The young lieutenant followed Dan to the other end of the line, where he could better see the approaching men. “You are right,” he said a moment later. “David and Ira are both there, and it is well worth our tramp out here to capture them.”
He divided his followers into two parties, directing one to creep cautiously through the forest to the rear of the royalists, while the other, with himself at its head, moved back to a place where the thicket offered a place of concealment.
Unaware of the ambush, the Tories advanced, discussing loudly the reasons which led them to return home.
“When I found that the regular troops were put on short rations to furnish the rest of us with something to eat, I thought I’d better go home,” one man said.
“I believed it was time Ira and I went up to the farm to get food for the others,” David Daggett added. “I tell the boy we’ve got enough there to feed a hundred men for a week, and that’s something.”
“How will you get it down here?” another asked.
“Ira’s long head has found a way,” the grandfather explained. “If you fellows want to join us in the venture, come on. All of us, working together, ought to bring stores enough to supply a regiment for quite a while.”
“I suppose the general will see we are given good prices for all we take in,” a third man remarked.
Then David Daggett grew furious. Whirling around he shook his fist in the face of the speaker, crying:
“Curses on your mean, stingy soul, John Tarbox! The man who at such a time as this is not ready to give up all he has for the king, ought to be kicked into the rebel camp, and I’d like to be the one to do it!”