ts were glad and the
British commander frightened.

A little after nine of the clock on Sunday morning, the 17th of
March, 1776, three Narragansett ponies stood before General
Washington's headquarters at Cambridge.

"Go with all possible speed to Governor Trumbull," said Washington,
delivering despatches to a well-known and trusted messenger, who
instantly mounted one of the ponies in waiting--Sweeping Wind by
name--and rode away, with many a sharp and inquiring glance back at
city and river and camp.

It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the messenger had not
paused since he set forth, longer than to give Sweeping Wind water to
drink, when, on the highway in the distance, he saw a red cloak
fluttering and flying before him.

It was Pussy Dean who wore the cloak. She was fifteen, fair and
lovely, brave and patriotic as any soldier in the land.

At first she was angry at the law by which she was denied a new cloak
that winter, made of English fabric, but when wrapped in the coveted
broadcloth of scarlet belonging to her mother she was more than
reconciled.

On this Sunday Pussy had been at the meeting-house on the hill, two
miles from home, at both morning and afternoon service, and afterward
had lingered a little to gather up bits of news from camp and town to
take home to her mother, and so it had happened that she was quite
alone on the highway.

Pussy chanced to look back to the summit of the hill down which she
had walked, and she saw the express coming.

"Now," she thought, "if I could only stop him! I wonder if I can't.
I'll try, and then," swinging her silken bag, "I shall have news to
carry home, the very latest, too."

As she swung the bag she suddenly remembered that she had something
within it to offer the rider.

"Of course I can," she went on saying to herself. "Post-riders are
always hungry, and it's lucky for him that I didn't have to eat my
dinner myself, to-day. Now, if I only had a basketful of clover heads
or roses for that pony, I'd find out all about Boston while it was
eating."

The only roses within sight were blooming on Pussy Dean's two cheeks
as Sweeping Wind came clattering his shoes against the frozen ground.
He would have gone straight on had a scarlet cloak not been planted,
like a fluttering standard, full in his pathway.

The rider gave the pony the slightest possible check, since he felt
sure that no red-coated soldier lurked behind the red cloak.

"Take som