It is with greatest effort that I strain now to catch my breath. My hand takes to unexpected flutters as I study to calm it into shaping these words, into neither spilling nor smudging ink.

I have gone out-of-doors once this night, the hour past curfew, in order to replace this diary into its secret location, only to have such an unexpected adventure that I must, of necessity, now carry it back indoors with me to record an account of the event while 'tis fresh in my mind, and contemplate a different place in which to keep this growing record safe and still-secret.

It is, of course, generally known to be a foolhardy notion to venture out-of-doors anytime after the King's curfew is in effect. And yet, with not one but two lieutenants quartered within the Outerbridge home, it gives the family not only the appearance of esteemed cordiality with those in red coats, but also, in truth, other soldiers do not bother to monitor us as they might others, thinking (no doubt) that were anything afoot amongst us, or in any way out-of-place (much less dangerously seditious) to be learned in our household, Lieutenants Williams and Davis would have long ago sniffed it out.

And so it is no challenge to discover that the night sentries tasked to enforce curfew about the village do not bother to patrol near our house, nor venture toward the shoreline that butts up against our garden.

It is also, no doubt, why my father's modest boat house (of which he has always been immeasurably proud) was allowed to stand, instead of being torn down for soldiers' firewood, though the dock that was once underneath its roof and the boat it housed were not so fortunate in their fates.

In truth, no matter Father's affection for it, it is a smallish building, with a low roof slanting toward land, though it boasts two small pane-glass windows on each side to light the interior. And yet, though we are not thought of much in regards to security concerns here, it is not a building in which to be caught at any time of day or night: for what good might one be up-to haunting such a building, now without a purpose? It is a hollow hull. An edifice without a floor (which the dock once served the purpose of). It, like so much of Setauket, has been made both ridiculously superfluous and utterly without proper function by the arrival of the King's troops.

And so, it is there where I kept my book. This book. In the cabinet among the abandoned fishing nets needing tending, the two hammocks my elder brothers once fashioned for themselves, and tried out (hanging them from hooks still in the strong supporting posts of the boathouse), on hot summer nights when being so near the water cooled the impatient, steaming energies of their later youth.

It is a high cabinet, unattached to others, and with its door shut, safe from rats or other gnawing creatures. In order to reach up to it, it requires my taking several steps into the water when the tide has come in, the skirts of my dress lifted high to avoid the wet (and the questions, were I to be asked; where I had been to get myself so very damp), my toes on their tips among the muddy, quickly-to-fall-away sloping bank.

Generally, I draped them over my shoulder, not worrying about damp encroaching upon my small clothes, which the skirts can well cover on my trip back indoors.

It was just so tonight, the glass windows giving enough moonlight without my needing a lamp. I was reaching my arms up to open the door of the cabinet, my skirts high and tumbled over a shoulder, when of all things on God's earth what should I hear, but low, near the water's edge, in a corner of the boathouse where less light shone, that unpleasantly familiar sing-song tone: "Jenny, Jenny. Her dowry's but a penny. And if you haven't any, and wish to marry Jenny, you'll earn your shiny penny, husbanding Miss Jenny."

Upon my very soul, in my life there is but one person I have ever known to chant that poorly-crafted rhyme. And though in his years at school he managed often enough to get the other boys to chant it with him, there was little doubt in my mind in that moment that Caleb Brewster was sitting low, near the water's edge, in my father's boathouse, perhaps but one-hundred foot away from the bedchambers of the house holding Lieutenants Davis and Williams.

And me, skirts over my shoulder, small clothes dripping, diary in-hand.

I turned toward the dark corner which held him. "What are you doing here?"

There was a sort of chuckle. "What are YOU doing here?" he asked, then added as though affronted by my appearance, "There's a curfew on."

It would be to bear false witness upon these pages to deny that Caleb Brewster was born to devil me. "Yes," I agreed, forgetting in my annoyance that my small clothes were uncovered. "There's a curfew on." No doubt I huffed. "For citizens of Setauket." I meant to imply that he was no longer considered to be such.

"Oh, curfew's not meant for the likes of me," he shook his head, even shaggier than I recalled it when last we had met. "Haven't you heard, Jenny? Liberty's been declared. I've claimed mine."

"A fine liberty, that," I still felt the sting of his rhyme even after years of not hearing it. "Creeping about in the dark." And then I lied. "What I had heard was that you had fallen off a whaling ship, and, like Jonah, now decorated one of those beasties' bellies, 'til it grew dyspeptic of you and would spit you up again."

He laughed hard (though he worked to muffle it) , and I saw the dullish glint of a pewter plate in his hands.

"What is this?" I asked in disbelief. "You are eating? On a plate, even?"

"Oh, aye," he glanced down to the plate, now empty. "Sally B. takes care of me. I'd take her for my own were I free to do so."

"Free?" I could not believe what he implied. "You mean to say you're engaged? You?"

"Well, it is a matter of fact that several delightful young ladies - and one fair rich widow - have at present valid claims upon my person."

