Cautiously they drew back from the hut; and when they had reached a safe distance, they paused, knee-deep in the snow, and listened.
Whips were snapping, horses were floundering through the drifts, men’s voices were crying out sharply.
“A provision train,” said Nat. “A provision train, bound for Trenton, as sure as you live!”
CHAPTER XX
TELLS OF TWO PATRIOTS IN TRENTON
Nat was right. A half dozen clumsy-looking sleighs, drawn by farm horses, came lumbering slowly along the road; in the light of the lanthorns that swung upon the side of each, the two young men saw that the vehicles were piled high with sacks of flour, barrels of salted meat, bacon, hams, and slaughtered hogs and sheep.
The drivers clump-clumped along doggedly by the side of their horses; at the front and rear of the train rode a party of horsemen.
“There is the opportunity you spoke of, just as though it had been made to your order,” whispered George. “But how are we going to take advantage of it?”
“Let us follow on behind. They may stop somewhere, and we can happen along—two honest and rather thick-witted fellows that we are—and who knows but that something might turn up.”
Allowing the sleighs and the horsemen to proceed a certain distance, they fell in behind and trudged in their tracks. George’s mind was full of what he had just heard; but try as he might, he could not reconcile them with the facts as he knew them.
“One thing alone convicts him and shows me conclusively that his tale was merely an invention,” reasoned the young New Englander. “And that is the letter of the British governor Tryon to the Tory mayor of New York. In that, Tryon recommended this very young man to the mayor as one to be trusted—one who had served him before and would again. And yet he has just told his uncle that he attributes the non-success of his ‘plan’ to the fact that he could never gain Tryon’s confidence.”