"Thomas!" reproved his sister. "Say it not, for when the curse is o'er, 't will grieve thee to have even thought it." If the tempered spirit of the elders spoke thus, it was more than the warm blood of youth could do, and Tabitha gave a loose to her woes. "'T is past endurance!" she cried, "to come and treat us all as if we were enemies who had no right even to breathe. They take possession of our houses and turn them into pig-sties with their filthy German ways; they eat our best and make us slave for them day and night; they plunder as they please, not merely our cattle and corn, so that we are forced to beg back from them the very food we eat, but take as well our horses, our silver, our clothes, and whatever else happens to please their fancy. The regiment of Lossberg has at this moment nine waggon-loads of plunder in the Fremantle barn. No woman is safe on the streets after sundown, and scarcely so in the day-time, while night after night the town rings with their drunken carousals. I told Friend Penrhyn the other night that if he had the spunk of a house cat he would get something to fight with, if 't were nothing better than a toasting-fork tied to a stick, and cross the river to Washington; and so I say to every man who stays in Trenton. I only wish I were not a female!" "Hush, Tabitha!" chided Miss Drinker, "'t is God's will that we suffer as we do, and thee shouldst bow to it." "I don't believe it 's God's will that we should be turned out of our rooms and made to live in the garret, or even in the barns, as some are forced to do; I don't believe it's God's will that they should have taken our silver tea-service and spoons. If God is just, He must want Washington to beat them, and so every man would be doing God's work who went to help him." Evidently with whatever strength her father and aunt held to the tenets of their sect, Tabitha's was not sufficiently ingrained to stand the test of the Hessian occupation. "Dost think it is God's work to kill fellow-mortals?" expostulated Miss Drinker. "No more of such talk, child; it is time we were making ready for supper."