Endure My Heart Read Online Free Page A

rather be that than a heathen royalist. I always had a sneaking admiration for the gentlemen. Andrew and I used to play at it when we were children. Hidden in the middle of our spinney at Fern Bank there is a tumbledown shack called the poachers’ shack. No doubt it was well named, but in our games, it was where the gentlemen (me) hid the brandy, and the revenue officer (Andrew) got his comeuppance.
    I enjoyed the game, and can well imagine the real thing must be thrilling. What a break in the dull life of a laborer, to slip over to France on a moonless night, or hide in readiness at home to receive the countraband. Had I been a man, I would certainly have joined them. But I was only a woman, so I winked at their activities and lent a hand when I could.
    Then too, Officer Crites was not at all popular. The man he replaced, Officer Daggar, had been much better liked, due to his willingness to take a bribe upon occasion. Crites was a martinet. He’d have turned in his own mother. In fact, he did turn in his fiancée’s brother, which lost him a fiancée and made him a host of enemies.
    My infraction of the law did not trouble my conscience unduly, though of course I knew abetting the gentlemen was a crime. I would have forgotten it by the next day if it had not been for the reward my new friends chose to bestow on me. Next morning as I went out to school, there was a shiny golden guinea sitting on the doorstep. We had had no callers the night before. No one but myself had been through that door since late yesterday afternoon. It was a payment for services rendered. Helping them caused not a twinge, but taking money for it did. I determined to purchase new books for the school with it, and did so.
    Two weeks passed, bringing us to the cold, rainy, windy, disagreeable month of November. As it was a Friday and I looked forward to getting an early start on my weekend, I kept no one in that night. The animal sessions at school were well under control. Miss Aldridge had a wicked cold, and I had taken the school alone that whole week, which made the weekend loom with more pleasure even than usual, since I did not exactly like teaching for a living. There was a timid tap at the door as I put on my pelisse. I went to answer it, thinking some student had forgotten his lunch basket or books.
    There stood Jemmie Hessler with his cap in his hands and a very worried frown on his youthful face. Lady sniffed and yelped at a brown bag that was slung over his shoulder. “G’day, miss,” he said, shuffling his feet. I peered down the road, but he was not followed. “Could I come in for a minute?” he asked.
    We went in and sat at two little desks that buckled both of our knees, making me realize the taller of my students must spend acutely uncomfortable hours here, for I was not tall myself, and Jemmie was a small, compact, wiry fellow about my own height. “What is it, Jem?” I urged him on, curious but still eager to be home.
    “It’s the stuff, miss,” he said. “Crites has tumbled to it we’re keeping it at the warehouse behind the lumber, and there’s a load in tonight. We’ve nought to do with it till it goes out Sunday night. We’ve got a tranter coming to carry it south Sunday night, but there’s two days for Crites to sniff around and find it.”
    “How about the stable loft at the inn?” I asked. During Daggar's entire reign the stable loft at the inn had been used. It had been no secret you could go there any hour of the day or night with your bottle and buy any amount you wanted.
    “That’s the second place he’ll look.”
    “Are there no haystacks or potato graves you can use?”
    “He’s on to all the old regular stunts, miss, the fuelhouses and chimmers, ricks and rainwater butts. We don’t want to divide the load up, for the tranter won’t make a dozen stops nowadays, with Crites prowling like a ghost.”
    I looked at him, bewildered. “But what is it you want me to do, Jem?”
    He swallowed twice and