“Yes, little Quakeress,� said the officer, who had first spoken to her, “I am he. What do you wish?�
Betty, too exhausted to be surprised, poured forth her story in a few broken sentences, and (hearing as if in a dream the hasty commands for the rescue of the soldiers in Chichester Meeting-house) fell forward in her saddle, and, for the first time in her life, fainted, worn out by her noble ride.
A few days later, when recovering from the shock of her long and eventful ride, Betty, waking from a deep sleep, found her mother kneeling beside her little bed, while her father talked with General Washington himself beside the fireplace; and it was the proudest and happiest moment of her life when Washington, coming forward and taking her by the hand, said, “You are the bravest little maid in America, and an honor to your country.�
Still the peaceful meeting-house and the gambrel-roofed home stand unchanged, save that their time-beaten timbers and crumbling bricks have taken on a more sombre tinge, and under the broad walnut tree another little Betty sits and sews.
If you ask it, she will take down the great key from its nail, and swinging back the new doors of the meeting-house, will show you the old worm-eaten ones inside, which, pierced through and through with bullet-holes, once served as a rampart against the enemy. And she will tell you, in the quaint Friends’ language, how her great-great-grandmother carried, more than a hundred years ago, the news of the danger of her countrymen to Washington, on the Brandywine, and at the risk of her own life, saved theirs.
THE FIRST BLOW FOR AMERICAN LIBERTY[E]
(A STORY OF THE BUNKER HILL POWDER)
By Emma W. Demeritt
Two little New Hampshire boys play a part in the patriots’ capture of a quantity of King George’s powder, and this very same powder was afterward used to fight the redcoats at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
TONY sat on a bench in the corner of the great stone fireplace watching the big logs as they sang and crackled and the flames leaped upward filling the room with a cheerful glow. Now and then he turned his head and glanced at a tall woman who was bustling about, getting supper ready.