Madam Constantia : $b The romance of a prisoner of war in the revolution (South Carolina)

By Author	[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \| Other Symbols ]
By Title	[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \| Other Symbols ]
By Language

Download this book: [ ASCII ]

Look for this book on Amazon

We have new books nearly every day.
If you would like a news letter once a week or once a month fill out this form and we will give you a summary of the books for that week or month by email.

Title: Madam Constantia : The romance of a prisoner of war in the revolution (South Carolina)
Author: Jefferson Carter, - To be updated
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Madam Constantia : The romance of a prisoner of war in the revolution (South Carolina)" ***

MADAM CONSTANTIA

[Illustration: ‘A fourth time I tried and, failing, gave over ... and
laid my face against the saddle.’ _p. 273_]

Madam Constantia
THE ROMANCE OF A PRISONER OF WAR IN THE REVOLUTION (SOUTH CAROLINA)

EDITED BY
JEFFERSON CARTER

_Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur_

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1919

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. SIR EDWARD’S PREFACE 1
II. UNDER KING’S MOUNTAIN 8
III. MADAM CONSTANTIA 26
IV. AT THE SMITHY 48
V. THE SWAMP FOX 72
VI. ON PAROLE 94
VII. HICKORY KNOB 116
VIII. THE MAN WITH TWO FACES 141
IX. THE COURT IS CLOSED 165
X. THE WOMAN’S PART 188
XI. THE MAN’S PART 211
XII. THE MILL ON THE WATEREE 235
XIII. CONSTANTIA AT SARATOGA 260

EDITOR’S PREFACE

Although the Historical Manuscripts Commission (England) has dealt with
several of the Northumberland Collections, the Commission has not
thought fit to print among the papers of the Craven family of Osgodby,
the narrative of the fifth baronet’s experiences in South Carolina
during the War of American Independence. The reason for this decision
may be either a belief that the episode is not of value from a
historical standpoint; or a suspicion that the facts owe something to
the expansion of a man writing many years later. However this may be,
the story seemed to the present Editor to possess a certain poignancy,
and, notwithstanding some intimate passages, to be worthy of a public
wider than that of the County of its birth. He has, therefore, with such
skill as he possesses prepared it for publication.

It will be noticed that Sir Edward Craven nowhere names the regiment in
which he served, but it appears from other sources that it was the 33rd
Regiment of Foot, now styled the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.

The Editor has thought proper to retain the fanciful title prefixed by
the writer, but has added some Chapter headings.

MADAM CONSTANTIA

CHAPTER I
SIR EDWARD’S PREFACE

_So here is this fatal war commenced!
‘The Child that is unborn shall rue
The hunting of that day!’_
H. WALPOLE.

_Not Lord Chatham, not Alexander the Great, nor Cæsar has ever
conquered so much territory in the course of all their wars as Lord
North has lost in one campaign!_

C. J. FOX.

Six months ago I went through the old papers in the Strongroom. I noted
that neither my father nor my grandfather had added a line, save in the
way of leases and the like, to the records which the first and second
baronets left of the Siege of Newcastle, and of the Union troubles. It
occurred to me that we owed something to posterity; and that, for lack
of more important matter, my fortunes _en campagne_ in America were a
part of the family history, and proper to be preserved.

For an idle man, however, to will and to do are two things; and I might
never have proceeded beyond the former if I had not a day or two later
taken up the Gentleman’s Magazine and learned that General Washington of
the United States of America had passed away at his seat at Mount Vernon
on the fourteenth of the preceding month. That gave me the needed
fillip. I never knew him; at least I never knew him by that title, since
on the few occasions on which I met him, it was beyond my duty as an
officer in His Majesty’s service to admit the existence of the States. I
believe him, however, to have been a gentleman of good family, kindly
and dignified, somewhat of the old school, and of considerable military
ability; one, too, whose influence went some way towards checking within
his sphere of action the rancour that in the Southern Colonies stained
the Continental Cause and did not spare ours. Unfortunately from ’80
onwards my duty led me into the Carolinas; and it was to the sad and
unusual nature of the war in those provinces that what was singular in
my experiences was due.

Previously, to be brief, I had served for three years in the north, I
had suffered the humiliation of surrendering with that gallant and loyal
gentleman, General Burgoyne, I had been exchanged. But my experiences in
Canada and on the Hudson were those of a hundred others and I pass over
them, proposing to begin my relation at the point at which the fortunes
of war cast me adrift, and flung me on my own resources.

From where I write, looking out on the barren, frost-bound hills of the
Border, it is a far cry to the rice-fields and tropical lands of the
Tidewater of Carolina; and a farther cry to the rolling country of
pleasant vale and forest that sweeps upwards to the foothills, and so to
the misty distances of the Blue Ridge. In those days it was often a
three months’ passage, on salt meat and stale water; a passage of which
many a poor fellow never saw the end. To-day I cross in a moment. But
before I do so, let me add a word of preface, that all who read this may
view the matter from our standpoint in ’80, midway in the fighting,
rather than from the point at which we stand to-day, with the end behind
us and an American Minister at St. James’s.

