The two lads were within forty feet of the boy who would have done the cause of freedom such grievous wrong, and each instant those who might lend him a helping hand were drawing further away.
Nathan glanced at Evan with a question in his eye, and the latter understood it as well as if he had spoken.
"It might be done," he whispered cautiously; "but we should not neglect the work which was set us."
"It is not safe to advance while these men are between us and Major Ferguson's force, therefore unless we make him prisoner it is necessary to remain idle."
"What could be done with him?"
"I'll venture to say he might be frightened into telling all we would know."
Nathan hesitated an instant. They had been sent out solely to gain some knowledge of the enemy's force and disposition. To take this boy a prisoner, even though he was their bitterest foe, seemed to be deviating from the course Colonel McDowells had marked out, but yet, as Nathan said, they must remain idle there until these four men should return. Therefore it would not be such a woeful waste of time.
"If we can do it without giving the alarm, I am ready," Evan whispered, and instead of replying, Nathan began creeping cautiously in the direction of the Tory, who sat with his back turned toward them.
Many a time had these two lads crept quietly upon a flock of wild turkeys without alarming the shy birds, and to go through the same maneuvers when a dull boy like Ephraim Sowers was the game to be stalked did not prove difficult.
Side by side they advanced with hardly so much as disturbing a single twig, and had gained the cover of a bush within three feet of him before he so much as changed his position.