"We ought to leave here in an hour," Jerry said, making answer because he thought I was trying to figure how long it would take us to make ready. "Amos won't need more than ten minutes to get what stuff his mother is puttin' up for him, an' I'm goin' round by the mill to see if they will trust us for half a bushel of meal." He was off like an arrow as he spoke, and Darius had no idea that I was hesitating as to the course to pursue, for an old fighter like him supposed it would be a pleasure for me to voluntarily go into the worst kind of a row. It was fortunate indeed for me that the old man never suspected what was in my heart, otherwise I would have been shamed in my home to such an extent that I could never go there again; but all that came to mind later. Just then I felt as if I was being cruelly wronged by those who should have stood my friends. Darius would have told me yet further of what Commodore Barney had done in the past; but I cut him short by saying like a spoiled child: "I don't care to hear anything more about him; just now it strikes me that we'd better be thinking of ourselves." The old man looked really distressed, and but for the fact that my heart was sore, I could have laughed because of the mistake he made. Darius really believed that I was grieving over being thus obliged to leave my mother and the children, and he said soothingly: "I come somewhere near knowin' how it is, lad. At such a time as this the least home talk that's made, the better, for it kind'er unstrings a fellow. You wait here, an' I'll go after what dunnage your mother is gettin' together; she'll understand that a short partin' is the best." I could not have stopped him, for he was off before I had time to so much as open my mouth, and there I stood leaning against the canoe, giving the people of Benedict to believe I was eager to be fighting for my country. Jim Freeman and his companions came along a few moments after Darius left, and in order to have some occupation, rather than from a desire to serve them, I offered to put the three aboard the Avenger. They talked of nothing but what they would do once the enemy gave them an opportunity, until I asked petulantly: "Is everybody in Benedict as eager to shed blood as are you?" "Not much," Jim cried with a laugh. "There's Elias Macomber, for example--he's an Englishman, you know, an' hasn't been in this country more'n four years. He's makin' a lot of wild talk 'bout what he'll do to us folks when the Britishers come up the river." "What reason has he to make any fuss?" I asked, rather for the sake of saying something, than because I desired information. "Well, I suppose all hands have roughed into him pretty bad, on account of things he's said, an' now he counts on showin' what his countrymen can do."