I say nothing about the Tea Duty or the claim to tax the Colonies. I
believe that we had a right to have money from them; our fleet covered
their trade. But whether we should not have left it to them to tax
themselves is another matter, and seems more English. What is certain
is, that we had through the war the most worthless government that ever
held power in England; and so my father said a hundred times—and voted
for them steadily till the day they fell!

In the City and at Brooks’s the war was never popular. There were many
in both who asked with Mr. Walpole what we should gain by triumph
itself; would America, laid waste, replace America flourishing, rich and
free? And here and there an officer declined to serve against his
kinsmen and was allowed to stand aside. But for the most part we ran to
it, younger sons and eldest too, from my neighbor Lord Percy downward,
as to an adventure. All who could beg or buy a commission mounted the
cockade. The thing was fashionable—with two results that I came to think
unhappy.

The first was that too many of our people—those in particular who had
the least right to do so—looked down on the Colonials from a social
height as on a set of farmers and clodhoppers; forgetting that many of
them were our own cousins once or twice removed, and that some had been
bred up beside us at Westminster and Oxford. The second was that those
of us who had seen service under the great Frederick, or had learned our
drill at Finchley or Hounslow, sneered at the rebel officers as tailors,
called them Mohairs—God knows why!—and made light not only of their
skill but their courage, treating even the Loyalists who joined us as of
a lower grade.

For these two prejudices we were to pay very dearly. They not only
brought into the struggle a bitterness which was needless and to be
deplored, but, as things turned out, they reacted very unpleasantly on
ourselves. It was bad enough to be worsted by those whom the meaner and
more foolish among us regarded as of lower clay; it was still more
mortifying for old soldiers, who had learned their drill in the
barrack-yard, to find that it went for little in face of the immensities
of that unknown continent; and that among the forests of the Hudson or
in the marshes of the Savannah our military art was of far less value
than the power to shoot straight, or to lay an ambush after the Indian
fashion.

Owing to these two prejudices the lessons we had to learn in the war
were the more painful. Not that our poor fellows did not fight. Believe
me, they fought with the most dogged courage—sometimes when the only
powder they had was the powder on their queues, and the steel or the
clubbed musket was their only weapon. But the others fought too and
stubbornly—what else could we expect? They were of our blood and bone;
they, too, were Britons. And they were in their own forests, on their
own rivers,—which seemed to be seas to us—they were fighting for their
homes and barns and orchards. Whereas we were twelve weeks from home,
ill-fed, ill-found, and ill-supported, scattered over hundreds of
leagues, and lost in pathless wilds that grew more hostile as outrage on
the one side or the other embittered our relations.

The first half of the war was fought in the northern colonies. It ended
sadly, as all remember, in our surrender at Saratoga, and in the retreat
of General Clinton from Philadelphia to the sea-coast. After that, the
fighting was transferred to the south, to Georgia, the Carolinas and
Virginia. We took Charles Town, we defeated the Continental Army at
Camden, we had South Carolina in our hands, we looked hopefully towards
the north. And then, in the late summer of ’80, when the south seemed to
be in our hands, the country on all sides rose against us as by magic
and the war took on a new and more savage character. But enough has been
said by way of general preface.

For myself. On the fifth of October of that year ’80, I was sent from
Charlotte—whither my Lord Cornwallis had advanced on his way into North
Carolina—with important orders to Colonel Ferguson, who at the time was
covering the left flank with a strong body of royalists. On the sixth,
accompanied by Simms, my orderly, and after a perilous ride, I reached
Ferguson’s camp on King’s Mountain. He knew that the enemy were in
strength in the neighbourhood, and, after falling back some distance, he
had taken up a strong position on a ridge, which rose above the forest—a
more active and able officer was not in the service. But this time he
had either under-valued his opponents, sturdy hunters and settlers from
the Backwaters, or he had over-estimated the strength of his position;
and the lamentable issue of the fight on the following day is well
known. After a fierce struggle Ferguson’s men were out-flanked and
surrounded, and he himself fell, striving bravely to the last, while the
greater part of his force was captured or cut to pieces. Of the few who
had the good fortune to break through the ring I was one. Nor was I only
fortunate for myself, for I carried off poor Simms on my crupper. From
this point my relation starts.

CHAPTER II
UNDER KING’S MOUNTAIN

_But Major Ferguson by endeavoring to intercept the enemy in this
retreat unfortunately gave time for fresh bodies of men to pass the
mountains and to unite into a corps far superior to that which he
commanded. They came up with him and after a sharp action entirely
defeated him. Ferguson was killed and all his party either slain or
taken._

RAWDON CORRESPONDENCE.

I was riding my grey, Minden, on that day, and I never wish to ride a
better nag. But the weight of two heavy men is much for the staunchest
horse, and when it fell, as it did a few yards short of safety, it came
to the ground so heavily that the shock drove the breath out of my body.
For a moment I did not know what had befallen me. I lay and felt
nothing. If I thought at all, I supposed that the horse had stumbled.
Then, coming to myself I tried to rise, and sank with the sweat starting
from every pore.

Simms, three or four yards from me, lay still. The horse lay as still,
but on my right shoulder, pinning me down and it needed no more to tell
me that my sword-arm was broken, and that I was helpless. The next thing
that I remember, a man was standing some paces from me and covering me
with one of their Deckhard rifles.

