ges know he _was_ my son? Did they, too,
recognise the family walk?"

Strides was taken aback at this question, and he even had the grace to
colour a little. He saw that he was critically placed; for, in addition
to the suggestions of conscience, he understood the captain
sufficiently to know he was a man who would not trifle, in the event of
his suspicions becoming active. He knew he deserved the gallows, and
Joyce was a man who would execute him in an instant, did his commander
order it. The idea fairly made the traitor tremble in his shoes.

"Ah! I've got a little ahead of my story," he said, hastily. "But,
perhaps I had best tell everything as it happened--"

"That will be the simplest and clearest course. In order that there be
no interruption, we will go into my room, where Joyce will follow us,
as soon as he has dismissed his men."

This was done, and in a minute or two the captain and Joel were seated
in the library, Joyce respectfully standing; the old soldier always
declining to assume any familiarity with his superior. We shall give
the substance of most of Joel's report in our own language; preferring
it, defective as it is, to that of the overseer's, which was no bad
representative of his cunning, treacherous and low mind.

It seems, then, that the bearers of the flag were amicably received by
the Indians. The men towards whom they were led on the rocks, were the
chiefs of the party, who treated them with proper respect. The sudden
movement was explained to them, as connected with their meal; and the
chiefs, accompanied by the major and Strides, proceeded to the house of
the miller. Here, by means of a white man for an interpreter, the major
had demanded the motive of the strangers in coming into the settlement.
The answer was a frank demand for the surrender of the Hut, and all it
contained, to the authorities of the continental congress. The major
had endeavoured to persuade a white man, who professed to hold the
legal authority for what was doing, of the perfectly neutral
disposition of his father, when, according to Joel's account, to his
own great astonishment, the argument was met by the announcement of
Robert Willoughby's true character, and a sneering demand if it were
likely a man who had a son in the royal army, and who had kept that son
secreted in his own house, would be very indifferent to the success of
the royal cause.

"They've got a wonderful smart man there for a magistrate, I can te