“Same with us that live in big houses and have servants. We only talk with others like ourselves, who have comfortable homes and plenty to eat. We forget what poorer people think, and it’s next to impossible to make ourselves think the way they do. You’ve been away so long you’ve forgot how some people feel about England. There never was anything like it! They’re all a-boil inside. They won’t have the English back! They just won’t have ’em back! They say England wants to run this country the way a man runs a mill: wants to use it for nothing but making money for the owner: regards the people in it as no better than mill-stones, to be worn smooth for England and then thrown into the creek.”

“It’s the truth,” I said. “The English think we’re just rabble! They call us that—rabble! I’ve heard ’em!”

“What’s that got to do with my letter?” Nathaniel persisted.

“Why,” my father explained patiently, “those that hate England feel everyone’s got to think the way they do. Everyone’s got to. They’re watching all the time to make sure nobody thinks different. Knowing I had two sons in England, they watched me. They watched your mother and your sisters, too. When they couldn’t find out what they wanted to know, they opened letters.”

He took his spectacles from his pocket and perched them on his nose: reached into a compartment of his desk to draw out a soiled square of paper.

“Here,” he said. “They opened this one, and right away they read this that Nathaniel wrote:

“There’s no place like London, with its fine theatres and palaces, and soldiers parading in the park. It’s a city that makes you feel at home. Peter and I went down to Salisbury and saw where Great-great grandfather Merrill lived before he went to Ipswich a hundred and fifty years ago. We found Merrills living there still—relatives. Long ago their name was DeMerle. They were Huguenots who came from Auvergne—Place de Dembis—at the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. One of them, Sir Peter, was a captain in the English army, and was knighted in 1634.”

My father folded the letter and looked at Nathaniel over his spectacles.

“What’s wrong with that!” Nathaniel demanded indignantly. “Damn ’em! Who gave ’em the right to open my letters!”

“Right or not, they opened this one,” my father said. “Then they called me before the Committee of Safety and questioned me.”

“About what?” Nathaniel asked.

“About you and Peter.”

“What did they want to know?”

“Whether you were well disposed to the cause of Liberty, after being in England and finding there was no place like London.”

“Liberty!” Nathaniel exclaimed. He laughed. “Where’s the liberty in having your letters opened! It’s almost enough, I should think, to make you want never to see this place again!”