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sacks.
    Then all at once we heard horses approaching. Leaping up, I saw a group of uniformed men come cantering down the road toward us. My mama did not move. She asked were they American troopers and I said I thought they were. We were each then taken up on a trooper’s horse and set off west toward Morristown, leaving the potato wagon far behind us as the rain began to come down. Never had we had such an escort before. Lizzie’s temper was much improved despite the weather. Thirty minutes later we rode into the American camp, wheremy mama was at once taken to the tent of General Washington himself.
    When we left the next day once more we rode with the troopers. They brought us down to within a few miles of the ferry landing on the Jersey shore. It was a cold, raw day, I remember, and my mama was silent. It was clear to me that something of far greater import than usual had occurred and that it was to do with her conversation with General Washington. But she did not speak of it. I felt sure that some momentous action was imminent. Perhaps that very night, I thought, I should again see a great conflagration, but this time in the harbor, with shuddering explosions and ships afire with blazing spars and sails of flame and burning British sailors leaping screaming into the water—!
    It was afternoon when we climbed on to the pier on the Manhattan shore. There we were met by the army captain who had issued my mama her pass, also three redcoats. My mama produced from within her clothing a crumpled sheet of paper which she then unfolded and pointed to his own scrawled signature. He asked her why we had traveled to Newark and she replied, as she always did, that wehad been to visit her sister’s family, for her mother was in poor health.
    The captain stared at the pass once more. We stood at the end of the pier with our basket of vegetables, shivering in the damp wind coming off the harbor. Never before had our pass been scrutinized with such close attention. I tried not to show my anxiety though I know now that by the very effort I revealed much. But I was a child! What did they expect of me? All at once the officer turned to me and spoke in a loud voice.
    —Boy, is this true?
    I looked at my mama and for a moment I was brave.
    —Yes, sir, I said.
    He stared hard at me.
    —Tell me what is wrong with your grandmother.
    I said nothing. The captain sank down so his eyes were on a level with mine.
    —What is your name? he said.
    —Edmund.
    —What is wrong with your grandmother, Edmund? You have just visited her in Newark, have you not?
    I was not brave anymore, I was confused and frightened by this loud man with his fierce blueeyes! All I could think was that if I told him a lie he would lock me up in a dark stinking hole without my mama. I covered my mouth with my hand and as I did so I saw something flare in his eyes. He stood up. My mama stepped between us. She pushed me behind her and drew close to the officer.
    —You are frightening the child, she said quietly. He does not trust you. We have had a long journey, sir. We want to go home.
    But no, he would not let us go home, and now Lizzie realized the gravity of our situation. We were to go with him; and not an hour has passed from that day to this that I have not been tormented with the thought that it was
all my fault
—that it was my behavior on the dock that day which aroused the officer’s suspicion, and set in motion my mama’s destruction—
    And the tapping at my door starts up again as it does whenever this idea begins to circle in my mind, and try as I might I cannot ignore it but must cross the room and find
again
that nobody is there, unless of course it is Death himself who comes knocking, and given that the cholera encroaches even now, his presence would be no surprise. Indeed, it would be welcome.

    We sat on a hard bench in the back of a wagon and the captain escorted us on horseback. My poor mama, she showed nothing, but what torment she must have