“Look well at that man, Clotilde,” said Stephen, “he is a Quaker and would, in Master Simon’s time have been whipped and stoned out of Massachusetts. Now we are proud that we have speech with him and that he has come all the long way from Pennsylvania to consult with us. We Puritans have learned a little, a very little, in a hundred years.” Clotilde sighed heavily and turned to go in. It seemed to her that she cared little to hear of such progress when all the time her dear Master Sheffield was growing thinner and whiter and that terrible war was coming ever nearer. She felt as she often did when the clouds of a summer thunderstorm were hanging lower and lower above the house, when the light was of a weird unearthly brightness and the air so terrifyingly still that, frightened as she was, she almost prayed for the storm to break. The Spring passed and the summer, while the rumblings and threatenings of war still sounded loud. Then, through the autumn and winter there was a lull, people began to look more cheerful, to talk of the possibility of a peaceful settlement, of England’s understanding that the struggle with the Colonies would be too long and bitter to be worth while. For the work that Stephen had done toward bringing the provinces together, those steady years of hopeful toil, had begun to bear fruit at last. Committees of Correspondence had been formed, the Continental Congress had met and the organisation of the Massachusetts minute-men had been copied by similar bands all up and down the sea-board. The friends of America in England, were pointing out to the headlong King George the Third that he was facing a nation with an army, instead of a handful of helpless rebels. So, for the winter at least, the King paused. And then came Spring again. It was an evening in April after a clear warm day, full of the sweet scent of growing things. A dash of rain had pattered over the garden, to be followed, just at sunset, by long, level shafts of light that shone on fresh green grass and budding shrubs and trees. A robin, in the hedge of the Queen’s Garden, was singing so loudly that Clotilde came to the great open door to listen. The willow trees beyond the garden were yellow with young leaves and the line of daffodils by the gate had bloomed in a nodding row. Then suddenly as she stood there, the robin’s little voice was drowned by a wild, fierce jangling of bells in the village, and a tall red tongue of flame leaped up from behind the houses on the hill. A thudding of hoof-beats came madly down the lane and a man leaped from his horse and ran in through the white gate, leaving his animal standing with the bridle trailing over its head. With hurried feet he came up the path and mounted the stone steps two at a time.