_4th Sol_. But the mornings we saw two years ago looked on us with another sort of eye than this,--it is not the glimmer of the long, pleasant harvest day that we see there. _5th Sol_. We have looked on mornings that promised better, I'll own. I would rather be letting down the bars in the old meadow just now, or hawing with my team down the brake; with the children by my side to pick the ripe blackberries for our morning meal, than standing here in these rags with a gun on my shoulder. Let well alone.--We could not though. _4th Sol_. (_Handing him a glass_.) See, they are beginning to form again. It looks for all the world like a funeral train. _5th Sol_. What was the Stamp Act to us, or all the acts beyond the sea that ever were acted, so long as they left us our golden fields, our Sabbath days, the quiet of the summer evening door, and the merry winter hearth. _The Stamp Act?_ It would have been cheaper for us to have written our bills on gold-leaf, and for tea, to have drunk melted jewels, like the queen I read of once; cheaper and better, a thousand times, than the bloody cost we are paying now. _4th Sol_. It was not the money, Will,--it was not the money, you know. The wrong it was. We could not be trampled on in that way,--it was not in us--we could not. _5th Sol_. Ay, ay. A fine thing to get mad about was that when we sat in the door of a moonlight evening and the day's toils were done. It was easy talking then. _Trampled on!_ I will tell you when I was nearest being trampled on, Andros,--when I lay on the ground below there last winter,--on the frozen ground, with the blood running out of my side like a river, and a great high-heeled German walking over my shoulder as if I had been a hickory log. I can tell you, Sir, that other was a moon-shiny sort of a trampling to that. I shall bear to be trampled on in figures the better for it, as long as I live. Between ourselves now---- _4th Sol_. There's no one here. _5th Sol_. There are voices around that corner, though. Come this way. [_They pass on_. (_Another group of Soldiers_.) _1st Sol_. Then if nothing else happens, we are off now. Hillo, Martin! Here we go again--skulking away. Hey? What do you say now? Hey, Mr. Martin, what do you say now? _2nd Sol_. (_Advancing_.) What I said before. _1st Sol_. But where is all this to end, Sir? Tell us that--tell us that. _3d Sol_. Yes, yes,--tell us that. If you don't see Burgoyne safe in Albany by Friday night, never trust me, Sirs. _1st Sol_. A bad business we've made of it. _4th Sol_. Suppose he gets to Albany;--do you think that would finish the war? _3d Sol_. Well, indeed, I thought that was settled on all hands, Sir. I believe the General himself makes no secret of that. _4th Sol_. And what becomes of us all then? We shall go back to the old times again, I suppose;--weren't so very bad though, Sam, were they?