Instinct speaks before reason. “Don’t shoot!” I cried.

“Why not?” he answered. “D—n you, your time is out! It was your turn at
the Waxhaws and it’s little quarter you gave us there! It’s our turn
to-day!”

Instinct prevailed once more. I knew that I could not rise, but I tried
to rise. Then I fainted.

When I opened my eyes again—to the circle of blue sky and the feathery
tree-tops waving about the little clearing—the man was standing over me,
a dark figure leaning on his gun. He was looking down at me. As soon as
I could direct my mind to him, “You have the advantage of me, stranger,”
he said dryly. “A redcoat’s no more to me than a quail. But shooting a
man who shams to be dead is not in my way. It’s you, that will pay the
price, however.”

“You’d not shoot a wounded man,” I muttered—not that for the moment I
seemed to care greatly.

“Who shot them at the Waxhaws?” he retorted savagely. “And hung them at
Augusta? And gave them to the Indians to do worse things with? By G—d!”
and with that he stopped speaking, and with an ugly look, he handled his
rifle as if he were going to knock out my brains with the stock.

But I was past fear and I was in pain. “Do your worst!” I said
recklessly, “And God save the King!”

He lowered his gun and seemed to think better of it. He even smiled in
an acrid sort of fashion, as he looked down at me. “Well, Britisher,” he
said, “you have the advantage of me! But if you can tell me what I am
going to do with you—”

“Hospital,” I murmured.

“Hospital!” he repeated. “Jerusalem! He says Hospital! Man, do you know
that there are nine here who lost their folks at the Waxhaws, and thirty
who are akin to them, and who’ve sworn, every man of them, to give no
quarter to a Tory or an Englishman! And I’ll not deny,” he continued in
a lower tone, “that I’ve sworn the same, and am perjured this moment.
And he says—Hospital!”

“But the laws of war!” I protested weakly.

“Ay, you score them plainly enough on your poor devils’ backs!”

“You make a mistake,” I said. I was becoming a little clearer in my
mind. “Those are the Articles of war.”

“Indeed!” he replied. And he stared at me as if he had never seen a
King’s officer before. Then “Why did you stop to pick up that fellow?”
he asked, indicating poor Simms by a gesture. “If you’d ridden straight
away, I should have been too late. It was your pause that gave me time
to level at your horse and bring it down.”

I raised myself on my elbow and found that the man had released me from
Minden and had lifted me to the edge of the clearing. Simms still
sprawled where he had fallen, with his arms cast wide and his neck awry.
The horse lay half in and half out of the stagnant pool that lapped the
roots of the trees on the farther side of the clearing.

“Is he dead?” I asked, staring at Simms.

“Neck broken,” the man replied, “Who was he?”

“My orderly.”

“Rank and file?”

“What else?” I said.

He grunted. “Is that in the Articles of War, too?” he said. “But any
way, you did him little good, and wrecked yourself by it!” Then, in a
different tone, “See here,” he said, “you’ve tricked me, shamming to be
dead and playing ’possum. I can’t leave you to the buzzards, nor yet
carry you to the camp, for they’ll be for shooting you—shooting you, my
friend, for certain! You’ll have to ride if I can get you a horse. That
is your only chance. I shall be away some time and if you wish to live
you will lie close. It’s not healthy anywhere this side of the Catawba
for that uniform!”

I was in pain, but I was sufficiently myself to be anxious when he had
left me; painfully anxious as time went on and he did not return. I lay
staring at poor Simms; the flies were clustering on his face. I thought
of the light heart with which I had ridden into Ferguson’s camp and
joined him and his volunteers the day before. I thought of the gay
dinner we had eaten, and the toasts we had drunk, and the “Confusion to
the Rebels” which we had planned—campaigning, a man learns to enjoy life
as it comes. And then I thought of the day that had gone against us,
miserably and unaccountably; of poor Ferguson, dragged and dead, with
his foot in the stirrup and enough wounds in him to let out the lives of
five men; of Husbands and Plummer and Martin—I had seen them all go
down,—those, who had escaped in the fight, shot like rabbits in the last
rush for the horses. By the laws of war, or of anything but this blind
partisan fighting we should have won the battle against an equal number
of undrilled farmers and backwoodsmen. We must have won. But we had
lost; and I lay there under the sumach bushes that blended with the red
of the old uniform; and if the man who had shot poor Minden at that last
unlucky moment did not return, the buzzards would presently spy me out
and Simms would not be the less fortunate of the two.

For the sounds of the fight had died away. The pursuit had taken another
line, the silence of the forest was no longer torn by shot or scream.
Even the excited chatter of the birds had ceased. The little clearing
lay lonely, with the short twilight not far off—was that a buzzard
already, that tiny speck in the sky?

What if the man did not come back?

