“I and chance, against any two;
Time and I against chance and you.”
LIX
TRAITORS IN THE REAR
On a broiling August day in the year 1781, an officer rode along the Raritan between Middle-Brook and Brunswick. As he approached the entrance of Greenwood, he slowed his horse, and after a moment’s apparent hesitation, finally turned him through the gateway. Once at the porch he drew rein and looked for a time at the paintless clap-boards, broken window-panes, and tangle of vines and weeds, all of which told so plainly the story of neglect and desertion. Starting his steed, he passed around to the kitchen door, and rapped thrice with the butt of a pistol without gaining any reply. Wheeling about, he was returning to the road when an idea seemed to come to him, for, altering direction, he pulled on his bridle, and turned his horse into the garden, now one dense overgrowth. Guiding him along one of the scarcely discernible paths, he checked him at a garden seat, and leaning in his saddle plucked half a dozen sprays of honeysuckle from the vine which surmounted it. He touched them to his lips, and gave his horse the spur. He held the sprays in his hand as he rode, occasionally raising them to his face until he was on the edge of Brunswick village, then he slipped them into his sword sash.
Giving his horse into the hands of the publican at the tavern, he crossed the green to the parsonage and knocked. “Is Parson McClave within?” he inquired of the hired girl.
“Come in, come in, Colonel Brereton,” called a voice from the sitting-room; “and all the more welcome are you that I did not know you were in these parts.”
“My regiment was ordered across the river to Chatham last week, to build ovens for the coming attack on New York, and I took a few hours off to look up old friends,” Brereton answered in a loud voice. “Where can we safely talk?” he whispered.
“I’ll leave my sermon even as it is,” said the presbyter, “and it being hot here, let us into the meeting-house yard, where we’ll get what breeze comes up the river. Eager I am to learn of what the army is about.”
Once they were seated among the gravestones, the colonel said “I need not tell you that five times in the last two months the continental post-riders have been waylaid ’twixt Brunswick and Princeton by scoundrels in the pay of the British. Only once, fortunately, was there information of the slightest importance, but ’t is something that must be stopped; and General Washington, knowing of my familiarity with this neighbourhood, directed me to discover and bring the wretches to punishment. Because I can trust you, I come to ask if you have any information or even inkling that can be of service?”
“Surely, man, you do not suspect any one in my parish?” replied the clergyman.
Brereton smiled slightly. “There is little doubt that the secret Tories of Monmouth County are concerned; but there is some confederate in Brunswick, who, whether he takes an active share, supplies them with information concerning the routes, days, and hours of the posts. I see, however, you have no light to shed on the matter.”