ting
dooryard in the village. In it, in bewildering confusion, were old
sleighs, pungs, horse rakes, hogsheads, settees without backs,
bed-steads without heads, in all stages of disability, and never the
same on two consecutive days. Mrs. Simpson was seldom at home, and even
when she was, had little concern as to what happened on the premises. A
favorite diversion was to make the house into a fort, gallantly held by
a handful of American soldiers against a besieging force of the British
army. Great care was used in apportioning the parts, for there was no
disposition to let anybody win but the Americans. Seesaw Simpson was
usually made commander-in-chief of the British army, and a limp and
uncertain one he was, capable, with his contradictory orders and his
fondness for the extreme rear, of leading any regiment to an inglorious
death. Sometimes the long-suffering house was a log hut, and the brave
settlers defeated a band of hostile Indians, or occasionally were
massacred by them; but in either case the Simpson house looked, to
quote a Riverboro expression, "as if the devil had been having an
auction in it."

Next to this uncommonly interesting playground, as a field of action,
came, in the children's opinion, the "secret spot." There was a velvety
stretch of ground in the Sawyer pasture which was full of fascinating
hollows and hillocks, as well as verdant levels, on which to build
houses. A group of trees concealed it somewhat from view and flung a
grateful shade over the dwellings erected there. It had been hard
though sweet labor to take armfuls of "stickins" and "cutrounds" from
the mill to this secluded spot, and that it had been done mostly after
supper in the dusk of the evenings gave it a still greater flavor. Here
in soap boxes hidden among the trees were stored all their treasures:
wee baskets and plates and cups made of burdock balls, bits of broken
china for parties, dolls, soon to be outgrown, but serving well as
characters in all sorts of romances enacted there,--deaths, funerals,
weddings, christenings. A tall, square house of stickins was to be
built round Rebecca this afternoon, and she was to be Charlotte Corday
leaning against the bars of her prison.

It was a wonderful experience standing inside the building with Emma
Jane's apron wound about her hair; wonderful to feel that when she
leaned her head against the bars they seemed to turn to cold iron; that
her eyes were no longer Rebecca Randall's b