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“What did he say, pa?” asked Jack.

“O some tomfoolery or other about the man having nothing to eat but hay for two days, and his brother dying over at the Forge. I didn’t stop to listen to the fellow, but sent him flying.”

Jack touched his mother’s toe in passing, and gave Becca a mysterious nod of the head, as much as to say:

“He’s the soldier from our hospital over there,” but nobody made answer to Mr. Blackstone.

Becca’s eyes filled with tears as she sat down at the tea-table, and sturdy Jack staid away until the last minute, taking all the time he could at washing his hands, that he might get as many looks as possible through the window in the hope that the bare-footed soldier might be lingering about, but he gained no glimpse of him.

Farmer Blackstone had the rheumatism sometimes, and that night he had it worse than ever, so that an hour after tea-time he was quite ready to go to bed, and his wife was quite ready to have him go, also to give him the soothing, quieting remedies he called for.

Becca was to sit up that night until eight-of-the-clock, if she made no noise to disturb her father.

While her mother was busied in getting her father comfortable, she thought, as it was such bright moonlight, she would go out to give her turkeys a count, it having been two or three nights since she had counted them.

Slipping a shawl of her mother’s over her head, she opened softly the kitchen door to steal out. The lowest possible whistle from Jack accosted her at the house corner. That lad intercepted her course, drew her back into the shadow, and bade her “Look!”

She looked across the snow, over the garden wall, into the orchard, and there, beneath her apple-tree, stood something between a man and a scarecrow, and it appeared to be looking up at the sleeping turkeys. Both arms were uplifted.

“O dear! what shall we do?” whispered Becca, all in a shiver of cold and excitement.

“Let’s go and speak to him. Maybe it is our hospital man,” said Jack, with a great appearance of courage.

The two children started, hand in hand, and approached the soldier so quietly that he did not hear the sound of their coming.

As they went, Becca squeezed her brother’s fingers and pointing to the snow over which they walked, whispered the word “Blood!”

“From his feet,” responded Jack, shutting his teeth tightly together.

Yes, there it lay in bright drops on the glistening snow, showing where the feet of the patriot had trod. The children stood still when they were come near to the tree. At the instant their mother appeared in the kitchen doorway and called “Jack!”

The ragged soldier of the United American States lost his courage at the instant and began to retire in confusion; but Becca summoned him to “Wait a minute!” He waited.

“Did you want one of my turkeys?” she asked.

“I was going to steal one, to save my brother’s life,” he answered.

“Is he only a boy, and has he light hair and blue eyes, and does he lie on the wet ground?”

“That’s Joseph,” he groaned.

“Then take a good, big, fat turkey–that one there, if you can get him,” said Becca. “They are all mine.”

The turkey was quietly secured.

“Now take one for yourself,” said Becca.

Number two came down from the perch.

“How many men are there in your hospital?” asked Jack, who had responded to his mother’s summons, and was holding a pair of warm stockings in his hand.

“Twelve.”

“Give him another, Bec–there’s a good girl; three turkeys ain’t a bone too many for twelve hungry men,” prompted Jack.

“Take three!” said Becca. “My pa never counts my turkeys.”

The third turkey joined his fellows.

“Better put these stockings on before you start, or father will track you to the camp,” said Jack. “And pa told ma never to give you anything of his any more.”

Never was weighty burden more cheerfully borne than the bag Jack helped to hoist over the soldier’s shoulder as soon as the stockings had been drawn over the bleeding feet.

“Now I’m going. Thank you, and good night. If you, little girl, would give me a kiss, I’d take it–as from my little Bessy in Connecticut.”

“That’s for Bessy in Connecticut,” said the little girl, giving him one kiss, “and now I’ll give you one for Becca in Pennsylvania. Hurry home and roast the turkeys quick.”

They watched him go over the hill.

“Jack,” said Becca, “if I’d told a lie to the turkeys where would they have been to-night, and Joseph? There are eight more. I wish I’d told him to come again. Pa’s rheumatism came just right to-night, didn’t it?”

“I reckon next year you won’t have all the turkeys to give away to the soldiers,” said Jack, adding quite loftily, “I shall go to raising turkeys in the Spring myself, and when Winter comes we shall see.”

“Now, Jacky,” said Becca, half-crying, “there are eight left, and you take half.”

“No, I won’t,” rejoined Jack. “I’d just like to walk over to Valley Forge and see the soldiers enjoy turkey. Won’t they have a feast! I shouldn’t wonder if they’d eat one raw.”

“O, Jack!”

“Soldiers do eat dreadful things sometimes,” he assured her with a lofty air. And then they went into the house, and the door was shut.

The next year there was not a soldier left above the sod at Valley Forge.

Now the soldiers are gone, the camp is not, the little girl has passed away, the apple-tree is dead, and only the hills at Valley Forge are left to tell the story, bitter with suffering, eloquent with praise, of the men who had a hundred years ago toiled for Freedom there, and are gone home to God.