Time Enough for Drums by Ann Rinaldi

Author:Ann Rinaldi [Rinaldi, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78686-9
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

19

He went away.

He left on a July day when the town was under a stupor of white heat. He packed his saddlebags and took his long musket and put on the hat pinned up with the turkey feather and rode out of town on Star.

One minute he was in Father’s study telling me how he expected me to keep on with my lessons, leaving his books for me to read. His hands were on my arms as gentle as goose down, yet like hot irons. He cradled me against his chest, pressed his face against mine, and said my name in terms of endearing promise. The next minute he was striding through the wide hall, and I was standing on our front steps watching him ride down Queen Street.

He left on the pretense that he was gathering information on the war for a Tory paper in New York. He would write for that Tory paper but he would also post notices once a month in the Pennsylvania Gazette about his runaway slave, Portia, under the name of Charles Apgar. As long as those notices appeared, I would know he was all right, for his letters to me under his own name might cease at any time.

I stood watching him go, thinking my heart would break. But it didn’t. It had to stay whole, for there were too many other things yet to come that would break it.

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