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While these things had been in the telling, Polly had slipped from the table unnoticed, and had lighted every lamp that could brighten the house front and serve to guide to its porch. The last lamp was just alight when Polly’s guests began to arrive. She half expected soldiers, and refugees came. It seemed to her that every family in New Haven must be related to every family in Waterbury–so many women and children came in to rest themselves before continuing the journey and “to wait until the moon should rise,” for the evening was very dark, and oh! the stories that each fresh arrival brought! They filled the group that came in to listen with fear and agony. New Haven was very near to Waterbury in that day. The inhabitants there were closely connected with the inhabitants here, and their peril and distress was a common woe. Little Stiles Hotchkiss cried himself to sleep that night, fearing that one of the three Hotchkisses, reported killed, might be his father.

Polly acted well her part. To the children she gave fresh milk; to their elders she explained that the militia had taken their supplies, while she made place to receive two or three invalids who could go no further, by giving up her own room.

“You’ll let me lie on the floor in your room, Aunt Melicent, I know,” she said, “for the poor lady is so old and so feeble; I’m most sure she is a hundred. She came in a chaise and wanted to get up to Parson Leavenworth’s, but she just can’t. She can’t hold up her head.”

It was near midnight when the refugees set forth for the Center, Mr. Porter himself acting as guide. After that time, the sleepy boys and the entire household having taken themselves to bed, the old house was left to the night, with its silence and its chill dampness that always comes up from the river, that goes on “singing to us the same bonny nonsense,” despite our cheer or our sorrow. Again, and yet again through the night, doors opened and two mothers stepped out in the moonlight to listen, hoping–hoping to hear sound of the coming of the boys, but only the lone cry of the whippoorwill was borne on the air.

“‘Pears like,” said Phyllis to Mrs. Porter in the morning, “the whippoorwills had lots to say last night; talked all night so’s you couldn’t hear nothing ‘tall.”

“Phyllis,” said Mrs. Porter, “there was nothing else to hear, but we shall know soon.”

Polly came down, bringing her checked linen apron full of eggs for breakfast. “I thought, mother,” she said, “that you’d leave yourself without an egg yesterday, so I looked out. Isn’t it handy to have them in the house? Haven’t heard a single cackle this morning yet, but yesterday was a remarkable day everyway. I believe the hens knew the British were coming. Did you ever see such eggs? Wonder if my old lady is awake yet! Guess I’ll carry up some hot water for her and find out.”

Polly poured the water deftly from the big iron tea-kettle hanging from the crane and hurried away with it, only to return with such haste that she tripped on the threshold, broke the pitcher and sent the water over everything it could reach. “Mother,” she said, recovering herself, “Parson Leavenworth will be here to breakfast. He’s coming down the road with father. My old lady will feel honored, won’t she? I know he’s come for her. Phyllis, any more hot water to spare? It’s so good to take out wrinkles; she’ll miss it, I know.”

The sun had not climbed over Great Hill when breakfast was over, and the last guest of the night had gone. Mrs. Punderson’s daughter Anna rode behind the Rev. Mark Leavenworth on his horse, Thankful with Mrs. Punderson, the old lady in the chaise, and even Stiles had galloped away toward the east, and yet not a traveler on the road had brought tidings from New Haven. The group on the porch watching the departure had not dispersed when Polly’s ears caught a strain floating up the river valley. She listened. She ran. She clasped her mother in her arms. She kissed her. She whispered in her ear, “I hear him! He’s coming! Ethel is; and Cato is with him!” she cried out, embracing Phyllis in her joy. The two mothers–the one white, the other black; the one free, the other in bonds–went to listen. They stood side by side on the porch; tears fell from their eyes, tears that through all the years science has failed to distinguish, the one from the other. Ethel’s cheery call rang clear and clearer. Cato’s wild cadence grew near and nearer, but when the boys rode up beside the porch, Mrs. Porter was on her knees in the little bed-room off the parlor, and Phyllis was in the kitchen. New England mothers, both of them! Their sorrows they could bear; their joys they hid from sight.

WATERBURY, CONN., September, 1898.