Unfortunately there was no other door by which Brinton could leave the room. What was worse, there was no closet in which he could hide. The soldiers were now so close at hand that he could hear their voices, and a glance through the window showed him that two of them were going around to the back of the house, as if to cut off any possible escape in that direction. And his mother would not be back until six o’clock. Instinctively his eyes sought the face of the tall time-piece in the corner. It was just three; and he could hear the soldiers’ steps on the front porch! The clock! Surely there was room within its generous case for a very small boy. In less time than it takes to write it Brinton was inside, and had turned the button with which the door was fastened. As he pressed himself close against the door, so that there should be room for the pendulum to swing behind him, he heard the corporal enter the room. He knew it must be the corporal, because he ordered the other man to go upstairs 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 hasn’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.”