I feel as if I couldn't eat a thing, hungry as I am, mother, when I
remember dear old daddy at Valley Forge. They say that General
Washington himself has scant rations, and men die every day from
hunger. What'll be the end of it all?"

"Perhaps the stories belie the truth" (there hadn't been a word from the
absent soldier for months), said the mother, trying to keep back the
tears. "But look--look, Jack, at the window!" with almost a shriek.
"That face! What is it?"

The cold had begun to coat the glass with a crystal veil. Somebody stood
out there, and by melting the frost with the breath, now looked in on
them with shadowy features and gleaming eyes. Jack stared with open
mouth at the apparition. Then, with a wild whoop, and a spring which
almost upset the table, he yelled, "Why, don't you see it's daddy come
home?" and executed a war-dance of joy to the door.

Colonel Lockett was almost eaten up by his wife and children before he
was permitted to retaliate on the savory dishes of the supper table. He
had been all day in an open boat on the water (the unsuspecting Jack had
had a glimpse of him), and without food since daybreak.

"'Twas unsafe to cross the enemy's lines by land," he said, with a sigh
of delicious contentment, sitting before the great blazing crackling
hearth and looking into the loving faces of his young people and their
mother. "To get through even as far as Sandy Hook was a narrow shave of
capture. So, then, 'twas off uniform and on fisherman's suit, lent me by
a kind heart, who also gave me a cast in his dory to the Great South
Bay. Thence across Long Island to Glen Cove, and 'twas easy there to
find a sail-boat to fetch me home over the Sound."

"And you didn't know of the British ship _Tartar_ lying off the place
here?" said Jack, with wonder and alarm.

"Not till too late. And having thus ventured, 'twould have been a
coward's job to have gone back," answered the father, with a smile.

"But," said Mrs. Lockett, with a face as white as the snow without,
"you're not in uniform. Should you be taken?" Even the youngest of the
children knew what that meant, and they shuddered with the vision of him
they loved standing with the fatal noose about his neck amidst the jeers
of a brutal soldiery.

"Tut, tut, good wife," quoth the Colonel, gayly. "These be but soldiers'
risks, and, trust me, the hemp you fear is not yet spun. And now away
with grewsome thoughts. Tell me how you make matters here, fo