The man at once pushed his way to the front. His coarse, large-featured face was inflamed and angry looking.
“So it’s you, is it?” growled he, his fierce eyes glowering wickedly. “I thought I recognized your voice.”
Nat laughed.
“And I rather thought I recognized your face as you took that little observation from the window a few moments ago.”
“Well, what do you want?” asked Royce. “We can’t be detained here all day by a whipper-snapper like you.”
“I wouldn’t think of detaining you,” replied Nat. “I merely desired to make sure that I and my friends met with no reception that we were not prepared for.”
As he spoke he lifted his hand and beckoned his comrades forward. As they came up at a trot, Revere and Ben holding their weapons ready, Nat said to them:
“I think you’d better ride on while I stay for a little further talk with these gentlemen. Ben, you may halt fifty yards away.”
There was that in the speaker’s manner that showed Revere that he was perfectly competent to carry out any plan that he had made. And so the convention’s messenger nodded his head and rode along up the road with the two boys.
Nat Brewster would have given a great deal to have seen Ezra Prentiss’ face at that moment. But he dared not take his eyes from the sullen, muttering group in the doorway of the mill. He smiled as he heard the hoofs of his companions’ horses rattling away. To Royce he said: