Part 8

From Newark Bay to Old Blazing Star Ferry stretched the marsh, deep, dense, well-nigh impassable. Under the orders of General Washington, supported by the approval of the Provincial Congress in session at White Plains, the live stock was being driven from the island, and ferried across Staten Island Sound to New Jersey. At the same moment the grand fleet of armed ships from Halifax, England, and elsewhere, was sailing in with General Howe on board and Red Coats enough to eat, at a supper and a dinner, all the live stock on a five-by-seventeen mile island.

Now the Commander-in-chief of the Continental forces at New York did not wish to afford the aid and comfort to the enemy of furnishing horses to draw cannon, or fresh meat wherewith to satisfy the hunger of British soldier and sailor. Oh no! On Manhattan Island were braves--for freedom toiling day and night; building earthwork, redoubt and battery with never a luxury from morning to morning, except the luxury of fighting for Liberty. Soldiers from camp, light-horse and militia from New Jersey, had gathered on the island, and had been at work a day and a night when the news came to the Kull cottage that in a few minutes its cow and calf would be called for. Hence the sudden watch from the roof, and the escapade from the barn-yard.

The Kull father, I regret to write, because it seems highly unpatriotic, had gone forth to catch fish that day, hugging up the thought close to his pocket of a heart, that the English fleet would pay well for fresh fish.

Now Sleet and Snow were treasures untold to Valentine and Anna Kull. Anna's pocket-money, stored up to be spent once-a-year in New York, came to her hands by the sale of butter to oystermen; and the calf, Snow, was the exclusive property of her brother Valentine. No wonder they were striving to save their possessions--ignorant, children as they were, of every good which they could not see and feel.

Cow and calf, or rather calf and cow, never before were given such a race. Highways were ignored. There were not many beaten tracks at that time on Staten Island. Daisied and clovered fields the calf was dragged through; young corn and potato lots suffered alike by the pressure of hoof and foot. Anna nearly forgot her out-of-joint arm when the four reached the marsh. Its friendly-looking shelter was hailed with delight.

Said Valentine, tugging the tired calf, to Anna, switching forward the anxious cow: "I should like to see the riflemen from Pennsylvania and the _Yankeys_ from Doodle or Dandy either, chase Sleet and Snow through _this_ marsh."

"It's been _awful_ work though to get 'em here," said Anna, wiping her face with a pink handkerchief suddenly detached for use from her gown.

In plunged the boy and up s-s-cissed a cloud of mosquitoes, humming at the sound of the new-come feast; fresh flesh and blood from the uplands was desirable.

The grass was green, _very_ green--lovely, bright, _light_ green; the July sun shone down untiringly; the tide rushing up from Raritan Bay met the tide rolling over from Newark Bay, and the cool, sweet swash of water snaked along the stout sedge, making it sway and bend as though the wind were sweeping its tops.

When within the queer infolding, boy, cow, and calf had disappeared, Anna called: "I'll run now and keep watch and tell you when the soldiers are gone."

"No, _you won't_!" shrieked back her brother; "you'll stay _here_, and help me, or the skeeters will kill the critters. Bring me the biggest bush you can find, and fetch one for yourself."

Anna always obeyed Valentine. It was a way she had. He liked it, and, generally speaking, she didn't greatly dislike it, but her dress was thinner than his coat, and the happy mosquitoes knew she was fairer and sweeter than her Dutch brother, and didn't mind telling her so in the most insinuating fashion possible. On this occasion, as she had in so many other unlike instances, she acceded to his request; toiling backward up the ascent and fetching thence an armful of the stoutest boughs she could twist from branches.

She neared the marsh on her return. All that she could discern was a straw hat bobbing hither and thither; the horns of a cow tossing to and fro; the tail of a cow lashing the air.

A voice she heard, shouting forth in impatient bursts of sound, "Anna, Anna Kull!"

"_Here!_ I'm coming," she responded.

"Hurry up! I'm eaten alive. Snow's crazy and Sleet's a lunatic," shouted her brother, jerking the words forth between the vain dives his hand made into the cloud of wings in the air.

"Sakes alive!" said poor Anna, toiling from sedge bog to sedge bog with her burden of "bushes" and striving to hide her face from the mosquitoes as she went.

