"Why, ain't they doing me a mighty good turn, cap'n? If it wasn't for them all you Britishers wouldn't be here, and I should have to take less than half-price for my truck, and trust the biggest part out at that."
"Oh, I see," the sergeant replied laughingly as he ordered his men to move on. "It's the pounds, shillings and pence that touch you more deeply than anything else. Good-night to you, Daniel. Don't charge more than three prices for your truck, and see to it that your assistant behaves himself."
"It is evident there has been no very great hue and cry over you and Jacob since yesterday afternoon," Greene said in a whisper as the patrol passed on in advance, "otherwise the sergeant would have known it. There's nothing now to prevent our carrying out the plan as I had allowed. Keep your eyes open, lad, and don't stay in the house a single minute after daylight."
CHAPTER XI.
A RECOGNITION.
Enoch soon learned that the most difficult task which confronted him in his new line of work was to persuade his mother he was not exposed to any more danger than he would be on the battlefield.
She, remembering Seth's capture and narrow escape from the scaffold, insisted her son should refuse to assist Greene the spy in any way. She was willing for Enoch to enlist; but objected most strenuously to his doing that which, if discovered, would doom him to a disgraceful death.
During the first two hours spent at home the boy used every argument to convince her he would not be in any greater danger than he had been since his release from jail, and not until he had begged she would consent to his carrying on the work "because he had promised, and would be ashamed to go back to camp with the excuse that his mother would not allow him to do anything of the kind," did she give an unwilling consent to the proposition.
"I shall live in constant terror of hearing that you have been arrested and sentenced to be hanged," she said finally; "but will try to hide such fears because you have given your word to cease playing the spy as soon as you can honorably leave the work and enter the army."
Enoch was more than willing to agree to this; he preferred to serve his country in any other way than that which he had just begun, and would welcome the time when he could stand boldly before his friends and acquaintances as a Continental soldier.
Agreeably to the promise made Greene, he was on the street as soon as daylight, and during the entire day lounged around the city, listening eagerly for scraps of important conversation whenever he passed a group of men; but hearing nothing which might benefit his friends.