CHAPTER XIV
A BROKEN LOCK
For many days the townsfolk and the soldiers talked of the performance that the Continental assault on Charlestown had interrupted. Don and Jud joked about it frequently, but they were always careful that neither Hawkins nor Snell should overhear them.
If all the Redcoats had been like Hawkins, the good people of Boston would have had little to complain of. He was always courteous and considerate; he seemed to spend as little time as possible in the house and kept to his room even on the coldest nights. The fellow was undoubtedly a fine soldier and as loyal to his King as any of them were, and secretly both Don and Jud admired him for it. He seemed to have a genuine affection for Don, though he rarely spoke more than a few words at a time to the boy.
Snell, on the other hand, was surly and quick-tempered and an ugly person to have about the house. He was inquisitive also. Once Aunt Martha found him trying to unlock the door to the cellar, and though he desisted at sight of her, the circumstance troubled her. It troubled Don too, but there was something that troubled him more than that. Snell had formed an acquaintance with Tom Bullard, and the two spent much time together.
“I tell you,” Don said to Jud one evening in February, “I don’t like it one bit, the way those two are together so much. Tom Bullard hates us like poison—I know that’s why he tried to steal your ma’s chickens—and I’m sure he’d like nothing better than to make us uncomfortable somehow.”
“But he can’t do anything, can he? You and your aunt have complied with all the town regulations, haven’t you?”
Don did not reply at once. “Well, maybe,” he said at last.
But Jud was not easily put off. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you something sometime,” said Don. “Not now, though.”
Don might not have told his companion his secret at all if it had not been for an unfortunate event that occurred toward the end of the month. One Saturday when Aunt Martha had been at the home of a sick neighbor almost all morning Don entered the house in Pudding Lane and to his consternation found Snell coming up from the cellar with an armful of wood. The broken lock lying on the floor told how the man had entered.