"I have not believed it any time, Miss Desmond, and only my duty
compelled me to look here."
What a consoling word those four little letters, "d-u-t-y," sometimes
spell! Blathwayt came to me the next moment, and reported that he had
searched the upper rooms and the garret without finding the lost
soldier. "But what a house it would be to loot!" he added in a whisper
to me, showing, like his comrade, those predatory instincts which the
British soldier often loves to indulge.
I pretended to a belief that he had not searched well the top of the
house, and to show my zeal insisted upon conducting a hunt in those
regions myself. But I thought, as I ascended the last stairway, that it
would be rather a grim joke on me, if I found Alloway there after
Blathwayt had failed to do so. But no such bad luck happened, and ten
minutes later I announced with great but secret joy that his Britannic
Majesty's army in Philadelphia had done Mr. Desmond an injustice; no
soldier was concealed in his house, and I was sure that none ever had
been. But while I said this I was wondering what had become of Alloway;
he had entered the Desmond house, I knew beyond a doubt, and he must be
in it yet, hidden in some secret recess. Well, at any rate, the luck
which Marcel claimed was watching over us was still on guard.
"I shall be pleased to tell your father how vain our search has been," I
said to Miss Desmond. But Mr. Desmond was yet in his own room and would
not come forth. The haughty old Quaker, as was evident to us all,
considered this search of his house a piece of gross insolence.
"I trust that I shall never again be sent on such an errand," I said to
Miss Desmond as we prepared to go.
She made the formal reply that she hoped so too, and I could read
nothing in her eyes. I was sure now that she had never known of
Alloway's presence in the house. Then I took my soldiers and went into
the street.