to wear them. What's next to do?" He tried on the clothes. They fitted
him as if made for him. He looked at himself in the greenish-yellow
glass. "Whoever I look like," he said, "I do not resemble George
Frothingham of the Twelfth New Jersey Infantry, that's one thing
certain." Looking for a closet or a place to hang up his finery, he
espied a small door at the farther side of the room. It opened upon a
narrow stairway, and the odor of cooking showed that it led probably to
the kitchen.
The only thing the trunk contained that George did not make use of was a
white wig. The strong dye he had used had taken the curl out of his
hair, and he drew it back from his forehead straight and glossy as an
Indian's.
He chose a rather quiet wine-colored coat, crimson waistcoat, and pearl
breeches, and setting the lace-trimmed hat jauntily on his head, went
down into the coffee-room.
"Ah, good-morning, Mr. Blount!" said the landlord. "There was an officer
of his Majesty's horse here this morning asking for you. But he
requested that you should not be disturbed." George bowed his thanks,
and asked the landlord to hurry with his breakfast.
As he turned about he could have fallen, for there, quite close to him,
was standing Schoolmaster Anderson. He was not blind at all! His keen
ferretlike eyes had the same quick glance, and his thin lips that same
Sphinx-like expression. But the beauty of George's disguise was proved
in an instant to his satisfaction, for Mr. Anderson looked at him
curiously, and asked Mr. Gerry his name in a voice that was quite
audible.
"Richard Blount," the latter replied.
"Ah, indeed!" answered the ex-schoolmaster. "The nephew of our
friend--eh?"
"The same," the landlord replied, as his young guest seated himself at
the table.
George's hands were shaking so with excitement that he could hardly hold
his knife and fork at first, but he quickly got over it, and a feeling
of exultation came into his mind. If Mr. Anderson had not recognized
him, no one else would, surely. If no one who actually knew the real
Richard Blount turned up, he was safe enough.
At this moment a loud blustering voice was heard, and a great figure
came from the hallway into the coffee-room.
It was Rivington, the King's printer, the man the early patriots had
wished to tar and feather for his utterances. He scarcely acknowledged
Mr. Anderson's nod, but turned to an officer who was following him.
"How that little schoolmaster does put on airs!" he said. "Why he
receives toleration I do not see."
"He is rather clever, I fancy," replied the officer. "His imitation of
General Washington is most amusing."
"Yes, he is amusing," responded Rivington.
George looked at Mr. Anderson once more. His small head seemed to
retreat into the folds of his neck-cloth, and the lace at his wristband
hung below his finger-tips. His clothes were as gorgeous as the plumage
of a peacock, and he had a way of bringing his heels together with a
click like a dancing-master. But the keen eyes and that protruding chin
would have told an accurate observer that a brain of no mean quality was
hidden underneath the curled white wig. But Rivington and the officer
were approaching.
"Ah, here's my friend of the other morning!" exclaimed the
officer--"young Blount of Albany." The speaker was the young cavalry
Captain who had met George on the hill-side two days before. "I see you
have found your tailor," he went on.
"No; better luck, my wardrobe," answered George. "I feared me I had lost
it."
"Good! Allow me to present our loyal friend, Mr. Rivington, long-time
printer to his Majesty," replied the officer.
"Your service, sir," replied Mr. Rivington, looking at George
thoughtfully. "You have not changed since I saw you last at Albany."
Imagine the surprise of the fictitious Richard Blount! Everything was
certainly playing into his hands. But he merely bowed, and asked the two
gentlemen to breakfast with him. They accepted, and seated themselves.
George once more had to recount the story of his supposed adventures on
the way from the city up the river.
Occasionally Rivington would interrupt with leading questions. "Ah, from
there you turned to the left and took the Lime Kiln Road beyond
Hudson--eh? Then down into the valley by Cloverburgh?"
A fear welled into George's heart. Was this man trying to trip him? So
to all questions he replied in the negative, and told of another way; to
which Rivington agreed, generally speaking, thus:
"Yes, 'tis the better route, I understand. A very clever ruse, indeed.
