Once there, she paused a second or two to take resolution
regarding her next act. She knew full well that there was not
one second to spare, and yet she stood looking, apparently, into
the glowing embers on the hearth. She was flushed and excited,
both by the unwonted toil, and the coming events. Cobwebs from
the rafters had fallen on her hair and home-spun dress, and would
readily have betrayed her late occupation, to any discerning
soldier of the king.

A smile broke suddenly over her face, displacing for a brief
second every trace of care. "It's my only weapon, and I must use
it," she said, making a stately courtesy to an imaginary guest
and straightway disappeared within an adjoining room. With
buttoned door and dropped curtains the little woman made haste to
array herself in her finest raiment. In five minutes she
reappeared in the kitchen, a picture pleasant to look at. In all
New England, there could not be a more beautiful little old lady
than Martha Moulton was that day. Her hair was guiltless now of
cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy little curls of silvery
whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a little cap of dotted
muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a particle of the
hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of a sheeny,
black silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as spotless as
the cap.

As she fastened back her gown and hurried away the signs of the
breakfast she had not eaten, the clear pink tints seemed to come
out with added beauty of coloring in her cheeks; while her hair
seemed fairer and whiter than at any moment in her three-score