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Picard knew he was living with the fruits of their courage. He looked to his side.

Alexander gaped at her, absorbing the depths of her convictions. He glanced at Picard, and tucked his shoulders with shame for what he had said earlier.

“If you persist with these loyalties,” Sandy said poignantly to Jeremiah, “then one of us will have to kill the other eventually. I am an officer and a gentleman. I’ve sworn an oath. I will not betray it.”

Jeremiah gazed at him. “You would turn me in?

” I would have to,” Sandy said. “It is my sworn duty.”

Not as surprised as Picard would have expected him to be, Jeremiah offered only a shrug. “So be it. I have a duty as well, yet I will compromise mine to make sure you survive. I know how you think, and I hold no malice toward you for it. You have sanctuary here, all of you, until we can find a way to return you to England.”

The words caused a great deal of trouble in Sandy Leonfeld’s face, washing away the defiance to some degree. Clearly, he was disturbed that his cousin would protect him, when he had just declared refusal to do the same for Jeremiah.

“What if we can’t go back, sir?” Seaman Wollard asked, his food still in his mouth. “If there’s no ship—”

Picard looked up, noting the “sir” and knowing that meant him.

“Then we’ll find safety in one of the larger cities, Seaman,” Picard told him. “Philadelphia or New York.”

“We should steal Justina back!” Seaman Bennett declared. “We can free the captain and the others!”

“You’ll be killed instantly,” Jeremiah said. “They’re under guard of the Colonial militia. Men who hunt squirrels and foxes. They can kill two of you with one shot.”

Picard wondered what Jeremiah really thought—whether the former Briton would allow such action to occur, now that he was loyal to independence. A man’s devotion could be stretched only so far.

He thought suddenly of Worf, torn between devotion to his honor and to Grant, devotion to a principle and to a better end to a problem that could affect millions of lives. Odette Khanty seemed like small potatoes on the scale of galactic politics, just part of the muscle-stretching that had gone on in governments for thousands of years, but for most of those thousands of years, there generally weren’t lives and lifestyles at stake on the kind of scale as nowadays faced the Federation.

But was that true? He wondered, as he looked at Jeremiah and his wife. These people’s struggle seemed almost silly, insignificant, even annoying if Sandy Leonfeld were consulted. Sandy was right—no one thought the colonies could win. In fact, they probably couldn’t have, if Britain’s willpower hadn’t been slackened by preoccupation with France and by selective British blunders at running a war so far and so much time away from their center of command.

Yet, despite its humility, this upstart militia attempt had become the foundation for the most encompassing law and justice in the galaxy. His mind reeled with the breadth of scope of these words, spoken in these small houses, during these long-faded days, and he charged himself never again to forget.

“I must go for a little,” Jeremiah said, standing up.

“Mercy has your clothing. Your uniforms will be hidden here. With common clothing, you shall be able to walk among the villagers, but be wary, all of you. This is a close community, and strangers can be easily noticed. Stay quiet, go out with greatest caution, and I beg you, do not approach the stable. Ifyou care to go off to Philadelphia or New York, I have no power to stop you. That is for the lieutenant to decide, as your commanding officer.”

The men stripped out of their uniform jackets and handed them to Amy Coverman and Aunt Mercy. Picard noted with some concern that Sandy Leonfeld resisted the longest, and it took Amy’s plaintive gaze to get his scarlet coat off his shoulders. His being a gentleman came in handy, as he broke down under Amy’s comely insistence.

Jeremiah watched the change of officers and soldiers to