It was nearly noon-day then, and the Fourth of July too, but neither Valentine nor Anna thought of the day of the month. Why should they? The Nation wasn't born yet whose hundredth birthday we keep this year.

The solemn assembly of earnest men--debating the to be or not to be of the United States--was over there at work in Congress Hall in the old State House. They were heated with sun and brick and argument; a hundred and ten British ships of war were anchoring and at anchor over on the ocean side of Staten Island. Up the bay, seven or eight thousand troops in "ragged regimentals" were working to make ready for battle; but not one of them all suffered more from sun and toil and anxiety and greed of blood than did the lad and the lass in the marsh.

They fought it out, with many a sting and smart, another hour, and then declaring that "cow or no cow they couldn't stay another minute," they strove to work their way out of the beautiful green of the sedge.

On the meadow-land stood their mother. She had brought dinner for her hungry children,--moreover, she had brought news.

The Yankee troops--the Jersey militia--had gone, but the British soldiers had arrived and demanded beef--beef raw, beef roasted, beef in any form.

The tears that the fiercest mosquito had failed to extort from Anna came now. "I wish I'd let her go," she cried, fondly stroking Sleet. "At least she wouldn't have been killed, and we'd had her again sometime, maybe; but now--I say, Valentine, are _you_ going to give up Snow?"

"No, I _ain't_," stoutly persisted the lad, slapping with his broad palm the panting side of the calf, where mosquitoes still clung.

"But, my poor children," said Mother Kull, "you will _have_ to. It _can't_ be helped. If we refuse them, don't you know, they will burn our house down."

"_If they do, I'll kill them!_" The words shot out from the gunpowdery temper of Anna Kull. Poor innocent girl of thirteen! She never in her life had seen an act of cruelty greater than the taking of a fish or the death of a chicken; but the impotent impulse of revenge arose within her at the bare idea of having her pet, her pretty Sleet, taken from her and eaten by soldiers.

"You'd better keep still, Anna Kull," said Valentine. "Mother, don't you think we might hide the animals somewhere?"

"Where?" echoed the poor woman, looking up and looking down.

Truly there seemed to be no place. Already six thousand British soldiers had landed and taken possession of the island. Hills and forests were not high enough nor deep enough; and now the very marsh had cast them out by its army of winged stingers--more dreadful than human foe.

"I just wish," ejaculated the poor sunburned, mosquito-tortured, hungry girl, who stood between marsh and meadow,--"I _wish_ I had 'em every one tied hand and foot and dumped into the sedge where we've been. Mother, I wouldn't use Sleet's milk to-night, not a drop of it,--it's crazy milk, I know: she's been tortured so. Poor cow! poor creature! poor, dear, nice, honest Sleet!" And Anna patted the cow with loving stroke and laid her head on its neck.

"Well, children, eat something, and then we'll all go home together,--if they haven't carried off our cot already," said the mother.

They sat down under a tree and ate with the eager, wholesome appetite of children. Mrs. Kull kept watch that the cow did not wander far from the place.

As they were eating, Valentine said to Anna, nodding his head in the direction of his mother: "I've thought of something. We must manage to send _her_ home without us."

"_I've_ thought of something," responded Anna. "Yes, we _must_ manage."

"I should like to know _what_ you could think of, sister."

"Should you? Why, think of saving the cow and calf, of course; though, if you're _very_ particular, you can leave the calf here."

"And what will you do with the cow?"

"Put her in the boat--"

"Whew!" interrupted Valentine.

"And ferry her over the sound," continued Anna.

"Who?"

"You and me."

"Do you think we could?"

"We can try."

"That's brave! How's your arm?"

"All right! I jerked it back, slapping mosquitoes."

"Give us another hunkey piece of bread and butter. Honey's good to-day. I wonder mother thought about it."

"I s'pose," said Anna, "she'd as leave we had it as soldiers. Wouldn't it be jolly if we could make 'em steal the bees?"

The wind blew east. Up came martial sounds mingled with the break and the roar of the ocean.

"Oh, dear! They're a coming," gasped Mrs. Kull, running to the spot. "They're coming, and your father is not here."

"Hide, hide, my children! Never mind the cow now," she almost shrieked; her mind was running wild with all the scenes of terror she had ever heard of.

