e town. So it was no wonder that
Rebecca was frightened and ready to listen to Lucia's plan to avert the
danger.

She did not know that her father and other men of the settlement were
already beginning to doubt the loyalty of the two captains to America's
cause.

"It will be easy enough to slip out when everybody is asleep," Lucia
replied to Rebecca's question. "We can meet at Mr. Foster's shop. If I
get there first I will wait, and if you get there before me you must
wait. As near ten o'clock as we can. And then it won't take us but a few
minutes to push the sapling out into the current. Just think, Rebby, we
will save the town, and nobody will ever know it but just us two."

Rebby sighed. She wished that Lucia's father had kept the secret to
himself. Besides, she was not sure that it was right to prevent the
liberty pole from being set up. But that the town should be fired upon
by a British man-of-war, and everyone killed, as Lucia assured her, when
it could be prevented by her pushing a pine sapling into the current of
the river, made the little girl decide that she would do as Lucia had
planned.

"All right. I will be there, at the blacksmith shop, when it strikes ten
to-night," she agreed, and the friends parted.

Rebecca walked slowly toward home, forgetting all the joy of the
afternoon; forgetting even that it was her fourteenth birthday, and that
a string of gold beads for her was probably on board the _Polly_.

Paul Foster towed the fine sapling to the very place that Lucia had
mentioned, and his father came to the shore and looked at it admiringly
as he helped Paul make it secure. "It is safely fastened and no harm can
come to it," Mr. Foster said after they had drawn the tree partly from
the water. Paul drew his canoe up on the beach, and taking the rabbits
in the stout canvas bag, started for home.

Anna and Luretta were both on the watch for him, and came running to
meet him. Anna now wore her every-day dress of gingham, and in her
eagerness to see the rabbits she had quite forgotten to try and behave
like Melvina Lyon.

"Why, it is a pity to separate the little creatures," Paul declared,
when Luretta told him that she had promised one to Anna. "See how close
they keep together. And this box is big enough for them both. And they
are so young they must be fed very carefully for a time."

"I know what we can do," declared Anna; "my rabbit can live here until
he is a little larger, and then my fathe