"I suppose that we shall return this evening," she said after the
greetings and inquiries were over and Mr. Royal had explained that in
a few minutes all that he had come for could be said to Mr. Archdale.
Although after thinking the matter over carefully he had decided that it
was Elizabeth, filled with the spirit of her warning, who should herself
give her message to Archdale yet he spoke to Pepperell as if she had
accompanied him. And when the General said that he had already sent for
the young man, Mr. Royal told him that his daughter had that in her
pocket for him which, if he knew, it would lend wings to his feet.

"A letter from our charming Mistress Katie," pronounced Pepperell,
smiling at Elizabeth.

"Yes," she said, and after a little repeated her question of their
returning that evening.

"Yes, I know," said the General. He waited a moment, and then added.
"But if you come among soldiers, you will feel the exactions of war.
There are those dispatches, you remember, not even read yet" and he
touched the breast of his coat, "because I was in such haste to pay my
respects to you. Now, I should like to send an answer to these, and I am
afraid I shall not have it ready before to-morrow morning; the Commodore
will probably write me to-night and I want to include whatever news he
may have. Will to-morrow do?"

"Oh, yes, I shall be glad to help the cause, even so little as that,"
she answered. Pepperell thanked her for her words, and ignored the look
of disappointment that he had seen flit across her face before she
spoke.

"We have been putting up a fascine battery within two hundred and
fifteen yards of the west gate," he said, "It will open fire in an hour,
and then you will see a cannonade! We have two forty-two pounders there,
it will be no child's play." Nothing had then hinted at the Titanic
scale of modern war engines. Elizabeth's eyes dilated, but she said
nothing. The General sat beside her, and asked how things were going on
in Boston, asked about his friends, and many trifling details that
neither dispatches nor letters would give him, and that she wondered
that he had heart for in the scenes going on about him. Then he told
them many particulars of the siege and especially of the terrible labor
of dragging the heavy guns from the shore into position, interspersing
all this narrative of the life-and-death struggles with amusing
anecdotes and bright comments, until she was amazed, and in listening