"What's the matter?" I cried incautiously loud as I rose to a sitting posture.
"The matter is that we are tied here all these hours instead of being in Cambridge where, mayhap, there is plenty for us to do."
"How long have you been awake?"
"Nigh about three days, as it seems to me, though I reckon it can't be more than a couple of hours."
"Have you seen or heard anything of the Britishers?"
"As much as you may see now by looking out from among the bushes. No one has come our way, and if they had I believe I'd eaten them, for since yesterday morning no bite of food has passed my lips."
It would have been better for me if he had refrained from speaking of food, because the mere words made me hungry, and on the instant I realized, or fancied I did, that my mouth was parched with thirst. The knowledge that I could minister to neither one desire nor the other, until we were come to Cambridge, only served to make them all the more intense.
It would be worse than childish to complain when no good could come from uttering peevish words, and I strove to put from my mind all that I desired, by speaking of Archie, idly wondering where he might be.
"Unless he is snug at home, I'm allowing the Britishers have got him penned up in such shape that neither you nor I can do much toward aiding him," Hiram said emphatically, and then to my distress of mind he set about telling of an acquaintance of his who had had the ill fortune to displease some of General Gage's following, thereby bringing himself to a sojourn in Boston prison.
After that we talked of this thing and of another, it makes little difference what, I meanwhile watching the sun until my eyes ran water, coming to believe now and then it was standing still in the heavens, so slowly did it move.