Free The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope

court-martialed."
    "General Washington isn't going to throw you out of the command."
    "What else can he do? The situation can't go on as it is much longer. I expect that delegations from the county trot down to headquarters every week with petitions for my removal signed by hundreds of disgusted citizens. If he'd only let me have more men, I might be able to smash Peaceable by mere brute force or at least scare his secret Tory playmates into staying home and behaving themselves. But there simply aren't the men to spare. They're all needed at the Hudson River forts and the county regiments were cut to pieces on the Minisink this summer. I've written to ask, but it'll be three days at least before I can hear, and even then I know what the answer's going to be."
    The three days dragged wearily by, and then became four, and then five, and finally six. On the morning of the sixth Dick rode over to Goshen with some county officials about the signal-fire system, and I went on an errand to a neighboring farm and did not get back till almost noon. As I passed the camp in the South Meadow, I noticed an unusual amount of activity going on — more fires were being built; men were bustling about with forage and blankets, talking excitedly; and scores of dusty horses led by unfamiliar rangers were milling around by the pond as they waited their turn for the water. Wondering, with a sudden lift of my heart, if General Washington really had sent the reinforcements at last, I stopped one of the strangers as he went by the gate and asked him the question.
    "Yes, miss, we're rangers too, same company, but I don't know whether we're going to be stopping on here or not. Colonel Van Spurter could tell you — he's up at the house."
    Colonel Van Spurter? I wondered as I went on down the drive and up the steps of the front porch. Dick had said that General Washington had once thought of giving the command to an Ogden Van Spurter at the beginning of the whole trouble. Perhaps — but oh, surely not! surely not! It would be too cruel after the way Dick had worked, and the disgrace he was feeling already, and his pride — It was not even as if Colonel Van Spurter were an officer of any sense or capacity. I could still hear Dick's voice saying ruefully only the night before: "If it just doesn't have to be Sputters! You might as well put Peaceable Sherwood in the charge of the village idiot and be done with it."
    Colonel Van Spurter, to do him justice, did not really look very much like the village idiot, but he did most unmistakably look like a large, heavy young man with a great sense of his own importance. I found him alone in the dining parlor by the sideboard, calmly helping himself to an apple from a dish of fruit I had put there that morning on the chance that Dick might remember to eat something in passing. He was gazing around him as he munched with the air of a man who was expecting to stay a long time and was wondering whether the beds and the cooking were likely to prove tolerable. He seemed, on the whole, rather pleased with the furniture and the apple and the view from the window. When I came forward and introduced myself, he was kind enough to seem rather pleased with me, too.
    "Well, well, well, so this is Miss Shipley!" he said, waggishly. "I can see now why Dick Grahame hasn't been in any particular hurry to finish his business in these parts. The gay dog! You could always trust old Dick Grahame to find himself the tightest house and the prettiest petticoat anywhere on the day's march."
    "That's very good of you," I murmured civilly. "Please don't hesitate to help yourself to that bunch of grapes just because I've come into the room."
    "Well, I don't mind if I do," said the gallant colonel, winking at me over the bunch of grapes with his mouth full. "I can see you're one of those girls who really knows how to take good care of a man — eh?" He sucked a grape rather noisily and spat out the seeds into the hollow of his hand.
    It was