“Count your threads, Patience, child. You will do well to give better heed to your sewing than to the window. Methinks your eyes have been following the garden path over often the last half hour, and your work has suffered the while.

“Why, when I was a lass in Devon I had stitched six samplers before I was your age; and one of them had the entire Lord’s prayer upon it embroidered in letters of red so small that your grandame had to don her spectacles in order to spell it out.

“Ah, well, the girls of to-day are catching the spirit of the times—revolt against the old order and small patience with the new. I must be off, Patience, and across the orchard to Mistress Edwards’ with a bowl of curds. She has a mind that they cure her gout. Do you attend your work while I am gone. The sampler is almost finished. I can read the text at the top in spite of its crooked letters, dear child:

“‘A Soft Answer Turneth Away Wrath.’

“Here are all the letters of the alphabet, too, and now it remains only for you to embroider your name in the cross-stitch. Measure your stitches with great care, for you will likely begin it so near the border that you will have small space left for Arnold.

“I shall be back by tea time.” Mistress Arnold stooped to touch with one thin, white hand, stripped of all its jewels, the bowed, brown head of the little girl who sat by the window sewing.

“If you finish the sampler by five o’clock, you may go out in the garden and play. Oh—”

Mistress Arnold turned in the doorway, and pulled from the green silk reticule which hung at her side, a long iron key.

“I will leave the key to the barn in your charge, Patience, and on no account give it to any one until I return. Your father tells me that his store of powder and shot is increasing daily, and we are likely to need these before long.”

Mistress Arnold sighed as she stepped over the threshold and took her way—a tall, straight figure in gray crinoline—between the pink clouds that the apple blooms made, and then out of sight.

Small Patience Arnold, a little brown-eyed lass who had seen eight summers in the quaint, white-walled town of Lexington, watched her mother. Then she leaned back in the stiff, wooden chair that was so much too high for her, drawing a weary little sigh. It was very dull, indeed, and stupid to stay in the bare kitchen. All outdoors, the first bees, the robins, and the perfume of the apple trees called her. Oh, if she might only drop her sewing to the floor, and run out to the garden, darting in and out among the trees like a bluebird in her straight frock of indigo-dyed homespun. If she might only sing in her sweet, clear voice, above the hum of bees and birds, the songs that her mother knew—the songs of merry old England where every one was happy, and everything was gay!

But, no, she must not go. There was the square of rough cloth in her hand, and the sticky needle, and the thread that would knot in spite of Patience’s care. Every little girl in Lexington had finished a sampler, and some of them two, by the time they were nine. She must hurry, for the afternoon was wearing away. Soon the sun would drop behind the orchard. Such a long name it was to sew—Patience Arnold.

Patience took up her needle again and began to count the stitches and embroider the letters, P. A. T. There were so many of the letters, and they were very crooked, for all the world like the new minutemen whom her father drilled on the village green when it was dusk. No one saw the minutemen march and countermarch, and no one could hear their feet in the soft grass. Patience laughed to herself, a merry little trill of a laugh, as she bent over the letters of her work.

“You are Mistress Anderson’s lad who has such long legs and thinks he will be the captain of the militia some day.”

Patience pointed to the A.

“And you—” She put her needle in the T.

But a long shadow lay across the doorsill. There were other shadows on the grass outside. Where had they come from? Why, the orchard was full of soldiers. One stood, even now, in front of Patience—a most gallant gentleman in scarlet broadcloth and gold lace, holding his cocked hat in his hand and smiling down at the little girl.

“So the bumpkins of this little town of Lexington, too, have taken upon themselves the gentle art of soldiering. It is high time that his Majesty interfered.”

The man seemed to speak to himself. Then he bent so low over the little girl in her straight-backed chair that the gilt fringe which dangled from his epaulets brushed Patience’s cheek.

“Such a pretty little lass, and so industrious, as she sits alone in this great house—”

He paused, watching Patience’s trembling little brown fingers. She was frightened by this emissary of the King. Then he continued, “I would ask shelter for my men.”

