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"Oh?" he said, when I released hiles in the dimness "Well, to be sure, Sassenach I h"

He flung back the quilt and rose Froround, I had a rather unorthodox viehich providedlinen shirt I did hope that what I was looking at was not the lingering result of his nightht it better not to ask

"You’d better hurry," I said "It’s getting light; people will be up and about soon"

He nodded and ducked outside I lay still, listening A few birds cheeped faintly in the distance, but this was autuht would provoke the raucous choruses of spring and su, but I could feel s

I ranit out roundfor the water bottle Feeling cool air on lanced over my shoulder, but dawn had coray but still

I touched the gold ring on ht before, and still unfa that had su cereain, deliberately, and hope that he could see his daughter’s happiness soone, and I was glad

A small sound, no louder than the distant birdcalls, drifted through the air The brief cry of a baby waking

I had once thought that no ht really to be no ht so However, a baby was host of a forer’s bed e of the canvas lifted, and Ja excited and alaret up and dress, Claire," he said "The soldiers are drawn up by the creek Where are ht, and far down the an to roll

COLD FOG LAY like smoke in the hollows all round; a cloud had settled on Mount Helicon like a broody hen on a single egg, and the air was thick with darass, to where a detachiment was drawn up in full splendor by the creek, drurandly ihtly cross I’d gone to bed in the expectation of waking to hot coffee and a nourishing breakfast, this to be followed by teddings, three christenings, two tooth extractions, the re for whisky

Instead, I’d been wakened by unsettling dreaed out into a cold drizzle in medias bloody res, apparently to hear a proclamation of some sort No coffee yet, either

It had taken sohlanders in their caer down the hillside, and the piper had gone quite purple in the face before he at last blew the final blast and left off with a discordant wheeze The echoes were still ringing off the mountainside, as Lieutenant Archibald Hayes stepped out before his men

Lieutenant Hayes’s nasal Fife accent carried well, and the ith him Still, I was sure the people farther up theas we did at the foot of the slope, though, ere no more than twenty yards from the Lieutenant and I could hear every word, in spite of the chattering of my teeth

"By his EXCELLENCY, WILLIAM TRYON, Esquire, His Majesty’s Captain-General, Governor, and Commander-in-Chief, in and over the said Province," Hayes read, lifting his voice in a bellow to carry above the noises of wind and water, and the premonitory murmurs of the crowd

Therain, and erratic winds had lowered the terees My left shin, sensitive to cold, throbbed at the spot where I had broken the bone two years before A person given to portents and ht have been tempted to draw co of the Governor’s Proclaht--the prospects were silowering at the crowd over his paper, "I have received inforeous and disorderly Persons did tuether in the Town of Hillsborough, on the 24th and 25th of last Month, during the sitting of the Superior Court of Justice of that District to oppose the Just Measures of Government and in open Violation of the Laws of their Country, audaciously attacking his Majesty’s Associate Justice in the Execution of his Office, and barbarously beating and wounding several Persons in and during the sitting of said Court, and offering other enornities and Insults to his Majesty’s Governes on the Persons and properties of the Inhabitants of the said Town, drinking Dae and Success to the Pretender--"

Hayes paused, gulping air hich to acco his chest with an audible whoosh, he read on: