Chapter Eight
“Treason!” Duncan gasped. “That’s what they’ll call it! I am risking life and limb so you can steal from the king? You’ll have me help thieves in some conspiracy against the crown?”
“Thieves, is it?” Smith shot back. “Ye may as well call a murderer the victim. Laying a tax on a people without giving them a voice in it, that’s the thieving of it. Stopping free men from talking with one another, that’s the murder of freedom, McCallum.”
Duncan’s mind reeled. Surely it was not possible that Woolford, a ranger captain with a king’s commission, or Jessica Ross, the innocent Edentown servant, could be involved in the theft of the king’s documents. He reminded himself that there were others in the strange circle of secrecy. “You would have me believe that Dr. Franklin and Sir Will
