The winter finds us well, and still something to eat and it is the hoap of your mother and me that these Fue lines find you the saim. I have a change of hart about your staing in England until the rebellion should be over, as it now appeers God knows when that will be. Thare is talk on all sides that America must be a sepperate country by itself. Those who are suspecktit of wishing to come to a peaceabil arranjement with England are in danger of losing thare property, thare hoams and thare verry lives. Thare are some who suspeckt us because you still remane in England. Tharefour if you can come saif home with the speshie, I would say come. I will leave it to Peter’s judgement. God knows we need the speshie. Thare is no money to be had anywhere, only paper money not worth mutch. Everyboddy is pore except those who become ritch out of our distress, and thare is no money to provide our army with powder or unaforms or pay. The British burnt Falmouth, leaving near 2000 women and children without rooves, cloathes or food for the winter whitch was a hard one. Steven Nason is hoam from Quebeck, where Nathaniel Lord was killt, and 18 men from Arundel captivatit by the British, among them Noah Cluff, who workt in our shipyard. Steven says the men not killt or captivatit will go on fiting, even if they fite with nothing but axes.…

II

I STARED at my father’s small handwriting, straight and regular, but somewhat trembly. The orchestra was playing again, a rollicking air that the young bucks liked to sing—The World Turned Upside Down. I seemed to smell the lilacs that flank our front door in Arundel and to hear the babble of my sisters, as I so often heard it when they were young, playing with their dolls in the crotches of the gnarled apple tree beside the kitchen. Dimly I heard Nathaniel singing beneath his breath:

What happy golden days were those

When I was in my prime!
The lasses took delight in me,

I was so neat and fine;
I roved about from fair to fair,

Likewise from town to town,
Until I married me a wife

And the world turned upside down.

Phrases came out from the letter, striking into the back of my eyes, so that they ached a little. “… still something to eat … losing their property, their homes and their very lives … some who suspect us because you … the British burned Falmouth … the men not killed will go on fighting.…”

Nathaniel stopped his humming and looked at me anxiously. “What’s the matter? It’s not bad news, is it?”

Before I could answer, a figure loomed close beside us. It was the white-wigged man in black, and he bowed to us profoundly, as though we were personages.