“I don’t think when a little matter like this presents itself. I act, as you will learn at no distant time,” replied Chesbrook. “Recollect, my lad, I have no great love for you.”
“A small thing like a fall from a porch roof should not be permitted to sour your temper so,” said Nat, evenly. “I would have thought that Lieutenant Chesbrook of His Majesty’s navy was beyond that.”
But Chesbrook made no reply to this. The puffy faced captain called a file of men and the boy was seized.
“Be careful of him,” warned Major Pitcairn, who had reëntered in the meantime and to whom the arrangement had been explained. “Lock him up securely and keep a guard over him—a strong guard.”
The captain and his men saluted. The boy from Wyoming was placed in the midst of them and led away.
He was placed in a room in a small stone building not far from the barracks. This was generally used for refractory troopers and contained a chair, a table, and a heavy chain fastened to the wall, on the end of which was an iron band which was now locked about Nat’s waist.
Hour after hour went by; the footsteps of the double guard outside his prison door went steadily up and down; now and then as the men passed one another their voices were heard murmuring. Through a small window, barred and high up in the wall, Nat got a glimpse of the sky; it was black and a few pale stars burned against it waveringly.
The boy sat with his head drooped forward upon the heavy table and the thoughts that filled his mind were gloomy enough.
“Suppose,” reflected he, “my message did not reach Dr. Warren; suppose he does not send Mr. Revere to warn Mr. Hancock and Mr. Adams and rouse the minutemen in defence of Concord. If General Gage can deal them this blow, the cause of the colonies may be wrecked.”
He pictured to himself the dark, midnight roads; the armed British troopers that guarded them. All along the route to Lexington, so ran his vision, the houses of the colonists were without lights; the inmates were wrapped in slumber. He imagined the party of officers riding far ahead with ready swords and pistols; then came the column of troops, solid, compact, dark, winding slowly along the highway like a huge serpent. And nowhere was there any one to oppose their progress; nowhere was there a voice raised to warn the sleeping ones of the danger that was approaching, slowly, deliberately, like Fate.