The absence of Joel cast a shade of doubt over the minds of the disaffected.  These last were comparatively numerous, comprising most of the native Americans in the Hut, the blacks and Joyce excepted.  Strides had been enabled to effect his purposes more easily with his own countrymen by working on their good qualities, as well as on their bad.  Many of these men—­most of them, indeed—­meant well, but their attachment to the cause of their native land laid them open to assaults, against which Mike and Jamie Allen were insensible.  Captain Willoughby was an Englishman, in the first place; he was an old army-officer, in the next; and he had an only son who was confessedly in open arms against the independence of America.  It is easy to see how a demagogue like Joel, who had free access to the ears of his comrades, could improve circumstances like these to his own particular objects.  Nevertheless, he had difficulties to contend with.  If it were true that parson Woods still insisted on praying for the king, it was known that the captain laughed at him for his reverence for Caesar; if Robert Willoughby were a major in the royal forces, Evert Beekman was a colonel in the continentals; if the owner of the manor were born in England, his wife and children were born in America; and he, himself, was often heard to express his convictions of the justice of most of that for which the provincials were contending—­all, the worthy captain had not yet made up his mind to concede to them.

Then, most of the Americans in the Hut entertained none of the selfish and narrow views of Joel and the miller.  Their wish was to do right, in the main; and though obnoxious to the charge of entertaining certain prejudices that rendered them peculiarly liable to become the dupes of a demagogue, they submitted to many of the better impulses, and were indisposed to be guilty of any act of downright injustice.  The perfect integrity with which they had ever been treated, too, had its influence; nor was the habitual kindness of Mrs. Willoughby to their wives and children forgotten; nor the gentleness of Beulah, or the beauty, spirit, and generous impulses of Maud.  In a word, the captain, when he went forth to review his men, who were now all assembled under arms within the palisades for that purpose, went to meet a wavering, rather than a positively disaffected or rebellious body.

“Attention!” cried Joyce, as his commanding officer came in front of a line which contained men of different colours, statures, ages, dresses, countries, habits and physiognomies, making it a sort of epitome of the population of the whole colony, as it existed in that day—­“Attention!  Present, arms.”