He shook hands with the lads; that he was a colonel and they but enlisted men made no difference in that democratic time. And after he had greeted Scarlett, who made room for him at the fire, the young colonel sat down.
“Have you noticed a tinge of frost in the air?” asked he, as he rubbed his hands briskly. “It will be a hard, cold winter, I think, when it is once upon us. It is always so when there is so early a beginning.”
“It was midsummer when we saw you here last,” said Ezra. “You remember the night that you told us about the guns at Crown Point and Ticonderoga.”
The boy’s words were followed by a curious interruption. A mug, partly filled, shattered upon the brick paved floor near by; they turned surprised and saw a man, apparently advanced in years, bent over a table, his back turned to them. The hand that had held the mug hung at his side, trembling as though with palsy; his whole attitude was as of one stricken with some sudden shock.
Two others sat with the man; they wore the dress of seafarers, and while one was of commanding proportions, the other was small. The heads of both were bent toward the old man; and the boys could see little of them except that they were dark and wore their sailcloth hats pulled low over their foreheads.
After a glance the other lads gave their attention once more to Colonel Knox. But Ezra continued to watch narrowly the actions of the three. As the boys had come along in the dusk toward “The Honest Farmer” he had noticed some figures that seemed to cling to their shadows. He had, also, a dim sort of consciousness that these same figures had entered the inn after them. And now something whispered to him that these were the same—that the men had a purpose in being where they were—that their selection of seats so near to his friends and himself was no accident.
“And,” he told himself in a puzzled sort of way, “they seem familiar. I somehow feel that I have met with them before.”
He examined the strangers narrowly; in a few moments the old man recovered and seemed to be talking guardedly to his companions; and the boy, more than once, caught a ferret-like look from the smaller of the two seamen that impressed him queerly. More and more he felt that these were persons whom he had known before.
But while he was watching the strangers, he was also listening to the remarks of his friends as they spoke to Colonel Knox. Some little time passed; then the colonel said, addressing them all:
“I came here to-night in the hope of seeing you. It just happens that there is something toward that makes me require the help of a few young spirits who will not hesitate at a little risk.”