His own was pale, but it had a set, determined expression, as though the struggle were over, and he had turned his back upon all the hopes he had builded for his beloved sister,--upon what might have been, but now never to be. "Sweetheart," he said, "there is one other we are bound in honor to take into our confidence, to tell all we know of this sad matter, and that is Hugh Knollys. He is not like to return here this many a day; still it is possible he may, or that I may be sent to the neighborhood of Boston before the summer comes. But whichever way I see him, I shall have to tell him the truth. Poor old Hugh!" "Why, John!" But Mary's eyes filled with a look bespeaking full knowledge of what he was to say, although she had never suspected it until now. He told her of all that passed between Hugh and himself that night, so many months ago. And when he finished, she could only sigh, and repeat his own words, "Poor Hugh!" "Aye, poor Hugh, indeed, for I know the boy's heart well. It will be a dreadful thing for him to face, and with his hands tied, as are my own, against doing aught to the Britisher because his welfare matters so much to Dot." Then he added almost impatiently: "I wish the child would let me talk with her. She must, before I go away, else I'll speak without her consent. So long as we are situated as now, it may do no harm to let the matter drift along; but if I have to leave home--" "Oh, Jack, don't speak of such a thing," Mary interrupted. And rising quickly, she laid her hand on his shoulder as though to hold him fast. "Why not, sweetheart?" he said, compelled to smile at her anxiety. "We know what we have to face in these distracting times; we knew it when we married. Matters grow worse with every week, each day almost. But we must be brave, my darling, and you will best hold me to my duty by keeping a stout heart, no matter whether I go or stay. And go I am pretty sure to, the same as every other man in the town, for we may look, any day, for a battle somewhere about Boston." Mary clung to him shudderingly, but was silent. Hugh Knollys had been all this time at Cambridge, where troops were mustering from every part of the land; and many men from Marblehead were there or in the neighborhood. They had heard from him but once, and then through Johnnie Strings, who, after this last trip--now over a month since--had returned to Cambridge with a very indefinite notion as to when he would come back to the old town. The pedler also reported having seen Aunt Penine, who was quartered near Boston, at the house of some royalist relatives of her brother's wife,--he himself having left his home in Lynn and taken up arms for the King. Mistress Knollys was also away, for she had closed her homestead and gone to stop with an only sister living at Dorchester,--doing this for safety, and before the soldiers left the Neck.