of
those who had seen their last battle. As she passed slowly on, she saw
a friend of her husband's, Dilwyn by name, lying half buried under a
pile of debris. She would have passed him by but for a feeble movement
of his hand under the rubbish, seeing which, she stooped down, pushed
aside his covering, and felt for his pulse to see whether he were
still alive. As she bent down her quick eye saw a cannon near where
the wounded man lay, a heavy, cumbersome gun which the Continentals
had evidently left behind as being of a type too heavy to drag with
them on their hasty march to Morristown. Beside the cannon Molly also
saw a lighted fuse slowly burning down at one end. She had a
temptation as she looked at the piece of rope soaked in some
combustible, lying there ready to achieve its purpose. She stooped
over Dilwyn again, then she rose and went to the cannon, fuse in hand.
In a half-second the booming of the great gun shook the
battle-field--Molly had touched it off, and at exactly the right
moment, for even then the advance guard of Lord Cornwallis and his men
was within range!

At the sound of the cannon they halted abruptly, in alarm. The foe
must be lurking in ambush dangerously near them, for who else would
have set off the gun? They spent an hour hunting for the concealed
Continentals, while Molly picked Dilwyn up and laid him across her
shoulder as she had carried the wheat-bags in childhood, and coolly
walked past the British, who by that time were swarming across the
battle-field, paying no attention to the red-headed young woman
carrying a wounded soldier off the field, for what could she have to
do with discharging a gun!

Molly meanwhile bore her heavy burden across the fields for two miles
until she reached the farm, where she laid the wounded man gently down
on a bed which was blissfully soft to his aching bones, and where he
was cared for and nursed as if he had been Molly's own kin. When at
last he was well again and able to ride away from the farm, he
expressed his admiration for his nurse in no measured terms, and there
came to her a few days later a box of fine dress goods with the
warmest regards of "one whose life you saved." As she looked at the
rich material, Molly smoothed it appreciatively with roughened hand,
then she laid the bundle away among her most cherished possessions,
but making use of it never entered her mind--it was much too handsome
for that!

Every hour the British troops were