When Nat had arrived at Germantown, some weeks earlier, his place at the office was not yet ready. In order not to be idle he had gone to work in the fields with the hired bands, and so still wore his backwoods costume. A hunting-shirt, low about the throat and coming almost to his knees, served the place of a coat, while his leggings of tanned deerskin and moccasins gave him the air of one fresh from the wilderness, which he was. But for all this homely dress he was a fine, upstanding youth, broad-shouldered and tall; his movements were as free and supple as those of a savage, and his face wore the look of habitual resolution that comes to those who live in dangerous corners of the earth.
“It’s queer,” he said to himself as he strode along, “that I can’t get out of the idea that I should take my rifle everywhere I go, as I did at home. Somehow I don’t know what to do with my hands when I haven’t it.”
To supply the place of the missing rifle he stopped a little later and cut a good-sized cudgel from a scrub oak; then once more he started forward, whistling softly.
Further on, he found it necessary to vault a fence into a narrow, tree-lined lane. Darkness had now about set in; the lane, because of its border of trees, was especially shadowy, and some little distance away Nat caught the yellow glow of a lantern as it came halting and dancing along toward him. Leaning back against the fence, he waited silently for the person carrying it to advance.
Forward it came, hesitatingly, timidly, it seemed. Nat at length made out the figure of a man and that of a girl, and in a short time they were close enough for him to catch the sound of their voices.
“But, grandfather,” said the girl, and Nat saw her look intently ahead in the lamp-light, “I feel quite sure that I heard some one.”
“Pish!” answered the man, impatiently.
“What if you did? The roads are free to every one, are they not?”
“But just now,” persisted the girl, “it is dangerous, is it not, with all this coming and going of strange men? Indeed,” with great candor, “I don’t like their looks any too well.”
“Hold your tongue,” cried the man, angrily. “It’s not for you to question the appearance of loyal subjects of the king.”