The Young Continentals at Lexington

But that Nat Brewster was not the only one who had noticed something odd in the evening’s proceedings was made evident as they all four ascended the wide stairs of the inn. Lowering his voice to a husky whisper, Paul Revere said:

“On the road it’s best, my lads, to pin your confidence upon no one—unless you are sure who he is.”

“Hello,” said Ben Cooper, “what’s brought that out?”

Revere held up his flaring candle, for the landlady had provided each of them with one; the light danced in their faces and up and down upon the walls and ceilings, throwing their distorted, gigantic shadows along the staircase.

“Nothing,” answered the horseman of the Suffolk Convention, “but the caution of an old traveler. I say nothing against any one, mind you; but it is well to be careful. The sweetest spoken person is not always the one most to be trusted.”

“I think I get your meaning,” spoke Ezra Prentiss. “You are of the opinion that the man below is not altogether to be trusted.”

They had reached the landing upon the second floor; the rooms which they were to occupy were just at hand. Revere made a gesture with the lighted candle that caused the shadows to crouch and then spring madly apart.

“I repeat,” said he, “that I say nothing against any one. However, it would be just as well to keep your eye upon this.”

As he uttered the last word he struck the pigskin saddle-bags smartly with his hand and nodded his head wisely.

“I think it’s very good advice,” said Ben Cooper, thoughtfully.

“And I,” remarked Ezra. “Good-night, Mr. Revere, and thanks. Good-night, Nat.”

Good-nights were said and they entered their rooms. Ezra and Ben were to occupy a large room in which were a pair of huge four-poster beds. Nat and Revere had separate rooms, but as it happened, there was a communicating door between.

The man placed his candlestick upon the top of a chest of drawers.

“I never saw a finer or more careful lad than Ezra,” he remarked, “but I’d as leave Mr. Adams had given me his errand to do.”

“Why?” and Nat Brewster turned his head, looking at the speaker with interest.

“Only that a person of years is naturally more cautious,” returned Revere. “Now take for example the fact that Ezra hung his saddle pouches upon the wall. Was that not very like carelessness?”

“But he had them before his eyes all the time,” said Nat.

Revere waved his hand.

“I grant you that. But it was no way to do. A person upon an important mission cannot be too sure.”

There was a short pause, then Nat said:

“You did not mistrust the man below at first, I think.”

“No; I thought him a hearty fellow enough. It was when the other arrived that I noticed something that rang false. He received the dark man as though he were a stranger. But I’ll hazard a guess that they knew one another well enough.”

“I see,” said Nat; and after that he had a greatly increased respect for the observation of Mr. Paul Revere.

As it happened, Revere chose the inner room, the windows of which opened upon the courtyard. Nat’s apartment overlooked the road and lay next the hall. In a very little while the boy heard the dismal creaking of Revere’s bed as the man climbed into it. Then, after a great number of yawns, there came the deep breathing of a person fast asleep.

But Nat had no desire to follow his example. He knew that he ought to be rested for the long journey of the morrow; but his brain was full of thoughts, his eyes unwinking; he had never felt so wide awake in his life.

There was a high sky that night and the stars gleamed clearly; but there was no moon and things were apt to be more vague and melt more swiftly into the blackness that lurked under the fences, trees and at the sides of buildings. Nat stood at his window looking out upon the darkness and waiting for the sounds that would tell him the strangers were taking themselves to bed. But as they seemed in no hurry to do this, the boy soon fell under the spell of the September night. Every rustle in the elm across the road was plain to him; and the rasp of insects, deep in the grass, came clearly to his ears.

“I like the nights in this flat country,” he said softly to himself. “Things seem more distant. They don’t come crowding upon you like they do among the hills.”

Just then the rattle of halyards and spars sounded from the river, the gleam of a starboard light came winking over the water in a long, thin trail and the huge loom of a sail showed ghostlike against the stars. The romance of this dim vessel appealed to the boy. What was she—where was she bound and what strange adventures would she bring her crew before her prow parted the waters of the Delaware again?

Half dreaming, Nat Brewster continued to watch; then he was quickly called back to the present by the sound of footsteps on the inn stairs. He turned from the window and listened. Lightly, swiftly the steps ascended; a dim glimmer of light from a bedroom candle was thrown along the hall and entered Nat’s room at the transom. But in an instant it had vanished and the footsteps grew fainter and finally died away.

“He’s gone the other way,” Nat said to himself. “His room is probably at the rear of the building.”

As they had stood upon the landing listening to Revere Nat had noticed that the staircase was in the center of that wing of the building and that the hallway ran in either direction from it.

“Whichever of them it is,” muttered the boy, “he’ll be well out of the way, at any rate.”

For a long time he stood and listened for the other man. But there were no further footsteps or sounds of any sort.

“Strange!” thought the listener. “Is it possible that two really came up that time? I felt sure that it was only——”

He had gone so far when he suddenly shrank back from the window. Across the road he had seen a moving shadow, unquestionably the dim figure of a man.

“I have it,” breathed Nat. “The second man is to remain on watch outside. And,” with a grim setting of his jaws, “that proves to me that there is going to be something attempted, as I thought.”

He had laid the long pistol upon a chair shortly after he had entered the room. Now he took it up, raised the hammer and renewed the priming.

“There is nothing like being sure,” he thought. “And unless I’m entirely wrong, a pistol that’s ready to fire will be a useful thing to have at hand before very long.”

