CHAPTER IV

_New Friends_

Before the night had settled down, Marianne found herself again under her grandmother's roof and by the side of the wounded man was her mother established. It was a much more comfortable state of things than to be left at home, still the girl chafed under the fact that she was in the enemy's country. Her feelings had been roused to their fullest extent by the fact that her father lay suffering from wounds inflicted by the Britishers, and she felt very bitter about it.

"You'd better make the best of it," Victorine told her, "and be thankful that you are all here together. It was a Providence, to my thinking, that your father was wounded thus early in the war, else there might have worse trouble come upon you."

"It is bad enough," Marianne returned; "yet when I think of those dead and dying men I saw brought over in the boats, I am thankful that my father was not one of them. The churches and houses at Lewiston are turned into hospitals, and the sounds of the groaning and moaning is terrible. As you say, there is no doubt but that we are lucky to have father here instead of among strangers. I wonder if he knows that it was all Royal's doing, and that he found him among the wounded, and rescued him from those horrible savage Indians, and then went to headquarters, and begged that he might be taken here."

Victorine's eyes shone with a starry softness. "I don't think he does know, but he will some day. It was like Royal."

"Yes, but who wouldn't do it for his own father? Still, I am glad that Royal could rescue him, though I am sure father would have done the same for him."

"Poor Royal, he is quite used up over General Brock's death. He admired him greatly."

Marianne looked up. "Oh, I didn't know you had seen Royal. Has he been here?"

Victorine hesitated, then replied, "Yes, he has been here every day to inquire for his father."

"And I have not seen him." Marianne spoke in quite an injured tone.

"He thought you might not care to see him, knowing the outcome of the battle."

"It wasn't he who won the battle," sniffed Marianne, but she said nothing more about seeing her brother, and after a while burst out with, "It isn't very nice to be in a place where you don't dare to speak your own mind, and where every one hopes your best friends will get beaten."

"They are our friends, too," returned Victorine. "We girls need not bother our heads over any part of the war except that which gives us wounded men to nurse. Grand'mère says our duty is that which is nearest at hand, and she nurses your father as tenderly as she would her own son."

"Of course she does; and if she didn't, there would be mother to do it."

"You are a discontent, Marianne."

"I am, just now. I like to be free, and I cannot speak my mind, nor run through the woods as I am used to doing, for fear I will meet some vile soldiers, and I cannot do this and that, so I have half a mind to run away."

"Where?"

"I shall not tell you."

Victorine laughed, but Marianne's words were something more than mere jest. She was busy forming a scheme which in time she meant to carry out, and which she dared not breathe to any one. It was when her turn came to sit with her father that she gave him the first intimation of what she desired to bring about.

"What is the news?" was his daily question when he was able to take an interest in what was going on. He depended upon Marianne for all his information, for he knew her keen sympathy with his own cause would lead her to glean all the bits she could. She had her own methods of procuring her news, but she did not whisper the reports to any one but her father. She would tell him of the squabbles in the American army, of how General Van Rensselaer had been disgusted with the conduct of the militia and had asked to be relieved, and that General Smyth had taken his place, and many other newsy items.

"Where did you learn all this?" her father would ask.

"A little bird told me," Marianne would reply with a smile.

"What is a parole?" she asked one day.

"It is one's word given that he will not take arms against a foe within a given time, and so he is allowed freedom of a certain sort."

"All the militia and their officers who were taken prisoners in your battle were sent back to their own side, on parole. Are you a prisoner on parole?"

"No, I was unconscious when they picked me up and brought me here. I have been puzzling lately to know how I happened to be brought to my own mother-in-law's house, and who was the means of doing it."

After a moment's silence Marianne told him, "It was Royal."

Her father turned his face away, but made no comment when she gave him the details. After she had finished she looked cautiously around and whispered, "Father."

He turned his head toward her again, and with her face close to his she laid bare her scheme.

Her father listened attentively, and when she had concluded he said, "But your mother, and Victor, and grand'mère--you forget that it might reflect upon them, and perhaps do them an injury."

"I have thought about that," Marianne told him. "I think I can arrange it so it will do them no harm. Will you trust me, father?"

"You are pretty quick-witted, and--yes, I can't afford to miss a chance. I don't mean to submit to being a prisoner if there's a chance of freedom, but I'm not strong yet, and the only thing I object to in the matter is, that we do not consider your mother."

"Yes, I know; I think that is a difficulty, but I don't believe we ought to tell even her. I'll come back and get her after you are safe."

Her father laughed. "For up and down assurance, commend me to a little body of your size. It is a case of the elephant and the mouse. Well, Marianne, it's worth the trying, and it cheers me up to have one good staunch American at my side. You would have been a brave soldier if you had been a boy."

"Royal is a brave soldier," said Marianne, "but he just happens to be on the wrong side." With that she left the room, but this was not the last conversation her father had with her upon the subject of his escape.

The leaves were falling fast when the time at last seemed ripe for Marianne to venture upon the thing which she so long had in mind. The frequent warnings of her elders, not to venture far from home, were unheeded one crisp afternoon in November. And while her grandmother was at work preparing a ragout for Mr. Reyburn, and her mother was no less busy with Victorine at the loom, and Victor in the barn with the men, she slipped out of the house, and down through the orchard, which she skirted, reaching the road without being seen. Her destination was an Indian wigwam in the woods, back some distance. She hoped she would encounter no one on the way, which was one lonely enough to encourage her belief that she could make her journey unobserved. She sped along, crunching the crisp leaves under foot, and singing softly to herself. Once in a while she left the path to chase a saucy squirrel or to gather chestnuts from the fallen burrs, already opening to the frost.

It was upon one of these excursions from the bridle path, that she finally came to grief, for in following the quirks and turns of a specially impudent squirrel, she stepped knee-deep in a bog so covered with fallen leaves as to be undistinguishable. She was flouncing and floundering, and trying to get out as best she could, when she heard a stifled laugh, and looking up she saw a boyish face above a scarlet coat. The face was on a broad grin, and the mischievous brown eyes were running over with mirth.

Marianne was indignant. That any one should see her in this plight was bad enough, but to be so discovered by a Britisher was too much. "You are in a hole, little girl," said the Britisher. "How did you do it?"

This was adding insult to injury. "Little girl," indeed! Marianne maintained a furious silence, and made no effort at all to extricate herself.

"Oh, maybe you like it in there," continued the youth. "Perhaps you went in on purpose--for leeches or something."

"It's none of your business what I went in for," cried Marianne, roused to speech. "There is one thing I didn't go in for, and that is, impertinence from a vile Britisher."

"Aha! then I have a prisoner without capturing one,--the mud has done that for me; but if you will cry, 'God save the king,' I will help you out."

"I will not cry God save anything, for you,--no, not if I stay here forever."

"You won't? All right. I suppose you do not really want to be helped out?"

"Not by you, you horrid rude creature!"

"Because I wear a scarlet coat? Don't you like my uniform?"

"I like you less, and that is saying a great deal. If all the British army were as ungallant as you, I should think they'd better be wiped off the face of the earth, and I hope we'll do it."

"We? Who are we?"

"We Americans."

"If you are an American, what are you doing over here, this side the river?"

"That, too, is none of your concern."

"You are a saucy little child. But, say, look here, you are getting in deeper." He spoke with real earnestness, and looking about him he spied a stout log which he dragged to the edge of the bog and pushed toward Marianne, then stepping upon it, he dragged her out, despite her protests that she would rather stay there forever than have him touch her.

"You'd smother after a while, or if you didn't go deep enough for that, you'd catch your death," he said coolly. "I may be an ungallant Britisher, but I'm not going to see little girls smother to death before my very eyes."

"Little girl!" there it was again. "I'll thank you to put me down," said Marianne, as soon as they had reached the solid ground.

"I'm going to. You are heavier than I thought. My! but you are a sight." He looked her over, and suddenly a half embarrassed expression came over his face. "Say," he remarked apologetically, "you are older than I thought you were. You see you were so far down in the mire that you looked like a small child. I didn't mean to be rude. I was only teasing."

"You were rude,--very,--but now that I see you nearer, I perceive that you are only a boy, and of course one cannot expect much politeness from hobbledehoys hardly out of their pinafores." Having given voice to this withering speech, Marianne turned her back and began to scrape the mud from her dress with a bit of bark.

"Here, let me help you do that," said Master Redcoat.

"You needn't trouble yourself," replied Marianne, magnificently, "I don't require your services. When I want the attentions of young gentlemen, I don't go to little boys dressed up in soldier clothes. You might spoil your boomaladdy coat, and your mother might put you to bed without your supper," she said mockingly.

The lad laughed. "You are giving it to me hot and heavy, aren't you? If you don't want me to help you, I'll sit down here and wait."

"Wait? What for?"

"For you."

"You can spare yourself the trouble. I don't want you. I know my way home."

"All the same, I'm going to stay. You can't possibly go far with your shoes heavy with mud and water, even if you should get the worst off your frock. Besides, it isn't safe for young ladies to go wandering around the woods when there are encampments of soldiers so near. My sisters are not allowed to do it."

