"Oh, father," she cried, turning to him in dismay, "here be a lot of British soldiers on horseback! Whatever can they have come for?"
He hurried out, Dorothy close by his side, to meet face to face at the open door a tall young officer coming up the steps with much clanking of sabre and jingling of spurs, while on the driveway were a dozen mounted troopers, one of whom held the rein of a spirited gray horse.
The officer raised his hat, and his sea-blue eyes, keen as steel, looked with smiling fearlessness straight into the lowering face of Joseph Devereux. Then they changed like a flash, and with swift significance, as they fell upon the slight figure shrinking close beside him.
"Sir," he asked, "are you Joseph Devereux?"
"As you say," was the calm reply. "And what might an officer of His Majesty's army want with me?"
"Only an audience," the young man answered respectfully. "I wish to assure you, in case of its being needful, of my good will, and of my desire to see that your person and property are guarded from annoyance during our stay in your neighborhood."
The old man frowned, and drew his tall figure to its full height.
"It would seem a strange chance," he replied haughtily, "that should put such a notion into your mind, young sir. I've lived here as boy and man these seventy years and more, and my fathers before me for well beyond one hundred years; and I 've needed no protection o' my own rights save such as God and my own townsfolk have accorded me as my just due."
"Such may have been the case before now, sir," the officer said, his eyes still fixed upon Dorothy's blushing face; "but troublesome times, such as these, have brought changes that should, methinks, make you take a somewhat different view of matters."
"The times may be troublesome, as you say; but even should they grow more so, I have my country's cause too truly at heart to desire favors from its enemies."