HOW THE PROMISE WAS KEPT
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.”