“You sent one of your negroes to the Davis plantation with a message for the Minute Boys,” Gabriel said, and I noted that he shifted his musket ever so slightly so he might be able to raise it to his shoulder on the instant. “I sent no negro, and for the very good reason that I have none.” “But Mistress Davis’s daughter told us it was your man who brought the word.” “Then Mistress Davis’s daughter will have to guess again,” the smith replied in a mocking tone. “There has been an old negro whom nobody seems to own, living near by here for the past year, and now and then I have hired him to do some bit of work for me.” “Then you did not send him to the Davis plantation to-day?” and now Gabriel spoke sharply, whereupon the man replied in an equally curt tone: “I have not seen the old rascal for a week or more.” We lads looked at each other in genuine alarm, for now did it seem positive a trap had been set, and the wonder was that those who were eager to do us a mischief did not begin their work. It was when the silence had lasted a full minute, and none of us seemed inclined to break it, that Master Sawyer took upon himself the task of gathering information, if there was any to be had in that quarter. “You are Master Reuben Rowe, and owner of this smithy?” “I am, sir,” the man replied, speaking more deferentially now, for mayhap he knew that the man addressing him was not one to be trifled with. “You say you sent no message, yet one was received which purported to have come from here. Have you seen any person in this vicinity who might have hired the negro to go to the Davis plantation?” “With the exception of a neighbor who lives two miles farther up the road, and who came here shortly after sunrise to have a hoe mended, I have seen no one.” “Where does this negro, of whom you speak, live? He must have a shack of some kind in which to sleep.” “Ay, that he has, and cultivates a bit of land, raising mayhap as much as will keep him from one year’s end to another. His place is three miles or more down on the edge of the swamp.” “In what direction?” “Yonder path leads to it.” Now the smith came out of the building that he might point to a faint trail running through a grove at right angles to the course we had been pursuing. Master Sawyer noted the direction, and said, as if thinking aloud: “Then in order for the negro to go to the Davis plantation, he must come by this forge?” “Unless he took a short cut through the woods in order to save considerable distance. Certain it is he can leave his shack without coming this way, for I have known three or four weeks to go by without his showing himself, but yet have heard of him at one place or another along the road.”