I told the half of it, I’d be putting ropes about the necks of a dozen or more.”

“I WALKED INTO A NEST OF KING’S MEN”

George laughed. “More than likely it was some sort of a rough joke that your visitor was enjoying at your expense,” said he.

Again the ire of the smith began to mount.

“Joke?” cried he. “Joke, is it? You know nothing of me, me lad, or you’d be sure no man would play the merry Andrew in that style with me. And maybe you think,” here he pointed one challenging finger at George, “that it was a joke that I see carried on that same night, only a bit earlier, at the ‘Wheat Sheaf’?”

“What was that?” asked George, allowing quite a tone of scepticism to creep into his voice.

The Celt recognized the doubtful tone, and the warmth of his manner increased.

“I made a bit of a mistake that night,” spoke he, trying to keep from flying into a rage. “I opened the door to one of the private rooms and walked into a nest of king’s men, up to their eyes in plotting. And that[90] was not all—in the midst of them was some one that’s supposed to wear an entirely different kind of a coat.”

[90]

“You mean,” said George, eagerly, “that you saw engaged with the Tories one who is known as a patriot?”

The interest in his voice was too plain to escape the smith; instantly the man’s heat vanished; all his excited desire to show that he had real cause to fear the anger of the conspirators disappeared.

“What I mean,” said he, in a greatly altered voice, and as he spoke his eyes were full of suspicion, “is no matter. I saw what I saw; and if anybody wants to know the meaning of it or the particulars of it, let him search them out for himself.”

“But,” demanded young Prentiss, “do you really mean to keep important facts from the authorities?”

“I mean to try and keep a roof over my head, and life in my body,” said the smith, thrusting a bar of iron into the fire and beginning to blow the coals into a higher red. “It’s all very well for those in the town to speak out boldly; but this is a lonely place;[91] and as I said before, a man with a wife and childer can’t run himself into danger.”

[91]

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