For Love of Country by William C. Hammond Read Free Book Online Page A

when both of his parents broke into laughter. But then he started to point and giggle at Jamie, who was kicking his legs and waving his arms in the air, in response either to his parents’ laughter or to the sudden loud knock on the front door.
    Katherine wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll go and see who it is,” she said. She was shaking her head and smiling as she walked out of the kitchen. When she came back in, her expression had changed dramatically. “Richard, it’s your father.” She said nothing else. She didn’t need to.
    Richard was up at once and making for the parlor at the front of the house. Katherine unbuckled Jamie from his chair and set him down next to Will. With a strict warning to them both to stay put and play quietly, she hurried after Richard.
    They found the family patriarch staring into the empty stone hearth. When he turned to face them, the shock to Richard was immediate.
His father was not a man who gave way to his emotions lightly. As a boy, Richard had admired his father’s physical and emotional courage, and his seemingly unfathomable well of knowledge. Others in Hingham felt the same way, and his voice of reason and calm had carried far beyond the borders of the village when the drums of revolution began threatening the colony. Thomas Cutler was at heart a Tory, loyal to king and Parliament, and he had urged the town elders to stand firm and not dispatch the local militia to join General Washington’s army encamped on Dorchester Heights. Not everybody in town was convinced of the purity of his motives, however. Some claimed that he was simply trying to salvage his family’s shipping business, pointing as proof to the business relationship he enjoyed with his brother William in England. Richard knew the truth. As Captain Jones had once told him, his father belonged to that rare breed of men who act on principle, not self-interest, and Richard had observed for himself on too many occasions how society tends to revile such individuals. He was convinced the truth would come out, and it did—the day contrite British authorities in Boston brought the body of his eldest son home to him. The moment Thomas Cutler gazed down upon that brutalized pulp of flesh he switched allegiance without looking back, going so far as to offer General Washington two of his best merchant brigs for conversion to privateers. At the same time, he had commended his second son, Richard, to the military ambitions of John Paul Jones.
    To Richard, as he approached his father in the parlor, Thomas Cutler appeared very much the way he had that horrible day of memory twelve years ago when he had knelt down beside Will’s defiled corpse. He was not an old man. He was only forty-nine. But today he looked as though the last vestiges of his youth had abandoned him.
    â€œWhat is it, Father?” he asked warily.
    Thomas Cutler bowed his head. “Good morning, Richard. I must apologize for disturbing you and your family at so early an hour. I’m afraid I am the bearer of very bad news.”
    â€œMother . . . ?” was Richard’s first reaction, for Elizabeth Cutler had been suffering ill health in recent months.
    â€œNo, it’s not your mother. It’s . . . this.” He offered his son the letter he held in his hand. “A post rider delivered it a short while ago.”
    Richard unfolded the letter. His eyes swept first to the name at the bottom, signed in the bold script of the U.S. minister to Great Britain. He scanned the text, then read the letter again, this time more slowly.

    Katherine asked, “What is it, Richard? Please God, tell me.” The pain scrawled in jagged lines upon his face frightened her.
    â€œIt’s from Mr. Adams,” he answered, though he spoke more to himself than to his wife, his eyes continuing to glare down at the letter. “Mr. John Adams.”
    â€œYes, I am well acquainted with Mr. Adams. And?”
    He