Friend Pye was a merchant and dealt in such foreign commodities—particularly in West India goods—as were in demand among the British officers. As previously noted, the Quaker had lived so circumspectly in the city throughout the war that his loyalty to the king was considered unshaken by his Tory neighbors, and yet he was so retiring and so worthy a man that the Whigs had not considered him a dangerous enemy.
If anybody noted, during these cold days of middle winter, that Friend Pye had a new ’prentice boy, it was not particularly remarked. The gossip of the camp and, indeed, all conversation was tinged with military life and happenings. Friend Pye’s young man carried goods to the Norris house where My Lord Rawdon—that swarthy, haughty nobleman, both hated and feared by all who came in contact with him—was quartered, and even to Peter Reeves’ house on Second Street, where Lord Cornwallis held a miniature court. Hadley was, in his new duties, quick and obliging. The British officers often remarked that, for a country bumpkin, Pye’s apprentice was marvelously polite and possessed some grace and gentleness. But all the time Hadley Morris was keeping both his eyes and ears open, and when Holdness came to the Quaker’s house under cover of the night, he told him all he had heard and seen, even to details which seemed to him quite worthless.
“Ye never know how important little things may be,” Holdness had told him. “It’s the little things that sometimes turn aout ter be of th’ greatest value. Stick to it, Had.”
But, one day, Hadley experienced something of a shock—indeed, two of them. He was walking through Spruce Street, carrying a bundle with which his employer had entrusted him to deliver at an officer’s residence, when a carriage came slowly toward him. It was a very fine coach—much finer than any he had observed in Philadelphia thus far—and it was drawn by a pair of magnificent horses. The horses were bay, and before many moments the boy, with a start, recognized them. His eyes flew from the handsome team to the coachman, perched on the high seat.
The bays were the same he had seen so often while Colonel Creston Knowles was a guest at the Three Oaks Inn, and the driver was William, the silent Cockney. The coach window was wide open and Hadley could see within. There, on the silken cushions, was seated Mistress Lillian herself! The boy stared, stopping on the edge of the walk in his surprise. Of course, he might have expected to find the British officer and his daughter here, yet he was amazed, nevertheless.
But he was evidently not the only person astonished. Lillian saw him. She leaned from the carriage window and, for an instant, he thought she was about to call to him. Then she glanced up at the driver’s seat and said something to William. At once the bays began to trot and the carriage rolled swiftly past. But Hadley had looked up at the driver, too, and for the first time saw and recognized the person sitting beside William on the high perch.
William was gorgeous in a maroon livery: the person beside him was in livery, also, and evidently acted as footman. But, despite his gay apparel, Hadley recognized this footman instantly. It was Alonzo Alwood, and as he gazed after the retreating carriage, the American youth was conscious that Lon had twisted around in his seat and was staring at him with scowling visage.
[TO BE CONTINUED]