"I'm agreeing with you, Martin, clean fighting or nothing. I'm not up to this slaughtering of infants myself. I half expect to see that baby playing in the moonlight every time a leaf rustles at night." The man laughed uneasily. "Once I fancied I saw a face—a pale boy-face—shining in the bushes. Lord, it gave me a turn!"
"Could there be a secret passage?" asked Martin in a low voice. "A fellow named Godkin told me an hour ago that he had his eye on a lame chap and a gawk of a schoolmaster who were always skulking around close to the ground. He says the boy lives hereabouts and knows the woods like a snake."
"No fool rebel could keep such a secret from me. Godkin likes to talk and swagger. He feels his oats. Come, just to pass the time, let's beat the bushes."
"Back out!" breathed Andy. There was no time to be lost. But the backward movement was most painfully slow. The men tramping in the bushes, feeling the thing but child-play, laughed and talked loudly.
"How many men has the old fox!" asked Martin, giving a cut to the bushes with his gun.
"Twelve thousand, though he gives out many more."
"He's got grit," rejoined Martin, "with my lord gripping his throat at close quarters with double that number at his heels, to stand still and calm as—as this rock! Gad, I nearly broke my gun! This land produces more rocks than anything else. I heard Washington is planning to get on Long Island again."
"He'll never get there. My Lord Howe—what in thunder!" Norton had slipped and fallen, and as he lay so, his face was on a level with the opening in the rocks!
"Come here!" he gasped. "Got a light! There's a hole here."
Martin struck a light and peered in. As he did so Andy's white, horrified face gleamed forth from the shadow. Without a word the head was withdrawn, and both Andy and the master knew that the man, or both men, would follow at once.