Sarah Bishop Read Online Free PDF Page A

it's no matter," Birdsall broke in. "What was the reason for such highhandedness?"
    "Do you ask me honestly?"
    "I do."
    "Well, Colonel Birdsall, my answer is that the pamphlet is a pack of lies."
    I was shocked by my father's blunt words, for he gained nothing by saying them. "My brother, Chad, joined the militia," I said. "He's a patriot soldier." Father was too proud and unbending ever to say this. "Chad is off somewhere fighting now."
    Birdsall said nothing. He acted as if Chad's being a soldier with the patriot militia made no difference to him.
His torch began to smoke and he held it out at arm's length, but its light still glinted on his upturned nose. It still looked like two black pistol barrels pointed straight at us.
    The horsemen seemed to catch a signal from Ben Bird-sail for something. They began to ride around in a circle. One of them lit a torch. The man held it while it sputtered and burst into flame. Then he flung it into a haymow beside the barn. Flames leaped high and caught the barn roof and licked their way swiftly upward to the ridgepole.
    I was unable to move or think. I stood there staring at the flames and screaming at Birdsall. I have no idea what I said. Then I ran past him, thinking to lead the cows out of the milking shed. I had taken no more than a dozen steps when the old mare staggered out of the barn. Her throat had been cut and she fell sprawling at my feet.
    Someone seized me from behind. Others bound my arms and legs. They pulled me off, away from the barn and the house, which was now also burning. They tied me to the trunk of a tree and left. One of them was Quarme.
    The house and barn and the cow shed and the pigsty were now one mass of sparks and leaping flames. I heard strange sounds, men yelling at each other and laughter. When the moon came up I worked myself free from the tree.
    I heard a wagon drive away. I heard horsemen galloping off up the hill. I kept moving through the grass toward our house, which was now only smoldering. I called out with all the strength I had left.
    A figure came toward me out of the leaping shadows, through the trees, across the meadow. It was like a figure you set up in the field to scare away crows. But it was not such a figure. It was my father, with his arms stretched out toward me. He was covered with tar and feathers. They looked like the same feathers that I had used to make our sleeping pillows.

7
    A FEW PEOPLE had come to see the fire burn our house and all the outbuildings. Most of them just stood around and watched, fearful of Birdsall and his gang. Only Mrs. Jessop helped us.
    She was a widow woman who lived down the road, two miles away. She came toward the last with her two strapping sons, after Birdsall had gone, and they lifted Father into their wagon. She was known as a neutral, not caring much whether the patriots won or those who
were loyal to the King, so she was willing to take us in. Besides, she was a Christian woman.
    As we drove into the Jessops', there was only a faint glow against the sky to mark where the house had been. A wind had come up. It smelled of bitter smoke. The boys carried Father inside and laid him on the floor in front of the fireplace.
    His hair hung down in dirty black strings. His nose and ears were stopped by great smears of tar. Birdsall's mob had stripped him down to his small clothes and tarred all his body, even daubed tar between his toes. Then they had strewn feathers so thick that he looked like some monstrous fowl that had come from the devil's hen coop.
    Mrs. Jessop sent the boys into the cellar for a barrel of lard, which we rubbed into the tar. We used up the barrel, half of another barrel, and three big sheets, rubbing, rubbing, before Father's body began to appear. Through it all he was silent.
    By the time dawn came and the sky clouded up, he was breathing only in gasps. One of the boys had gone off on horseback to fetch Mr. Laurence, the apothecary, but when he arrived, hours afterward, Father