“Yes, sir?”
The colonel beckoned him nearer and whispered an inaudible order in the man’s ear. There was no change of expression upon the servant’s countenance, and the command might have been welcome or distasteful as far as an observer could have told. When the colonel ceased speaking, William rose without a word and tiptoed cautiously to the door. On pulling this ajar, however, the lusty snoring of Jonas Benson warned him of the inn-keeper’s presence. He closed the door again, nodded to the colonel, and vaulted through one of the open windows, thus making his exit without disturbing the landlord.
But although everybody about the tavern itself seemed to be slumbering, the colonel’s man found that he could not enter the stable without being observed. As he came out of the glare of sunshine into the half darkness of the wide threshing floor, the Englishman suddenly came upon a figure standing between him and the narrow window at the further end of the stable. It was the stable boy and he was just buckling the saddle-girth upon a nervous little black mare whose bit was fastened to a long halter hanging from one of the cross-beams.
Hadley Morris was a brawny youth for his age, which was seventeen. He was by no means handsome, and few boys would be attractive-looking in the clothing of a stable boy. Yet there was that in his carriage, in the keenness of his eye, in the firm lines of his chin and lip, which would have attracted a second glance from any thoughtful observer. Hadley had been now more than a year at the Three Oaks Inn, ever since it had become too unpleasant for him to longer remain with his uncle, Ephraim Morris, a Tory farmer of the neighborhood. Hadley was legally bound to Ephraim, better known, perhaps, as “Miser Morris,” and, of course, was not permitted to join the patriot army as he had wished. The youth might have broken away from his uncle altogether had he so desired, but there were good reasons why he had not yet taken this decisive step.
He had found it impossible to live longer under his uncle’s roof, however, and therefore had gone to work for Jonas Benson; but he still considered himself bound to his uncle, and Jonas grumblingly paid over to the farmer the monthly wage which the boy faithfully earned. Hadley found occasion oft and again to further the cause which in his soul he espoused. It was he rather than the landlord who saw to it that the fleetest horse in the stable was ready saddled against the expected arrival of one of those dispatch-bearers whose coming and going had disturbed Colonel Knowles the night before. As he now tightened the girth of the mare’s trappings she danced about as though eager to be footing it along the stage road toward the river.
Hadley was startled by the sudden appearance of the colonel’s servant in the doorway of the barn.
“So you are riding hout, too?” observed the latter, going toward the stalls occupied by his master’s thoroughbreds. “There’s a deal of going back and forth ’ere, hit seems to me.”
“Oh, it’s nothing so lively as it was before the war broke out,” Hadley explained, good-naturedly. “Then the coaches went out thrice a week to Trenton, and one of the New York and Philadelphia stages always stopped here, going and coming. Business is killed and the country is all but dead now.”
William grunted as he backed out one of the carriage horses and threw his master’s saddle upon it. “You’re going out yourself, I see.” Hadley said, observing that the man did not saddle the colonel’s charger.
“Hi’ve got to give the beasts some hexercise if we’re goin’ ter lie ’ere day hafter day,” grumbled William, and swung himself quickly into the saddle.