But, thank God, even as I thought of this, I heard him. He came into
view among the boles of the trees on the farther side of the clearing,
riding one horse and leading another. He dismounted beside me and hooked
the reins over a bough, and for the first time I took in what he was
like. He appeared to be middle-aged, a tallish lean man, with hair that
was turning gray. He wore a hunter’s shirt and buckskin leggings, and
with this, some show of uniform; a blue sash and a wide-brimmed hat with
a white cockade were pretty well the sum of it. He had steely eyes—they
showed light in the brown of his thin hard-bitten face. He stepped to
the dead man and took from him a strap or two. Then he came to me.

“Now!” he said curtly. “Harden your heart, King George! You’ll wince
once or twice before you are in that saddle. But when you are there
you’ll have a chance, and there’s no other way you will have one! Now!”

To tell the truth, I winced already, having a horror of pain. But
knowing that if I cried out, here was this rebel Yankee—who had no more
nerves than a plantation Sambo—to hear me, I set my teeth while, with a
splint made of two pieces of wood, he secured my arm in its due
position, and eased as far as he could the crushed shoulder. He did it
not untenderly, and when he rose to his feet, “You look pretty sick,” he
said, “as if you’d be the better for a sup of Kentucky whisky. But
there’s none here, and there’s worse to come. So pull yourself together,
and think of old England!”

He spoke in a tone of derision, to which the gentleness of his touch
gave the lie. I rose to my feet and eyed the saddle. “It’s that or the
buzzards,” he said, seeing that I hesitated; and he shoved me up. I did
what I could myself and with an effort I climbed into the saddle.
“That’s good!” he exclaimed. “For a beginning.”

I cried out once—I could not refrain; but I was mounted now if I could
stay where I was. I suppose that he saw that I was on the verge of
collapse, for “See here!” he cried roughly. “I can shoot you, I can
leave you, or I can take you. There is no other way. What do you say?”

“Go on,” I said. And then, “Wait!”

“What now?” he growled, suspicious, I think, of my firmness.

“His address is on him,” I said, nodding towards Simms. “He wanted his
wife to know, if he did not come off. It’s in his hat. I must take it.”

He stared at me. For a moment I thought that he was going to refuse to
do what I asked. Then he went and picked up Simms’ hat and from a slit
in the looped side he drew a thin packet of letters. “Are you satisfied
now?” he said, as he handed the packet to me.

“That’s it,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I thought you held that lot were only food for the triangles,” he
muttered. “Well, live and learn, and the last knows most! Now, forward
it is, sir, and within five miles I’ll have you under cover. All the
same there’s a plaguy bottom to cross that will give us trouble, or I am
no prophet!”

I was soon to learn what he meant. For a certain distance, riding where
it was level through open park-like land, that closed here and there
into forest, the going was good and the pain was bearable, though the
thought that at any moment the horse might stumble chilled me with
apprehension. But after a while we sank into a shallow valley, where the
air was darkened by cypress trees and poisoned by their yew-like odor.
And presently, threading the swamp that filled the bottom, there
appeared a rivulet. It crossed our path, and my heart sank into my
boots.

“Stay here,” the man said shortly; and he left me and rode up and down,
hunting for a crossing, while I followed him with scared eyes. At length
he found what he wanted and he signed to me to join him. “Give me your
rein,” he said, “and hold on with all the strength you have! It’s neck
or nothing!”

We did it. But the muscles of the crushed shoulder and, in a less
degree, the broken arm gave me exquisite pain, and I had to pause awhile
on the other side of the water, crouching on the neck of my horse. When
I had recovered, we went on and climbed out of the bottom and in another
half mile as the light began to fail, we struck into a rough road.

We rode along it side by side, and he looked me over. “Major, ain’t
you?” he said by and by.

I admitted it.

“Only came in yesterday, did you?”

“That’s so,” I said. “How did you know?”

“Ah!” he said. “That’s telling. But you may take it from me, there’s
little we don’t know. Ever been taken before, Major?”

In pain as I was I wondered what imp of mischief had suggested the
question. “If you must know,” I said reluctantly, “I was taken at
Saratoga.”

“And exchanged?”

“Yes,” I said.

He chuckled. “Jerusalem!” he said. “You take it as easily as a snake
takes skinning! Got a gift for it seemingly! But you escaped better last
time than this, I guess?”

“Yes,” I said grudgingly—why should I explain? And luckily at that
moment a light showed a little way before us, and relieved me from
farther questioning. The forest gave place to two or three ragged
fields, divided by snake-fences; and beyond these, where our road
crossed another, appeared a small log-house, backed by some straggling
out-buildings. If appearances went for anything it was a tavern or a
smithy. The light shone from a window of the house.

As we rode up to the door two or three dogs heard us and gave the alarm.
The result was not promising. The light went out.

My companion swung his foot clear of the stirrup, and kicked the door.
“House!” he cried. “House! Barter!”

There was no answer.

“House!” he cried again. “It’s I! Wilmer!”

A window creaked. “Is that you, Captain?” a thin quavering voice asked.

“Who should it be?” my companion answered. “Don’t be a fool! I want
you.”

A bar was removed—not very quickly—and the door was opened. By such
firelight as issued from the room I saw an old man standing in the
doorway, and behind him three or four white-faced women. He nursed a gun
which he had barely the strength to level, and which he made haste to
lower as soon as he had taken a look at us. “Lord-a-mercy, Cap’en, what
a gunning there’s been,” he piped, peering up at us, all of a tremble.
“We’ve been sweating here for hours, not knowing what moment the Tories
and redcoats might be on us! Lord-a-mercy! Might ha’ been the last day
by the sound of it!”

