She gulped and felt the tears slip down her cheeks. Under his hands her shoulders were shaking. “But I aim to come back,” he said. He scrambled down the ladder and away. Like Dick, he had the courage to go and the feet to get him there, and she was left without so much as a window to wave him good-by from, and how could he put her name on the gun when he did not know her name? It came to her suddenly that she had to run after him and tell him her name was Catherine Greenleaf. If he didn’t know it, he’d never be able to send her father’s gun back to her, and she wouldn’t want a stranger to keep her father’s gun. Dashing the tears away, she stumbled down the ladder and ran through the lilacs where she met him slowly coming back. He looked down at her and smiled. “Come to my mind that a thing you do for luck, you must do three times,” he said. He bent and kissed her again. Then he turned and ran through the front gateway. “Stop, thief!” yelled Granny, tapping furiously on the parlor windowpane. “That’s my son’s blunderbuss! Call the watch! Call the constable! Call the sheriff! Stop, thief, stop! Come back, come back!” _Chapter Five_ THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT “I can’t think whatever put you up to such devilment, Catherine,” sputtered Granny. “’Twas bad enough for you to spile your new hat, without giving your father’s gun away.” “I’ve told you over and over again that I didn’t give him the gun,” sighed Kitty. “I only loaned it to him. He promised to bring it back. He looked like a lad who’d keep his word.” Granny clucked to the raw-boned sorrel horse and tugged expertly at the reins as the animal plodded round a curve in the sandy road. “Tom, Tom, the piper’s son/He ran away with Father’s gun!” sang Sally Rose under her breath. “Hummp!” snorted Gran. Kitty looked across the plowed fields to where the Merrimack flowed behind a hedge of willows. They dipped their long green boughs in the flooding stream, and here and there the water gave back a flash of bright sun. How peaceful everything looked in the soft April afternoon. How hard it was to believe that the lads she knew might be facing the redcoats’ bayonets only a few miles off. But everyone did believe it. Everyone was frightened and apprehensive. Folk turned out everywhere to shade their eyes and watch the roads that led southward, Boston way. It was more than twenty-four hours since Tom Trask had made off with the old blunderbuss, but Granny was still scolding about it. She would have scolded more, probably, if there hadn’t been so many chores for all of them, getting supplies ready to send after the Minutemen. All day yesterday they had baked, and this morning she and Sally Rose had gone from door to door collecting old linen for bandages. Then Uncle Moses Chase brought the borrowed wagon and suggested that the three of them might help by driving into the country to see what they could procure from the cellars and smoke houses of the farmers round.