“Where ye been, then?”
“Oh—round Charlestown most of the time, I guess. You know Job Townsend’s tavern there?”
“Job Townsend? Keeps the Bay and Beagle, don’t he? In Crooked Lane near Harvard Street. I knowed him when he was your age. Too bad. He lost his wife young. Got a right pretty daughter, I’ve heard. Sally Rose, or something like.”
“Yes, he’s got a pretty daughter,” said Gerry Malory, draining his glass. “I been around the Bay and Beagle some.”
“I don’t get down that way much myself,” said the landlord thoughtfully. “What’s the news thereabout? Do they think the British’ll fight? And if they do....”
The young man shook his head solemnly. “You got no chance against the British,” he said.
The landlord looked up sharply. “Ye say ‘you’ and not ‘we,’” he protested. “Does that mean Barnstable don’t intend to join against the cruel laws o’ the King? That they be not with the rest o’ Massachusetts? The Hampshire towns be with us, and I hear that so be the west and south, New York and Virginia, too.”
“Oh no, no, I do not mean that at all,” cried the young shoemaker. “’Twas a slip of the tongue. Of course Barnstable—on Cape Cod—will join cause with you. I only mean that the outlook is dark, sir, dark, for those who would fan the flames of rebellion in America.”
He put down his empty glass and leaned forward, his hands clenched before him on the table. “How can we defend a thousand miles of seacoast with only a few scattered towns, against a great battle fleet of three hundred ships and armed men? We can scarce put thirty thousand soldiers in the field. England has one hundred and fifty thousand, and can summon more. We lack guns, ammunition, money, and trade. More than that, we lack the tradition of love of country, a tradition that will make the meanest man fight and die bravely. For a thousand years men have been giving their lives for England. What man has ever given his life for America before?”
“Sounds like you been listening to some Tory make speeches, lad. Happens there was a few gave their lives at Concord and Lexington the day before yesterday,” retorted the landlord. “There’s a first time for everything, Gerry.” His voice was milder than the milk in his half-empty glass, but his eyes held a sharp look, a look of question. Suddenly his face went white.