Because of being in the cellar, which was wholly underground, no light could come to us from the outside; but the lantern burned dimly as if the oil had been nearly consumed, and I fancied it was day.
My comrades awakened very shortly afterward like lads who have had their fill of slumber, and we lay on the beds trying for at least the twentieth time to get some glimmer of an idea regarding the strange doings of the night before, as well as questioning whether it might not be possible for us to learn whether Master Lord was at home.
While we talked Hiram, growing impatient, went boldly up the ladder, setting his shoulder against the trap-door; but failing to move it ever so slightly, and at this seeming evidence of our being held prisoners we grew alarmed.
So narrow was the ladder that two of us could not stand side by side on the upper rung in order to come at the barrier, and when each in turn had spent his strength against the heavy timbers without effect, we came together near the table, groping about that we might touch hands, for by this time the flame of the lantern had died away entirely, leaving us in total darkness.
"If Master Lord wanted to make friends with the Britishers, he would be on a fair road to so doing by giving us up to General Gage," I suggested, striving to speak in a mirthful tone as if in my mind there was no possibility of such treachery on his part, and Harvey clutched me by the hand nervously, as he whispered:
"Don't! Don't give words to what seems so very like the truth!"
"Have done with talk like that!" Hiram cried angrily. "To judge Master Lord an enemy is the same as calling the lieutenant, who treated us in such friendly fashion, a traitor."
"But why are we locked in here when it surely must be daylight?"
"There can be no answer to that question until Master Lord himself comes to make it, and I am bound to hold him a good man and true because of what we have been told, until he proves the contrary."
I believe Hiram himself was more than a little alarmed, for it seemed to me he struggled overly much to convince us he was apparently easy in mind, and we were yet giving words to our painful doubts when, without our having heard a sound previously, the trap-door was raised, letting into the cellar a flood of light as if the day had already grown old.