“What now?” demanded a rough voice. “Plague take you, neighbors, to go battering at an honorable man’s door.”
“Come down and draw your bolts,” said the sergeant of grenadiers.
“Not I, indeed,” answered the man in the nightcap, and with a promptness that caused both Ezra and Scarlett to laugh. “I obey the law, gentlemen; no man in the town of Boston minds it better. And the law says that all places of public entertainment must out with their lights and up with their shutters at sundown.”
“If you don’t want your door in splinters, you’ll come down and open it,” said the sergeant. “I bring you two persons whom you are to harbor, at command of General Gage.”
“That,” replied the nightcapped one, in an altered tone, “sets a different face upon the matter. Why did you not say so at once? I will be down instantly.”
The candle vanished; a little later, after a great deal of clatter and clinking of bars and chains, the door opened; the man in the nightcap was shown to be a squat, broad-shouldered personage with gold rings in his ears and the aspect of a seafarer.
“Now, open your ears,” spoke the British sergeant, briefly. “And give heed to what I’m going to tell you.”
“Ay, ay,” replied the host of the “Jolly Rover.”
“These two are to lodge here and pay for their own entertainment. You are to report at headquarters at once if they are absent for more than a half day at a time.”
The landlord regarded the newcomers with no great favor.