Read Conceived in Liberty for Free Online Page B

Charley Green says.
    We march back. The sky breaks open, and it begins to snow. We stumble on through the snow.

IV
    A deep peace and a great stillness, and a wind to wash clear the skies and show the stars. There is a great silence over the face of the world, and it is Christmas Eve.
    We have been here days—or weeks. We lose count of days until the word goes round that Christmas is a day away and there will be extra rations of rum. The word goes round that there will be chickens, that Captain Allen McLane and his foragers captured a British convoy train with a thousand chickens. But nobody believes and nobody is very much excited about Christmas. Another lean day. There are enough officers to take care of a thousand chickens.
    It’s night now, and I have sentry duty. It has snowed three times since we got here. There is six inches of loose, sandy snow on the ground. When you walk, it swirls up and seeps into crevices in your foot-coverings. As long as anybody can remember, there has never been such a winter as this.
    I walk one hundred and twenty paces and back—for two hours. I walk slowly, dragging my musket. At the edge of the forest, where the beat ends, I have a clear view of the frozen Schuylkill, of the King of Prussia Road and of the road to Philadelphia, blue rolling hills that sweep away until they are lost in a mystery of night. A fancy of lights on the horizon—perhaps Philadelphia. Philadelphia is only eighteen miles away.
    I wait there for Max Brone. He’s a German boy, a weed of a back-country lout from the hills around Harrisburg, who has the beat with me this night. He speaks only a few words of English, and his face is twisted with pain and homesickness and cold. He’s better than no one at all. The silence can drive you mad.
    I reach the limit of my beat and stop. The moment I stop moving, the cold eats in. It seems that we are here at the edge of the world—with no barrier between us and the cold of outer space. I wear two coats, my own and Kenton Brenner’s. But both are worn thin. The snow has crusted around my feet, and they are balls of ice. My hands are wrapped in a piece of blanket; with them and with my elbows I hold my musket. But no keeping out the cold; I try to kick the ice off my feet.
    As I wait there, I see Brone toiling up the slope. He is bent over, almost crawling on all fours. He doesn’t see me until he is quite near, and then he starts back.
    â€œAll’s well,” I say.
    He straightens up and sighs. His breath comes out in a cloud of frozen moisture. He leans his musket against himself and beats his hands against his sides.
    â€œI vas feard,” he says. “ Gott —it’s lonely.”
    We stand together for a while, silent, only moving in little jerks to keep the cold off. A wolf howls. His howl begins with a quiver, strengthens and climbs into the night. A dog’s bark answers. I feel little shivers crawl up and down my spine, and Brone’s face drawn taut.
    â€œI’d like to get a shot at that one,” I say. “I’d make me a nice cap and a pair of mittens out of his wool.”
    Brone answers: “I tink—ven I valk alone, dey’re vaiting.”
    There were no wolves here when the army first came. Farming country that has been farmed for years doesn’t have wolves. Eighteen miles away, there was a city of twenty thousand people.
    â€œThere are more every day,” I say.
    â€œAt home, tonight, dere vud be a fire. A roasting pig. Ve drink all night—and dance.”
    We stare at each other, and I nod. I look at him and try to see him, a thin, short boy with a frost-bitten face, a sparse yellow beard and wide-set unintelligent eyes. No imagination and no hope. I say to myself, why? I say to myself, what have you ever dreamed to follow a terrible nightmare of revolution?
    He’s the same blood as the Hessians. We don’t hate the Hessians. But the Pennsylvania Germans do; they