Kitty lay in the wide bed and watched her cousin slip out of her dainty garments and fling them carelessly across a chair. Yes, she thought, there was, after all, some sort of unconscious wisdom about the pretty featherbrain. Hanging and wiving goes by destiny, Colonel Stark had said, and she had known that Gerry was her destiny, almost from the day she had seen him first from the door of the Bay and Beagle as he marched past with the prisoners’ cart. And she would not have it otherwise, for she loved Gerry. He would be as good an American as most others, some day. He had many virtues, and she would rejoice and be proud of them all her life, most likely. But when it came to a matter of living free, Sally Rose was right. Tom Trask was the man who would know. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.