The Major! Brinton's own father! He was coming home! This, then, was the surprise that his mother had said she would bring him when she went off with Towser in the morning to go to Colonel Shepard's. And now those redcoats were going to sit there and wait until he came, and then— Brinton did not know what would happen, whether he would be shot on the spot, or merely put in prison for the rest of his life.
Oh, if he could only get out and run to meet his father and warn him! But the men seemed to give no signs of leaving the room.
"Perhaps he haven't come at all yet," suggested one of the privates.
"Perhaps 'e hasn't," answered the voice of the corporal; "but w'y, then, wouldn't his folks be 'ere a-waitink for 'im? 'Owever, I'll give 'im hevery chance. It's now five-and-twenty minutes after three. I'll give 'im huntil six, but if 'e doesn't turn hup by then, we'll start away for the shore without 'im."
"Six o'clock!" thought the boy in the clock. The very time his mother had told him she was going to be home again "with something very nice for him." And now she and his brave papa would walk right into the arms of these dreadful English soldiers, and he could not stop them!
Whang!
What a noise! It startled Brinton so much that he nearly knocked the clock over; and then he realized that it was only the clock striking half past three.
Half past three! He had been in there only half an hour, and already he was so tired he could hardly stand up. How could he ever endure it until four, until half past four, five, six?
"If only something, some accident even, will happen to detain papa and mamma!" he thought. But how much more likely, it occurred to him, that his father, having but a short leave of absence, would hasten, and arrive before six.
"Tick-tock," went the clock.