“You mean,” said George, eagerly, “that you saw engaged with the Tories one who is known as a patriot?”
The interest in his voice was too plain to escape the smith; instantly the man’s heat vanished; all his excited desire to show that he had real cause to fear the anger of the conspirators disappeared.
“What I mean,” said he, in a greatly altered voice, and as he spoke his eyes were full of suspicion, “is no matter. I saw what I saw; and if anybody wants to know the meaning of it or the particulars of it, let him search them out for himself.”
“But,” demanded young Prentiss, “do you really mean to keep important facts from the authorities?”
“I mean to try and keep a roof over my head, and life in my body,” said the smith, thrusting a bar of iron into the fire and beginning to blow the coals into a higher red. “It’s all very well for those in the town to speak out boldly; but this is a lonely place; and as I said before, a man with a wife and childer can’t run himself into danger.”
The return of the apprentice, leading a plow horse by the bridle, put an end to the talk. So George mounted and, gathering up his reins, said:
“The ‘Wheat Sheaf’ is not very far away, I believe?”
“A matter of a half mile,” answered the mechanic.
“I’ll dine there, like as not,” said George. And then he added, with a laugh: “Perhaps it will be as well for me to keep my eyes open also; I may see something upon my own account.”
Then he waved his hand in a good-bye and set off along the road once more. The patriot batteries mounted upon the Heights were in view through the dusk when he sighted the “Wheat Sheaf,” which was a large rambling structure with a veranda upon two sides of it and a great number of small-paned windows through which the lights were already beginning to glint.