“Aye, many slaughtered,” agreed Johnny, falling into step beside him. “We was bayoneted like so many cattle. This’ll be remembered forever in New England as a terrible black day.” “I guess it will,” Tom said. “I saw them shoot Dr. Warren,” continued Johnny. “Shot him in the head just as he was leaving the redoubt.” “I seen him once in Cambridge,” muttered Tom. “He was a good man, I guess. It’s worse for me that we lost young Caleb Stark.” “The Colonel’s son?” asked Johnny, and his face brightened. “Oh no! That was a false report, Tom. I heard Putnam himself telling Prescott that. Said he was sorry the boy’s father ever got the word--but it didn’t make no difference in the way he led his men. He said Stark’s a soldier all the way through. Likely you and Caleb will be drinking beer together tonight on Winter Hill.” Tom drew a long breath. He looked out at the blue hills to the west, with the red hot ball of the setting sun behind them. He was glad that his friend was alive, but the good news hadn’t changed his mind about one thing. He still wanted to live free. _Chapter Sixteen_ HANGING AND WIVING “Do you feel afraid now we’re really here?” asked Kitty. She put her hand to Gerald Malory’s sleeve with a light, possessive touch and looked up into his face anxiously. Gerry smiled down at her. He still wore his country clothes and a bandage round his head, but the healthy color was coming back into his face now. She had tended him for a week at the field hospital below Medford Bridge, and for a week after that he had been able to go walking with her in the sunshine every afternoon. She and Sally Rose slept at the house of Mrs. Fulton who directed the hospital. But Sally Rose was making new friends, and spent less and less time among the wounded men, even though Gerry himself was there. “Not half so afraid as I was that night we went back to Charlestown to dig up the silver,” Gerry said. They stood in the highroad in front of the old Royall House where Colonel Stark had his headquarters. In a few moments they would go in. Gerry would confess that he was not a New Hampshire man who had got knocked on the head at the rail fence and couldn’t remember what company he came from. He would admit that he was Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third. But they would not go in just yet. It was a soft summer night with the fragrance of garden flowers in the air. He drew her down beside him on the low brick wall. “What were you afraid of that night?” she asked him. “When we went to The Sign of the Sun to get a pass from the British major so we could go into town, I thought he seemed like a very kind man.” Gerry grinned down at her. “He was kind to you, certainly. From the look in his eye, he’d have given you Boston Common and Long Wharf too, if you’d asked for them. You’ve a way with us menfolk, Kitty.”