“I am going,” he said sorrowfully. “Tell me by which road this alert goes?”
“To Newark, and then by the Morris turnpike. They get a guide at Amos Henderson’s,” she told him.
“Good-bye,” he said. “I will come again for you, Peggy.”
“Good-bye, John,” answered Peggy hardly able to speak. “And tell my mother—my mother, John——”
“Yes,” he said. They clasped hands. “Don’t worry, Peggy. This will be the alert that failed.”
Peggy waited until she could no longer hear his cheery whistle down the road and then stole back into the house.
Drayton was right. Four and twenty hours later the most disgruntled lot of Britishers that the city ever beheld returned, fatigued and half frozen from their fruitless quest. The famous alert from which so much was hoped had failed.
[3] “Alert,” an old word meaning an attack.