[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE] Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved. * * * * * PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 1896. FIVE CENTS A COPY. VOL. XVII.--NO. 854. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR. * * * * * [Illustration] FOR KING OR COUNTRY. A Story of the Revolution. BY JAMES BARNES. CHAPTER XXIII. WHEREIN SOME THINGS ARE EXPLAINED. Propped up by pillows in an easy-chair before a roaring fire in the great fireplace, George Frothingham was sitting, relating to a group of listeners the story of his adventures on the way from New York. His sister Grace, seated on the arm of the chair, was softly stroking his hand. Aunt Clarissa, who had discarded her tatting-frames, was busily clicking her needles at the toe of a woollen stocking. "What I don't see," said George, "is where I got that little chopped-down horse that you say I rode upon. I do not know where he came from." "But you are anticipating," said Aunt Clarissa; "you had only got as far in your story as sighting Lyons Farms." "Oh, that's so!" said George. "Now comes the part that I hate most to tell. When I came down the hill, it was evident that something was wrong in the collection of little houses. No one was stirring about, and the ruins of a small building were smoking to the left of the road. What do you suppose had happened? The firing that I had heard two or three hours before had taken place here. There had been a skirmish. A body of English troops and a company of Hessians on a marauding excursion had been met at the cross-roads by a handful of militia. It makes my blood boil to tell the rest, but the Lord will punish them. All this had happened only a few hours before I arrived. They had shot Mr. Hinckley, and a brute of a Hessian had rested his gun on the window-sill, and killed his wife as she bent over her baby's cradle. Then, like redskins, they had hurried off. I found no one amongst the dwellings but some frightened children huddling in a cellar. The houses were robbed and empty." Aunt Clarissa had dropped her stocking and rushed into the next room. "God forgive me!" she had exclaimed, when she was alone, and she had reached her long arms up above her head. "Curse them and their tyrants to the bottom of the sea! How could I have been so blind--so stubborn?" When she had come back, however, she kissed her nephew on the forehead. The remembrance of the scene, and the picture of it which was going through his mind, had caused George to pause and sink back silently among the cushions. "I think I will rest a little," he said. No one disturbed him, and for some time there was silence. In a few minutes a loud, hearty voice was heard ringing through the hallway. George smiled. "Colonel Hewes," he said. "Do ask him in." The Colonel greeted his young friend with a subdued effusion, and, with the gentleness of a woman, spread out George's fingers in his palm.