"She'd not be likely to go from her anchorage in this fog." The old man spoke musingly, while he slowly filled his pipe for a final smoke before retiring for the night.
"But I take it they will move from there as soon as may be, on account of fearing the trouble they have a right to expect because of the men they've stolen," Hugh said indignantly.
"Yes," added Jack, "even if only to get into Great Bay, and closer to their fellows on the Neck."
"'T is a thousand pities they should have taken Mugford," the old gentleman remarked, as he carefully lit his pipe.
"Yes," his son assented; "it is in every way a pity, for if they wish to invite trouble they could not have made a better opening for ill feeling among the people of the town."
"Indeed they could not," Hugh exclaimed hotly. "Every one is sure to take Mugford's abduction to heart, and find a way to make the redcoats answer for it."
"We shall find a way, please God, to make them all answer for their overbearing and insolence to us as a country as well as individuals," Joseph Devereux said gravely. "And that reminds me, I had surely thought Broughton and the rest o' the committee would have returned from Boston this night."
"He was very doubtful, as I think, of getting back before to-morrow, or perhaps until Monday." And a dreamy look softened Jack's face, as if he might be thinking of what was to be told when Nicholson Broughton returned.
"Jack, what a lucky beggar you are!" exclaimed Hugh, with a touch of envy in his tone, as the two young men tarried a moment in the former's room before saying good-night.
Jack opened his eyes still wider, exactly after the fashion of Dorothy when she was surprised.