"Jest like me," said Watts. "I've done all I can to put down this 'ere wicked rebellion." "I've heard so," said Allen. "We got the news all the way from Connecticut. You delivered a whole ship's cargo of heavy guns and muskets and ammunition to the loyal-hearted Tories of New London. I was born there once, myself. I know just how faithfully they love their king and his blessed Parliament. Good-by, Luke! A successful voyage to you. Keep out o' the way of pirates." "I must, this time," said Watts. "If I don't, I'll never get another ship to carry furs and things in." Up on deck they went, and the last words uttered by Allen did not have to be whispered. "Take good care of your neck, Captain," he called out, from his boat. "If you're caught, this time, you'll never see New York again, or Marblehead, either." "I guess he's about right," said Mate Brackett, gazing after the boat. "I'd say you seem to be a man that the rebels have set a mark on." "Never you mind," said Watts. "We won't be ketched by 'em, that's all. The commodore says we may sail our own course. We'll git there." "All right, sir," said Brackett. "We've a queer lot o' chaps with us this trip, but we'll work 'em." What he meant by that was that all the prime seamen were needed by the war-ships, and that almost anything on two feet had been deemed good enough for an old transport ship going home in ballast. "We'll have to travel under light canvas, I take it," remarked Brackett, as he looked at his crew. "It'd be all night and part o' next day for them to shorten sail in a hurry." The boat which carried Mr. Allen, the loyal fur trader, reached the shore. On getting out of it, he walked until he came to a dwelling a short distance easterly from what the fire had left of old Pearl Street. He entered without knocking and passed through the house to the kitchen in the rear, where a comely, middle-aged woman stood before an open fireplace, watching a pot which was hanging on the crane. "Sally Allen," he said, in a somewhat low and guarded tone, "the captain took the furs. It's all right." "It is if they don't find him out," she said, gloomily. "I think you are running awful risks, Tom. The sooner you are back again in the Mohawk Valley, the better for you." "I shall get there," he told her; "that is, if I'm not shot before I pass the Dunderberg. I mustn't stay here, though. I must be in a canoe at Spuyten Duyvil Creek before morning." "They make short work of spies, Tom," she said. "Think of what they did to Nathan Hale. I used to know him, years ago, in New London." "Sally," he said, "I want you to mark just one thing. He isn't forgotten! One o' these days there'll be some first-rate British officer captured, a good deal as Hale was, with papers on him, playing spy. Whenever that happens, our side won't show any mercy. The spy'll have to swing!"