"I've been wanting to go to Boston for ever so long too. I wonder when my chance will come," he said ruefully. "You seem always to get the good things first."
"Oh! your turn will come all right!" responded Seth, patting him on the back. "We'll go to Boston together some fine day, see if we don't."
The summons of Major Rogers to the presence of the Commander-in-Chief aroused much curiosity at the fort, and many were the conjectures as to what it meant, but if the veteran Ranger had any idea of his own he shrewdly kept it to himself.
They set out early in the afternoon, directing their course for Albany, on the Hudson River, and as the danger of being attacked by Indians in league with the French had to be considered, Major Rogers deemed it prudent to have ten of his Rangers accompany them that far, and then return to Fort William Henry.
To Seth, whose experience of the world was so slight, even Albany, then little more than a thriving town, was a revelation, and he would have been glad to spend some days there seeing the sights and getting acquainted with the people, but the Major was not the man to dally by the way. To him Albany was of slight consequence. Boston filled his mind, and if there had been any lightning express trains in that day as there are now connecting the two cities, he certainly would have taken the first one leaving the railway station.
But there was nothing better then than the lumbering stage coach, that jolted its slow way over the New Connecticut Road, as it was called, which wound its somewhat devious course from Albany to Boston.
"Confound the old rattle-trap!" growled the short-tempered Major as the heavy coach swayed and pitched over the rough coach road. "I wish we had taken horse. We'd save time and have more comfort."
Seth, however, although he was too discreet to say so, did not at all agree with his chief. It was his first long ride in a stage coach, and it gratified a desire cherished from his earliest boyhood, and even if the vehicle was clumsy and the roads were rough, he was enjoying himself in no small degree.
From Albany to Springfield, thence to Brookfield, and so by Worcester and Marlborough the post road ran, but before reaching their destination in Boston they had an adventure which aptly illustrated the unwisdom of waking up the wrong passenger.
They travelled all night as well as all day, for the coach carried the mails, and about half-way between Worcester and Boston, on a particularly lonely spot, where the road lay along the bottom of a ravine, shut in by tree-clad hills, rising steeply on either side, the slow-going conveyance was suddenly brought to a full stop, in obedience to the command of two masked men on horseback, who covered the driver with their pistols as they sternly shouted: