"I? Nothing—that is, nothing except what everybody knows."
"Well, what does Mister Everybody know?" he inquired, sneeringly.
"They say he takes the King's highway," I replied. "There's a book about him, printed in Boston."
"With a gibbet on the cover," interrupted the big fellow, impatiently. "Oh, I know all that. But don't they say he's a rebel?"
"Why, yes," I replied; "everybody knows he set fire to the King's ship, Gaspee, and started the rebels a-pitching tea overboard from Griffin's Wharf."
I stopped short and looked at him in amazement. He was Jack Mount! I did not doubt it for one moment. And there was the famous Weasel, too—that little, shrivelled comrade of his!—both corresponding exactly to their descriptions which I had read in the Boston book, ay, read to Silver Heels, while her gray eyes grew rounder and rounder at the exploits of these so-called "Minions of the Moon."
"Well," asked the forest runner, with a chuckle, "do you still think yourself lucky?"
I managed to say that I thought I was, but my lack of enthusiasm sent the big fellow into spasms of smothered laughter.
"Now, now, be sensible," he said. "You know you've a belt full of gold, a string of good wampum in your sack, and as pretty a rifle as ever I saw. And you still think yourself in luck? And you're supping with Jack Mount? And the Weasel's watching everything from yonder hazel-bunch? And Saul Shemuel's pretending to be asleep under that pine-tree? Why, Mr. Cardigan, you amaze me!" he lisped, mockingly.
So the little Hebrew had recognized me after all. I swallowed a lump in my throat and rose to my elbow. With Jack Mount beside me, Walter Butler prowling outside the fire-ring, and I alone, stripped of every weapon, what in Heaven's sight was left for me to do? Truly, I had jumped into that same fire which burns below all frying-pans, and presently must begin a-roasting, too.