There was a high sky that night and the stars gleamed clearly; but there was no moon and things were apt to be more vague and melt more swiftly into the blackness that lurked under the fences, trees and at the sides of buildings. Nat stood at his window looking out upon the darkness and waiting for the sounds that would tell him the strangers were taking themselves to bed. But as they seemed in no hurry to do this, the boy soon fell under the spell of the September night. Every rustle in the elm across the road was plain to him; and the rasp of insects, deep in the grass, came clearly to his ears.
“I like the nights in this flat country,” he said softly to himself. “Things seem more distant. They don’t come crowding upon you like they do among the hills.”
Just then the rattle of halyards and spars sounded from the river, the gleam of a starboard light came winking over the water in a long, thin trail and the huge loom of a sail showed ghostlike against the stars. The romance of this dim vessel appealed to the boy. What was she—where was she bound and what strange adventures would she bring her crew before her prow parted the waters of the Delaware again?
Half dreaming, Nat Brewster continued to watch; then he was quickly called back to the present by the sound of footsteps on the inn stairs. He turned from the window and listened. Lightly, swiftly the steps ascended; a dim glimmer of light from a bedroom candle was thrown along the hall and entered Nat’s room at the transom. But in an instant it had vanished and the footsteps grew fainter and finally died away.
“He’s gone the other way,” Nat said to himself. “His room is probably at the rear of the building.”
As they had stood upon the landing listening to Revere Nat had noticed that the staircase was in the center of that wing of the building and that the hallway ran in either direction from it.
“Whichever of them it is,” muttered the boy, “he’ll be well out of the way, at any rate.”
For a long time he stood and listened for the other man. But there were no further footsteps or sounds of any sort.
“Strange!” thought the listener. “Is it possible that two really came up that time? I felt sure that it was only——”
He had gone so far when he suddenly shrank back from the window. Across the road he had seen a moving shadow, unquestionably the dim figure of a man.