Half a dozen questions and answers went back and forth between them, as between old acquaintances, near neighbors. Then the parlor door opened to let in Rachel Tarns and the "all muffled up" girl who had been in the sleigh with Maud. She did not speak to anybody, but went and sat down, silently, at the other window of the parlor.
"Guert," said Rachel, "sit thee down here, by me and Maud. Thee will talk only of what I bid thee, and thee will ask no foolish questions."
"All right," said Guert. "What is it you want me to say? Maud hasn't told me, yet, half o' what I want to know."
"If thee were older," she said, "thee would have more good sense. I have a reason that I will not tell thee. I wish thee to give me a full account of all thy dealings with that brave man, Nathan Hale. Thee saw him die, and there is no other that knoweth many things that are well known to thee."
"Thee must!" exclaimed Rachel. "Thee will not leave out a word that he spake or a deed that he did."
Something flashed brightly into the quick mind of Guert just then. He could not exactly shape it, but it came when he caught the sound of a low sob from under the veil of the girl at the other window. "I'll begin where I first saw him," he said.
He did not at all know after that how his boyish enthusiasm helped him to draw his word pictures of Captain Hale's daring scout work, of boat and land adventures by night and day, in company with him and Up-na-tan and Coco. He told it more rapidly and vividly as a kind of excitement spurred him. He did not know that beyond the half-open door of the next room his mother and several other persons were listening. Two of them had come in the cutter with Maud, and yet another sleigh had brought visitors to the Avery house. There were to be very loving and tenacious memories to treasure all that he was telling.
Guert came at last, sorrowfully, more slowly, to the tragic end of all in the old orchard near the East River. He told of the troops, and the crowd, and the tree, and he repeated the last words of the hero who perished there.
"That I can give but one life for Liberty!" he said, and there his own voice choked him, while a whisper from beyond the door said softly: "Glory! Glory! Glory!"