"I? Oh, I don't know," was the careless answer. "Do you not think I am somewhat too young to have much of an opinion upon such matters?"
He smiled, but without replying. Then Dot came closer to him and said in a low voice, "At any rate, I am good-natured enough to say I can show you something that you, being His Majesty's officer, had best know about."
"What is it?" the young man asked. He was now looking around for his hat, which, together with the bandage about his head, had fallen off during his struggle with the pedler.
Dorothy's sharp eyes were the first to catch sight of these; and she picked them up and handed them to him, noting with an odd feeling that he placed the bandage inside his coat and over his heart.
"It is something you may or may not care to see," she replied. "Only I'll warrant you'll be sorry if another reports it first; for I shall show it to the next Britisher who comes this way."
"Very well," he said; "let me see it."
Without further parley, and suspecting a nest of concealed firearms, or something of the like, he followed her down the rocks, going with slow caution, while she went more rapidly and soon stood below, waiting for him. And then, side by side, they set off inland.
Dorothy, skirting as closely as was prudent the woods where she reckoned Mary was still hiding, took care to remark to her companion, in a voice loud enough to reach her friend's ears, that it would not take over ten minutes to reach their destination, and that then he had best go his own way.