Stephen glanced up quickly at the portrait hanging above the mantel, one of the very few of his rescued possessions that he had brought to the cottage. The picture was of Master Simon, painted before he left England; it showed a dreamy-faced boy with those same wide, grave blue eyes. Margeret Bardwell had had them, and Amos and Alisoun, but none of them quite so like Master Simon’s as were Stephen’s.
“It is curious,” he said at last, “but go on with your tale. If we pause to talk of the colour of eyes we will never come to the end of your adventure.”
“When the officer spoke at length,” Miles continued, “his words knocked all the wind from the sails of my silly vanity.
“‘I have been watching you,’ he said, ‘ever since you stopped by the Common, and I had no difficulty in recognising you as an officer in the Continental Army. It was not the first time we had met, however. Do you recollect a night raid last October, when your men made a stand north of Hopewell to the great discomfiture of the soldiers of King George?’
“‘What,’ I cried, ‘are you the officer that escaped?’ He nodded. ‘Then,’ I went on, further rage swelling in my heart, ‘you must have had a hand in the burning of that house and garden!’
“‘I am glad to say, that was no work of mine,’ he answered; ‘my division did not join the rest until that ugly task was done. The Commander’s orders in the matter were strict and definite but had they been issued to me I fear I would have made some trouble over obeying them. That is not the question now, however. Here are you, a soldier out of uniform, within the enemy’s lines, and that means hanging as a spy. What were you doing here beyond decorating His Majesty’s barracks with the rebel flag?’
“I explained my errand briefly and cursed the bragging folly that had been my undoing. He interrupted my hot words, however, before I had gone far on that subject.
“‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘how, when I escaped from that battle where your forces fought to so much greater advantage than ours, there was a certain officer of the rebel army who snatched a gun from one of his men, slipped down a path that he knew and was waiting for me, with rifle in rest, at the turn of the road?’
“‘And do you recollect how he took careful aim as I galloped by and then suddenly flung up his weapon and saluted me instead of firing? I remember it well, even to the man’s face, for although it was a hurried moment, one notes clearly the countenance of an enemy who is about to take one’s life. I was thinking of it when I saw that same officer in huckster’s clothes, standing by the Common. And I am thinking of it still’—and here he opened the door—‘when I bid that man go free now, to follow Cousin Betsey, who wants his protection more than King George wants his life.’