alist, though he was by no means a violent
hater of the rebels. Many of them were his old friends and neighbors;
and his only brother, Dr. Ephraim Merridew,--Sibyl's father,--was a
rebel at heart, though in far-away Barbadoes, where he was at that time
engaged in business, he could not serve the rebel cause in person, as he
would gladly have done. But he left behind him a son who, in full
sympathy with his father's views, ranged himself boldly on the rebel
side, as part and parcel of the American army.

A rebel relative in Barbadoes was not a matter to trouble oneself about
greatly, but a rebel relative on the spot, so to speak,--for young
Ephraim was only four miles away at the Cambridge rallying-ground,--was
a different thing; and, amiable and easy-going as Mr. Jeffrey Merridew
was disposed to be, his nephew's close proximity could not, under the
peculiar circumstances, but be embarrassing and disturbing on occasions;
for the young man, besides being his nephew, was Sibyl's brother, and
Sibyl, as a member of a royalist's family,--for her father on his
departure for Barbadoes had left his motherless girl in her uncle's
charge,--could not, of course, be allowed free intercourse with one who
had placed himself in an attitude of active hostility to the royal
cause.

When Sibyl was apprised of this dictum, she at once made passionate
protest against it. "What harm do the King's soldiers think poor Eph can
do them by now and then paying a visit to his sister?" she asked her
uncle scornfully.

"Harm? You are very young, Sibyl, and don't understand these things.
Your brother has chosen very foolishly to join the rebel forces, and so
has made himself one of our acknowledged enemies; and I never heard of
declared enemies in time of war walking in and out of each other's
houses like tame cats," answered Mr. Merridew, sarcastically.

"But Eph, such a boy as Eph, only nineteen, only two years older than I!
What harm could he do now, more than he has ever done, by coming to his
uncle's house as a visitor?" still persisted Sibyl, rather foolishly.

"What harm!" exclaimed Mr. Merridew, impatiently. "What a child you are,
Sibyl! Why, his coming here would compromise me fatally with the royal
government. I should be suspected of disloyalty, and do you think that
he, your brother, could be in any such communication with us and fail to
see and hear many things that might bring us disaster if reported to his
officers?"

"You think