“Ay, so it goes,” her mother said. “Some mishap each season all the way back to the year when your father was away among the Indians and we made the candles wondering whether he would ever come back to see them burn. But this year, surely all is peaceful and quiet and our task should be carried safely to its end.” Mistress Radpath spoke too soon for, as it proved, never before was a candle making season so full of disturbing and long-remembered events. To begin with, the very next day when the first kettleful of berries had just been swung over the fire, a mounted man stopped at the gate and came in to tell them that a cousin in the next town was taken with a fever and begged for help. So, with scarce half-an-hour’s delay, Mistress Radpath went off, seated on the pillion behind the messenger and leaving Margeret to face the candle making alone. She boiled and dipped and cooled with steady patience all of that day and the next until a great pile of straight smooth candles lay upon the kitchen table. Master Simon came in just as the first two were lighted and was loud in his praise of the tall, sweet-smelling flame. “Will not my mother be pleased?” cried Margeret joyfully. “I can scarcely wait to show her how well the work has gone. See, here are little ones for lanterns and big ones to read by and a few great splendid tapers to burn if perchance the Governor should visit us again. And to-night you shall sit and read by these first ones while I sit by you and sew.” It had been a cool, clear October day, with vivid sunshine lying over the garden, but as Margeret went to the window to pull the curtains close she saw that the night promised to be stormy. It had grown dark early, big black clouds were rolling across such few stars as had sought to show themselves, and, even as she stood there, a patter of rain came against the glass. “We will be so cosy here by the fire,” she was saying, as she went to the next window, then, with a sudden exclamation, “Oh, look, look, Father; what can those lights mean?” Master Simon came quickly to look over her shoulder. At the edge of the town moving lanterns were passing to and fro, with here and there the red flare of a pine-knot torch. Even as they watched more and more lights gathered and were carried back and forth in excited confusion while on the rising wind came the far-off sound of the town crier’s bell. “Oh, what can it be?” faltered Margeret. “Do you—do you think it could be the Quakers again?”