In a firm voice she repeated to me the words I had already heard, then she passed up the stairs. In a few moments I heard her telling my two sisters Caroline and Elizabeth--they were both younger than myself--that it was time to get up. After that I heard my mother go to her own room and shut the door. In the silence that followed this I fell to thinking. Was my father really dead? Could it be that the British had been repulsed? Duncan Hale had been telling me for weeks that war was coming, but I had not thought his prophecy would be fulfilled. Now I understood why he had come so often to visit my father; and why, during the past month, he had seemed so absent-minded in school. My preparation for going to Oxford in the autumn, over which he had been so enthusiastic, appeared to have been completely pushed out of his mind. I had once overheard my father caution him to keep his visits to Lord Percy strictly secret. I was wondering if the part he had played might have any ill consequences for him and for us, when my mother's footsteps sounded on the stairs. She came at once to where I had been standing for some moments, caught me in her arms, and, without speaking, held me close for a moment, and then pressed a kiss on my forehead. 'Go, Roger,' she said, 'and find Peter and Dora. Bring them to the library, and wait there till I come with your sisters.' I was turning to obey, when I caught a glimpse through the hall doorway of two rebel soldiers galloping up. They had evidently come from Boston. At sight of my mother, one of them addressed her with an unmannerly shout that sent the blood pulsing up to my cheeks in anger. What my mother had been thinking I did not know; but from that moment a great passion seized me. That shout which almost maddened me, had, I can see in looking back over it all, much to do in making me a Loyalist, and in sending me to Canada. The soldiers looked in somewhat critically, but passed. They were rough looking men, poorly mounted and badly dressed. My mother withdrew from the doorway and went upstairs, as I proceeded to seek out our two faithful coloured servants. I delivered to each the bare message given me by my mother, and returned at once to the library. Everything in the room suggested my father. On his desk lay an unfinished letter to my brother, who had enlisted in the King's forces some six months before. I had read but a few lines of this when the door opened, and my mother entered with Caroline and Elizabeth. In a moment I saw that the spirit of my mother had passed on to my sisters. I was sure they knew the worst; and although I could see Caroline struggle with her feelings, both girls maintained a brave and sensible silence. A moment later Peter and Dora entered, each wide-eyed and apprehensive, but still ignorant of the great calamity that had now befallen our recently happy household.