“If you’d let it go to one o’ the Port lads--say Dick Moody, now--I could have understood,” Granny rambled on. “Why, I don’t know how many years that gun has been in our family! My grandmother told me it was brought from England in the days of the coming over. Her father got it in trade for an old horse down in Plymouth County.” Kitty gave a sudden giggle. “Tom said it looked old enough to belong to Adam,” she said. She pulled her bonnet off and felt the warm sunlight on her brown hair, felt a warmth inside her when she said his name. “Hoity-toity, so we call him ‘Tom’!” cried Granny. Sally Rose reached out and caught her grandmother’s ruffled taffeta sleeve. “Granny,” she said, “there’s a farmhouse down that cart track under the shagbark trees. Uncle Moses said to call at every place and not miss a single one.” Kitty gave her cousin a grateful glance as Granny turned the sorrel off the highway and into a rutted lane. Stone walls bordered the fields on each side of them, and little brooks of water flowed in the gutters, draining the wet black land. In one field a plow stood abandoned in mid-furrow, and half a dozen cows waited patiently at the bars, but nobody came to drive them off to pasture. “Can’t be anyone at home,” said Granny, “’Bijah Davis lives here, and he’d never treat his animals so.” As they drove into the yard of the weathered farmhouse, a young woman came to the door, a pale young woman with a baby in her arms and two toddlers pulling at the skirts of her blue calico dress. A half-grown yellow cat ran between her feet, almost upsetting her. “Land’s sakes, Nance,” cried Granny. “You’re looking poorly this spring. Is ’Bijah round somewhere?” The young woman shook her head. “’Bijah took his gun and put for Cambridge,” she answered. “I wrapped him up a clean shirt and a hunk o’ corn’ beef. I don’t know when he’ll be home.” Granny tut-tutted. “Many gone from around here?” she wanted to know. “Pretty nigh all the men,” said the young wife sadly. “Like you say, Ma’am Greenleaf, I been poorly this spring, but I got both bake ovens going just like other folks, I can tell you. We’re cooking up victuals to send after the lads. Two oxcarts has gone already, and by tomorrow we can fill two more.” Granny nodded in agreement. “We’re doing the same at the Port,” she said. “Don’t suppose you got any foodstuffs you could spare us, something you don’t need for your own?” She pulled out a beaded purse and fingered it significantly. Nancy Davis put up a hand to smooth back the stray wisps of hair from her forehead. “Could be some eggs in the haymow where the hens steal nests sometimes,” she murmured. “Could be. I ain’t had the gumption to go look.” “We’ll go,” cried Sally Rose eagerly. “Come on, Kitty.”