But for all her pride of bearing, for all her scorn of her captor, George noted a small tremble of the lower lip; it were as though her restraint would goat any moment and the tears begin to flow. And as he watched he saw the resentment in her eyes now and then give place to something else. It was fear; the shivering fear of one who is helpless.

The officer addressed her. “It may be,” said he, “that you can explain your presence outside.”

“Perhaps I could,” she returned, and if there was fear in her eyes, there was no trace of it in her voice.

[117]“It would be somewhat interesting to hear your reasons for lurking about.”

[117]

“It would be equally interesting to hear your reasons for treating me as you have done,” answered Peggy, quietly.

“As to that, I have my orders,” and the man laughed, not without good nature. “And in the face of what has just now occurred, I am bound to be even more strict than ever in carrying them out.”

While the officer questioned and the girl answered, her glances went here and there about the room like those of a hunted thing seeking a way of escape. The eyes of George Prentiss closely followed after; but they saw things that her startled glances passed over.

He noted four muskets stacked near a window. These belonged to the men who had pinioned Herbert Camp and himself. The men who had brought Peggy into the room each held one.

“But they,” reflected George, “were fired after the peddler, and have not been reloaded. The same is true of the pistol in the belt of the officer.”

Also he noted something which Peggy[118] could not see. This was that the belt which held his arms behind him had begun to slip; he felt that at any moment he desired he could free himself from it.

[118]

He found himself thrilling at the thought. His entrance into the “Wheat Sheaf” had put him upon the track of a promising Tory plot, the coming of the soldiers had all but ruined his chances of getting to the bottom of it; but now hope sprang up once more. If he could help Herbert Camp to escape from the colonials, he felt that he’d have even more chance than before to sound the plot, whatever its nature, to the bottom.

Mistress Trout, 

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