“Sh! Speak low, sir! We don’t know whose ears may be near us. Where there’s more room we’d be more likely to see ’em.”
Percy was becoming interested. At a short distance they came to a sort of clearing, where there had once been, so tradition said, a log hut; and here they stopped. The boy cast a quick, sweeping glance around, and then spoke.
“Mr. Maitland, Uncle Rodney bade me tell you there is danger, and you must look sharp. Cap’n Tryon has been to your mother’s—”
“Captain Tryon! Is he here?”
“Yes, sir. He came some time in the night, and he’s in a terrible way.”
“But what has he come for? What has happened to upset him?”
“Why, sir—as Uncle Donald told it to me—somewhere on the road, between this and Burton, somebody saw him that knew him. He was on the outside of the stage-coach with the driver, and it was the driver that told him how the man had looked at him.
“Well, sir, the next time the coach stopped with the mail, up comes three officers and tells the cap’n he’s their prisoner. P’rhaps you can guess how he took it. They must have had a pretty sharp time of it for a little while.
“Cap’n Tryon’s got two bullets in him—one in his arm and the other in his shoulder, but he give ’em the slip. He says he left two of ’em on the ground, but he didn’t know whether they were dead or not. Mercy! how he did swear! I heard him while he was on board the brig.”
“But what has this to do with me, Guy?”