Peter, after being entrusted with Dennis’s secret of the hidden powder, walked about like one whose head was in the air. If he stuck pumpkin-seeds into corn-hills, he did so with a machine-like motion. He had listened to the singing of the birds in the cedars, but he forgot the bird-singing now; though he loved rare wild flowers, a white orchid bloomed among the wintergreens by the ferny brookside, but he did not see it now; the sky, the forests, and everything seemed to have vanished away.

He watched Dennis after their return as the latter came out of the alarm-post over the way and went to the tavern or the war office.

Dennis for a time merely bowed to him and passed him by, day by day, when on duty; and the corn grew, and the orioles flamed in the air. But one thought held him—a picture of the light in the window in the cedars, guarding some unknown cave that contained the lightnings and the thunder of the battle-field. What would come of that service?

He at last felt that he must see Dennis. He could stand the suspense no longer.

So one night he crept up to Dennis’s chamber under the rafters.

“I could stay away from you no longer, after what you told me,” said he. “Strange things are going on—horsemen coming and going; queer people haunt the Colchester road; knife-grinders, clock-cleaners, going into the forest to get walnut-oil; men calling out ‘Old brass to mend’; and I seem to see spies in them, and I fear for him.”

“Boy, I fear for him. He is an old man now, but he walks erect, and seems to think that some host unseen is guarding him. He wears the armor of faith. I can see it, other people do not; and he does not fear the face of clay.”

“Dennis, when are you going to set me behind the window and the light in the cedars, at night?”

“Soon, boy, soon. Let us look out of the window.”

It was a June night. Below them was the war office, the Alden Tavern, the house of William Williams—the boy’s home. Afar stretched the intervales, now full of fireflies and glowing with the silvery light of the half-moon. Night-hawks made lively the still air, and the lonely notes of the whippoorwills rang out from the cedars and savins in nature’s own sad cadences. The roads were full of the odors of wild roses and sweetbrier, but were silent.

“Dennis,” said Peter, “I have been thinking. Suppose I were to watch in the cedars, and an unknown man were to come down the open road toward the light in the window. And suppose I were to say, ‘Halt, and give the countersign,’ and he were to have no countersign. Then I would say, ‘Follow me, but do not come near me, or I will discharge my duty upon you.’ And suppose he were to follow, and I move back, back, back with the window and light, and he were to think that I were a house, and that I were to draw him into a trap and lose him, and put out the light and run for you—what would you do then?”

“I would hunt for him in the ravine where you left him—in the wood trap—and would find him, and wring from him the cause of his being on the highway without a passport.”

“Dennis, do you think that such a thing as that will ever happen?”

“Yes; my instincts tell me that it will. Boy, there is one man whom Washington trusts, whom the Governor relies upon, but in whom I can see a false heart. He was born only a few miles from here. He is famous. If he were to turn traitor to our cause, as I believe he will, he would send spies to Lebanon. He would seek to destroy the hiding-places of powder, and he knows where they are to be found. Then, boy, your time to thwart such designs would come.”

“What is that man’s name?”

“I hardly dare to breathe it even to you, with a heart of truth.”

“I will never break your confidence. What is the name?”

“Benedict Arnold!”

It now began to be seen in the army that the Governor was in peril. The Tories plotted a secret warfare against the leading patriots.

One day Governor Trumbull met the Council of Public Safety with the alarming declaration:

“They have put a price upon my head.”

A reward had been secretly offered for his capture.

“I must have a guard,” he said, and a guard was granted him of four sturdy, loyal men—a public guard, who examined all strangers who came by day to Lebanon.

The plots of the Tories filled the country with alarm. One of these plots was to assassinate Washington. Others were to abduct the royal Governors.

These plotters tried to seize Governor Clinton of New York, and William Livingston, the patriotic Governor of New Jersey. They did seize General Stillman at Fairfield and carried him away as a prisoner.

Lebanon was exposed to such incursions from the sea. Spy boats were on the waters, and these might land men on the highway to Lebanon and seize the Governor and bear him away.

The biographer of Governor Trumbull (Stuart) thus relates an incident that illustrates the perils to which the Governor was exposed:

“A traveler, in the garb of a mendicant—of exceedingly suspicious appearance—came into his house one evening when he was unwell and had retired to bed. The stranger, though denied the opportunity of seeing him, yet insisted upon an interview so pertinaciously that at last the Governor’s wary housekeeper—Mrs. Hyde—alarmed and disgusted at his conduct, seized the shovel and tongs from the fireplace and drove him out of the house. At the same time she called loudly for the guard; but the intruder suddenly disappeared, and, though careful search was made, eluded pursuit, and never appeared in that quarter again.”

