with a fur hood on her head, her face, thrillingly
beautiful, set around with fluffs of wind-blown brown-gold hair.
Farnsworth was too young to be critical and too old to let his eyes
deceive him. Every detail of the fine sketch, with its steel-blue
background of sky, flashed into his mind, sharp-cut as a cameo.
Involuntarily he took off his hat.

Alice had come in by way of the postern. She mounted to the roof
unobserved, and made her way to the flag, just at the moment when Helm,
glad at heart to accept the easiest way out of a tight place, asked
Oncle Jazon to lower it.

Beverley was thinking of Alice, and when he looked up he could scarcely
realize that he saw her; but the whole situation was plain the instant
she snatched the staff from its place; for he, too, recollected what
she had said at the river house. The memory and the present scene
blended perfectly during the fleeting instant that she was visible. He
saw that Alice was smiling somewhat as in her most mischievous moods,
and when she jerked the staff from its fastening she lifted it high and
waved it once, twice, thrice defiantly toward the British lines, then
fled down the ragged roof-slope with it and disappeared. The vision
remained in Beverley's eyes forever afterward. The English troops,
thinking that the flag was taken down in token of surrender, broke into
a wild tumult of shouting.

Oncle Jazon intuitively understood just what Alice was doing, for he
knew her nature and could read her face. His blood effervesced in an
instant.

"Vive Zhorzh Vasinton! Vive la banniere d'Alice Roussillon!" he
screamed, waving his disreputable cap round his scalpless head. "Hurrah
for George Washington! Hurrah for Alice Roussillon's flag!"

It was all over soon. Helm surrendered himself and Beverley with full
honors. As for Oncle Jazon, he disappeared at the critical moment. It
was not just to his mind to be a prisoner of war, especially under
existing conditions; for Hamilton's Indian allies had some old warpath
scores to settle with him dating back to the days when he and Simon
Kenton were comrades in Kentucky.

When Alice snatched the banner and descended with it to the ground, she
ran swiftly out through the postern, as she had once before done, and
sped along under cover of the low bluff or swell, which, terrace-like,
bounded the flat "bottom" lands southward of the stockade. She kept on
until she reached a point opposite Father Beret's hut, to which she