Women, and a few old or feeble men, were toiling across the farmyards here and there, carrying favorite gowns, or chests of silver, or pewter teapots to conceal them in wells and hollow trees. And from almost every doorstep strong arms laboriously hoisted old folk and invalids into carts to haul them away.
“What do you think’ll come of it, Kit?” asked Sally Rose in a low worried voice. “Do you think Gran will take us over the river to Haverhill? I don’t want to go to Haverhill. It’s a sleepy country town, and it’ll be worse than the Port, with all the lads away. I’d almost rather get caught by the British, I think.”
“But they’re cutting and slashing all before them,” Kitty reminded her grimly. “That farmer said he rode over twenty dead bodies on the way.”
“Well, I do not think they would cut and slash me,” said Sally Rose, smiling confidently in the dark. “Oh, Kit, look there!”
They were passing a tiny cottage half hidden by leafy apple trees. An armchair had been placed firmly on a scrap of lawn, and in the chair sat a man with a lantern beside him and a musket across his knees. He was enormous, and almost perfectly round. “Let the British come!” he shouted, and waved his musket. “I be too fat to budge for ’em! I’ll stay here and shoot the bloody devils down!”
A little way farther on they came across a group of women bending over another woman who lay on the ground in the curve of a stone wall. Granny hesitated, and then drew rein. “Is the poor critter sick?” she called to them. “Can I help? Perhaps we could make a place for her.”
A tall woman in a gray shawl straightened up. “No, thank’ee, Ma’am,” she called crisply. “It’s only Aunt Hannah. She wheezes so with the asmaticks, her noise would give us away to the British. We’re going to cover her over with leaves and let her rest, all snug and out of sight, here by the wall.”
At that Nancy Davis began to laugh. She laughed and laughed, and then she began to cry. Gran slapped her face hard and drove on. “None o’ that foolishness, Nance,” she said severely. “Mind your children. ’Bijah would expect you to. Kitty and Sally Rose”—she lifted her voice—“is all well with you back there?”
“Let’s not go any farther, Gran,” pleaded Sally Rose. “There are lights at the inn we just passed by. If the folks haven’t run away, maybe they’ll have beds for us. Maybe if we hide in bed, the British will ride on and never know we’re there. I don’t want to go to Haverhill, Gran.”
“When I say you’ll go to Haverhill, to Haverhill you’ll go,” said Gran, and drove on into the night. “I hope I can make the ferry in time.”