"Pshaw! pshaw! Mother Kull," said her boy, assuringly. "They won't come down here. Somebody's guiding them around who knows just where every house is. You and Anna get into that thicket yonder and keep, whatever happens, as still as mice."

"What'll _you_ do, bub?" questioned Anna, her sunburned face brown-pale with affright.

"Oh, I'll take care of myself. Boys always do."

As soon as Mrs. Kull and her daughter were well concealed in the thicket, the sounds began to die away. They waited half an hour. All was still. They crept out, gazing the country over. No soldier in sight. Down in the marsh again were boy and cow.

"I'll run home now," said Mrs. Kull. "I dare say 'twas all a trick of my ears."

"But I heard it, too, Mother Kull."

"Your ears serve you tricks, too, Anna. You wait and help Valentine home with the animals."

Anna was glad to have her mother gone. She sped to the marsh. She threaded it, until by sundry signs she found the trio and summoned them forth.

The old Blazing Star Ferry was seldom used. A boat lay there. It was staunch. The tide with them, they _might_ get it across. Had they been older, wiser, they would never have made the attempt.

A fresh water stream ran down to the sea. They passed it on their way thither. In it Sleet drank deep, and soothed for a moment the bites that tormented her; the children kneeled on the grassy bank, and drank from their palms; the calf frolicked in it, till driven out. An hour went by. They reached the ferry. It was deserted. Somebody had used the boat that day. It was at the shore. Grass was yet in it.

"Come along, Snow," said Valentine, urging with the rope. "Go along, Snow," said Anna, helping it on with a stout twig she had picked up. The calf pranced and ran, and before it knew its whereabouts was in the broad-bottomed boat. Sleet stood on the shore, and saw her baby tied fast. One poor cry the calf uttered. It went home to the motherly heart of the dumb creature. She went down the sand, over the side, and began, in her own way, to comfort Snow.

"Now we are all right!" cried Valentine, delighted with the success of his ruse; for he had slyly, lest Anna should see the deed, thrust a pin in Snow to call forth the cry and win the cow over to his side.

"Take an oar quick!" commanded the young captain.

His mate obeyed. They pushed the boat out, unfastened it from the pier. Before anybody concerned had time to realize the situation the boat was adrift, and they were whirling in the tide.

"Now, sis," said Valentine, a big lump in his throat, "we're in for it. It is sink or swim. It's not much use to row. You steer and I'll paddle."

Sleet looked wildly around. She tossed her head, sniffed the salt, oystery air, and seemed about to plunge overboard.

Anna screamed. Valentine threw down his paddle and dashed himself on the boat's outermost edge just in time to save it from overturning. Mistress Sleet, disgusted with Fourth of July, had made up her mind to lie down and take a nap. The boat righted and they were safe. Staten Island Sound at this point was narrow, scarcely more than a quarter of a mile in width, and the tide was fast bearing them out.

"Such uncommon good sense in Sleet," exclaimed the boy. "_That_ cow is worth saving."

At that moment a dozen Red Coats were at the ferry they had just left. The imperious gentlemen were in a fine frenzy at finding the boat gone.

They shouted to the children to return.

"Steady, steady now," cried the young captain. His mate was steady at the helm until a musket ball or two ran past them.

"Let go!" shouted the captain. "Swing your bonnet. Let them know you're a woman and they won't fire on _you_."

The little mate stood erect. She waved her pink flag of a sun-bonnet. Distinctly the soldiers saw the pink frock of Anna Kull; they saw her long hair as the sea breeze lifted it when she shook her pink banner.

A second, two, three went by as the girl stood there, and then a flash was seen on the bank, a musket-ball ran through the bonnet of the little mate, and the waves of air rattled along the shore.

The bonnet was in the sea; Anna had dropped to her seat and caught the helm in her left hand.

"Cowards!" cried Valentine, for want of a stronger word, and then he fell to working the boat on its way. The tide helped them now; it swung the boat over toward the Jersey shore.

The firing from Staten Island called out the inhabitants on the Jersey coast. They watched the approaching boat with interest. Everything depended now on the cow's lying still, on the boy's strength, on the meeting of the tides. If he could reach there before the tide came up all would be well; otherwise it would sweep him off again toward the island.

"Can't you row?" asked Valentine, at length.