Think you not so, Captain?"
"Quite wonderful," the other replied. "Mr. Blount should tell it to
General Howe. The Yankees are not so clever as he thinks."
"Oh, by no odds!" Rivington had responded.
"You mentioned having despatches to his Lordship and his brother," said
the younger officer. "Do you not think it would be well to deliver them
as soon as possible? Pardon my suggestion."
"'Tis my intention to deliver them to-day. Can you secure an interview?"
inquired George, eagerly.
"Beyond all doubt I can," said Rivington, interrupting. "They will be
glad to see you."
An hour or so later George was waiting, with the florid printer, in the
little anteroom of the polished hallway of one of the large private
houses that belonged to New York's most wealthy family. It was here that
General Howe and his brother, the noble Lord, lived when on shore. They
both had quarters also on board the flag-ship in the bay.
Something was going on, for aides and orderlies streamed in and out of
the big house, and despatches were being taken to the various commands;
secretaries, with their arms full of papers and with pens behind their
ears came out occasionally, filled with importance.
At last an orderly stepped up to where our hero and Rivington were
pleasantly chatting. "General Howe will see you, gentlemen," he said,
saluting.
George caught himself in the act of replying to the salute. That would
never do at all. He was supposed to be ignorant of military tactics, and
he trembled at his narrow escape.
General Howe glanced over the despatches lazily. He appeared to be an
easy-going man of indolent habits, for he lounged in his chair. He had a
good-natured face.
"So the American General Schuyler is disgruntled, eh?" he said. "'Tis
quite like opera-bouffe. And they say that Farmer Gates from
Massachusetts may supersede him. Well, well, the plot thickens.
Burgoyne's army is obstructed by broken roads and felled trees. Let them
take their time. They will encounter nothing worse. 'Tis my opinion that
we forced things too hard in Now Jersey. I thank you for the news these
despatches contain, my dear young sir," he said, "and it is good news to
hear of our friends up the river. Can I do anything for you? You can
most certainly command me. I trust I shall see you again."
A splendid hound was sprawled out on the rug before the fireplace.
George looked at him carefully. He knew the dog in an instant. It was
one that had been raised by Mr. Wyeth. General Howe followed the lad's
glance.
"I see you know a good dog when you see him," he said. "'Twas a present
to me from a soldier. He seems to have an antipathy for Yankees, but
likes a scarlet coat."
The dog turned over on his back and lazily tapped the floor with his
tail. Seeing George, he arose and stretched himself; but as he
approached closer he suddenly grew excited, and jumped up on the young
man's breast, trying his best to lick his hands and face.
"How strange!" said General Howe. "I have never seen him pay aught of
attention to a stranger here before. Down, down! you devil!" The dog
slunk beneath the table, and at last Rivington and "Richard Blount"
stepped out in the hallway.
"'Tis strange about dogs," the older man was saying. "They are both
faithful and capricious."
George went back to his hotel. On his way he had another proof that his
disguise was quite impenetrable, for whom should he pass walking along
the street but Abel Norton, the chief clerk. George held his breath. The
old man, however, looked him in the face and passed on.
All this lack of recognition gave George the necessary assurance to
carry on his fictitious position. He listened to the talk of the
soldiers in the grill-room at the City Arms, but gained little knowledge
of the plans even from the conversation of the officers. It was evident
that the leaders of the British feared their divulgence. It was not Lord
Howe's intention to let Washington know the destination of the fleet,
which he could turn either northward to the assistance of Burgoyne, or
southward into the Chesapeake and the Delaware. While this uncertainty
remained, both forces were at a standstill.
It had thawed during the day, and a drizzling rain had set in. Late at
night George opened the window, and once more stood upon the roof. Then
he dropped over the wall to the ground. He had once more donned the old
suit which he had worn as his first disguise, and with his collar drawn
up to his ears he strode northward. He had not gone far when, as he
turned about the corner of a lane, he thought he heard the sound of some
one screaming. Then a doorway burst open, throwing a flood of light out
into the darkness, and a female voice was heard screaming shrilly:
"Thieves! robbers! help!"
