"Thee must!" exclaimed Rachel. "Thee will not leave out a word that he spake or a deed that he did."
Something flashed brightly into the quick mind of Guert just then. He could not exactly shape it, but it came when he caught the sound of a low sob from under the veil of the girl at the other window. "I'll begin where I first saw him," he said.
He did not at all know after that how his boyish enthusiasm helped him to draw his word pictures of Captain Hale's daring scout work, of boat and land adventures by night and day, in company with him and Up-na-tan and Coco. He told it more rapidly and vividly as a kind of excitement spurred him. He did not know that beyond the half-open door of the next room his mother and several other persons were listening. Two of them had come in the cutter with Maud, and yet another sleigh had brought visitors to the Avery house. There were to be very loving and tenacious memories to treasure all that he was telling.
Guert came at last, sorrowfully, more slowly, to the tragic end of all in the old orchard near the East River. He told of the troops, and the crowd, and the tree, and he repeated the last words of the hero who perished there.
"That I can give but one life for Liberty!" he said, and there his own voice choked him, while a whisper from beyond the door said softly: "Glory! Glory! Glory!"
Throughout Guert's narrative, there had been something almost painful in the forward-leaning eagerness of the veiled girl at the window. She was standing now, and a sigh that was more a sob broke from her as she held out to him a hand with something that she was grasping tightly. Rachel stepped forward and took it, opening it as she did so. Only a small, leather case it was, containing a miniature.
"My boy," said Rachel, "is that like thy friend? Look well at it. Tell me."
"It's a real good picture," said Guert, wiping his eyes as he looked more closely. "It's like him, but there isn't the light and the smile that was on his face when he stood with the rope around his neck under that old apple tree."
"That is enough," said Rachel, turning away with the miniature. "I think not many eyes will ever see this thing again."
"Not any," came faintly from under the veil. "I mean to have it buried with me. Nobody else has any right to it. I must go now."