ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the story of the capture, trial, and execution of a Hessian drummer boy by Americans during the Revolution. A crowd had gathered around the gallows, and three militiamen, wearing blue coats and white sashes, kept pushing them back. On the other side of the field, across from the crowd and farther away from the gallows, half a dozen Quakers stood in a little group, their long dark coats and flat-brimmed hats giving them an odd, funereal appearance. The story is told from the point of view of Evan Feversham, a doctor who has seen enough of death, and an outsider in the narrow world of Puritan New England. The Hessian boy marched with his head upright, his pale hair blowing in the wind, his step firm and sure. He stood before the gallows now, and the crowd had lost its voice in the presence of death, and an almost terrifying stillness settled over the Common.
