At this moment the search was interrupted. Kitty, sleeping the sound sleep of tired childhood, had heard none of the noise for a while, but at last the sound of the loud talking made its way to her brain. She woke, sat up, and looked around her, quite bewildered at first, but presently remembering all about it. "Where are you, Mr. Hessian?" she called. Receiving no answer, she made her way to the door, and beheld her friend in the hands of men who were evidently treating him roughly enough. Kitty did not know what fear was. With one bound, she was in the midst of the group and had her arms clasped tight round Caspar's body. "Touch him if you dare!" said she, her great gray eyes flashing fire. "What are you doing to him? There! He drove away the bear and tied up my feet and all, and that's the way you use him—to pull off his coat and his shoes, and make him catch cold in the wet!—Recompense Joake, see if I don't tell father of you when he comes!" The men looked at each other. "What was it about the bear, Kitty?" asked Thomas Whitecar. Kitty told her story, which we have already heard, and which lost nothing by her way of telling it. "And he tied up my feet real good; and when I couldn't walk, he carried me in his arms miles upon miles, and then he cooked a bird for my supper, and gave me every bit of the biscuit—yes, every bit. He wouldn't take one crumb, and he made me a nice bed; and that's the way you serve him!" cried Kitty, in a tempest of wrath.—"Recompense Joake, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live—so there! Just see if I tell you any more stories, that's all." "Well, now, Kitty, if it wasn't wrong, I could be put out with thee," said Recompense, seriously aggrieved, as it seemed, by Kitty's threat. "Haven't I been out all night and all day looking for thee, say?" "Why didn't you look in the right place, then?" asked Kitty, no ways appeased.—"Oh, Cousin Thomas, you won't let them hurt him, will you?" "Not if I can help it, Kitty," answered Thomas. "But you shall help it or I'll—I'll kill somebody myself. I'll run right away and get lost again, and tell General Washington of you—yes, and Aunt Deborah too!" cried Kitty, heaping threat upon threat, and keeping fast hold of Caspar. "I say hang him up! Who minds what a child says?" said Joses Dandy. "I dare say he put the story in her mouth. I know the man, I tell you. I saw him myself shoeing a big white horse for one of the officers of the Waldeckers, as they call them." "And pray where was thee when thee saw him?" asked Recompense Joake. "He was selling fresh eggs at a shilling apiece to some of the English officers," said Caspar, quietly. All the time he had been haunted with the idea that he had seen the man before, and the mention of the big white horse brought back to his mind an egg-and-butter peddler who had asked and obtained an exorbitant price for his wares. "Oh, ho!" exclaimed Thomas Whitecar. "What's that?"