“Father, let the Captain tell us,” said one of the women.

“We’ve beaten them soundly,” my companion answered with less blatancy
than I expected. He seemed, indeed, to have two ways of talking, and to
be by no means without education when he pleased to show it. “In a month
or less,” he continued, “there’ll not be a redcoat this side of the
Santee High Hills; and if Marion does his work as well below, we shall
be in Charles Town by Christmas! We shall have cleared Carolina, and
you’ll have no more need to sweat! But there, I want you to take in a
wounded man, Barter. He’s a broken arm, and a shoulder that, I expect,
will give more trouble than the arm, and—”

“He’s welcome!” the woman broke in heartily. “He’s welcome to what we’ve
got, Captain, and the Tories have left us! Let him come right in!
Talking’s poor fare, and—”

Her voice quavered away to nothing, she left the sentence unfinished.
Before I had grasped what was amiss, or understood what was doing, the
man and the women had crowded back into the house, the lower half of the
door was closed, I heard a bolt shot. “No, no! you’ve no right to ask
us!” the old man quavered. “You’ve no right to ask us, Cap’en! He’s a
redcoat! We’ll take in no King’s man and no Tory! Not we!”

“We daren’t, Cap’en Wilmer,” the woman said. “If we did the boys would
take him out, and hang him, and, as likely as not, burn the house over
us! It’s as much as our lives are worth to take him in!”

“See here,” the Captain answered, with more patience than I expected—it
was clear that in spite of their refusal these people stood in awe of
him. “See here! You can say that I put him here, Barter.”

“And if you were here, it might do!” the woman replied. “May be so and
may be not. But you’re not here, Cap’en Wilmer, and when the boys’
blood’s up they’ll not listen to father nor to me! We’re a parcel of
women, and you’ve no right to ask it. They’ve said, and you know it as
well as I do, that they’ll burn down any house that shelters a redcoat.
We’ll not take him!” she continued firmly, “and small kindness to him if
we did! Phil Levi was here last Sunday and swore till he was black in
the face what he’d do if we so much as fodder’d one of them! More by
token, Cap’en, if you think it’s safe—why do you not take him in at the
Bluff?”

“It’s a mile farther,” Wilmer said, “and there are reasons.”

“And we’ve reasons, too!” the woman retorted sharply. “I’d not lay a
hand on him myself—God forbid I should—but I’ll not shelter him. Jake is
out with Colonel Marion below the Forks, and father hasn’t strength to
pull a trigger, and we’re a parcel of women and ’tisn’t fair to ask us!
’Tisn’t fair to ask us, and we all alone!”

Wilmer swore softly. “D—n Phil Levi!” he said. “He’s a brave
fellow—before and after! But I can’t say that I saw the color of his
horse’s tail to-day!” He sat forward in his saddle, undertermined,
pondering.

I had borne up pretty well so far. Pride and the habit of a soldier’s
life had supported me under this man’s scrutiny. I had told myself that
it was the chance of war; that I was fortunate in being alive where so
many—alas, so many!—who had sat at table with me a few hours before, had
fallen. But, little by little, pain had sapped my fortitude. Every
second in the saddle was a second of agony; every moment that my arm
hung from the shoulder was a grinding pang. And on the threshold of this
house, at the sound of the women’s voices, I had thought that at last
the worst was over. Here I had promised myself relief, rest, an end. The
disappointment was the sharper. The refusal to take me in seemed to be
fiendish, heartless, cruel. At the mere thought of it, of the barbarity
of it, self-pity choked me, and I could have shed tears. “Let me be,” I
muttered. “I can bear no more.”

“No, I’m d—d if I do,” Wilmer answered angrily. “I had a reason for not
taking you to my place, Major, but needs must when the devil drives, and
it’s there you are bound to go. We must make the best of it.” He took my
rein. “It’s a long way to Salem,” he continued, “but it’s the last mile.
Hold up! man, and maybe you’ll see King George yet. He certainly ought
to be obliged to you,” he added with a dry laugh. He kicked up his
horse.

I moved away with him, biting off the prayer that rose to my lips that
he would let me be. I had no other thought now but to persist, to bear,
to keep the saddle; and the croak of the frogs, the plaintive notes of
the mocking bird in the thicket, the change from clearing to forest and
again from forest to open fields—the open fields of a considerable
plantation—all passed as the scenes pass in a nightmare; now whelming me
in despair, as the blackness of the trees closed about us, now lifting
me to hope as lights broke out, twinkling before us. Poor Ferguson, the
fight, Simms, my fall, all receded to an infinite distance; and only one
thing, only one thought, one aspiration remained—the craving to rest, to
lie down, to come to the end of pain. My shoulder was on fire; my arm
was red-hot iron. One moment I burned with fever; the next I turned cold
and faint and sick.

Only a mile! But from Newgate to Tyburn is only a mile, yet how much
lies between them for the wretch condemned to suffer on the gallows.

