“Esther and I left the stockade hand in hand,” Daniel said, when it was possible for him to speak. “She had refused to go with the women and children, and was waiting for me near the gate. We drifted down-stream clinging to a dead tree, until learning that the Tories were on the lookout for any who might have escaped the Indians, and then I took to this shore, for there was no other way open. We had no more than landed when we came across Mistress Morley and one of her neighbors, as you see. We were minded to make our way into the Pittstown stockades, but before travelling very far found that the savages were in the thicket close about, therefore turned back. How is it you are here?” Giles told Daniel of our adventures, but without speaking of the cowardice he and I had shown, and wound up the story by saying, with the ghost of a smile on his lips: “It looks much as if the Minute Boys had taken it into their heads to rendezvous here, and we need only wait in order to have so many of the company as are yet alive in line. Do you know if Elias Shendle came out of the fight?” “I have seen nothing of him since that moment when the Indians poured in upon us,” Daniel replied, sadly. The two women, hearing that we had halted because of weariness caused by lack of food, drew from the pockets of their dresses a small quantity of corn bread, which they had brought from the stockade that the children might not cry with hunger when silence was necessary for the safety of all, and urged that we eat it. I looked shamefacedly at Giles for an instant, and then said, emphatically, inwardly resolving that never again would I complain of needing food: “It would choke me to take bread from the mouths of babes. Keep what you have, Mistress Morley, lest the children be in worse plight than they are even now. Giles March and I are about to do what we may at snaring game of some kind, and if so be we can find means to kindle a fire, we’ll not long be hungry.” With that, Mistress Morley drew from her pocket flint and steel, as she said with an effort at cheeriness: “When we were making ready to leave the stockade, I had it in mind that these might be needed, and it only remains for Master Bartlett to find that which shall serve as tinder, in order for us to build as much of a fire as it may be safe to make.” “If the women, who have children to care for, can hold their courage at such a time as this, then have you and I shown ourselves unfit ever to perform the duties of men,” Giles March said to me as we started out in search of game, and I replied, sorrowfully: “Let us try to forget it, else we shall be unable to hold up our heads again. From this out I will never tell in Master Bartlett’s hearing of what I hope to do, lest he remind me of this time when I showed myself a fool as well as a coward.”