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 neighbor's house which had been set on fire and burned by the Hessians a short while before.

"The beasts!" cried Sally, digging her slender fingers into the red earth resentfully. Tis so cruel to wantonly destroy homes!"

"Aye," observed the young Englishman. "But scarcely more cruel," he suggested smoothly, "than to shoot down men from behind a stone wall. It be, I think, even a little more honorable way o' conducting warfare than that!"

"Honorable, say ye!" Sally's glance and voice grew sharp. "Speak ye o' honor where Hessians who fight for hire be concerned? Or the English who pay them? What be wrong to defend one's home, e'en from behind a stone wall, when the enemy invade ye? Nay, ye wrong Master Todd—I know ye mean him!—when ye speak thus, sir! He be the kindest and most honorable o' men, when not driven beyond endurance, forsooth!"

"Mayhap ye be right," answered young Lawrence pacifically. He looked at her as she squatted in the sunshine, her swiftly moving fingers sorting out the tiny seeds in their packets of woven grass. Once more the sun, glinting on her hair, caught his eyes. "Holden red!" he muttered, as he had muttered the day before.

"What mean ye?" asked Sally now, curiously.

"Your hair—'tis almost same color and