One of the reasons that made Lebanon a perilous place and that invited plots and spies was that magazines of powder from the West Indies were thought to be hidden here, as well as at New London and along the Connecticut main and river. Powder was the necessity of the war; to explode a powder magazine was to retard the cause.

Lebanon was like a secret fortress to the cause. Prisoners of war were sent to Governor Trumbull. It was thought that they could not be rescued here. But their detention here by the wise, firm Governor invited new plots. The thirteen colonies sent their State prisoners here. Among these prisoners was the Tory son of Benjamin Franklin, a disgrace to the great patriot, that led him to carry a heavy heart amid all of his honors as the ambassador to the French court. Dr. Benjamin Church, a classmate of Trumbull at college, was sent to him among these prisoners.

Trumbull became universally hated by the Tories. They saw in him the silent captain of the world’s movement for liberty. The condition became so alarming that in November, 1779, Washington sent a message to him to seize all Tories. “They are preying upon the vitals of the country,” he said. The Continental Congress demanded of him to “arrest every person that endangered the safety of the colony.” The condition that became so alarming, then, was beginning now.

What a position was that that was held by this brave, clear-headed, conscience-free man!

Strangers were coming and going; any one of them might have a cunning plot against the Governor in his heart. The way to him was easy. Express-wagons with provisions started from Lebanon; drivers of cattle came there; people who had cases of casuistry; men desiring public appointment in the army; peddlers, wayfarers, seamen, the captains of privateers.

But he walked among them—amid these accumulating perils—as one who had a “guard invisible.” He had. He knew that his own people were loyal to him, that they believed him as one directed by the Supreme Power for the supreme good, and that they loved him as a father.

Dennis guarded the good old man as though he had had a commission from the skies to do so. He gave to him the strength of his great heart. He caused a tower—“the alarm-post”—over his head, one secret room, to protect him—“a room over the gate”—and the room must have seemed to the man whose brain directed all like the outstretched wing of a guardian divine. The Governor was an old man when the war began. Born in 1710, he was at the time of the Declaration of Independence sixty-six years old.

Dennis was like a guardian sent to him, and Peter like a messenger sent to Dennis. There was something in the glances of each to the other that was out of the common of life—it was the cause.

One day there was a shout in the alarm-post.

A man was riding up the Colchester road, dashing, as it were, as if his own body and that of his horse were only agents of this thought. He was an Irishman. When the Lexington alarm came, he had heard the clock of liberty strike; his hour had come.

“A man is coming like mad, riding with the wind,” said the sentinel in common terms.

The man came rushing up to the store, and drew his rein. The Governor met him there.

“Knox, your Honor, Knox of the artillery. I was at Bunker Hill.”

“I know you by your good name,” said the Governor. “You know how to put your shoulder to the wheel.”

Knox of the artillery smiled.

He had won the reputation of knowing how to put his shoulder to the wheel in a queer way. There was a rivalry between the Northenders and Southenders in Boston, and both parties celebrated Guy Fawkes’s day with grotesque processions, in which were effigies of Guy Fawkes and the devil. In an evening procession of the party to which young Knox belonged on Guy Fawkes’s day the wheel of the wagon or float bearing an effigy, possibly of Guy Fawkes, broke, and that the rival party might not know it and ridicule his party, he said:

“I will put my shoulder to the wheel.”

He did this, and the float moved on, and the pride of his party was saved.

Knox of the artillery had kept a bookstore in Boston. It was like the New Corner Bookstore before the famous Old Corner Bookstore. When the war broke out he was attached to the artillery. There was a great need of powder, and he had a scent for it. He found it, he hid it; he was the “powder-monkey” of the great campaigns.

Like Paul Revere, he caught the spirit of the minutemen. He could ride for liberty! He was riding for liberty now!

“Washington recommended you to volunteer for the artillery service,” said the Governor. “I could have no more favorable introduction to you. You do not ride for nothing, my young friend. May I ask what brings you here? Your horse foams.”

