When he had overtaken him, the impulsive lad's heart burst out at the lips with the words: "_We_ could take Boston _now_, just as easy as anything--without wasting a jot of powder either. Skip across the ice, don't you see, and be right in there before daylight. A big army lying still for months and months, and just doing nothing but wait for folks in Boston to starve out! I _say_ it's shameful; now, too, when the ice has come that General Washington has been waiting all winter for." "You won't help your country one bit by scolding about it, Jeremy. You'd better save your strength for cutting willow-rods to-day." "I'd cut like a hurricane if the rods were only going to whip the enemy with. But just for sixpence a day--pshaw! I say, it don't pay." "Look here, lad, can you keep a secret?" "Trust me for that," returned Jeremy. Turning suddenly upon his questioner, he faced him to listen to a supposed bit of information. "Then why on earth are you talking to _me_ in that manner, boy?" questioned the man. "Why you _know_ all about it, just as well as I do; and a fellow _must_ speak out in the woods or _somewhere_. Why, I get so mad and hot sometimes that it seems as if every thought in me would burn right out on my face, when I think about my poor mother over there," pointing backward to the three-hilled city. The two were standing at the moment midway of a corn-field. The February wind was lifting and rustling and shaking rudely the withered corn-stalks, with their dried leaves. To the northward lay the Cambridge camp, across the Charles River. To the south and east, just over Muddy River and Stony Brook, lay the right wing of the American Army, with here a fort and there a redoubt stretching at intervals all the distance between the camp at Cambridge and Dorchester Neck, on the southeast side of Boston. Behind them, to the westward, lay Cedar Swamp, while not more than half a mile to the front there was a four-gun battery and Brookline Fort, on the Charles, near by. While Jeremy Jagger was pouring forth his words with vociferous violence, the man by his side glanced eagerly about the wide field; but, satisfying himself that no one was within hearing, he said, resting his hatchet on the lad's shoulder while speaking: "See here, my boy. The brave man never boasts of his bravery nor the trustworthy man of his trustworthiness. How you learned what you know of the plans of General Washington I do not care to ask; but to-day and all days keep quiet and show yourself worthy of being trusted." "I'll try as hard as I can," promised Jeremy. "No one can have tried his best without accomplishing something that it was grand to do, though not always _just what_ he was trying to do," responded the man, glancing kindly down upon the fresh, eager lad, tramping through the snow, at his side. "Don't forget. 'Silence is golden,' in war always. Not a word, mind, when you get home, about the work of to-day."