attacks by your people and ours, there is always plenty to interest one.
General Hamilton has been conducting the siege lately, but General Rosen
returned yesterday and took the command; but there's really not much to
do. We know you cannot hold out much longer."

"I don't know," John said quietly. "I think that, as long as a man has
strength enough to hold his arms, Derry will not surrender. When you
march in, it will be to a city of dead people. We had such hopes when the
fleet came. If the people could have caught Kirk, they would have torn
him in pieces. He had five thousand soldiers on board, and, if he had
landed them, we could have sallied out and fought, instead of dying of
hunger."

"Yes," Walter agreed, "we should have retired at once. We have only seven
or eight thousand men here now, and if five thousand English soldiers had
landed, we must have raised the siege at once. I can tell you that,
though he is on the other side, I was almost as angry at Kirk's cowardice
as you must have been. I shall be glad when this awful business is over.
I knew it was bad enough before, but after what you have told me about
the women and children, I shall never think of anything else, and I will
gladly help you in any way I can. There can't be any treason in trying to
prevent children from starving to death. What do you want me to do?"

"What would do the children more good than anything, the women say, would
be milk. If I could get a keg that would hold two or three gallons--and a
watertight box with about twenty pounds of bread, I could swim back with
them just as I came. I would show you the exact spot where I landed, and
would come out again in four days. If you could put a supply ready for
me, every fourth night, among the bushes at the mouth of the river, with
a little lantern to show me the exact spot, I could come down with the