Part 9

She read the wonderful prayer that once was prayed in Carpenter's Hall, and about which every member of Congress wrote home to his wife.

On a small "stand," encased in glass, she came upon a portrait of Washington, painted during the time he waited for powder at Cambridge. Patty Rutter had seen it often, with its halo of the General's own hair about it. She turned from it, and beheld (why, yes, surely she _had_ seen _that_, but not here; it was, why long ago, in her baby days in Philadelphia, that Mrs. Rutter had taken her up into a tower to see it), a bell--Liberty Bell, that rang above the heads of the Fathers when the Nation was born.

Poor little Patty began to cry. Where could she be? She reached out her hand, and climbed the huge beams that encased the bell, and tried to touch the tongue. She wanted to hear it ring again, but could not reach it.

"It's curious, curious," she sobbed, wiping her eyes and turning them with a thrill of delight upon a beloved name that greeted her vision. It was growing dark, and she _might_ be wrong. But no, it was the dear name of Adams; and she saw, in a basket, a little pile of baby raiment. There were dainty caps and tiny shirts of cambric, whose linen was like a gossamer web, and whose delicate lines of hem-stitch were scarcely discernible; there were small dresses, yellow with the sun color that time had poured over them, and they hung with pathetic crease and tender fold over the sides of the basket.

The little woman paused and peered to read these words, "Baby-clothes, made by Mrs. John Adams for her son, John Quincy Adams."

"Little John Quincy!" she cried, "A baby so long ago!" She took the little caps in her hands, she pulled out the crumpled lace that edged them. She said, through the swift-falling tears:

"Oh, I remember when he was brought home _dead_, and how, in the Independence Hall of the State House at Philadelphia, he lay in state, that the inhabitants who knew his deeds, and those of his father, John, and his uncle, Samuel, might see his face. I love the Adamses every one," and she softly pressed the baby-caps that had been wrought by a mother, ere the country began, to her small Quaker lips, with real New England fervor for its very own. Tenderly she laid them down, to see, while the light was fading, a huge picture on the wall. She studied it long, trying to discern the faces, with their savage beauty; the sturdy right-doing men who stood before them; and then her eyes began to glisten, and gather light from the picture; her lips parted, her breath quickened; for Patty Rutter had gone beyond her life associations in Massachusetts, back to the times in which her Quaker ancestors had make treaty with the native Indians.

"It is!" she cried with a shout; "It is Penn's treaty!" Patty gazed at it until she could see no longer. "I'm glad it is the last thing my eyes will remember," she said sorrowfully, when in the gloom she turned away, went down the hall, and entered her glass chamber.

"Never mind my watch," she said softly. "When I waken it will be daylight, and I need not wind it. It will be so sweet to lie here through the night in such grand and goodly company. I only wish Mrs. Samuel Adams could come and kiss me good night."

With these words, Patty Rutter laid herself to rest upon the silken quilt from Gardiner's Island; and if you look within the Relic Room, opposite to Independence Hall, in the old State House at Philadelphia, in this Centennial summer, you will find her there, still taking her long nap, _fully indorsed by Miss Adams_, and in Independence Hall, across the passage way, you will see the portraits of more than fifty of the Fathers of the nation, but the Mothers abide at home.

BECCA BLACKSTONE'S TURKEYS AT VALLEY FORGE.

Turkeys, little girl and apple-tree lived in Pennsylvania, a hundred years ago. The turkeys--eleven of them--went to bed in the apple-tree, one night in December.

After it was dark, the little girl stood under the tree and peered up through the boughs and began to count. She numbered them from one up to eleven. Addressing the turkeys, she said: "You're all up there, I see, and if you only knew enough; if you weren't the dear, old, wise, stupid things that you are, I'll tell you what you would do. After I'm gone in the house, and the door is shut, and nobody here to see, you'd get right down, and you'd fly off in a hurry to the deepest part of the wood to spent your Thanksgiving, you would. The cold of the woods isn't half as bad for you as the fire of the oven will be."

Becca finished her speech; the turkeys rustled in their feathers and doubtless wondered what it all meant, while she stood thinking. One poor fellow lost his balance and came fluttering down to the ground, just as she had decided what to do. As soon as he was safely reset on his perch, Becca made a second little speech to her audience, in which she declared that "they, the dear turkeys, were her own; that she had a right to do with them just as she pleased, and that it was her good pleasure that not one single one of the eleven should make a part of anybody's Thanksgiving dinner."

"Heigh-ho," whistles Jack, Becca's ten-year-old brother: "that you, Bec? High time you were in the house."

"S'pose I frightened you," said Becca. "Where have you been gone all the afternoon, I'd like to know? stealin' home too, across lots."

"I'll tell, if you won't let on a mite."

"Do I ever, Jack?" reproachfully.

He did not deign to answer, but in confidential whispers breathed it into her ears that "he had been down to the Forge. Down to the Valley Forge, where General Washington was going to fetch down lots and lots of soldiers, and build log huts, and stay all Winter." He ended his breathless narration with an allusion that made Becca jump as though she had seen a snake. He said: "It will be bad for your turkeys."

