“That may be--that may be,” testily. “You’re as shortsighted as my old wife, Had. You’ll both let this Master Creston Knowles throw dust in your eyes because he’s got a pretty daughter. Bah!” And Jonas stumbled back to bed, leaving Hadley Morris to retire to his couch on the loft floor of the stable. But had these well-founded suspicions been to any purpose, the inn-keeper surely would have remained awake on the afternoon our story opens, instead of lolling, sound asleep, in his wide chair in the hall. Behind the parlor door, not ten feet away from mine host of the Three Oaks, Colonel Creston Knowles was conversing in a low tone with his serving man. “And you say it happened twice during the night, sirrah?” queried the British officer, who spoke to everybody but his daughter with sternness. “Twice, hand it please ye, sir. Hi’m sure the stable was hopened once hafter the time you was hup, sir, hand another ’orse taken hout. My life! but Hi thought hit thieves hat first, sir--some o’ them murderin’ cowboys; but the young lad has tends to the ’orses seemed to know them that came, hand they did not touch hour hanimals, sir.” “It’s a regular nest of rebels!” exclaimed the colonel, his brow black enough at the report. “Such places as this should be razed to the earth. The spies who report to this Mr. Washington and his brother rebels evidently have free course through the country. They even exchange their steeds here--and Malcolm’s troop lying less than six miles away this very day. William!” “Yes, sir?” The colonel beckoned him nearer and whispered an inaudible order in the man’s ear. There was no change of expression upon the servant’s countenance, and the command might have been welcome or distasteful as far as an observer could have told. When the colonel ceased speaking, William rose without a word and tiptoed cautiously to the door. On pulling this ajar, however, the lusty snoring of Jonas Benson warned him of the inn-keeper’s presence. He closed the door again, nodded to the colonel, and vaulted through one of the open windows, thus making his exit without disturbing the landlord. But although everybody about the tavern itself seemed to be slumbering, the colonel’s man found that he could not enter the stable without being observed. As he came out of the glare of sunshine into the half darkness of the wide threshing floor, the Englishman suddenly came upon a figure standing between him and the narrow window at the further end of the stable. It was the stable boy and he was just buckling the saddle-girth upon a nervous little black mare whose bit was fastened to a long halter hanging from one of the cross-beams.