to come, I must settle what was to be done at Gordon's Pride with all
possible speed. It was only a few days after our going there, that I
rode into Oxford with a black cockade in my hat Patty had made me, and
the army sword Captain Jack had given Captain Daniel at my side. For I
had been elected a lieutenant in the Oxford company, of which Percy
Singleton was captain.

So passed that winter, the darkest of my life. One soft spring day, when
the birds were twittering amid new-born leaves, and the hyacinths and
tulips in Patty's garden were coming to their glory, Master Tom rode
leisurely down the drive at Gordon's Pride. That was a Saturday, the
29th of April, 1775. The news which had flown southward, night and day
alike, was in no hurry to run off his tongue; he had been lolling on the
porch for half an hour before he told us of the bloodshed between the
minute-men of Massachusetts and the British regulars, of the rout of
Percy's panting redcoats from Concord to Boston. Tom added, with the
brutal nonchalance which characterized his dealings with his mother and
sister, that he was on his way to Philadelphia to join a company.

The poor invalid was carried up the stairs in a faint by Banks and
Romney. Patty, with pale face and lips compressed, ran to fetch the
hartshorn. But Master Tom remained undisturbed.

"I suppose you are going, Richard," he remarked affably. For he treated
me with more consideration than his family. "We shall ride together,"
said he.

"We ride different ways, and to different destinations," I replied dryly.
"I go to serve my country, and you to fight against it."