At last I was aware that my companion had alighted—perhaps he had done
so more than once—to pull down a sliprail. This time, whether it was the
last, or the only time, the rattle of the timber provoked an outburst of
barking, and presently, amid the baying of dogs, a nigger’s voice called
out to know who was there. The alarm once given—and the hounds gave it
pretty loudly—other voices joined in, in tones of alarm as well as joy.
Lights glanced here and there; in a twinkling there were people about
us. Black faces and white eyeballs appeared for an instant and sank into
shadow. We halted before the porch of a long wooden house, that declared
itself, here plainly and there dimly, as the lights fell upon it.

I could only endure. But surely the end was come now! Surely there would
be rest for me here. They would come to me, they would do something for
me presently.

Wilmer had gone up on the porch, and there was a woman—a woman in white
with her arms about his neck. He was soothing her and she was laughing
and crying at once; and about them and about me—who sat in the saddle
below, in the dull lethargy of exhaustion—shone a ring of smiling, black
faces. And then—here was something new, something startling and
alarming—the woman was looking down at me, and speaking quickly and
sharply; speaking almost as those other women had spoken at Barter’s.
She was pointing at me. And the niggers were no longer laughing but
staring, all staring at me. I gathered that they were frightened.

It could not be that there was no rest for me here? It could not be that
they would not take me in here! Oh, it was impossible, it was inhuman,
it was devilish! But I began to tremble. “Anywhere, anywhere but here!”
the woman was saying. “It is madness to think of it. You know that,
father! Why did you bring him here? When you knew! When you knew,
father!”

“In the cabins, honey, if you like,” the man answered patiently. “But
he’ll not be safe out of our sight.”

She flared up. She poured out her anger upon him. “Safe!” she cried.
“And what of you? Where will you be safe? And what is it to me if he be
not safe? Don’t do it, father, don’t,” she continued, her voice sinking
to a note of entreaty. “Don’t bring him here! It will end ill! You will
see, it will end ill! Let him go to Barter’s.”

“We’ve been to Barter’s—”

“And he won’t take him! No! he’s more sense, though the risk to him is
small. But you, think how the day has gone, and left you safe and well!
And now, now at the end, you will spoil all!”

“Let be, Con,” the man struck in, speaking with decision. “He must come
in. There’s nothing else for it. We’re not Cherokees, nor savages.
There’s nothing else that can be done. You must put up with it, and—”

In a twinkling she was at the foot of the steps and at my rein—a girl,
young, slender, dark and fiercely excited. “If you are a man,” she
cried, seizing my arm, “if you are a gentleman, you’ll not come here! Do
you hear, sir! There are reasons, a thousand reasons why we cannot take
you in. And more—”

On that word she stopped. A change came over her face as she looked into
mine. The only answer I could give her—she had gripped my wounded arm
and I could bear no more—was to faint away. As the man had said, I was
in sore need of a sup of Kentucky whisky.

CHAPTER III
MADAM CONSTANTIA

_I see how she doth wry,
When I begin to moan;
I see when I come nigh,
How fain she would be gone._

_I see—what will ye more?
She will me gladly kill:
And you shall see therefore
That she shall have her will._
ANON.

When I came to myself I was, by comparison, in a haven of comfort. I was
in a clean bed, in a clean room, I was wearing a shirt that was also
clean and was certainly not my own. A negro woman with a yellow kerchief
bound about her head was holding a lamp, while a colored man who was
bending over me, contrived a cage to lift the coverlet clear of my
shoulder and arm. The room was small, with boarded walls, and the
furniture was of plain wood and roughly made, of the kind that is found
in the smaller plantations of this upper country. But my eye alighted on
a framed sampler hung between two prints above the bedhead; and this and
one or two handsome mahogany pieces told a story of changes and
journeys, which these, the cherished relics of an older house, perhaps
in the Tidewater, had survived.

I noted these things dreamily, blissfully, resting in a haven of ease.
Presently the man stood back to admire his work, and the woman, turning
to glance at my face, saw that my eyes were open. She set down the lamp
and fetching a cup held it to my lips. I have reason to believe that it
held milk-punch; but for me it held nectar, and I drank greedily and as
long as she would let me. Whatever it was, the draught cleared my mind;
and when the man turned to the table and began to occupy himself with
rolling up a monstrous length of bandage, I saw the woman sign to him.
They looked towards the door, and I became aware of the voices of two
people who were talking in an outer room. The speakers were the two who
had debated my fate before, while I hung, worn out, over my horse’s
neck; and the question between them was apparently the same.

“But I can’t see it, father!” the girl was saying, repeating it as if
she had said it half a dozen times before. “I can’t see it. What is he
to us? Why should we do it? Think of my mother! Think of Dick! Haven’t I
heard you say a hundred times—”

“And a hundred to that! I admit it, Con,” the man answered, “I have. But
there was something about this fellow if you’ll believe me—”

“About him!” she retorted, blazing up. “A weakling! A milksop! A poor
thing who swoons under a minute’s pain!”

