Peter thought much of his aged uncle, the wood-chopper, who had said to him, “Out you go!” The boy had a forgiving heart. “He did it on account of his love for the King, and he thinks that a king is appointed by God,” he would say to the Governor. “Do not disturb him.”
The Governor would not disturb him. He, too, had a forgiving heart.
Peter’s heart was true to the old man. He sometimes wondered as to where would fall the old man’s gold at last—to the King, or him. But he had no selfish schemes in the matter—for him to do right was to live. In his midnight watches, and with his most curious means of communication with the alarm-post in the cedars, he held one purpose uppermost: it was, to protect from harm the unselfish Governor who had spoken so kindly to him when his heart was hungry, and whom all the people loved.
The Governor still went about with apparent unconcern; he would talk here and there with those who detained him and needed him, now at the tavern, now upon the village green. But the people all knew that dangerous people were coming and going to and from the green-walled town.
Peter saw something suspicious in the conduct of several sailors who visited the place from the ports, and who called the inland province the Connecticut main.
“I would sooner die myself,” he said to Dennis, “than to see any harm befall the Governor. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’” He had learned to quote Scripture from the Governor.
One night as he was watching with his window at the elbow of the turnpike, he was surprised to hear a soft, slow, cautious footfall, and to see a curious stranger in a blanket approaching in the dim light. He turned up the hill behind the window and light to see if the man in the blanket would follow him.
The man in the blanket turned when Peter set down the window, and went down the hill as from a house to meet the traveler.
Peter stopped the stranger, whom he saw to be dark and tall, and who held under his blanket some weapon which seemed to be a hatchet.