“Oh! that’s something in his favor,” she declared.
“So I thought you’d say,” he replied, shouldering his rake and broom and preparing to return to the stableyard. “I didn’t want you to have too bad an opinion of Uncle Ephraim.”
“If he is the person my father is looking for I have a very bad opinion of him, indeed, and his being for the king will make little difference one way or another.”
Her words disturbed Hadley when he thought them over. Mistress Lillian had seemed well disposed towards him personally, but she was also bitter against his uncle, and Hadley believed Uncle Ephraim should have warning of the colonel’s visit. So, immediately after his duties at the Three Oaks were performed, Hadley set out to his uncle’s house.
The Morris pastures were the nearest to the Three Oaks Inn, and crossing the road where he had so fortunately escaped the dragoons by the aid of Lafe Holdness, Hadley struck into the open plain on which his uncle’s cattle grazed.
The big pasture was dotted with clumps of trees, and while yet Hadley was some distance from the farmhouse and its neighboring buildings, he saw a band of young stock stampeding wildly from the vicinity of a grove of dwarfed oaks not far away. The cattle, heads down and tails in the air, plunged across the plain at a mad pace, and Hadley was positive that they were not running without cause. The drove passed him like a whirlwind, and in their wake came a loudly-yelping cur and a person whom he very well knew, urging the dog on.
“Hold on there! what are you about?” cried Hadley, running forward. “What are you chasing the cattle for? That brute of yours will kill some of the stock.”
It was Lon Alwood, and it was quite evident by Lon’s expression of countenance that Hadley was the last person he had expected to meet just then. “Wh—why, I thought you had gone to join the army!” he gasped.
“I’m right here to tell you to stop chasing my uncle’s cattle,” returned Hadley, in disgust.
“Oh, you are, hey?” cried the other boy, with bravado. Then, to the cur who had halted like his master at the appearance of Hadley: “Sic ’em, boy—sic ’em!”