“There is no time to be lost in days like these,” said the young artilleryman. “These are days of destiny, and we must make the success of our cause sure. I went to Washington for permission to bring the siege-guns and powder from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. I have come to you for a like reason. I am sure, in my soul, of ultimate victory; I know it will come, but preparation is victory. Boston is evacuated, and to defend New York we must protect the coast of Connecticut. I have conferred with Washington, and I must have a word with you.”

“To the tavern with the horse,” said the Governor. “Into the store, or war office, as I call my place here, we will go and shut the weather-door, and I will answer ‘Go’ if any call. We will consider the matter.”

They went into the store and the door was shut.

Without sighed the cedars in the April or May winds. It was the coming of summer; the bright wings of southern birds were blooming in the air. The cedars were dressing in green, and the elms flaming in the glowing suns of the long days.

They talked, as we may fancy, of the sons of liberty, the siege of Boston, and the outlook, and here young Knox gained strength to face the strenuous campaigns of New York and the Jerseys, and to cause the cannon of liberty to thunder as never before.

They talked of Rhode Island. Strange things were happening there.

Then the Committee of Safety came. And they considered the matter.

The Governor had a habit of saying, “Let us consider the matter”; after a time he added, “and bring it before the council.”

He walked about like a visitor to the world. He was always “considering” some matter.

He would stand before the church, considering; cross the green, considering; the public men who came to visit him usually found him considering.

Why had Knox come to Lebanon?

It was to talk of powder. How could saltpeter be found? Where could it be stored?

There might be a powder magazine at New London, or near it, or in covert in a place on the Connecticut, or right here among the rocky caves of the hills. Where?

The Governor would “consider.” He did, and the secret hiding-places of powder were known to few besides him. The Governor knew the guards of the magazines. So Connecticut stored powder.

“Powder, powder, ye gods, send us powder!” cried General Putnam at the battle of Bunker Hill.

There was a powder famine. The whole army needed powder.

One day the Governor sat before his door on the green, waiting the return of Dennis. The latter came back from a commission which he had executed quickly, and dropped from his horse on the green.

“You have made short time, Dennis.”

“Yes, Governor; I never think of myself, but only of the cause.”

“You may well say that, and I know it to be true. Such a spirit as that in these testing times is invaluable. I have a new commission for you.”

“Let me have it. I will die for it; I am in for liberty now—head, heart, and heels.”

He sunk down on the green.

“Let us consider,” the Governor said; “let us consider. You have heard me speak of Salisbury, the hidden town in the northwest corner of the State, on the Housatonic. The world knows little of that town, but it hears much. There has been a foundry there since ’62. I am going to make an arsenal there, and manufacture guns there, and make it a powder-post. I must have post-riders who can lead teamsters and who can be trusted, and move quickly, to go from Lebanon green to Salisbury with my orders. No spot in America can be made more useful to our army than this. I am going to appoint you as an officer for this business, as a special messenger to Salisbury in the secret service.

“Dennis, no one can do so much as when he is doing many things. When I am doing two things well, I can do three. I never undertake anything that I can not do well, but experience enables us to do many things well, as you are learning yourself, Dennis O’Hay.”

Dennis bowed.

Salisbury was a hidden place, but rich in nature. It was a place of iron-mines, with limestone and granite at the foot of the mountains. Here the United States began to cast cannon and gather saltpeter. The works grew. Cannon-balls, bombs, shells, grape-shot, anchors, hand-grenades, swivels, mess-pots and kettles, all implements of war were made and stored here. The armaments of ships were furnished here by skilled hands. Here the furnaces blazed night and day. Here the ore-diggers, founders, molders, and guards were constantly at work. There came here an army of teamsters for transportation. The Governor wished one whom he could trust to bear his orders to this town hidden among the mountains, and Dennis was such a man. Dennis could be spared, as there was a regular guard at the alarm-post now, and the church afforded it a shelter.

The reader who makes a pilgrimage to Lebanon to visit the “war office” should note the old church and recall the habits of a stately past, when men lived less for money-making and more for the things that live.

The solemn bell rings out as of old, but it is over the graves of people who were the empire builders, but who knew it not except by faith. The gray stones are crumbling where they lie. The engine-whistle sounds afar, and Willimantic reflects the life of new times. Here New England of old lives on—apart from the hurrying world of steam and electricity.

The great cedars are gone, though cedar swamps are near. Night settles down over all in silence, and one feels here that this is a lonely world.

The lights have gone out in the old Alden Tavern, and the tavern itself is gone, but nature here is beautiful among the hills, and to the susceptible eye the hills are touched by the spirit of the patriots of old.