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Pussy chanced to look back to the summit of the hill down which she had walked, and she saw the express coming.

“Now,” she thought, “if I could only stop him! I wonder if I can’t. I’ll try, and then,” swinging her silken bag, “I shall have news to carry home, the very latest, too.”

As she swung the bag she suddenly remembered that she had something within it to offer the rider.

“Of course I can,” she went on saying to herself. “Post-riders are always hungry, and it’s lucky for him that I didn’t have to eat my dinner myself, to-day. Now, if I only had a basketful of clover heads or roses for that pony, I’d find out all about Boston while it was eating.”

The only roses within sight were blooming on Pussy Dean’s two cheeks as Sweeping Wind came clattering his shoes against the frozen ground. He would have gone straight on had a scarlet cloak not been planted, like a fluttering standard, full in his pathway.

The rider gave the pony the slightest possible check, since he felt sure that no red-coated soldier lurked behind the red cloak.

“Take something to eat, won’t you?” accosted Pussy, rather glowing in feature and agitated in voice by her own daring.

Meanwhile the rider had given Sweeping Wind a second intimation to stand, which he obeyed, and sniffed at Pussy’s cloak and cheeks and silken bag as she held it forth to the rider, saying naively, “I went to meeting and was invited to luncheon, and so didn’t eat mine.” She spoke swiftly, as though she knew she must not detain him.

He answered with a smile and a “Thank you,” took the bag, and rewarded her by saying, “The British are getting out of Boston, bag and baggage.”

“And where are you going?” demanded Pussy, determined not to go home with but half the story if she could help it.

“To Governor Trumbull with the good news and a demand for two thousand men to save New York,” he cried back, having gone on. His words were entangled with a mouthful of gingerbread or mince-pie to such an extent that it was a full minute before Pussy understood their import, and then she could only say over and over to herself, as she hastened on, “Father will be here, father will come home, and we’ll have the good old times back again.”

But notwithstanding her hope and a country’s wish, the good old times were not at hand.

Pussy reached home and told the story. Baby went down plump into the wooden cradle at the first note of it, and set up a tune of rejoicing in his own fashion which no one regarded. Brother Benjamin, aged thirteen, whistled furiously, regardless of the honors of the day. Sammy, who was ten, clapped his hands and knocked his heels together, first in joy, and then began to fear lest the war should be over before he grew big enough to be in it.

“Mother,” said Pussy, a few minutes later, “let Benny come with me to tell Mr. Gale about it; may he?”

Pussy laid aside her Sunday bonnet, tied a straw hat over her ears with a silk kerchief to keep out the wind, and in three minutes got Benny into the highway.

“See here, Ben, I’m going to light a fire on Baldhead to tell all the folks together about it, and I want you to help me; quick, before it gets dark.”

“You can’t gather fagots,” responded Ben.

Yes, she could, and would, and did, while Benny went to the house nearest to Baldhead to ask for some fire in a kettle.

The two worked with such vigor and will that the first gathering of darkness saw the light of the beacon-flame burst forth, and the great March wind blew it into fiercest glow. Every eye that saw the fire there knew that it had been kindled with a purpose, and many feet from house and hamlet set forth to learn the cause.