Jesse snatched off the wreck of his nightshirt and twisted it into a cord, running it through the belt of Reuben's breeches. "Go first, Ben--I'll h'ist you." Ben swarmed up somehow. Jesse yelled: "Drop! You must catch him." Then Jesse was up too, clutching the palisade with his knees, hauling on the makeshift rope before Reuben's groping hand could discard it. Jesse gained a grip on Reuben's armpit, and Ben flung himself down. "Ready, Jesse!" But instead of letting Ben catch his brother, the old man leaped with him, turning in mid-air so that he fell under Reuben, who sprawled free and ripped loose the cord. Ben grabbed the boy's arm. Jesse reeled up on his knees. "Get to Hatfield! I'm undone. The filthy papists've done me in." Reuben had at least delivered himself from his witless trance. He tugged to free his arm and wailed: "Let me go!" "Get up, Jesse! You can't sit there so." Jesse shook his head, a stubborn child. "I stink. There's men fail at everything--you don't understand." He whimpered, trying to cover his crotch. "I be naked, can't you see? You go on. I'm done." "Let me go, Ben! Let me go back! Let me go, damn you!" Ben's eyes were watering from the cold and from a billow of smoke the wind flung down on them. "God damn it, Jesse, you think we'd abandon you? Get up!" "Plague and fire...." "_Get up!_" "Oh, I--I will, Ben. It's the old liquor rising up in me. Ben, I couldn't help that, it was on me to drink. Leave me gather my wits. O Lord Jesus, is it coming day already? I will get up, Ben, don't fret." And he did, jerky in motion like an ill-made doll, willing to follow.... Some confusion of battle still fumed by Captain Wells' fortified house beyond the southeast corner of the palisade. Ben heard gunfire, the heart-cracking sound of a woman wailing unseen. Leading, gripping Reuben's wrist, Ben avoided that fort, plunging into the woods and white-packed underbrush to circle it and come out well to the south on the Hatfield road--unmistakable, familiar, over there on his right under enormous morning sky. Others in flight had marked the road with the signature of bloody drops, clear against white now that the sun was surely rising. Reuben pulled back continually. Ben's right knee throbbed, he couldn't think why. He knew Jesse was following. Impossible to run in this white muck. He could push on, the sun at his left hand, and not look back. He was aware not of time but only of breathing, of driving forward in pain against the sodden snow and retaining his hold of Reuben's wrist; yet time was moving too, as it would forever, and the sun advancing. He realized that for some while now he had heard no gunfire. They had surely not come so far on the Hatfield road as not to hear it, for the morning was still. It must have ended. The wind had dropped, the air becoming sluggish, almost warm. Drowsy.... Reuben struggled abreast of him and beat feebly at his shoulder. "Ben, you must let me go back. Mother----"