“Sorry?” She looked up at him, at dear, bright-eyed, stout-hearted Miles with whom she had played, by whom she had been befriended ever since she was big enough to play at all. At the thought of his never coming back, a gush of tears rose to her eyes and ran unchecked down her cheeks. She sprang up without speaking further and ran into the house. The study door stood open so that within she could see Stephen sitting in his big chair with his grey head bowed upon his hands. He looked, as he sat there, pathetically weary and worn. She slipped into the room, and dropped upon her knees beside his chair and laid her hand upon his. “Dear Master Sheffield,” she said, “are you so grieved that the war has come at last?” “Ay, grieved I am,” he answered slowly as he put his arm about her, “yet, in a measure, I am lighter of heart, now that the thing that we have so long dreaded has finally come upon us. But, dear Clotilde, while I would give all I have, house, lands, life itself, for the winning of this struggle, yet I thank a kind Heaven that the war has found me old and outworn, unable to go forth and slay my fellow men.” CHAPTER XIII LIGHTING THE FIREBRAND Forth to the war marched the men of New England, lighthearted every one of them and thinking, as did Miles, that the siege of Boston was to be a merry affair. “We will be back in three months,” they said to their wives as they bade them good-bye. “We will drive those redcoats into the sea and convince King George of what stuff we really are made. Then it will all be over.” So down the roads came pouring a motley stream of volunteers, clad in hunting shirts and homespun, armed, for the most part, with the strangest weapons, flintlock muskets a hundred years old, clumsy, ancient blunderbusses and homemade pikes. All of the would-be soldiers knew how to shoot, but very few, how to march or drill; and nearly every one of them desired to be an officer. Who was to be found who could change this earnest-hearted but many-minded rabble into an army? That was the question on everybody’s tongue. To the women of New England, however, the war seemed a greater and a graver thing, for it is easier to feel misgiving when you sit at home alone. What mattered to any one of them how short the struggle was if the goodman of that particular house never came home again? Yet there was little time for brooding since, if the war was to go on, the women must do their part. The army must somehow be given clothes to wear and food to eat, and out of the households of America must all such garments and provisions come. Down from the garrets were brought the big spinning-wheels that had long been laid away, and loud was their song as they began to whirr like swarming bees; the looms creaked, the scissors snipped, needles flew in and out and the ovens glowed all day long, for every one who was not at the war was toiling for the army.