At the table Mr. Porter told, for the benefit of Mrs. Melicent Porter and Mrs. Punderson, some of the events, both pathetic and tragic, that had occurred in the old house during his boyhood and youth, and Mrs. Melicent Porter told again the events of the day in June--only a year before--wherein the battle of Monmouth had been fought near her New Jersey home, and she had spent the day in doing what she could to relieve the sufferings of men so spent with battle and heat and wounds that they panted to her door with tongues hanging from their mouths; also of her perilous journey from New Jersey to Connecticut on horseback, accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Baldwin, her father--during which journey it was, that she had thrown her daughter Melicent in safety from her horse to the bank of the river they were fording, while the animal, having lost its footing, was going down the current. While these things had been in the telling, Polly had slipped from the table unnoticed, and had lighted every lamp that could brighten the house front and serve to guide to its porch. The last lamp was just alight when Polly's guests began to arrive. She half expected soldiers, and refugees came. It seemed to her that every family in New Haven must be related to every family in Waterbury--so many women and children came in to rest themselves before continuing the journey and "to wait until the moon should rise," for the evening was very dark, and oh! the stories that each fresh arrival brought! They filled the group that came in to listen with fear and agony. New Haven was very near to Waterbury in that day. The inhabitants there were closely connected with the inhabitants here, and their peril and distress was a common woe. Little Stiles Hotchkiss cried himself to sleep that night, fearing that one of the three Hotchkisses, reported killed, might be his father. Polly acted well her part. To the children she gave fresh milk; to their elders she explained that the militia had taken their supplies, while she made place to receive two or three invalids who could go no further, by giving up her own room. "You'll let me lie on the floor in your room, Aunt Melicent, I know," she said, "for the poor lady is so old and so feeble; I'm most sure she is a hundred. She came in a chaise and wanted to get up to Parson Leavenworth's, but she just can't. She can't hold up her head."