A man's figure was seen struggling at the doorway with a woman, who had
grasped him firmly by the throat.
George, animated by an impulse, jumped the fence and ran to the house.
But before he reached there, a man turned the corner at top speed and
disappeared.
George knew the little house well; it was in a room in the second story
that he had passed many a night thinking of the past and planning for
the future. It was Mrs. Mack's.
"For the love of Heaven, Mr. Frothingham!" exclaimed a voice.
George had come within the ray of light, and it was none other than the
good washer-woman who was standing there.
"The blackguard tried to rob me," she said. "He stole in the back way,
and I found him in the pantry; but he didn't get a thing," she added,
"He might have murthered me intirely if you hadn't come up, sir."
George stepped inside the house and closed the door. "Would you have
known me, Mrs. Mack?" he asked.
"Indade in a minute, sir," she said, "I think. No, but you have changed.
Perhaps it was the way you leaped the fince. Your hair, sir--what has
happened it?"
"Mrs. Mack," said George, "I must speak quickly. I am here on dangerous
business. If you see me anywhere you must not recognize me--until you
see me in my uniform. Do you understand?"
"Shure," said the good woman. "Now I recall your face, you're a perfect
stranger, sir."
George smiled. "Have you seen the deaf-and-dumb man who brought the
money to me?"
"I do now and then. And shure he often asks fer ye."
"And what do you tell him?" asked George.
"That I hope ye're well," she responded.
"Now, Mrs. Mack, how can you do it?"
"And indade and with signs, and why not?" she asked, giving the same
answer that she had once before. "P'r'aps I have promised not to tell."
"Well," was the response, "remember, would you know me now? I have to
hasten."
"I would not," replied the widow. "Good-by, and may the Lord bless ye!"
"It was strange that she recognized me and the others did not," George
was thinking to himself, as he approached the lonely orchard, whose path
was rarely used except by the occupants of the two farms that bordered
it. "It may have been the walk," he added.
The snow had melted so that he could find no trace of any one having
been there before him on this day, but when he reached his hand back
into the limb of the tree, he touched a paper. How it thrilled him! Now
he would find out what things meant. There was something else there
also, and stretching out his fingers, he grasped a leather bag, which
clinked musically as he drew it forth. It was more gold! He hurried back
to the inn, and climbed to the top of the wall. But what was his dismay
and horror when he saw a figure on the roof bending on its knees trying
to look into the window of his room! A light was burning brightly
within.
George lowered himself cautiously and turned about the corner. What was
he to do? How was he to regain the second story? The papers must be read
at once.
George did not know that the man on the roof had caught sight of his
head as he had drawn himself up to the top of the wall, and had called:
"Hist! Blount! Oh, Blount!" in a low tone.
Then the stranger had crawled to the edge of the roof, and whispered
again: "Hist! Number Four! I am Number Two."
But he looked and listened in vain for an answer, for at this moment
George had disappeared in the darkness. He had not heard the hail.
With the agility of a sailor the small figure slid to the ground and
walked away quickly. If the young spy had heard the footsteps he would
have known that it was his old friend the schoolmaster.
When George reached the corner he leaned back against a buttress,
puzzling what to do.
Then he remembered with a start the door in his room that he had opened
thinking it would be a closet, but had discovered it to be a narrow
stairway that led down into a sort of servants' hall off the kitchen. If
he could gain it now he might be able to see within his apartment and
find out what was going on. The man on the roof prevented him, of
course, from getting back the way he left.
The tap-room opened upon the alley. It was thick with the clouds of
tobacco smoke, and noisy with the conversation of the crowd. He knew
that if he could once get beyond it to the kitchen he might be able to
find the door that led to the stairway. And now an idea struck him. The
walls were covered with rough cartoons and sheets of somewhat vulgar
songs, which most of the crowd had learned by heart. He had seen the men
often edging along, with their faces close to the wall, as if they had
been bookworms searching in a case for a mislaid volume. He stepped
inside the room, and followed the same tactics. No one paid the least
attention to him, and with his back to those seated about the tables, he
made his way to the kitchen. Here good luck also favored him, for a fat
man in a greasy apron snored in the corner. He was the only occupant,
and a door partly ajar disclosed to him the servants' stairway.
