“Why shouldn’t we fight England?” Joe Carey’s father said with a growl. “You’d be the last one, Mrs. Sutton, that I’d think’d set yourself against that.” “’Tis not England,” said my grandmother, “that you fight with your plots. ’Tis America you strike when you strike here. And, as long as you stay here, be Americans and not traitors!” They began to murmur at that, and my father said: “You don’t know what you’re talking about, mother. You’d better take John home. This is no place for either of you.” “No more than it’s a place for you,” she said. “Will you be coming home with me now?” “I will not,” my father said. “Faith, and you’ll all be wishing you had,” she told them, “when the jails’ll be holding you in the morning.” “The jails!” The big man who had held the blue-prints came closer to us. “What is it you say of jails? You have told the police, then?” “I didn’t need to,” my grandmother said. “The government men have been watching this long time. ’Twill be at midnight that they’ll come here. But ’tis not myself they’ll be finding.” I saw the men’s glances flash around the room through the smoky haze before she called: “Come, Shauneen.” I took her hand again and led her out of the room. Just before the door closed after us I saw that my father’s face had grown very white, and that Mattie Kleiner’s father had dropped his pipe on the floor. Outside the house I spoke to my grandmother tremblingly. “Do the police really know?” I asked her. She gave her dry little chuckle. “If they don’t, they should,” she answered; “but I was born an O’Brien, and I’ve never known one of them yet that ever told the police anything. No, Shauneen,” she laughed, “’twas the high hill I shot at, but I’m thinking that the shot struck. We’ll watch.” We crossed the street and waited in the shadow of the house at the corner. For a little while all was quiet at Kleiner’s. Then I saw the tall man come out with Joe Krebs’s uncle. After a time my father came out with Mr. Winngart and Mr. Carey. They walked to the other corner and stood there a moment before they separated, “Shall we go home now?” I asked my grandmother after I had told her what I had seen. “Not yet,” she said. “I’ve one more errand to do this night.” I thought it might have something to do with the tall man who’d spoken to me or with the telephone call, and I wondered when she sighed. “I’m a very old woman,” she seemed to be saying to herself. “I’ll be ninety-one years come Michaelmas Day. Some of the world I’ve seen, and much of life. Out of it all I’ve brought but a few things. I’d thought to give these to my son. But--” She paused. “How old are you, Shauneen?” she asked me. “Fourteen,” I said. “Old enough,” she nodded. She turned her head as if she were looking for something or some one. Then: “Do you know your way to the Battery?” she asked me. “Sure,” I told her. “Are you going there?” “We are.” * * * * *