Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/85

Rh ingroom had been crowded with clerks and had hummed like a beehive with the myriad activities of the Hallowell trade. It was a dull and empty place now, and the fleet of Hallowell ships was scattered, some lying at anchor, some dismantled and sold, some fallen into the hands of the enemy. For this was the third year of that struggle with England that the histories were to call the War of 1812.

Cicely, for all her thirteen years, looked very small, sitting there at the end of the long table, in her "sprigged" high-waisted gown, her feet in their strapped slippers perched on the rung of the high office stool. She had just taken up her pen to begin writing again when the voices of the two men by the fire rose so suddenly that she dropped it, startled. Her father's tone fell almost immediately to strained quiet, but Martin Hallowell, his partner, went on with angry insistence. She knew him to be hot-headed and impetuous, but she had never heard such words from him before.

With a quick, eager motion that was the embodiment of impatient greed, Martin was running his finger down the columns of the ledger before him.

"There is no ship like a privateer, and no privateer like the Huntress," he was saying. "Send her on one more voyage and we shall be rich men."

There was an ugly tremor in his voice, that quavered and broke in spite of his attempts to keep it calm.

"I do not care to be one of those who gathers