Again he fell to waiting. A clock from some distant part of the hostelry struck eleven and then midnight. It was some time after that—how much, Nat did not know—for he had gradually become drowsy—when a faint creaking noise suddenly came from the hall. With the step of a cat he crept to his room door and laid his ear against its edge to listen.

He was not mistaken; there was a soft scuffling sound, much like that which would be made by a person advancing slowly and with much caution.

Outside his door the sound ceased, and a long silence followed. At first Nat was convinced that the prowler intended to enter his apartment; but a moment’s thought showed him that the man could hardly be working by chance.

“The door of the room occupied by Ben and Ezra directly faces mine,” was Nat’s conclusion. “It is there he has stopped and it is there he is going to enter.”

A faint click—so faint as to be scarcely discernible—came from the other side of the door. The prowler had lifted the catch and was probably at that moment standing with his eyes peering through the darkness into the opposite room. Nat gave him a moment to get well within the room; then he grasped the handle of his own door, slowly and noiselessly swinging it open.

The hall was dark save for the starlight that sifted through the window at the front. But just then there came the crackle of a tinder-box in the room opposite, as it caught the spark from a steel. Nat saw a form crouching close to the floor. Then there was a swift glance—a swifter movement and the pigskin saddle-bags were in the hands of the unknown.

So, pistol in hand, Nat stepped into the doorway.

“Now then, whoever you are,” he said in a loud tone, “stand steady, or it will be the worse for you.”

Instantly the light was extinguished. He heard the four-posters creak as the sleepers awoke and sat up; and he was just about to cry a warning to them when a strong hand hurled him aside and a dark figure leaped down the hall toward the window. Nat had a confused sense of hearing startled voices calling out; but he did not pause to learn what they were crying.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Stop, or I’ll fire!”

But the unknown paid no heed. Under the hall window was a porch roof. Leaping through the one he gained the other; as he did so the pistol exploded with a terrific report and the heavy ball flew by his head. He was balancing himself upon the edge of the roof for a leap when Nat sprang out and upon him. Clutched in each other’s arms they swung backward and forward for a moment and then fell into the road.

The shock broke their holds. Bruised and bleeding Nat Brewster staggered to his feet. Lights were beginning to flash at the inn windows and eager faces to peer out. The stranger was also rising; the saddle-bags were in his hands, and Nat sprang forward to grasp them, when he received a terrific blow from behind and fell forward upon his face in the dust of the road.

Ben Cooper, staring from his bedroom window, candle in hand, saw the person who struck the blow raise his bludgeon as though to deliver a second.

“It’s the stranger with the earrings,” cried the boy.

Lights were now shining from various windows and the roadway before the inn was dimly illuminated; the man was clearly the same, and there was a fierce look upon his face as he steadied himself for the finishing stroke. But just then came a most tremendous barking and growling; petrified with astonishment, Ben saw a great dog rushing furiously forward from the inn yard—and held in leash by the Porcupine.

The monstrous beast sprang upon the swarthy man and crushed him to the ground; dragging the dwarf after it like a feather, it rushed upon the tall man, who had risen and was gazing around in a most bewildered manner.

Then Ben, followed by Ezra, leaped out upon the porch and thence to the ground; and though they arrived upon the scene of action but a moment or two later, it was to find the two strangers gone, and the Porcupine and dog masters of the situation.

With the help of Revere they carried Nat into the inn parlor; the landlady, who was now up, as were indeed all the people of the hostelry, began staunching the flow of blood from a wicked cut in his scalp, all the time lamenting that such a thing should have occurred at her house.

“The villains!” she said. “The ungrateful wretches! I hope they get their deserts! To strike a poor lad like this—to attempt a robbery here—to run off without settling their score.”

“Now,” demanded Ben Cooper of the Porcupine, who was perched upon the arm of the settle where Nat lay, “how on earth did you come here?”

“I came to see him,” answered the misshapen boy, a catch in his voice.

The landlady gave the speaker a look that was full of wonder and contained just a little fear.

“How he ever came to make up with that wicked beast, Hector, is more than I can understand,” she said to the others. “I have had that dog chained in the yard these three years, and only one or two of us dare go near him.”

“I can always make friends with dogs,” said the dwarf. “All I need is a chance to talk to them. And when you put me in the loft over the stable to sleep my window was just above him; so I had no trouble at all. When the noise began I knew what it was right away, and so I made good use of Hector.”

Here Nat opened his eyes and began to stare bewildered about him. Revere, Ben and the landlady bent over him, but Ezra looked keenly at the dwarf.

“When the noise began you knew what it was,” repeated he. “How was that?”

“Never mind,” replied the dwarf, coolly. “I knew; so let that be enough.”

Nat’s wits came slowly back to him during this time, and he painfully grasped each fact as it presented itself to him. The struggle with the stranger came first—then, finally, the object of the man’s visit.

“The saddle-bags!” he cried, starting to his feet.

“Are gone,” replied Ben Cooper in a startled tone, for in his anxiety for Nat this important fact had been forgotten.

Nat’s eyes went accusingly toward Ezra; he had not fully recovered from the shock of the blow and the boy’s figure was seen through a sort of haze.

“And the message?” spoke Nat, in an unsteady voice.

“It is safe,” replied Ezra Prentiss, quietly. “I have it here in my pocket.”