I had thought Hortense would die in fits.

“Mademoiselle means the squirrel, Ramsay,” she said, choking, her handkerchief to her lips.  “Tell Jack thanks, with my love,” she called, floating back up the stairs.

And the governess set to laughing in the pleasant French way that shakes all over and has no spite.  Emboldened, I asked why Hortense could not play with us any more.  Hortense, she explained, was become too big to prank on the commons.

“Faith, mademoiselle,” said I ruefully, “an she mayn’t play war on the commons, what may she play?”

“Beau!” teases mademoiselle, perking her lips saucily; and she shut the door in my face.

It seemed a silly answer enough, but it put a notion in a lad’s head.  I would try it on Rebecca.

When I re-entered the window, the dominie still slept.  Rebecca, the demure monkey, bent over her lesson book as innocently as though there were no turnstiles.

“Rebecca,” I whispered, leaning across the bench, “you are big enough to have a—­what?  Guess.”

“Go away, Ramsay Stanhope!” snapped Rebecca, grown mighty good of a sudden, with glance fast on her white stomacher.

“O-ho!  Crosspatch,” thought I; and from no other motive than transgressing the forbidden, I reached across to distract the attentive goodness of the prim little baggage; but—­an iron grip lifted me bodily from the bench.

It was Eli Kirke, wry-faced, tight-lipped.  He had seen all!  This was the secret of Mistress Rebecca’s new-found diligence.  No syllable was uttered, but it was the awfullest silence that ever a lad heard.  I was lifted rather than led upstairs and left a prisoner in locked room with naught to do but gnaw my conscience and gaze at the woods skirting the crests of the inland hills.

Those rats in the attic grew noisier, and presently sounds a mighty hallooing outside, with a blowing of hunting-horns and baying of hounds.  What ado was this in Boston, where men were only hunters of souls and chasers of devils?  The rats fell to sudden quiet, and from the yells of the rabble crowd I could make out only “King-killers!  King-killers!” These were no Puritans shouting, but the blackguard sailors and hirelings of the English squadron set loose to hunt down the refugees.  The shouting became a roar.  Then in burst Eli Kirke’s front door.  The house was suddenly filled with swearings enough to cram his blasphemy box to the brim.  There was a trampling of feet on the stairs, followed by the crashing of overturned furniture, and the rabble had rushed up with neither let nor hindrance and were searching every room.

Who had turned informer on my uncle?  Was I not the only royalist in the house?  Would suspicion fall on me?  But questions were put to flight by a thunderous rapping on the door.  It gave as it had been cardboard, and in tumbled a dozen ruffians with gold-lace doublets, cockades and clanking swords.