“It is, sir.”
“Do you know a person named Ephraim Morris living in this part of the country?”
“That is my uncle’s name,” declared the boy, and his interest grew, for he remembered his conversation two days before with Mistress Lillian.
“How old a man is he?” demanded Colonel Knowles, with some eagerness.
“Rising sixty, sir. He is a farmer and lives not more than four miles from here.”
“Well,” said the Englishman, turning finally on his heel, “you’re a worthy nephew of such an uncle, I don’t doubt.”
“I’m afraid Uncle Ephraim would not agree with you,” Hadley called after the gentleman. “He is a Tory.”
But Colonel Knowles paid no further attention to him, and the boy went on with his work. But his mind ran continually on the interest the colonel and his daughter evidently had in old Ephraim Morris. Mistress Lillian herself appeared after breakfast, and while Hadley was clearing up the entrance to the inn yard. Jonas Benson prided himself on having everything about the inn as neatly kept as did his wife inside the house.
“Hadley Morris!” the colonel’s daughter exclaimed, leaning over the railing of the inn porch and looking at the youth with sparkling eyes. “Has my father seen you? Mistress Benson told me you had come back and that she was afraid father would be angry when he saw you. Aren’t you afraid?”
“I’ve seen the colonel,” Hadley replied, smiling up at her. He remembered the anxiety in her countenance when he had last seen her looking from the inn window as he ran with the dispatches to escape the dragoons, and he was not so much afraid of her as he had been earlier in their acquaintance. “He wasn’t very pleasant, but the dragoons aren’t in the neighborhood now and I guess he won’t try to do anything to me. You see, m’am, most of the farmers are on my side.”