Page:Milady at Arms (1937).pdf/119

 Newark dock in the early afternoon, he merely nodded to her to go ashore, which she was glad enough to do. Toryism and cruelty were too closely associated in her mind for her not to have been upon her guard all morning.

Hungry and tired, she tramped slowly up the lane from the river, and sometime later she was peering in at the kitchen door of the Rising Sun Tavern.

Mistress Banks, the host's wife, was in charge of the many pots and kettles swung upon a huge crane in the great fireplace, and an odor of cooking onions and roasting meat greeted the newcomer as she paused shyly. Mistress Banks gave a nervous start at sight of the girl's shadow thrown suddenly across the sanded floor; but her face cleared at actual sight of Sally.

"Why, come ye in, my dear," she bade Sally kindly, "Mind the meat, Sam!" She turned to the little Negro boy, who bent to his task of turning the spit before the fire, after staring at Sally. "Hast but come to Newark?" went on the tavern hostess with an inquiring look. "Martha!" she lifted her voice imperatively. "Art ever returning to the kitchen? I cannot attend these pots forever!"

A buxom Negro woman came waddling in from the tap room in answer. "Ah was jes' servin' Captain Camp," she explained, giggling. "I done heah him tell some othah men dat His Excellency had