Chapter 10

THE LETTER OF THE FOUR

The building into which Henry was taken was built of brick and rough stone, two stories in height, massive and very strong. The door which closed the entrance was of thick oak, with heavy crosspieces, and the two rows of small windows, one above the other, were fortified with iron bars, so close together that a man could not pass between. Henry's quick eye noticed it all, as they entered between the British guards at the door. The house inside was divided into several rooms, none containing more than a rude pallet bed, a small pine table, a tin pitcher, a cup of water, and a pine stool.

Henry followed Holderness into one of these rooms, and promptly sat on the pine stool by the window. Holderness looked at him with a mixture of admiration and pity.

"I'm sorry, old chap," he said, "that I have to lock you up here. Come now, do be reasonable. These rebels are bound to lose, and, if you can't join us, take a parole and go somewhere into Canada until all the trouble is over."

Henry laughed lightly, but his heart warmed again toward young Holderness who had come from some easy and sheltered spot in England, and who knew nothing of the wilderness and its hardships and terrors.

"Don't you be sorry for me," he said. "As for this room, it's better than anything that I've been used to for years. And so far as giving a parole and going into Canada, I wouldn't dream of such a thing. It would interfere with my plans. I'm going back into the South to fight against your people and the Indians."

"But you're a prisoner!"

"For the present, yes, but I shall not remain so."

"You can't escape."

"I always escape. It's true I was never before in so strong a prison, but I shall go. I am willing to tell you, Lieutenant Holderness, because others will tell you anyhow, that I have outside four very faithful and skillful friends. Nothing would induce them to desert me, and among us we will secure my escape."

Into the look of mingled admiration and pity with which Holderness had regarded Henry crept a touch of defiance.

"You're deucedly confident, old chap," he said. "You don't seem to think that we amount to much here, and yet Colonel de Peyster has undoubtedly saved you from the Indians. You should be grateful to him for that much."

Henry laughed. This ingenuous youth now amused him.

"What makes you think it was Colonel de Peyster or any other English or Tory officer who saved me from the Indians? Well, it wasn't. If Colonel Bird and your other white friends had had their way when I was taken I should have been burned at the stake long before this. It was the Wyandot chief, Timmendiquas, known in our language as White Lightning, who saved me."

The young officer's red face flushed deeper