“But if you had seen him pick the man up?” he pleaded. “It was that that
took me, honey. It ran right athwart of all that I had heard of his
like, and had seen of some of them! It was the devil of a mellay I can
tell you! Of five who made off together after Ferguson was down he was
the only one who fought his way through; and we were after him whip and
spur. He was all but clear of us, when there came the other man running
through the bush and calling to him, calling to him to take him up for
God’s sake! For God’s sake! He stopped, Con! And I can tell you that to
stop with the muzzles of our Deckhards between his shoulderblades and
not forty yards off—”

“Who wouldn’t have?” she retorted scornfully. “Is there a man that
wouldn’t have stopped? Is there a man who calls himself a man who could
ride away—”

“Well, I fancy,” he replied dryly, “I could put my hand on one or two,
Con. I fancy I could.”

“And because he did that,” she continued stubbornly, “because he
remembered, for just that one moment, that he and the men whom he hires
to fight his battles were of the same flesh and blood as himself, you do
this foolish, this mad, mad thing! To bring him here, father! To bring
him to the Bluff of all places! Why, if it were only that I am
alone—alone here—”

“There’s Aunt Lyddy.”

“And what is she?—it would be reason enough against it! But to be left
here,” the girl continued angrily—and it seemed to me that she was
pacing the room—“alone for days together with this insolent Englishman
who looks down on us, who calls us colonials and mohairs, and thinks us
honored if he doesn’t plunder us—and if he plunders us, what are we but
rebels? Who will hardly stoop to be civil even to the men who are
risking their all and betraying Carolina in his cause! Oh! it is too
much!”

“He’s not the worst of them at any rate,” Wilmer replied with good
humor. “Sit down, girl. And as to your being left with him, I don’t know
any one more able to take care of herself! If that be all—”

“But it’s not all!” she cried. “It’s not a quarter! If that were all I’d
not say a word! But it’s not that, you know it is not that!”

“I know it’s not, honey!” he said in a different tone—and I wondered to
hear him, so gentle was his voice. “I know it’s not.”

“If you were away altogether it would be different! If you kept away—”

“But I can’t keep away,” he answered mildly. “I must come and go. I
can’t let the plantation go to ruin. Times are bad enough and hard
enough—we may be burnt out any night. But until the worst comes I must
keep things together, Con, you know that. It’s fortunate that we’re
above King’s Mountain. After this Tarleton and his Greens—d—n the
fellow, I wish he had been there to-day—will spread over the south side
like a swarm of wasps flocking to the honey-pot. But they’ll be shy of
pushing as far north of Winsboro’ as this—we’re too strong hereabouts.
For the Englishman I’d send him to the cabins at once, but he wouldn’t
be safe from our folks outside the house.”

She spoke up suddenly. “If they come for him,” she cried, “I warn you,
father, I shall not raise a finger to save him!”

“Pooh! pooh!”

“I vow I will not! So now you know!”

“Well, I don’t think that they’ll come,” he replied lightly. “They know
me, and—”

“To shelter a Britisher!”

“I’ve sheltered worse men,” he responded reasonably.

“At least you’ve had warning!” she retorted—and I heard the legs of a
chair grate on the floor of the outer room. “If I have to choose, your
little finger is more to me than the lives of twenty such as he!”

“Unfortunately,” he answered dryly, “it’s not my little finger, my dear,
that’s in peril! It’s my—”

“Father!” she cried, pain in her voice. “How can you! How can you!”

“There, there,” he said, soothing her, “a man can but die once, and how
he dies does not matter much! Courage, Con, courage, girl! Many is the
awkward corner I have been in, as you know, and I’ve got out of it. You
may be sure I shall take all the care I can.”

“But you don’t!” she retorted. “You don’t! Or you would never let this
man—” I lost the rest in the movement of a second chair.

For some minutes the two blacks had made hardly a pretence of attending
to me. They had listened with all their ears. Once or twice when what
was said had touched me nearly they had goggled their eyes at me between
wonder and amazement. And I, too, wondered. I, too, saw that here was
something that needed explanation. Why should this girl, scarcely out of
her teens—I judged her to be no more that twenty—feel so strongly, so
cruelly, so inhumanly? Why should she show herself so hard, so
unnatural, where even her father betrayed the touch of nature that makes
us all akin? This was a question, but it was one that I must consider
to-morrow. For the present I was too comfortable, too drowsy, too weary.
Sleep pressed on me irresistibly—the blessed sleep of the exhausted, of
the wounded, of the broken, who are at last at rest! The room grew hazy,
the light a dim halo. And yet before I slept I had a last impression of
the things about me.

The girl came to the open door and stood on the threshold, gazing down
at me. She was tall, slender, dark, and very handsome. She looked at me
in silence for a long time, and with such a look and such a curiosity as
one might turn on a crushed thing lying beside the road. It hurt me, but
not for long.

For I slept, and dreamt of the Border and of home. I was in the small
oak parlor at Osgodby. There was no fire on the hearth, it was summer
and the bow-pots were full of roses. The windows were open, the garden,
viewed through them, simmered in the sunshine.