"I'm not allowed to do it either, but I do when I have a purpose." The accent on "young ladies" mollified Marianne somewhat, but she could not resist adding, "I don't think it is much safer for little boys to be out alone."

"Look here! how old do you suppose I am?" asked the lad.

"Oh, I don't know--ten or twelve," returned Marianne, with marked indifference.

Her companion laughed. "That overdoes it. If you had said fifteen or sixteen, I might have felt aggrieved, for I believe I do look younger than I am. I am nineteen."

"You don't look it. How old do you suppose I am?"

"When you were in the bog, I thought you were eight or ten, but now you are out of it, I suppose you may be--let me see--fourteen."

"I am seventeen," replied Marianne, with dignity.

"Really? You aren't very big for your age."

"No, I am little, like mamma, though I look like my father. My brother, Royal, looks like mamma, but he is tall like father."

"You don't happen to mean Royal Reyburn, do you?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"Don't I? Why, he is up at our house now. I am in his regiment, and we belong to the same company. I wish I had known in the beginning that you were his sister."

"You would have been more polite, I suppose. It doesn't speak very well for your gallantry that you were not so anyhow, even though you didn't know who I was."

"That is so. I am a thoughtless fellow, and I am afraid I like to tease. Please don't tell Roy, or I'll never hear the last of it. He will be sure to tell Kate. By the way, I haven't told you my name. I am Jack Silverthorn. Now I will tell you what we'd better do: Our house is just back here a little way, and I think we'd better go up there and get you a dry rig."

"Oh, no, no! Appear before entire strangers in this condition? I could never do it."

"Oh, but you needn't see any one but Kate. We can sneak around the back way, and I will get Kate to come to you and fix you up. You will like Kate; every one does. Then I will see that you get home safely."

Marianne was still doubtful. "You said Roy was up there?"

"Yes, I left him there with the girls when I came away."

"What girls?"

"My two sisters, Kate and Sue. I came out to get some chestnuts. I forgot all about that."

Marianne's curiosity to see the two girls whose society her brother seemed to enjoy overcame her scruples, and she finally consented to accompany Jack to his house. The thought of the surprise she would give her brother quite drove away her ill feeling, and she became more gracious to her companion as they walked along. After all, he had done her a service, for, as she thought of it, she was in a predicament; and if no one had chanced to come her way, even if she had not sunk deeper in the marsh, she might never have been able to extricate herself, and might have died of cold and starvation there in the lonely wood. At the thought of this she relented still further, and they were laughing gayly by the time they reached the outbuildings of the Silverthorn farm. The lad had such a cheery, unaffected way with him, that in his presence Marianne forgot to be resentful; but once his back was turned and she was left standing in the woodhouse, she realized that she was in the hands of the enemy, and all her complacent acceptance of the situation died within her.

But the feeling did not have time to acquire bitterness before Kate Silverthorn appeared. Hers was a bonny face, showing honest blue-gray eyes, a nose just a trifle tip-tilted, and a mouth with sweet, smiling curves. Around her smooth forehead clustered curling brown locks, and her homespun gown, open at the neck, displayed a round white throat.

She hurried toward Marianne, holding out both hands. "This is too bad," she said. "Jack has just been telling me that you fell into a bog. How did you manage to get out?"

"He pulled me out," Marianne told her, half-reluctantly.

"That was good. I am glad he was there to do it. Let me take off those stiff shoes and stockings." She was down on her knees in a minute.

"No, no!" protested Marianne. But Kate laughed and said coaxingly: "Just let me do it. You have such little feet that unfortunately my shoes will not fit you, but Sue's will be a little better. I will run into the house and get them. Stay right here. No one will see you. I will lock the door behind me." And Marianne was left a veritable prisoner for a few minutes.

Presently Kate returned with a pan of warm water and the necessary articles of clothing. "There," she said, "you'll soon look like yourself. I want to see your brother's face when you come in with me. He hasn't an idea that you are anywhere about."

"He is still here then?"

"Oh, yes, he comes nearly every day with Jack. You see, they are in the militia and can get away. There, you look fine! That blue is very becoming. Here, let me do your hair over." And the deft fingers soon piled up Marianne's hair in a becoming twist. Then Kate stood off to see the effect. "You are lovely in that gown," she declared. "It is quite long, and makes you look ever so much taller." She leaned over and kissed her visitor, and putting an arm around her, drew her into the garden. Marianne felt her charm and was unable to make the slightest resistance or to conjure up any feeling of animosity; instead, her heart warmed toward this unaffected, cheery girl as it had seldom done toward any one.