“I could stay away from you no longer, after what you told me,” said he. “Strange things are going on—horsemen coming and going; queer people haunt the Colchester road; knife-grinders, clock-cleaners, going into the forest to get walnut-oil; men calling out ‘Old brass to mend’; and I seem to see spies in them, and I fear for him.”
“Boy, I fear for him. He is an old man now, but he walks erect, and seems to think that some host unseen is guarding him. He wears the armor of faith. I can see it, other people do not; and he does not fear the face of clay.”
“Dennis, when are you going to set me behind the window and the light in the cedars, at night?”
“Soon, boy, soon. Let us look out of the window.”
It was a June night. Below them was the war office, the Alden Tavern, the house of William Williams—the boy’s home. Afar stretched the intervales, now full of fireflies and glowing with the silvery light of the half-moon. Night-hawks made lively the still air, and the lonely notes of the whippoorwills rang out from the cedars and savins in nature’s own sad cadences. The roads were full of the odors of wild roses and sweetbrier, but were silent.
“Dennis,” said Peter, “I have been thinking. Suppose I were to watch in the cedars, and an unknown man were to come down the open road toward the light in the window. And suppose I were to say, ‘Halt, and give the countersign,’ and he were to have no countersign. Then I would say, ‘Follow me, but do not come near me, or I will discharge my duty upon you.’ And suppose he were to follow, and I move back, back, back with the window and light, and he were to think that I were a house, and that I were to draw him into a trap and lose him, and put out the light and run for you—what would you do then?”
“I would hunt for him in the ravine where you left him—in the wood trap—and would find him, and wring from him the cause of his being on the highway without a passport.”
“Dennis, do you think that such a thing as that will ever happen?”
“Yes; my instincts tell me that it will. Boy, there is one man whom Washington trusts, whom the Governor relies upon, but in whom I can see a false heart. He was born only a few miles from here. He is famous. If he were to turn traitor to our cause, as I believe he will, he would send spies to Lebanon. He would seek to destroy the hiding-places of powder, and he knows where they are to be found. Then, boy, your time to thwart such designs would come.”
“What is that man’s name?”