George stole softly up, and reached a little landing, which he knew at
once was the one he had looked at from his own room. He could hear the
sound of voices from within. One was loud and hearty, and the other he
knew at once as Landlord Gerry's.
"He is out on some escapade with the young officers, I promise you,"
said the landlord, "or mayhap he has gone over to the fleet, though all
below-stairs say that they did not see him go out. Why don't you wait
until the morning, sir? He appears a popular young gentleman, and may
possibly stay out late."
"No, he is a sleepy-head, my nephew," responded the other. "And he will
return soon if summat has not befallen him."
"He is a handsome lad," put in the landlord.
The other laughed. "Well, that depends where you look for beauty," he
responded. "I never reckoned him as such."
George saw it all now. It was the uncle from Connecticut, who had
returned, and, to use the expression, "the jig was up."
But what meant the man on the roof?
Seating himself on the stairway, his courage almost left him. What was
he to do? A hiding-place must be found before morning.
He thought at once of Mrs. Mack's. There lay his only hope. But there
was now some movement in the kitchen. The fat man, who had been
sleeping, was stirring a rasher of bacon over the fire. The talking had
ceased in his room, and suddenly he remembered with a start of fright
that the cipher and locket he had left under the pillow of the bed. It
almost made him sick with fear. He moved from his hiding-place, and
putting his eye to the key-hole, looked within.
The candle was guttering, and a huge shadow wavered across the opposite
wall. As his eye became accustomed to the light and the draught of air
blowing through the key-hole, he made out the figure of the large man
sitting in an easy-chair. His breast was rising and falling. He was
asleep.
[Illustration: IN TWO STEPS HE WOULD BE IN FULL VIEW.]
George tried the door. It moved, and in a moment he was standing in the
room. Here he paused. In two steps more he would be in full view of the
person looking through the window. He carefully measured the distance
and the direction of objects about him; and drawing a long breath he
blew with all his might at the candle on the dressing-case. It flickered
and went out. Then he stepped across in the darkness and placed his hand
beneath the pillow.
The heavy man drew a long breath and moved his head. "Confound that
light!" he said, and George heard him arise to his feet and fumble along
the wall.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
RIDDLES IN FLOWERS.
BY WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON,
AUTHOR OF "HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS," "SHARP EYES," ETC.
Indeed, are they not all riddles? Where is the flower which even to the
most devoted of us has yet confided all its mysteries? In comparison
with the insight of the earlier botanists, we have surely come much
closer to the flowers, and they have imparted many of their secrets to
us. Through the inspired vision of Sprengel, Darwin, and their
followers, we have learned something of their meaning, in addition to
the knowledge of their structure, which comprised the end and aim of the
study of those early scholars, Linnæus, Lindley, Jassieu, and De
Candolle. To these and other eminent worthies in botany we owe much of
our knowledge of _how_ the flowers are made, and of the classification
based upon this structure, but if these great savants had been asked,
"You have shown us that it _is so_, but _why_ is it thus?" they could
only have replied, "We know not; we only know that an all-wise
Providence has so ordained and created it."
Take this little collection, which I have here presented, of stamens and
petals selected at random from common blossoms. What inexplicable
riddles to the botanist of a hundred years ago, even of sixty years ago!
For not until that time was their significance fully understood; and yet
each of these presents but one of several equally puzzling features in
the same flowers from which they were taken.
[Illustration: PUZZLING FORMS AND FACES.]
In that first anther, for example, why those pores at the tip of the
cells, instead of the usual slits at the sides, and why that pair of
horns at the back? And the next one, with longer tubes, and the same two
horns besides! Then there is that queer specimen with flapping ears--one
of six from the barberry blossom; and the pointed, arrow-headed
individual with a long plume from its apex; and the curved C-shaped
specimen--one of a pair of twins which hide beneath the hood of the sage
blossom. The lily anther, which comes last, is poised in the centre.
