mp that could brighten the
house front and serve to guide to its porch. The last lamp was just
alight when Polly's guests began to arrive. She half expected
soldiers, and refugees came. It seemed to her that every family in New
Haven must be related to every family in Waterbury--so many women and
children came in to rest themselves before continuing the journey and
"to wait until the moon should rise," for the evening was very dark,
and oh! the stories that each fresh arrival brought! They filled the
group that came in to listen with fear and agony. New Haven was very
near to Waterbury in that day. The inhabitants there were closely
connected with the inhabitants here, and their peril and distress was
a common woe. Little Stiles Hotchkiss cried himself to sleep that
night, fearing that one of the three Hotchkisses, reported killed,
might be his father.

Polly acted well her part. To the children she gave fresh milk; to
their elders she explained that the militia had taken their supplies,
while she made place to receive two or three invalids who could go no
further, by giving up her own room.

"You'll let me lie on the floor in your room, Aunt Melicent, I know,"
she said, "for the poor lady is so old and so feeble; I'm most sure
she is a hundred. She came in a chaise and wanted to get up to Parson
Leavenworth's, but she just can't. She can't hold up her head."

It was near midnight when the refugees set forth for the Center, Mr.
Porter himself acting as guide. After that time, the sleepy boys and
the entire household having taken themselves to bed, the old house was
left to the night, with its silence and its chill dampness that always
comes up from the river, that goes on "singing to us the same bonny
nonsense," despite our cheer or our sorrow. Again, and yet again
through the night, doors opened and two mothers stepped out in the
moonlight to listen, hoping--hoping to hear sound of the coming of the
boys, but only the lone cry of the whippoorwill was borne on the air.

"'Pears like," said Phyllis to Mrs. Porter in the morning, "the
whippoorwills had lots to say last night; talked all night so's you
couldn't hear nothing 'tall."

"Phyllis," said Mrs. Porter, "there was nothing else to hear, but we
shall know soon."

Polly came down, bringing her checked linen apron full of eggs for
breakfast. "I thought, mother," she said, "that you'd leave yourself
without an egg yesterday, so I looked out. Isn't it handy to hav