“I felt sure he would try—­I heard he was doing his duty,” she replied with averted face.

“Zeke Watkins says he’s no soldier at all—­nothing but a dirt-digger.”

For a moment, as the cobbler had hoped, Susie forgot her blushes and secret in her indignation.  “Zeke Watkins indeed!” she exclaimed.  “He’d better not tell me any such story.  I don’t believe there’s a braver, truer man in the—­Well,” she added in sudden confusion, “he hasn’t run away and left others to dig their way into Boston, if that’s the best way of getting there.”

“Ah, I’m going to get even with him yet,” chuckled Stokes to himself.  “Digging is only the first step, Miss Susie.  When Old Put gets good and ready, you’ll hear the thunder of the guns a’most in Opinquake.”

“Well, Mr. Stokes,” stammered Susie, resolving desperately on a short cut to the knowledge she craved, “you’ve seen Mr. Jarvis a-soldiering.  What do you think about it?”

“Well, now, that Zeb Jarvis is the sneakin’ist fellow—–­”

“What?” cried the girl, her face aflame.

“Wait till I get in a few more pegs,” continued Stokes, coolly.  “The other night he sneaked right into the enemy’s lines and carried off a British officer as a hawk takes a chicken.  The Britisher fired his pistol right under Zeb’s nose; but, law! he didn’t mind that any more’n a ’sketer-bite.  I call that soldiering, don’t you?  Anyhow, Old Put thought it was, and sent for him ’fore daylight, and made a sergeant of him.  If I had as good a chance of gettin’ rid of the rheumatiz as he has of bein’ captain in six months, I’d thank the Lord.”

Susie sat up very straight, and tried to look severely judicial; but her lip was quivering and her whole plump little form trembling with excitement and emotion.  Suddenly she dropped her face in her hands and cried in a gust of tears and laughter:  “He’s just like grandfather; he’d face anything!”

“Anything in the ’tarnal universe, I guess, ’cept you, Miss Susie.  I seed a cannon-ball smash a shovel in his hands, and he got another, and went on with his work cool as a cucumber.  Then I seed him writin’ a letter to you, and his hand trembled—–­”

“A letter to me!” cried the girl, springing up.

“Yes; ’ere it is.  I was kind of pegging around till I got to that; and you know—–­”

But Susie was reading, her hands trembling so she could scarcely hold the paper.  “It’s about you,” she faltered, making one more desperate effort at self-preservation.  “He says you’d stay if you could; that they almost drove you home.  And he asks that I be kind to you, because there are not many to care for you—­and—­and—–­”

“Oh, Lord! never can get even with that Zeb Jarvis,” groaned Ezra.  “But you needn’t tell me that’s all the letter’s about.”

Her eyes were full of tears, yet not so full but that she saw the plain, closing words in all their significance.  Swiftly the letter went to her lips, then was thrust into her bosom, and she seized the cobbler’s hand, exclaiming:  “Yes, I will!  I will!  You shall stay with us, and be one of us!” and in her excitement she put her left hand caressingly on his shoulder.