The middle of the winter found Henry on guard at the lower end of the city. Here were a number of stores which had been broken down by the bombardment, and some of the owners were missing. A quantity of goods had been stolen, and Henry and four other soldiers were set at the task of guarding the property.
On the second day that Henry was on guard he noticed something which did not at all please him. Two of the soldiers, named Fenley and Prent, were unusually friendly, and, when they supposed they were not being watched, one or the other would slip into one of the stores. When the fellow would reappear, he would have something concealed under his coat, and this, later on, he would pass over to another soldier, named Harkness, who had charge of a watch-house a square away.
“I believe that those fellows are up to no good,” thought Henry, after he had watched the movements of the three soldiers several times. “They act like a regular pack of sneaks.”
But Henry was too open-hearted and square to suspect the trio of deliberate wrongdoing, until one day Prent accosted him and asked him how he liked his pay as a soldier.
“I think we get mighty little for what we do,” said Prent. “And Fenley and Harkness think the same.”
“It is certainty not much,” answered Henry, totally unsuspicious that he was being “sounded.”
“Wouldn’t you like to have the chance to make a bit more?” went on Prent, in a lower voice, and with an anxious look around.
“What do you mean, Prent?”
“Oh, nothing much, only if you’d like to make some money on the outside, perhaps I can place you in the way of it.”
“I am out to make any money that I can make honestly,” answered the young soldier.