“I believe I know your vessel from having seen Samuel Garratt in her at the Albany Pier. She is a craft on which you could live without discomfort, and I would have you say this to your father, although mayhap he will not care to take advice from a man so much younger than himself. Nevertheless it can do no harm to repeat the words: It would be better if you three lads cruised about, keeping well to the New York side for the next week or two, until the excitement concerning this plot has died out somewhat.” I would have been a stupid not to have understood what he meant, but after promising to speak to my father as he proposed, I held my peace, and nothing more was said until we arrived at the foot of Market Street. I had fancied that when he was taken away by the guard Luther Stedman would have said very much that was disagreeable and threatening; but greatly to my surprise he remained silent. His eyes spoke, however, as did those of his companion, and in them I read as plainly as words could have told me, that if ever the time came when they might make reprisals, I would be called upon to pay the debt. “The sloop seems the cleaner for bein’ rid of them,” Abel Grant said in a tone of relief when we had watched the prisoners, surrounded by the soldiers in such a manner that it would have been impossible for them to hold any communication with the idlers on the street, march away until they were lost to view in the distance. “I cannot say whether we have truly been of benefit to the Cause this day,” Sam added thoughtfully, and, as I believed then, a trifle nervously; “but it seems that this much is certain: We have so turned matters that it becomes necessary to hold together as Minute Boys, gettin’ as many recruits as possible, for from now on the hand of every Long Island Tory will be against us.” “That is much as Lieutenant Winterbottom believes,” I replied, and then told what message he had sent my father, whereupon Abe cried grimly: “He is in the right so far as concerns our stayin’ aboard the sloop; but in the wrong if he fancies one or two weeks will work any change in the situation. Unless General Washington succeeds in gainin’ possession of all the country roundabout, an’ can successfully oppose the British forces who would come near here, then are our lives in anythin’ but pleasant places, an’ it seems to me much as if Abel Grant was in the same box with us.” “Ay, lad, that he is,” Abel replied, “an’ yet a trifle too old to be called a Minute Boy! I’m thinking I had best apply for the position of admiral, using this ’ere craft as my flag-ship, an’ allowin’ that the Minute Boys of Long Island have not only got an army, but a fleet.”