ABSTRACT
This chapter tells the story of the capture, trial, and execution of a Hessian drummer boy by Americans during the Revolution. War is not a game, not a question of ethics or Christianity, war is a bloody damned insanity. At the heart of the story is a Quaker family, who hide the boy after his landing party has been killed in an ambush. Because the captain of the Hessian's had ordered the hanging of a local whom he thought might be a spy, the town militia lay in wait, massacred the Hessians, and hunted down the only survivor, Hans Pohl. 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. Hans Pohl, sat in the kitchen by the hearth, and now he was dressed in Raymond's old clothes and his hair was cropped short in the Quaker fashion.
