rporal, because he ordered the other man to go up
stairs and look around there, while he searched the room on the other
side of the hall.

Brinton could hear the footsteps of the men as they walked about the
house, and their voices as they talked to each other. Then all was quiet
for a long while. He was just on the point of peeping out, when all four
men entered the room.

"Well," said a voice that he recognized as the corporal's, "it is plain
there is no one at 'ome. Me own himpression is that the bird's flown.
'E's probably started back for camp, and the wife and the kid with 'im.
I don't believe in payink no hattention to w'at them Tories says, nohow,
goink back on their own neighbors--and kin, too, like as not. It's just
to curry favor with the hofficers, it's me own hopinion. 'Ow did 'e know
the Major was comink 'ome to-day, anyhow?"

Nobody answered him. Perhaps he didn't expect any one to.

The Major! Brinton's own father! He was coming home! This, then, was the
surprise that his mother had said she would bring him when she went off
with Towser in the morning to go to Colonel Shepard's. And now those
redcoats were going to sit there and wait until he came, and then--
Brinton did not know what would happen, whether he would be shot on the
spot, or merely put in prison for the rest of his life.

Oh, if he could only get out and run to meet his father and warn him!
But the men seemed to give no signs of leaving the room.

"Perhaps he haven't come at all yet," suggested one of the privates.

"Perhaps 'e hasn't," answered the voice of the corporal; "but w'y, then,
wouldn't his folks be 'ere a-waitink for 'im? 'Owever, I'll give 'im
hevery chance. It's now five-and-twenty minutes after three. I'll give
'im huntil six, but if 'e doesn't turn hup by then, we'll start away for
the shore without 'im."

"Six o'clock!" thought the boy in the clock. The very time his mother
had told him she was going to be home again "with something very nice
for him." And now she and his brave papa would walk right into the arms
of these dreadful English soldiers, and he could not stop them!

_Whang!_

What a noise! It startled Brinton so much that he nearly knocked the
clock over; and then he realized that it was only the clock striking
half past three.

Half past three! He had been in there only half an hour, and already he
was so tired he could hardly stand up. How could he ever endure it until
four, until half past four, fi