"Why, Jack? General Washington won't steal them."

"Soldiers eat turkey whenever they can get it; and, Bec, this apple-tree isn't above three miles from the Forge. You'd better have 'em all killed for Thanksgiving. Come, I'm hungry as a bear."

"But," said Becca, grasping his jacket sleeve as they went, "I've just promised 'em that they shall not be touched."

Jack's laugh set every turkey into motion, until the tree was all in a flutter of excitement. He laughed again and again, before he could say "What a little goose you are! Just as if turkeys understood a word you said."

"But I understood if they didn't, and I should be telling my own self a lie. No, not a turkey shall die. They shall all have a real good Thanksgiving once in their lives."

Two days later, on the 18th of December, Thanksgiving Day came, the turkeys were yet alive, and Becca Blackstone was happy.

The next day General Washington's eleven thousand men marched into Valley Forge, and went out upon the cold, bleak hillsides, carrying with them almost three thousand poor fellows, too ill to march, too ill to build log huts, ill enough to lie down and die. Such a busy time as there was for days and days. Farmer Blackstone felt a little toryish in his thoughts, but the chance to sell logs and split slabs so near home as Valley Forge was not likely to happen again, and he worked away with strong good will to furnish building material. Jack went every day to the encampment, and grew quite learned in the ways of warlike men.

Becca staid at home with her mother, but secretly wished to see what the great army looked like.

At last the final load of chestnut and walnut and oaken logs went up to the hills from Mr. Blackstone's farm, and a great white snow fell down over all Pennsylvania, covering the mountains and hills, the soldiers' log huts, and the turkeys in the apple-tree. January came and went, and every day affairs at the camp grew worse. Men were dying of hunger and cold and disease. Stories of the sufferings of the men grew strangely familiar to the inhabitants. Affairs that Winter would not have been quite so hard at Valley Forge if the neighbors for miles around had not been Tories. Now Becca Blackstone's mother was a New England women, and in secret she bestowed many a comfort upon one after another of her countrymen at the encampment. Her husband was willing to sell logs and slabs and clay from his pits, but not a farthing or a splinter of wood had he to bestow on the rebels.

At last, one January day, when Mr. Blackstone had gone to Philadelphia, permission was given to Becca to accompany her mother and Jack to the village. Into the rear of the sleigh a big basket was packed. Becca was told that she must not ask any questions nor peep, so she neither questioned nor looked in, but found out, after all, for when they were come to the camp, she saw her mother take out loaves of rye bread and a jug, into which she knew nothing but milk ever was put, and carry them into a hut which had the sign of a hospital over it. Every third cabin was a hospital, and each and every one held within it men that were always hungry and in suffering.

In all her life Becca had never seen so much to make her feel sorry, as she saw when she followed her mother to the door of the log-hospital, into which she was forbidden to enter.

There large-eyed, hungry men lay on the cold ground, with only poor, wretched blankets to cover them. She caught a glimpse of a youth--he did not seem much older than her own Jack--with light, fair hair, such big blue eyes, and the thinnest, whitest hands, reaching up for the mug of milk her mother was offering to him.

Then, when Jack came to her, he was wiping his eyes on his jacket sleeve. He said "If I was a soldier, and my country didn't care any more for me than Congress does, I'd go home and leave the Red Coats to carry off Congress. It's too bad, and he's a jolly good fellow. Wish we could take him home and get him well."

"Who is he, Jack?"

"O, a soldier-boy from one of the New England colonies. He's got a brother with him--that's good."

The drive home, over the crisp snow, was a very silent one. More than one tear froze on Mrs. Blackstone's cheek, as she remembered the misery her eyes had beheld, and her hands could do so little to lighten.

The next day Mr. Blackstone reached home from Philadelphia. He had seen the Britons in all the glory and pomp of plenty and red regimentals in a prosperous city. He returned a confirmed Tory, and wished--never mind what he did wish, since his unkind wish never came to pass--but this is that which he did, he forbade Mrs. Blackstone to give anything that belonged to him to a soldier of General Washington's army.

"What will you do now, mamma, with all the stockings and mittens you are knitting?" questioned Becca.

"Don't ask me, child," was the tearful answer that mother made, for her whole heart was with her countrymen in their brave struggle.

Three nights after that time Mr. Blackstone entered his house, saying:

"I caught a ragged, bare-footed tatterdemalion hanging around, and I warned him off; told him he'd better go home, if he'd got one anywhere, and if not to join the army, of his king at Philadelphia."

"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.

HOW TWO LITTLE STOCKINGS SAVED FORT SAFETY.

"A story, children; so soon after Christmas, too! Let me think, what shall it be?"

"O yes, mamma," uttered three children in chorus.

Mrs. Livingston sat looking into the fire that flamed on the broad hearth so long, that Carl said, by way of reminder that time was passing: "An uncommon story."

Then up spoke Bessie: "Mamma, something, please, out of the real old time before much of anybody 'round here was born."

"As long off as the Indians," assisted young Dot.

