Her second application drew forth an even sterner rebuff, for the housewife, before Janice had said half of her speech, cried, “Be off with you, you Tory! think you I would give help to such nasty dogs?”

The third attempt was equally futile, for she was told:  “Not for a thousand dollars would I give you anything, and if you would all die of hunger, ’t would be so much the better.”

The maiden was long since too accustomed to this treatment to let it discourage her, and in her fourth essay she was more fortunate.  While the woman was refusing, the farmer himself appeared upon the scene, and moved by pity, or perhaps by the youth and beauty of the petitioner, vetoed his wife’s decision, and not merely filled her pail with milk, but added a small basket of eggs and apples, declining to accept the one hundred dollars in Continental bills she tendered.

Her quest had taken Janice nearly two miles away from her quarters, and in returning with this wealth she was compelled to pass the length of the encampment.  This brought her presently to a large tent, from which issued the sobs of a child, intermixed with complaints in French of cold and hunger, with all of which a woman’s voice was blended, seeking to comfort the weeper.

On impulse, the girl turned aside and looked through the half-closed flap.  Within she saw a woman of something over thirty years of age, with a decidedly charming face, sitting on a camp-stool with a child of about three years old in her arms and two slightly older children at her feet, from one of whom came the wails.

“We do not know each other, Madame de Riedesel,” Janice apologised in the best French she could frame, “but Captain Geismar and others have told me so much about you that I—­ I—­” There Janice came to a halt, and then in English, colouring as she spoke, she went on, “’T is mortifying, but though I thought I had become quite a rattler in French, the moment I need it, I lose courage.”

“Ach!” cried Madame de Riedesel.  “Nevair think.  I speak ze Anglais parfaitement.  Continuez.”

“I was passing,” explained Janice, mightily relieved, “and hearing what your little girl was saying, I made bold to intrude, in the hope that you will let me share my milk and eggs with the children.”  As she spoke, Janice held out to each of the three a rosy-cheeked apple, and the sobs had ended ere her explanation had.

“Ah!” cried the woman, “zees must be ze Mees Meredeez whom zay told me was weez ze waggons in ze rear, and who, zay assure me, was a saint.  Zat must you be, to offer your leettle store to divide with me.  Too well haf I learned how difficile it ees to get anyzing from zeese barbarians.”

“They are hard, madame,” explained Janice, “because they deem us foes.”

“But women cannot be zare enemies, and yet ze women ze worst are.  Ma foi!  Weez ze army I kept through ze wilderness, ze bois, from Canada, and not one unkind or insult did I receef, till I came to where zere were zose of my own sex.  Would you beleef it, in Boston ze femme zay even spat at me when I passed zem on ze street.  And since from Cambridge we started, when I haf wished for anyzing, my one prayer zat it shall be a man and not a woman I must ask it has been.  Ze women, I say it weez shame, are ze brutes, and ze men, zay seek to be gentle, mais, helas! zay are born of ze women!