“What did happen?” asked Dick lazily. “Somebody’s cat kitten, or Indian Joe take too much rum and do a war dance in Queen Street again?” Johnny shook his head and smiled. “Sally Rose Townsend’s back,” he said. The other boys sat up, and their faces brightened. “I don’t care much for girls,” said Eben, picking a piece of long brown seaweed from the dock’s end and shredding it in his fingers. “But Sally Rose is different. Maybe it’s her hair.” “Having gold-colored hair never hurt a girl none,” declared Johnny, with the air of a man who knew about such things, a man grown. “But with Sally Rose--well, it’s the way she smiles, I think.” “I like Kitty better,” said Dick stoutly. “Sally Rose is always grinning--at everybody. When Kitty smiles, there’s some sense to it--when she’s pleased, or you tell her a joke.” “What’s Sally Rose doing in Newburyport this time o’ year?” asked Eben. “She comes in the summer to visit Granny Greenleaf and her cousin Kitty, but it’s still early spring--April nineteenth, for I took me a look at the almanac this morning. See, there’s the first log raft from New Hampshire just tied up today.” The other boys looked where he pointed. Through the gathering darkness they saw that a drift of shaggy logs covered the whole surface of a little cove nearby. Lanterns flashed here and there, and a dim shouting echoed among the narrow lanes and small brick houses beside the river. The lumbermen who had brought the raft down from the great forests farther up the Merrimack, were moving about it now, making everything fast for the night. “It’s been a warm spring,” said Johnny, smiling quietly to himself. Dick shivered and turned up the collar of his homespun jacket. “Maybe it has,” he said, “but it’s cold enough tonight to freeze your gizzard. Hope there won’t be a frost, with the apple trees already budded and most o’ the fields plowed. But what’s that got to do with Sally Rose? Her father keeps a tavern in Charlestown, shops and houses all round, and the seasons don’t matter. Spring don’t mean nothing there.” “There’s a lot stirring round Charlestown this spring, Sally Rose says,” continued Johnny. “Looks like the British soldiers in Boston might be ’most ready to come out and fight. We been expecting it, and we got plenty o’ powder laid by, at Concord and a few places more. Might need to use it any time now. Sally Rose’s father thought she’d be safer here.” “Did she tell you that?” asked Eben quickly. “You’ve talked with her then?” “Yes, I talked with her,” said Johnny. He turned his dark head a little and looked up the hill at the lighted town behind them, starlight over the dormer windows set high in the rooftops, the church steeple white against the night sky. He seemed to be watching for something. He did not say any more.