But Colonel Knowles paid no further attention to him, and the boy went on with his work. But his mind ran continually on the interest the colonel and his daughter evidently had in old Ephraim Morris. Mistress Lillian herself appeared after breakfast, and while Hadley was clearing up the entrance to the inn yard. Jonas Benson prided himself on having everything about the inn as neatly kept as did his wife inside the house. “Hadley Morris!” the colonel’s daughter exclaimed, leaning over the railing of the inn porch and looking at the youth with sparkling eyes. “Has my father seen you? Mistress Benson told me you had come back and that she was afraid father would be angry when he saw you. Aren’t you afraid?” “I’ve seen the colonel,” Hadley replied, smiling up at her. He remembered the anxiety in her countenance when he had last seen her looking from the inn window as he ran with the dispatches to escape the dragoons, and he was not so much afraid of her as he had been earlier in their acquaintance. “He wasn’t very pleasant, but the dragoons aren’t in the neighborhood now and I guess he won’t try to do anything to me. You see, m’am, most of the farmers are on my side.” “You are a terrible rebel!” declared the girl, but she still smiled down upon him. “Did you carry those dispatches ’way to--to that Mr. Washington whom your people call ‘general’?” “I went all the way with them and saw General Washington himself,” declared the boy, proudly. “He is a mighty fine gentleman, and the place where he stops was full of officers. All the American army are not ragamuffins,” and his eyes twinkled as he thus reminded her of her criticism of the American soldiery on a previous occasion. “Some of the colonists know how to fight as well as hired soldiers.” “And some of them know how to run,” Lillian cried. “True. Would you have had me stand here and face that whole mob of dragoons--to say nothing of your father?” “Oh, I didn’t mean you. I think you were very smart to get away on that horse with the dispatches. And I’ll tell you what father said about it,” she added, lowering her voice and glancing about her. “He said that ‘if the rebel youth can fight so well and are such strategists, it is no wonder that my Lord Howe and the other generals have so little luck in bringing the uprising to a swift close.’ Now, aren’t you proud?” Hadley flushed as she spoke. “I thought he was very angry with me this morning.” “Well, I think he is angry enough; but he seemed to admire your ability to beat the dragoons and get across the river as you did. I heard him and the officer in command of the troopers talking about it, and they both wondered how you escaped them on the road to the ferry. Father said he had almost caught you--he could tell by the sound of your horse’s feet--when the sound suddenly stopped and you disappeared as though the earth had opened and swallowed you. How did you do it?”