The Hidden Children by Robert William Chambers Chapter 7 Page 28

“So, to avoid a debtor’s prison, we took the open road again. But war was ravishing the land; there was no work for him to do. We starved slowly southward, day by day, shivered and starved from town to town across the counter.

“Near to a camp of Continental troops there was a farm house. They took me there as maid-at-all-work, out of charity, I think. My father wandered over to the camp, and there, God alone knows why, enlisted — I shall not tell you in what regiment. But it was Continental Line — a gaunt, fierce, powder-blackened company, disciplined with iron. And presently a dreadful thing befell us. For one morning before sunrise, as I stood scouring the milk-pans by the flare of a tallow-dip, came to me a yawning sergeant of this same regiment to tell me that, as my foster father was to