“But you will not get killed?” Susanna would plead, looking from one face to the other.  She was fond of John, who had been like a brother to her all her life; she had a great admiration for handsome Fritz, who often spent whole evenings telling her wonderful stories of the far south whilst she plied her needle over the rough garments the Rangers were to take with them.  It seemed to her a splendid thing these men were about to do, but she shrank from the thought that harm might come to them.  She sometimes almost wished they had not thought of it, and that they had been content to remain in the city, drilling with the town militia, and thinking of the coming spring campaign.

“We must take our chance,” answered Fritz, as he bent over her with a smile on one of those occasions.  “You would not have us value our lives above the safety of our distressed brethren or the honour of our nation?  The things which have happened here of late have tarnished England’s fair name and fame.  You would not have us hold back, if we can help to bring back the lustre of that name?  I know you better than that.”

“I would have you do heroic deeds,” answered Susanna, with quickly-kindled enthusiasm, “only I would not have you lose your lives in doing it.”

“We must take our chance of that,” answered Fritz, with a smile, “as other soldiers take theirs.  But we shall be a strong and wary company; and I have passed already unscathed through many perils.  You will not forget us when we are gone, Susanna?  I shall think of you sitting beside this comfortable hearth, when we are lying out beneath the frosty stars, with the world lying white beneath us, wrapped in its winding sheet!”

“Ah, you will suffer such hardships! they all say that.”

There was a look of distress in the girl’s eyes; but Fritz laughed aloud.

“Hardship! what is hardship?  I know not the name.  We can track game in the forest, and fish the rivers for it.  We can make ourselves fires of sparkling, crackling pine logs; we can slip along over ice and snow upon our snowshoes and skates, as I have heard them described, albeit I myself shall have to learn the trick of them—­for we had none such methods in my country, where the cold could never get a grip of us.  Fear not for us, Susanna; we shall fare well, and we shall do the work of men, I trow.  I am weary already of the life of the city; I would go forth once more to my forest home.”

There was a sparkle almost like that of tears in the girl’s eyes, and a little unconscious note as of reproach in her voice.

“That is always the way with men; they would ever be doing and daring.  Would that I too were a man! there is naught in the world for a maid to do.”

“Say not so,” cried Fritz, taking the little hand and holding it tenderly between his own.  “Life would be but a sorry thing for us men were it not for the gentle maidens left at home to think of us and pray for us and welcome us back again.  Say, Susanna, what sort of a welcome will you have for me, when I come to claim it after my duty is done?”