"Ah yes; that will do, children. I will tell you a story that happened in this very house almost a hundred years ago. It was told to me by my grandmother when she was very old."

There was a grand old lady, Mrs. Livingston, at the head of this house then. She loved her country very much indeed, and was willing to do anything she could to help it, in the time of great trouble, during the war for independence. My grandmother was a little girl, not so old as you, Bessie. Her name was Lorinda Grey, and her home was in Boston. The year before, when British soldiers kept close watch to see that nothing to eat, or wear, or burn, was carried into Boston, Mr. Grey contrived to get his family out of the city, and Lorinda, with her brother Otis, was sent here. Afterward, when Boston was free again, the two children were left because the father was too busy to make the long journey after them.

Altogether, more than a dozen children belonging in some way to the Livingstons had been sent to the old house. The family friends and relatives gave the place the name "Fort Safety," because it lay far away from the enemy's ships, and quite out of the line where the soldiers of either army marched or camped.

The year had been very full of sorrow and care and trouble and hard work; but when the time for Christmas drew near, this grand old Mrs. Livingston said it should be the happiest Christmas that the old house had ever known. She would make the children happy once, whatever might come afterward, and so she set about it quite early in the fall. One day the children (there were more than a dozen of them in the house at the time) found out that the great room at the end of the hall was locked. They asked Mrs. Livingston many times when it meant, and at last she told them that one night after they were in bed and asleep, Santa Claus appeared at her door and asked if he might occupy that room until the night before Christmas. She told him he might, and he had locked the door himself, and said "if any child so much as looked through a crack in the door that child would find nothing but chestnut burs in his stocking." Well, the children knew that Santa Claus meant what he said, always, so they used to run past the door every day as fast as they could go and keep their eyes the other way, lest something should be seen that ought not to. Before the day came every wide chimney in the house was swept bright and clean for Santa Claus.

Aunt Elise, a sweet young lady, lived here then. She was old Mrs. Livingston's daughter, and she told the children that she had seen Santa Claus with her own eyes when he locked the door, and he said that every room must be made as fine as fine could be.

After that Tom and Richard and Will and Philip worked away as hard as they could. They gathered bushels and bushels of ivy, and a mile or two of ground-pine, and eight or ten pecks of bitter-sweet, and stored them all in the corn granary, and waited for the day. Then, when Aunt Elise set to work to adorn the house, she had twenty-four willing hands to help, beside her own two.

When all was made ready, and it was getting near to night in the afternoon before Christmas, Mrs. Livingston sent a messenger for three men from the farm. When they were come, she called in three African servants, and she said to the six men, "Saddle horses and ride away, each one of you in a different direction, and go to every house within five miles of here, and ask: 'Are any children in this habitation?' Then say that you are sent to fetch the children's stockings, that Santa Claus wants them, and take special care to bring me _two_ stockings from each child, whose father or brother is away fighting for his country."

So the six men set forth on their queer errand, after stockings, and they rode up hill and down, and to the great river's bank, and wherever the message was given at a house door, if a child was within hearing, off flew a stocking, and sometimes two, as the case might be about father and brother.

Now, in a deep little dell, about five miles away, there was a small, old brown house, and in it lived Mixie Brownson with her mother and brother, but this night Mixie was all alone. When one of the six horsemen rode up to the door, and without getting down from his horse, thumped away on it with his riding-whip handle, Mixie thought, "Like as not it is an Indian," but she straightway lifted the wooden latch and opened the door.

"There's one child here, I see," said the black man. "Any more?"

"I'm all alone," trembled forth poor Mixie.

"More's the pity," said the man. "I want one of your stockings; two of 'em, if you're a soldier's little girl. I'm taking stockings to Santa Claus."

"O take both mine, then, please," said Mixie with delight, and she drew off two warm woolen stockings and made them into a little bundle, which he thrust into a bag, and off he rode. Mixie's father was a Royalist, fighting with the Indians for the British, but then Mrs. Livingston knew nothing about that.

It was nearly midnight when the stockings reached Fort Safety. It was in this very room that Mrs. Livingston and Aunt Elise received them. Some were sweet and clean, and some were not; some were new and some were old. So they looked them over, and made two little piles, the one to be filled, the other to be washed.

About this time Santa Claus came down from his locked-up room, with pack after pack, and began to fill stockings. There were ninety-seven of them, beside sixteen more that were hung on a line stretched across the fire-place by the children before they went to bed, so as to be very handy for Santa Claus when he should enter by the chimney.

"What an awful rich lady my fine old Grandmother Livingston must have been, to have goodies enough to fill 113 stockings!" said Carl, his red hair fairly glistening with interest and pride; while Bessie and Dot looked eagerly at the fire-place and around the room, to see if any fragment of a stocking might, by any chance, be about anywhere.

Well, at last the stockings were full. I cannot tell you exactly what was in them. I remember that my grandmother said, that in every stocking went, first of all, a nice, pretty pair of new ones, just the size of the old ones; and next, a pair of mittens to fit hands belonging with feet that could wear the stockings. I know there were oranges and some kind of candy, too.