"Yes," replied Nathan. "He's a lieutenant in the British army now, and I believe he is attached to Major Langdon's staff."
"Major Langdon?" exclaimed Barnabas. "That's the name of the prisoner I lost! I wonder if he is with the party."
"Very likely, since Godfrey is here," Nathan suggested.
Barnabas scratched his head thoughtfully for a moment, seeing in this affair a relation to certain other things that had puzzled him considerably of late.
"I'm forgetting my duty," he said. "It ain't safe to stay here a minute longer. Forward, now, an' make no noise."
With loaded muskets, the men fell in behind their leader, leaving the body of poor Lindsay to stiffen on the grass. Barnabas led the party about a hundred yards to the northeast and halted them in a cluster of pine trees.
"You're safe from attack here," he said. "Don't stir till I come back. I'm going forward a bit to reconnoiter."
Several volunteered for this duty, but Barnabas knew that he was best fitted for it, and he had his way. He crept off as noiselessly as a serpent, and the shadows hid him from view.
Nathan and his companions waited anxiously in the dark cover, not daring to speak above a whisper, and expecting at any moment to hear a shot. Fully half an hour elapsed, and dawn was beginning to break when Barnabas returned.
"I've been to the enemy's camp," he announced, eagerly. "They're less than a mile due north from here, across a creek that flows through a deep an' narrow ravine. An' just on the other side of the creek an' the camp is the bridle-road. There's a big pine tree fell across the chasm, formin' a natural bridge from bank to bank, an' I crept over that to peek an' listen."