Why? What puzzles to the mere botanist! for it is because these eminent
scholars _were mere_ botanists--students and chroniclers of the
structural facts of flowers--that this revelation of the truth about
these blossom features was withheld from them. It was not until they had
become philosophers and true seers, not until they sought the divine
significance, the reason, which lay behind or beneath these facts, that
the flowers disclosed their mysteries to them.
Look at that random row of petals too!--one with a peacock's eye, two
others with dark spots, and next the queer-fingered petal of the
mignonette, followed by one of that queer couple of the monk's-hood
blossom which no one ever sees unless he tears the flower hood to
pieces. We all know the nasturtium, but have we thought to ask it why
these petals have such a deep crimson or orange colored spot, and why
each one is so beautifully fringed at the edge of its stalk?
These are but a dozen of the millions of similar challenges, riddles,
puzzles, which the commonest flowers of field and garden present to us;
and yet we claim to "know" our nasturtium, our pink, our monk's-hood
larkspur, our daisy, and violet!
No; we must be _more_ than "botanists" before we can hope to understand
the flowers, with their endless, infinite variety of form, color, and
fragrance.
It was not until the flowers were studied in connection with the insects
which visit them that the true secret of these puzzling features became
suspected.
[Illustration: FERTILIZATION OF A FLOWER AS BELIEVED BY GREW AND
LINNÆUS.]
We all know, or should know, that the anther in flowers secretes and
releases the pollen. For years even the utility of this pollen was a
mystery. Not until the year 1682 was its purpose guessed, when Nehemias
Grew, an English botanist, discovered that unless its grains reached the
stigma in the flower no seed would be produced. But the people refused
to believe this, and it was not until fifty years later that Crew's
statement was fully accepted, and then only because the great Linnæus
assured the world that it _was_ true. But about fifty years later
another botanist in Germany, Sprengel, made the discovery that the
flower could not be fertilized as these botanists had claimed, that in
many blossoms the pollen could not fall on the stigma.
[Illustration: LINNÆSUS'S IDEA WAS WRONG.]
Sprengel knew that this pollen must reach the stigma, but showed that in
most flowers it could not do so by _itself_. He saw that insects were
always working in the flowers, and that their hairy bodies were
generally covered with pollen, and in this way pollen grains were
continually carried to the stigma, as they could easily be in these two
blossoms shown at B. Sprengel then announced to the world his
theory--the dawn of discovery, the beginning of the solution of all
these floral riddles. The _insect_ explained it all. The bright colors
and fragrance were intended to attract him, and the nectar to reward
him, and while thus sipping he conveyed the pollen to the stigma, and
fertilized the flower.
[Illustration: WHAT SPRENGEL DID NOT EXPLAIN.]
But now Sprengel himself was met with most discouraging opposition to
his theory, showing that he had guessed but half the secret after all.
Flowers by the hundreds were brought to his notice, like those two shown
in Diagram C, in which the insect could not transfer the pollen from
anther to stigma, as the stigma is closed when the pollen is ripe, and
does not open until the pollen is shed. For seventy years this
astonishing fact puzzled the world, and was at last solved by the great
Darwin, who showed that nearly all flowers shun their own pollen, and
are so constructed, by thousands of singular devices, that the _insect_
shall bring to each the _pollen of another flower_ of the same species,
and thus effect what is known as _cross-fertilisation_.
We must then look at all flowers as expressions of welcome to some
insect--day-flowering blossoms mostly to bees and butterflies, and
night-bloomers to moths. And not only expressions of welcome, but each
with some perfect little plan of its own to make this insect guest the
bearer of its pollen to the stigma of another flower of the same
species. And how endless are the plans and devices to insure this
beautiful scheme! Some flowers make it certain by keeping the stigma
closed tight until all its pollen is shed; others place the anther so
far away from the stigma as to make pollen contact impossible; others
actually imprison these pollen-bringing insects until they can send them
away with fresh pollen all over their bodies.
Take almost any flower we chance to meet, and it will show us a mystery
of form which the insect alone can explain.
[Illustration: THE TWO-FORMED FLOWERS.]