
“Quick,” she gasped. “Let’s get inside. They’re firing into the town, not just at the earthworks any more.”
Racing into the taproom, they found Gran in talk with a tall man who wore an officer’s coat and three-cornered hat and did not carry a pail.
“Girls,” said Gran, her voice frighteningly calm, “the British have landed, and ’tis plain they mean to charge the Hill. Whether they can take it or not, we don’t know. But they’re shooting straight into Charlestown now, iron balls and iron cases full of burning trash. The town’ll soon be in flames over our heads. ’Tis time to leave. There’s nothing more we can do.”