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Show Page 210 I knew not whether I could keep that promise. On the morrow the men were to march to Anne and Cisly's. I feared I was not yet done with mourning. A fine rain was falling when the column of men trudged away from the fort before dawn the following morning. Along with their muskets, they carried shovels and spades, for it was thought that only the dead awaited them. All day I wandered restlessly about the fort, unable to settle to any work, though, indeed, there was little work to be done outside of grinding corn. Daisy and Bunny were dead, so there was no butter to churn. There was no garden to plant, no fields to hoe. For even if it had been safe to venture outside the fort and into the nearby fields, most of our seed had been burned. What little we had found, we were forced to eat I had chewed my fingernails till they bled ere the men appeared from the forest to the north, no doubt having marched all the way round to the Staples' land that lay five miles in that direction. I raced to the gate and waited, thinking that it seemed I had ever stood thus, waiting with fluttering heart for news of who had lived and who had died. The men entered, bearing over their shoulders a few sacks of peas, a few barrels of corn that had survived the fires, |
