"To find where they have jailed my father," answered Mehitable. "Tell my mother—I dare not say farewell for fear she will stop me—that I go to seek him."
"But, Hitty, 'twill break your mother's heart an aught happens to you, too!" exclaimed Miranda. "Besides, the Tories have promised to give your father a fair trial!"
"Randy," Mehitable stopped short and looked at the other searchingly, "think you it will be a fair trial with your father and Amos Williams in charge o't?"
Miranda's eyes fell and she slowly shook her head.
"I—I—fear not, Hitty."
"I fear not, too," responded Mehitable grimly. "Therefore I am going."
At Master Jones's house Jemima opened the door for her.
"Nay, I know not where my father is," she said apathetically in answer to Mehitable's eager question. Jemima seemed to be living in some nightmare of her own so that she walked and talked mechanically. As Mehitable saw the change in her, remembering when Jemima Jones had been the wit and life of every gathering, before her brother's kidnapping and her mother's serious illness, she realized that war was more than deprivation, that it meant tragedy as well. All the way to Newark, after she had left the Joneses' farmhouse far behind, she seemed to see Jemima's dulled eyes, hear her hoarse voice.
When she arrived at the Hunters and the Hounds tavern, Mehitable was surprised to see the lower windows blazing with light. She opened the door full upon
