HE THREW HIMSELF UPON THE GROUND. See page 136

ROGER DAVIS
LOYALIST

BY

FRANK BAIRD

WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

Toronto
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY LIMITED

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

HE THREW HIMSELF UPON THE GROUND . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

SHE MOTIONED ME TO MY FATHER'S EMPTY CHAIR

'THAT MAN,' I SAID, TURNING AND FACING THE 'COLONEL,'
WHO SAT PALE AND SHIVERING

'THIS IS NOVA SCOTIA,' HE SAID, POINTING TO THE MAP

Roger Davis, Loyalist

Chapter I

The Outbreak

It was Duncan Hale, the schoolmaster, who first brought us the news. When he was half-way from the gate to the house, my mother met him. He bowed very low to her, and then, standing with his head uncovered—from my position in the hall—I heard him distinctly say, 'Your husband, madam, has been killed, and the British who went out to Lexington under Lord Percy have been forced to retreat into Boston, with a loss of two hundred and seventy-three officers and men.'

The schoolmaster bowed again, one of those fine, sweeping, old-world bows which he had lately been teaching me with some impatience, I thought; then without further speech he moved toward the little gate. But I had caught a look of keen anxiety on his face as he addressed my mother. Once outside the garden, he stooped forward, and, breaking into a run, crouching as he went as though afraid of being seen, he soon disappeared around a turn in the road.

My mother stood without speaking or moving for some moments. The birds in the blossom-shrouded trees of the garden were shrieking and chattering in the flood of April sunlight; I felt a draught of perfumed air draw into the hall. Then a mist that had been heavy all the morning on the Charles River, suddenly faded into the blue, and I could see clearly over to Boston, three miles away.

I shall not soon forget the look on my mother's face as she turned and came toward me. I have wondered since if it were not born of a high resolve then made, to be put into effect later. She was not in tears as I thought she would be. There were no signs of grief on her face, but instead her whole countenance seemed illuminated with a strangely noble look. I was puzzled at this; but when I remembered that my mother was the daughter of an English officer who was killed while serving under Wolfe at Quebec, I understood.

In a firm voice she repeated to me the words I had already heard, then she passed up the stairs. In a few moments I heard her telling my two sisters Caroline and Elizabeth—they were both younger than myself—that it was time to get up. After that I heard my mother go to her own room and shut the door. In the silence that followed this I fell to thinking.

Was my father really dead? Could it be that the British had been repulsed? Duncan Hale had been