For Love of Country Read Online Free PDF

then whipped to a bloody pulp and strung up from a yardarm after he struck a king’s officer in defense of a shipmate. Ten years; yet those vivid memories persisted and still caused Richard’s soul to grieve.
    As shapes along Hingham Harbor began to resolve into distinct forms, Richard left his perch amidships and strode forward to the jib stay, squinting ahead toward Crow Point. It took him a moment to spot them, but yes, there they were, a short distance up on Otis Hill, just where he had expected to find them. He could see Katherine crouched low beside little Jamie, pointing to the packet and waving his hand for him in its general direction. Richard’s sister Lavinia stood next to them, returning his wave with one hand while trying to restrain Will with the other. Young Will. Going on five years now, more than two years older than Jamie, he looked and acted so much like his namesake that his grandmother in her dotage often confused him with her own dead son. He had the same Anglo-Saxon hair and eyes, the same lean and tapered body, the same restless, devil-may-care approach to life that over the years had triggered any number of cuts, scrapes, and bruises—and, once, a broken fibula. He was a handful. His mother was the first to admit that. But her face glowed with pride at the notice Will received from citizens of all ages and the precociousness and free spirit that others found charming and astonishing in one so young.
    As the packet was secured fore and aft at the dock, Will shook off his aunt’s grasp and bolted forward. Richard stepped onto the dock and walked toward him. Free of the docks and upon dry land, he dropped to a knee and wrapped one arm around Will while encouraging Jamie
with the other. Released from his mother’s grip if not her attentive eye, Jamie toddled up to his father. At length Richard stood and smiled at his wife. They came together lovingly yet discreetly, as was their custom when in public.
    â€œRichard,” Lavinia gushed, when it came her turn to embrace him, “welcome home! Mother and Father have invited you for supper. I know it’s getting late and you want to go home, but could you? Please? Annie and I can see to the boys,” referring to Richard’s other sister. “I promise we won’t keep you late.”
    Despite his deep fatigue and longing to be alone with his wife and sons, to decline an invitation from his parents was unthinkable. Besides, Richard reasoned, it would already have passed muster with Katherine.
    â€œI don’t see why not, Liv,” Richard replied. He raised his hat to several people passing by and welcoming him home. “Is Stephen here?”
    â€œNo. He couldn’t leave the business. But he asked me to send you his regards. I must leave tomorrow. Which is why I’m hoping to have some time with you tonight.”
    â€œThen let’s make it so.”
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    IT TURNED OUT, in fact, to be a late night. These days, a Cutler family gathering of such proportions was rare. Lavinia, at age seventeen, was married to Stephen Starbuck, a shopkeeper in Duxbury, and Anne, now in her early twenties, was engaged to Frederick Seymour, a gifted Harvard graduate who had insisted on postponing matrimony until he was further along in his medical career and able to support a wife and family in proper style. And with Caleb now following in Richard’s footsteps, he too was often at sea, in the Caribbean or the Atlantic or, recently, in the Mediterranean. So Thomas and Elizabeth Cutler were delighted to have this opportunity to regale their family with a healthy round of roast beef, garden-picked vegetables, Yorkshire pudding, bottles of Burgundy, and a day-old berry pie: a meal designed to keep the conversation lively.
    The mahogany-veneered Longcase clock in the parlor had chimed twelve times before Richard and Katherine finally took their leave and walked outside into the sticky, cricket-orchestrated night. The