He pointed to a score of soldiers in red coats who swarmed the dooryard now, laughing, brawling, and trampling on Mistress Arnold’s beds of savory herbs.

“The day is warm, and we have had a long march from Boston town. I would that my men might lie and rest a space on the cool hay of your barn, my little lady. We have tried the door, but we find it barred, and the key is missing from the padlock. Will you give me the key, little maid?”

Patience bent lower over her work as the last words came from the man’s lips. Reaching in her homespun pocket for the key which her mother had given her, she clasped it in her hand and held it underneath the sampler as she stitched the letters once more. For a second she did not speak. It seemed as if her throat was burning. Her lips were dry with fear. Then she looked up, smiling a wistful little smile.

“No, kind sir. I can not give you the key.”

“Oho, so the little lady is stubborn.”

The man crossed to the door and motioned to the waiting soldiers outside. In a second they had obeyed his summons, swarming Mistress Brewster’s clean kitchen and covering the spotless floor with the dust of the high road.

“Search the house!” commanded their leader. “Yonder stubborn girl is tongue-tied, and stubborn. She will neither give up the key, nor tell me where it is. Overturn the chests of drawers; tear up the carpets, break down the doors, spare nothing, I say, but bring me the key of yonder barn.”

No sooner were the words spoken than the work of pillage began. Sounds of doors and hinges wrenched from their places, the tramp of rough boots on the floor above her head, the rattle of chests told the frightened little Patience that the work of searching the house had begun. It seemed to her that the key would burn its way straight through her palm, so hot it was. Her hands trembled, and her eyes filled with tears so that she could scarcely see her needle. But still she stitched, never leaving her chair, nor lifting her white little face.

The soldier who had given the command remained in the kitchen pacing restlessly up and down, his arms folded, and a frown deepening on his forehead.

“P. A. T. I. E. N.”—Patience was nearing the edge of the sampler, and it was with difficulty that she stitched because of the key that lay underneath the cloth. The letters were, indeed, crooked and straggling, and lacking the precision of even those that spelled the text. There was no sound in the room, now, save the ticking of a tall clock and the tread of the soldier’s feet.

Suddenly the soldier in command stopped in front of Patience’s chair and laid a heavy hand on her little bare, brown arm. He spoke, and the words were full of anger.

“Enough of this nonsense! Give me the key, I say. I will have it!”

Patience slipped out of her chair and down to the floor, holding her sampler, covering the hidden key, as high as the man’s eyes. He loosed his grasp upon her arm, looking at her in wonder. Such a little lass, in her straight blue frock, and not as tall as his own little girl in England. She had the same soft eyes, though, and the same low, sweet voice.

“I would gladly give you what you wish, sir,” she began bravely, “but I promised my mother I would deliver the key to no one until she returned. Look!” She held the sampler still higher. “I am stitching my name. Is it not a stupid task on such a pretty day?”

“A soft answer turneth away wrath.” The man read the text at the top of the sampler. Then he looked out of the window and farther than the apple trees.

“It is indeed neatly stitched, little lass,” he said. “My own Elizabeth is even now making her sampler, and wetting it with tears until I return to her, overseas.”

He gave a quick command to his men, who filed down the stairs, empty handed, and into the garden. Then he raised his hat in salute, and followed them as they marched slowly down the road and farther than Patience could see.

“My little girl—my Patience—are you safe?”

It was Mistress Arnold who ran across the orchard and into the kitchen, clasping the trembling little lass in her arms. “We saw the red coats from Mistress Brewster’s window and knew that they had been here. But you are unharmed—and the guns—the powder?”

“I spoiled my sampler, mother,” Patience gave a sobbing laugh as she held up her work with the crookedly stitched ending, and the unfinished name. “It is as you feared. I started my name too near the border and there is no room to finish it, but”—she held out the precious bit of iron, “here is the key.”