After they had retrieved the old weapon and taken their leave of Colonel Stark, they walked quietly through the streets of Medford hand in hand. Kitty should have been relieved that she would have no painful scene with Tom, but she could not help feeling rueful at the knowledge that he had preferred red-haired Jeanie all the time. “You’re lucky,” Gerry assured her. “I wish--I wish I could get out of it so easy with Sally Rose.” He kissed her on the steps of the Fulton house. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, Kitty,” he said. “It may take me a long time to make my own way. And you--now your grandmother’s dead, where will you go?” “I think I’ll go back to her old house and wait till you come for me. You’ve never been to Newburyport, but you can find the way. You’ll be gone tomorrow, and I’m going to Cambridge and get old Timothy and take him home.” “Will Sally Rose go with you?” he asked. “What do you think?” said Kitty. “Look there!” She pointed to the parlor window just to the left of the front door. Sally Rose was standing inside the parlor. She was smiling up into the eyes of a tall young captain who wore the blue and white of the Connecticut line. She let her lashes veil her eyes and opened her pretty lips. “We’ve none such handsome lads in Massachusetts--” she said. Gerry Malory swallowed. Then he began to laugh. “Where, oh where,” he exclaimed, “have I heard those words before?” After he had left her, Kitty slipped into the house and up to the little chamber that she shared with Sally Rose. She went to the window and stood there, looking at the still town, and the moonlit river, the campfires on Winter Hill, the lights of the warships far down the dim bay. Less than three months back, it was, that they had all played hide-and-seek in Newburyport, but they would never play hide-and-seek again. Never again would they be that young. Even she and Sally Rose, Gran had said, would be great-grandmothers some day. How glad she was that Gran had had that last cup of tea. She turned from the window and began to undress, laughing as she remembered the struggle to get Sally Rose out of the stays. Never again, she thought, would they be as young as that. She was just climbing into bed when Sally Rose opened the chamber door. “Kitty,” she said, “there’s going to be handsome men in uniform about for ages. Captain Davenport was just telling me that he expects a long war. He says that since Bunker Hill, the word’s been in everybody’s mouth that we’re going to live free or die--and that will take a long time.” “Live free or die? What does that mean?” asked Kitty, bewildered. “Well, I don’t understand it myself,” said Sally Rose, taking the ribbon out of her curls, “but I have an idea of one man who might know. I think you’ll be likely to find out if you go and speak to Tom Trask.”