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CHAPTER I.
W
hen Sir William Howe succeeded General Gage as governor and military commander of the New England province, he at once set to work to make himself and the King's cause popular in a social way by giving a series of fine entertainments in the stately Province House.
To these entertainments were bidden all the Boston townsfolk who were loyal to the British crown. Amongst such, none were more prominent or made more welcome than Mr. Jeffrey Merridew and his pretty young niece, Sibyl.
Mr. Merridew was a stanch royalist, though he was by no means a violent hater of the rebels. Many of them were his old friends and neighbors; and his only brother, Dr. Ephraim Merridew,—Sibyl's father,—was a rebel at heart, though in far-away Barbadoes, where he was at that time engaged in business, he could not serve the rebel cause in person, as he would gladly have done. But he left behind him a son who, in full sympathy with his father's views, ranged himself boldly on the rebel side, as part and parcel of the American army.
A rebel relative in Barbadoes was not a matter to trouble oneself about greatly, but a rebel relative on the spot, so to speak,—for young Ephraim was only four miles away at the Cambridge rallying-ground,—was a different thing; and, amiable and easy-going as Mr. Jeffrey Merridew was disposed to be, his nephew's close proximity could not, under the peculiar circumstances, but be embarrassing and disturbing on occasions; for the young man, besides being his nephew, was Sibyl's brother, and Sibyl, as a member of a royalist's family,—for her father on his departure for Barbadoes had left his motherless girl in her uncle's charge,—could not, of course, be allowed free intercourse with one who had placed himself in an attitude of active hostility to the royal cause.
When Sibyl was apprised of this dictum, she at once made passionate protest against it. "What harm do the King's soldiers think poor Eph can do them by now and then paying a visit to his sister?" she asked her uncle scornfully.
"Harm? You are very young, Sibyl, and don't understand these things. Your brother has chosen very foolishly to join the rebel forces, and so has made himself one of our acknowledged enemies; and I never heard of declared enemies in time of war walking in and out of each other's houses like tame cats," answered Mr. Merridew, sarcastically.
"But Eph, such a boy as Eph, only nineteen, only two years older than I! What harm could he do now, more than he has ever done, by coming to his uncle's house as a visitor?" still persisted Sibyl, rather foolishly.
"What harm!" exclaimed Mr. Merridew, impatiently. "What a child you are, Sibyl! Why, his coming here would compromise me fatally with the royal government. I should be suspected of disloyalty, and do you think that he, your brother, could be in any such communication with us and fail to see and hear many things that might bring us disaster if reported to his officers?"
"You think Eph would be so mean as to tell tales?" exclaimed Sibyl, in high indignation.
"Tell tales!" repeated Mr. Merridew, flinging back his head with irrepressible laughter at Sibyl's ignorance. Why, my dear, the reporting of important facts, however gained in times of war, is part of war tactics; it is not called 'telling tales.'"
"And would you—would you, if you were in Ephraim's camp as a visitor,—would you—"
"Tell tales?" laughed Mr. Merridew. "Indeed I would, if I heard anything worth telling,—anything that I thought would save the cause I believed to be a righteous cause." Then, more seriously: "Why, Sibyl, it would be my duty to do it."
"Oh! oh!" cried Sibyl, "it is odious, odious, all this war business."
"Yes, I grant you that; but who is to blame for bringing this odious business upon us? Who but these foolish malcontents, these rebels, like—"
"Like my father and my brother," broke in Sibyl, hotly, as Mr. Merridew hesitated.
"Yes, like your father and your brother, I am sorry to say," concluded her uncle, gravely.
"No, no, no!" cried Sibyl, excitedly. "It is not they who are to blame. They are good and brave and wise. They only want justice and fair play. It is the King's folk who are to blame,—the King's folk who want to oppress the people with unjust taxes, that they may live in greater grandeur."
Mr. Merridew stared in silent astonishment at this unexpected outburst. Then, in a severer tone than his niece had ever heard from his lips, he said,—
"So this is the treasonable talk you have heard from your brother; these are the teachings that he has been instilling into you? Ah, it is none too soon that you are cut off from the influence of that headstrong boy."
"But it was my father who instilled these teachings into my brother. They are his principles, and they are my principles too!"
"Your principles!" and Mr. Merridew, his sense of humor immensely tickled at the sound of this fine word, that rolled off with such an assumption of dignity from those rosy young lips, burst into a great laugh. Yet then and there he said to himself, "That Jackanapes of a boy, to fill her head with this treasonable stuff! But we'll see, we'll see if we can't crowd all such stuff out with livelier things when we have those fine doings at the Province House Sir William is talking of. Her principles! The little parrot!" and he laughed again.