And the children, in one derisive row of merciless tormentors, stood just in the upper shadow line, repeating the refrain with painful insistence, until Boyle himself was glad to retreat into the silence of his own tent for the night. There were sounds of laughter from every near-by tent. What Dian thought of this absurd adventure could only be conjectured from the scornful expression of her rosy lips, as she gathered the two little girls in her arms and drove the still jeering boy, Harvey, and Tom Allen in the darkened back-ground, away into the far seclusion of their own tent.
But even as she fled, she heard in the near distance another shrill cat-call, "Come and kiss yoo papa." And she joined with one smothered hysterical burst of laughter, the two girls, who were still in her arms, in laughing at their discomfited enemy.
III.
"COME AND KISS YOO PAPA"
It was barely five o'clock the next morning, and long before the lazy sun would climb the high eastern hill, when Brother Duzett's drums rattled and rolled their startling reveille, echoing from peak to peak. In a moment, the quick bustle of camp life broke the stillness of dawn, and the neigh of the tethered horses, and the low of the oxen in the meadow, added a note of surprised domesticity to that wild scene. Then, before these sounds were fairly through echoing and re-echoing across the silver sheeted lake, two rounds from Uncle Dimick Huntington's cannon ware answered by two others across the vale fired from Elisha Everett's fieldpiece. The booming volleys were swept from crag to crag, and went rolling and tumbling in wild confusion down the canyon's winding glens, and were just losing themselves in silence, when the three brass bands united in one great glowing tribute to liberty, in the entrancing melody of the loved "Yankee Doodle." After this even the children could sleep no longer, but dressed as best they could with half-frozen fingers in the dim dawn of the snow-cooled air.
Out from tent and wagon-box they poured at eight o'clock, these merry, happy revellers, filled to the brim with joyous anticipations of all that the day and the years would bring to them.
As Dian and Ellen met each other, both with cheeks of rosy hue from their hastened toilet, and ready to go to the bowery for morning prayers, they heard that shrill call, now muffled by the busy morning noises—
"Come and kiss yoo papa," and Dian knew that the young avengers were again hot on the Englishman's trail.
"What's that?" asked Ellen.
Dian explained her midnight adventure, but she asked no question of Ellen as to her own whereabouts the night before, as she really was indifferent on that subject. She had known and loved Ellen a good part of her life, and she did not propose to let a silly thing like John Steven's diverted attentions come between her and her friend. Dian was much too sensible for jealousy as a pastime; it might do in real love; but jealousy in the abstract had never been a part of her character. Dian was surely sensible.