"Bub, I can't," said Anna, her voice shaking out the words. It was the first time she had spoken since she sat down.

"Are you hurt?" he questioned.

"I tremble so," she answered, and turned her face away.

"I reckon we'd better help that boy in," said a Jersey fisherman as he watched, and he put off in a small boat.

"Don't come near! Keep off! keep off!" called Valentine, as he saw him approach. "I've a cow in here."

The fisherman threw him a rope, and that rope saved them. The dewy smell of the grassy banks had aroused the cow. She was stirring.

The land was very near now; close at hand. "Hurry! hurry!" urged the lad, as they were drawing him in. Before the cow had time to rise, the boat touched land.

"You'd better look after that girl," said the fisherman, who had towed the boat. The poor child was holding, fast wrapped in the remnants of her pink frock, her bleeding hand. The musket ball that shot away her bonnet grazed her wrist.

"Never mind me," she said, when they were pitying her. "The cow is safe."

The same evening, while, in Philadelphia, bonfires were blazing, bells ringing, cannon booming, because, that day, a new nation was born; over Staten Island Sound, by the light of the moon, strong-armed men were ferrying home the girl and the boy, who that day _had_ fought a good fight and gained the victory.

At home, in the Kull cottage, the mother waited long for the coming of the children. She said; "Poor young things! _Mine own children_--they _shall_ have a nice supper." She made it ready and they were not come.

Farmer Rycker's wife and daughter came over to tell and hear the news, and yet they were not come.

Sundown. No children. The Kull father came up from his fishing and heard the story.

"The Red Coats have taken them," he said, and down came the musket from against the wall, and out the father marched and made straightway for the headquarters of General Howe, over at the present "Quarantine."

Then the mother, left alone in the soft summer gloaming, fell on her knees and told her story in her own plain speech to her good Father in Heaven.

It was a long story. She had much to say to Heaven that night. The mothers and wives of 1776 in our land spake often unto God. This mother listened and prayed, and prayed and listened.

The fishermen had left Valentine and Anna on the shore and gone home. Tired, but happy, the brother and sister went up, over sand and field and slope, and so came at length within sight of the trees that towered near home.

"Whistle now!" whispered Anna, afraid yet to speak aloud. "Mother will hear and answer."

Valentine whistled.

Up jumped the mother Kull. She ran to the door and tried to answer. There was no whistle in her lips. Joy choked it.

"Mother, are you _there_?" cried the children.

"No! I'm _here_," was the answer, and she had them safe in her arms.

PATTY RUTTER: THE QUAKER DOLL WHO SLEPT IN INDEPENDENCE HALL.

Patty Rutter had fallen asleep with her bonnet on, and had been lying there, fast asleep, nobody knew just how long; for, somehow--it happened so--there was nobody in particular to awaken her; that is to say, no one had seemed to care though she slept on all day and all night, without ever waking up at all.

But then, there never had been another life quite like Patty Rutter's life. In the first place, it had a curious reason for beginning at all; and nearly everything about it had been as unlike your life and mine as possible.

In her very baby days, before she walked or talked, she had been sent away to live with strangers, and no real, warm kiss of true love had ever fallen on her little lips.

It all came about in this way: Mrs. Sarah Rutter, a lady living in Philadelphia--exactly what relation she bore to Patty it is a little difficult to determine--decided to send the little one to live with a certain Mrs. Adams, at Quincy, in Massachusetts, and she particularly desired that the child should go dressed in a style fitting an inhabitant of the proud city of Philadelphia.

Now, at that time Philadelphia was very much elated because of several things that had happened to her; but the biggest pride of all was, that once upon a time the Continental Congress had met there, and--and most wonderful thing--had made a Nation!

Well, to be sure, that _was_ something to be proud of; though Patty didn't understand, a bit more than you do, what it meant. However, the glory of it all was talked about so much that she couldn't help knowing that, when this nation, with its fifty-six Fathers, and thirteen Mothers, was born one day in July, 1776, at Philadelphia, all the city rang with a sweet jangle, and called to all the people, through the tongue of its Liberty bell, to come up and greet the newcomer with a great shout of welcome.

But that had been long ago, before Mrs. Sarah Rutter was grown up, or Patty Rutter began to be dressed for her trip to Quincy.

