ed, had surrounded the meeting-house, and were
pouring volley after volley at its doors and windows. Then for the first
time Betty thought of the officer's message, and remembered that the
safety of the Americans depended upon her alone, for her father was
away, no neighbor within reach, and without powder she knew they could
not resist long.

Could she save them? All her stern Quaker blood rose at the thought, and
stealing softly to the paddock behind the barn, she saddled Daisy and
led her through the bars into the wood road, which opened into the
highway just around the bend. Could she but pass the pickets without
discovery there would be little danger of pursuit; then there would be
only the long ride of eight miles ahead of her.

Just before the narrow wood road joined the broader highway Betty
mounted Daisy by means of a convenient stump, and starting off at a
gallop, had just turned the corner when a voice shouted "Halt!" and a
shot whistled past her head. Betty screamed with terror, and bending
over, brought down her riding-whip with all her strength upon Daisy,
then, turning for a moment, saw three troopers hurriedly mounting.

Her heart sank within her, but, beginning to feel the excitement of the
chase, she leaned over and patting Daisy on the neck, encouraged her to
do her best. Onward they sped. Betty, her curly hair streaming in the
wind, the color now mounting to, now retreating from her cheeks, led by
five hundred yards.

But Daisy had not been used for weeks, and already felt the unusual
strain. Now they thundered over Naaman's Creek, now over Concord, with
the nearest pursuer only four hundred yards behind; and now they raced
beside the clear waters of Beaver Brook, and as Betty dashed through its
shallow ford, the thud of horse's hoofs seemed just over her shoulder.

Betty, at first sure of success, now knew that unless in some way she
could throw her pursuers off her track she was surely lost. Just then
she saw ahead of her a fork in the road, the lower branch leading to the
Brandywine, the upper to the Birmingham Meeting-house. Could she but get
the troopers on the upper road while she took the lower, she would be
safe; and, as if in answer to her wish, there flashed across her mind
the remembrance of the old cross-road which, long disused, and with its
entrance hidden by drooping boughs, led from a point in the upper road
just out of sight of the fork down across the lower, and through the
val