Free My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier

rum.”
    â€œThen you know where the dock is. Now listen carefully. Just before you get to the dock there’s a road off to the left. Down the road about a mile there’s a house with white siding and green trim. Knock there. Ask for Mr. Burr. And give him this letter. He’ll give you a shilling. Right? Now repeat it back.”
    I did so; then I tucked the letter down inside my shirt and left, slipping out the back way and through his pasture before I cut back onto the road. The sun was now up and was rising over the meadowland to the east. I judged it to be about seven o’clock. The sun wouldn’t go down again until around seven at night, which gave me twelve hours—plenty of time if I walked along swiftly. In fact, if everything went well, I could easily be back by the middle of the afternoon, which might even give me time to catch a few shad to show Father. I hid the fishing tackle behind a stone wall just in case.
    I moved at a brisk pace. Despite the sun, the air was morning cool and fresh. It was nice weather for walking and I felt excited, notscared. I was worried about dropping the letter, though, and I kept touching it to make sure that it hadn’t fallen out of my shirt. After a while I came to the place where the road from the Center runs into the Fairfield Road. I stopped for a minute to rest and to see if I couldn’t find a better way to stow the letter so it would be safe. I was trying to find a way to hitch it under my belt when I heard somebody shout. I looked up. Betsy Read was coming down the road from the Center.
    â€œHello, Tim,” she said.
    â€œHello.”
    She came up to me. “What’re you doing here? What’s that?”
    Hastily I shoved the letter back into my shirt.
    â€œNothing,” I said.
    â€œWell it isn’t nothing,” she said. “It’s a letter.” She smiled. “You’ve got a girlfriend.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I have to go. I’m kind of in a hurry.”
    â€œI’ll walk with you,” she said. “Where are you going?”
    It made me nervous having her walk along with me. She wasn’t suspicious of anything, and I didn’t think she would go down to the tavern and tell Father she’d seen me; but if she should happen accidentally to bump into him, she might say something. “I’m going fishing,” I said.
    â€œFishing? On the Fairfield Road?”
    â€œThere are shad in the millstream.”
    â€œWell you’re going in the wrong direction,” she said,
    â€œOh. Well I know that, I was up there already, but there weren’t any shad so I’m going someplace else now.” I was blushing from telling so many lies. Lying is a sin.
    â€œDon’t you want to know where I’m going?” she said.
    â€œSure,” I said.
    â€œI’m going down to Horseneck. Guess what doing.”
    It was better to have her talk than me, because it saved me lying.
    â€œI don’t know. Shopping for cloth?”
    â€œGuess again.”
    Horseneck was down on Long Island Sound, too, but muchfurther south than Fairfield. I couldn’t figure out what she might be doing there. “Visiting your cousins?”
    â€œI don’t have any cousins down there.”
    â€œWhat then?”
    â€œSeeing Sam,” she said.
    I stopped dead in the road. “Sam? Is he in Horseneck?”
    â€œI shouldn’t tell you that. You’re a Tory. Anyway he’s not there anymore, they’ve gone someplace else.”
    We weren’t walking along anymore, but facing each other. I was all excited. “How do you know Sam’s there?”
    â€œMr. Heron told me.”
    â€œMr. Heron? How does he know, he’s a Tory?”
    She frowned. “Well I know that, but he said that Sam was there with a commissary officer, scouting for beef.”
    It didn’t make any sense. Mr. Heron was supposed to be a Tory; he wasn’t supposed