'em all killed for Thanksgiving. Come, I'm hungry as a bear."

"But," said Becca, grasping his jacket sleeve as they went, "I've just
promised 'em that they shall not be touched."

Jack's laugh set every turkey into motion, until the tree was all in a
flutter of excitement. He laughed again and again, before he could say
"What a little goose you are! Just as if turkeys understood a word you
said."

"But I understood if they didn't, and I should be telling my own self
a lie. No, not a turkey shall die. They shall all have a real good
Thanksgiving once in their lives."

Two days later, on the 18th of December, Thanksgiving Day came, the
turkeys were yet alive, and Becca Blackstone was happy.

The next day General Washington's eleven thousand men marched into
Valley Forge, and went out upon the cold, bleak hillsides, carrying
with them almost three thousand poor fellows, too ill to march, too
ill to build log huts, ill enough to lie down and die. Such a busy
time as there was for days and days. Farmer Blackstone felt a little
toryish in his thoughts, but the chance to sell logs and split slabs
so near home as Valley Forge was not likely to happen again, and he
worked away with strong good will to furnish building material. Jack
went every day to the encampment, and grew quite learned in the ways
of warlike men.

Becca staid at home with her mother, but secretly wished to see what
the great army looked like.

At last the final load of chestnut and walnut and oaken logs went up
to the hills from Mr. Blackstone's farm, and a great white snow fell
down over all Pennsylvania, covering the mountains and hills, the
soldiers' log huts, and the turkeys in the apple-tree. January came
and went, and every day affairs at the camp grew worse. Men were dying
of hunger and cold and disease. Stories of the sufferings of the men
grew strangely familiar to the inhabitants. Affairs that Winter would
not have been quite so hard at Valley Forge if the neighbors for miles
around had not been Tories. Now Becca Blackstone's mother was a New
England women, and in secret she bestowed many a comfort upon one
after another of her countrymen at the encampment. Her husband was
willing to sell logs and slabs and clay from his pits, but not a
farthing or a splinter of wood had he to bestow on the rebels.

At last, one January day, when Mr. Blackstone had gone to Philadelphia,
permission was given to Becca to accompany her mother and Jack to the