Dan appeared so dull, and knew so little about affairs in Fort Edward, whence they supposed he had come, that the inmates of the house at length decided he was some half-witted fellow who knew enough to bring their horse home, and but little more.
“You better follow him down to the main road, and make sure he turns the right way,” Mistress Earle said to her eldest son, a boy of a dozen years. Therefore he, unnoticed by Dan, came down the road, and was near enough, when the latter joined his comrade, to recognize Ira.
Surprised at seeing the young scout there, the boy stood staring after the horsemen until they had disappeared from view down the Fort Edward road.
Then he turned toward his home to make known the wonderful discovery; but getting a glimpse of a horseman coming from the direction of Bennington, he waited that he might see who he was. The surprise he had felt on seeing Ira Le Geyt, was deepened upon beholding in the third rider none other than his friend Fred Lyman. When he was within hearing, he cried:
“Hello, Fred! Your cousin, Ira Le Geyt, is just ahead of you.”
“What’s that?” young Lyman asked, reining in his horse.
“I say your cousin, Ira Le Geyt, has just gone down the road. Don’t you remember that ma told your folks about him when she let you know my pa and your pa had been captured by the rebels?”
“Yes; but she said he had gone back to the fort to get help.”
“That is what she thought—what I thought until just now,” the boy explained, and he quickly told of his discovery.
“I don’t understand it,” the young Tory said in a puzzled tone. “It looks as if he had been in Bennington ever since night before last, and if that’s so, I don’t see why he didn’t come out to our house.”