I scoffed and rolled my eyes at him - whether he could see this in the darkness or not. "And Sally B. is behind this - this - rendezvous?" I stretched to think of the most shocking thing I might say - all the while hoping my book was not in plain sight. "Why, I'll - I'll see her whipped."

"Whipped?" he nearly sputtered. "Jenny Outerbridge, you never ordered a person whipped in your life. And even should you now, you'll father'll never. He's a good man, is Malachi."

"A good man?" I asked him. Was the Continental Army so ill-informed? "He's your enemy is what he is. If you knew how hard everyone in this household worked to be Loyalist - why, you wouldn't stay put here one moment longer."

"Worked?" he asked, as though mulling the word over. "Does it not come naturally, then? Or does King George now break his subjects like a horse to the saddle, for to be ridden?"

Something in speaking of my family so, declaring them Loyalists (as they declared themselves) - thinking of the decisions made by one (possibly two) Outerbridges for what they thought was the good of all, brought up a queer and unsettling humour in me. "King George plants his soldiers among us, in our homes - into our families, until I am no longer certain if they are the tares, or we are. And so many have given in. For what can we do here? It is too late to fight for Setauket, it is taken. You may have your Liberty, but we've none. We can't even run to the privy on a warm night."

The water in which he had (of necessity) been crouching sounded from around his feet as he stood. "Firstly, Jenny, I will tell you this: all have not given in. Would I be here if they had? In this war I'm not nobody, I tell you. And I work for Somebodys. Not everyone has given in." His voice began to show to me that his words had begun to raise a queer humour within him as well. "And as for fighting for Setauket? Every boy I meet soldiering, he fights for where he's from. Every one of us that left Setauket, Setauket's what we see - you, Pollie Donaldson, little Jemmy Greene down by the harbor...the town - the way the sun looks lying upon the water of a morning, the smell of oyster, the callus in the palms of our hands that we carry from the work we did growing up here: we fight for Setauket. And what's more? I say - no, I promise: Setauket's more important to this war than I have liberty to tell you."

His words were moving, heartening even. But I didn't feel deserving of their sentiment. "But don't you think, don't you think they hate us? Staying here, keeping meek in the face of the soldiers and all they do? Scared back into our houses by a curfew that the chickens hardly even keep to? Who would pledge to give their life in battle for those of us here with food to eat and shelter, and making alliances - pretend or otherwise - to avoid hardship or harm?"

He sighed. "Listen to you," he said, "look at you, Jenny. You're gonna have to try harder to be a Loyalist." And light hit off his teeth as he smiled. "Setauket has our hearts, Jenny - not our scorn."

"Why are you not with your family, then?"

"That's complicated. They're watched more closely than are Outerbridges. And they've no boathouse on the water. Sadly missing the old boat, though, I see." He was clearly dismayed by this. "Could've made use of 'er."

"What news would you have me carry to them for you?" I asked, knowing that with his father dead his elderly uncle and his ailing sister were all that he had left in the world. "The list of your betrotheds?"

"Oh, I like that, Jenny. Keep it up. Don't let a man get too comfortable with ye unchaperoned in the dark. Ah, tell them what you think would ease them most. That I am well and safe, and think of them often. If things can go to present plan, they shall know by tomorrow that I have been back, so it makes no difference when you pay them a call. But I thank you for it."

I pointed up toward the cabinet. "There is a hammock in there," and I gestured toward the pegs still in place for the hanging of it. "So long as you don't forget and roll out of it into the water."

"You always were a good girl, Jenny," he told me, with a nod and grin. This time when I saw it I thought - for the first time ever - I was convinced there was something there more behind it than just deviltry and wildness. We both knew I must head back indoors and risk lingering no longer, and leave him to whatever he intended to do further in the boathouse.

I stepped up toward the hinged door and walked through it.

He peeked his nose out after me, just enough so I could hear his quiet whisper. "And Jenny? I'll include in my report to Tallboy, on my very word of honor - how fetching you do look in the moonlight in your small clothes."

Caleb Brewster should be very glad that I am grown up enough now that I did not yell aloud and throw my diary book at the door, in hopes to thump him good.

But I cannot say that the notion of his mentioning my name in such unsavory context to a particular Setauket-born officer gave me any true reason to blush. Only, it did steal my breath a moment.

But what now? I have put this account to paper, and yet again it is something that must be hidden. I will not tell the Brewsters that I have seen him face-to-face, only that I have news. They will understand. He is their nephew, brother and family. They will keep news of him safe. Though they may wonder greatly at receiving such news of him from an Outerbridge.

I write to remind myself that as much as this entry may risk something for Caleb Brewster, its accounting here risks my own person seven-fold. I have violated curfew, I am keeping a seditious and illegal diary of treasonous thoughts and rhetoric, and now, now actions.

For I have entertained a Continental spy here upon my property, and I have failed to report his presence to the proper authorities. The moment I sighted him and did not raise my voice in alarm, my transgression was sealed. Our slave Sally B. has fed him, and I have offered him the comfort of a hammock for the night, and promised to carry a message for him.

What now, are such actions making of me?