As I wrote, Mrs. Rutter wished that Patty should go attired in a manner to do honor to the city of Philadelphia; therefore she was not permitted to depart in her baby clothes, but her little figure was arrayed in a long, prim gown of soft drab silk, while a kerchief of purest mull was crossed upon her breast; and, depending from her waist, like the fashion of to-day, were pincushion and watch. Upon her youthful head was a bonnet, crowned and trimmed in true Quaker fashion; and her infantile feet were securely tied within shapely slippers of kid. Thus equipped, Miss Patty was sent forth upon her journey.

Ah! that journey began a long time ago--fifty-eight, yes, fifty-nine years have gone by, and Patty Rutter is quite an aged little lady now, as she lies asleep, with her bonnet on.

"It is time," says somebody, "to close."

No one seems to take notice that Patty Rutter does not get up and depart with the rest of the visitors, that she only stirs her eyelids and turns her head on the silken "quilt" where she is lying.

The little woman who keeps house in the Hall locks it up and goes away, and there is little Patty Rutter shut in for the night. As the key turns in the old-time lock, the Lady Rutter winks hard and sits up.

"Well, I've been patient, anyhow, and Mrs. Samuel Adams herself couldn't wish me to do more," she said, with a comforting yawn and a delightful stretch, and then she began to stare in blank bewilderment.

"I _should_ like to know what this all means," she whispered, "and _where_ I am. I've heard enough to-day to turn my head. How very queer folks are, and they talk such jargon now-a-days. Centennial and Corliss Engine; Woman's Pavilion and Memorial Hall; Main Building and the Trois Freres; Hydraulic Annex, railroads and what-nots.

"_I_ never heard of such things. I don't think it is proper to speak of them, or the Adamses would have told me. No more intelligent folks in the land than the Adamses, and I guess _they_ know what belongs to good society and polite conversation. I declare I blushed so in my sleep that I was quite ashamed. I'll get up and look about now. I'm sure this isn't any one of the houses where we visit, or folks wouldn't talk so."

Patty Rutter straightened her bonnet on her head, smoothed down her robe of silken drab, adjusted her kerchief, looked at her watch to learn how long she had been sleeping, and found, to her surprise, that it had run down. Right over her head hung two watches.

"Why, how thoughtful folks are in this house," she exclaimed in a timid voice, reaching up and taking one of the two time-pieces in her hand. "Why, here's a name; let me see."

Reading slowly, she announced that the watch belonged to "Wil-liam Wil-liams--worn when he signed the Declaration of Independence." "Ah!" she cried, with pathetic tone, "this watch is run down _too_, at four minutes after five. I remember! _This_ William Williams was one of the fifty-six Fathers. I guess I must be in Lebanon--he lived there and his folks would have his watch of course. Here's another," taking down a watch and reading, "Colonel John Trumbull. _Run down, too!_ and at twenty-three minutes after six. _He_ was the son of Brother Jonathan, Governor of one of the Mothers, when the Nation was born. Yes, yes, I must be in Lebanon. Well, it's a comfort, at least, to know that I'm in company the Adamses would approve of, though _how_ I came here is a mystery."

She hung the watches in place, stepped out of the glass room, in which she had slept, into a hall, and with a slight exclamation of delicious approval, stopped short before a number of chairs, and clasped her little fingers tightly together.

You must remember that Patty Rutter was a Friend, a Quaker, perhaps a descendant of William Penn, but then, in her baby days, having been transplanted to the rugged soil and outspoken ways of Massachusetts, she could not keep silence altogether, in view of that which greeted her vision.

She was in the very midst of old friends. Chairs in which she had sat in her young days stood about the grand hall. On the walls hung portraits of the ancestor kings of the nation born at Philadelphia in 1776.

In royal robes and with careless grace, lounged King George III., the nation's grandfather, angry no longer at his thirteen daughters who strayed from home with the Sons of Liberty.

Her feet made haste and her eyes opened wider, as her swift hands seized relic after relic. She sat in chairs that Washington had rested in; she caught up camp-kettles used on every field where warriors of the Revolution had tarried; she patted softly La Fayette's camp bedstead; and wondered at the taste that had put into the hall two old, time-worn, battered doors, but soon found out that they had gone through all the storm of balls that fell upon the Chew House during the battle of Germantown.