My mother was sitting on the other side of the empty hearth, fanning
herself with a great yellow fan, and we were both looking at the picture
of Henrietta Craven that is set in the overmantel. “Ill will come of it,
ill will come of it,” my mother was repeating over and over again. And
then I found that it was not my mother who was saying it but the
portrait over the fireplace; and—which did not seem to surprise me at
the time—it was no longer the portrait of Henrietta Craven in her yellow
sacque that spoke, but a woman in white, tall and slender and dark and
very handsome.

* * * * *

It was noon when I awoke; not the sultry noon of Charles Town, for the
rains had come and the day was grey and cool. I was alone, in the
pleasant stillness, but the door into the living-room was ajar, perhaps
that I might be heard if I called. Pigeons were cooing without, and not
far away, probably on the veranda, some one was crooning in tune to the
pleasant hum of a spinning-wheel. Sleep had made another man of me. My
head was clear, I was free from fever, I was hungry; such pain as I felt
was confined to the shoulder and arm. Yesterday I had come near to
envying those who had fallen in the fight. To-day I was myself again,
glad to be alive, free to hope, ready to look forward. After all, things
might be worse; our Headquarters were at Charlotte, barely thirty-five
miles away, and if my Lord Cornwallis moved towards King’s Mountain, to
avenge Ferguson, I might be rescued. If he did not, I must contrive to
be sent, as soon as I was well enough to travel, to the rebel
Headquarters in the northern colony, whence I might be exchanged. I
should be safe there—I was not safe here. I must see this man Wilmer by
and by and talk to him about it. He had shown a measure of humanity and
some generosity, mingled with his dry and saturnine humor. And he had
saved my life, I had no doubt of that. In the meantime I was famished,
positively famished!

I called, “Hi! hi!”

The low crooning stopped, the hum of the spinning-wheel ceased. The
negro woman who had held the lamp appeared in the doorway. “How you find
yo’self dis mawning?” she asked. And then in a lingo which at this
distance of time I do not pretend to reproduce correctly, she asked me
what I would take to eat.

“There’s nothing I could not eat,” I said.

She showed her teeth in a wide smile. “Marse mighty big man, dis
mawning,” she answered. “He sorter lam-like yistiddy. He mo’ like one er
de chilluns yistiddy. W’at you gwine ter eat?”

“Breakfast first!” I said. “Some tea, please—”

She shook her head violently. “Hole on dar,” she said. “I ’ear Ma’am
Constantia say der ain’t no tea fer Britishers! De last drap er dat tea
bin gone sunk in Cooper River!”

“Oh!” I replied, a good deal taken aback. Confound Madam Constantia’s
impudence! “Then I will have what you will give me. Only let me have it
soon.”

“Marse mighty big man dis mawning,” the woman said mischievously.
“He’low he’ll eat de last mossel der is. Yis’dy he mo’ like one er de
chilluns.”

Well, I had the last morsel—without tea; while Mammy Jacks stood over me
with her yellow kerchief and her good-natured grinning black face.
“Who’s Madam Constantia?” I asked after a time.

“W’at I tole you,” the woman replied with dignity, “She, Ma’am
Constantia ter cullud folks. She, missie ter me.”

“The young lady I saw yesterday, is she?”

“Tooby sho’.”

“She is Captain Wilmer’s daughter, I suppose?”

“Dat’s w’at I laid out fer to tell you.”

I did not want to seem curious or I should have asked if “Madam” was
married. I refrained out of prudence. I went on eating and Mammy Jacks
went on looking at me, and presently, “I speck you monst’ous bad, cruel
man,” she said with unction. “I hear Ma’am Constantia say you make smart
heap uv trubble fer cullud folks, en tote em to ’Badoes en Antigo! She
say you drefful ar’ogant insolent Englishman! You too bad ter live, I’
low.”

“And Madam Constantia told you to tell me that?”

The woman’s start and her look of alarm answered me. Before she could
put in a protest, however, the negro who had been with her the previous
evening appeared and relieved her from the difficulty. He came to attend
to my arm, and did his work with a skill that would not have disgraced a
passed surgeon. While he was going about the business, I was aware of a
slender shadow on the threshold, the shadow of some one who listened,
yet did not wish to be seen. “Confound her!” I thought. “The jade! I
believe that she is there to hear me whimper!” And I set my teeth—she
had called me a milksop, had she?—well, she should not hear me cry
again. The shadow lay on the threshold a short minute, then it vanished.
But more than once on that day and the two following days I was aware of
it. It was all I saw of the girl; and though I knew, and had the best of
grounds for knowing her sentiments respecting me, I confess that this
steady avoidance of me—lonely and in pain as I was, and her guest—hurt
me more than was reasonable.

As for Wilmer he was gone, without beat of drum, and without seeing me;
and save Mammy Jacks and the nigger, Tom, no one came near me except
Aunt Lyddy, and she came only once. She was a little old lady, deaf and
smiling, who labored under the belief that I had met with my injuries in
fighting against the French. She was quite unable to distinguish this
war from the old French war; when she thought of the fighting at all,
she thought of it as in progress in Canada or Louisiana, under the
leadership of Braddock and Forbes and Wolfe. The taking of Quebec was to
her an event of yesterday, and I might have drunk all the tea in the
world, and she would not have objected. Such was Aunt Lyddy; and even,
such as she was, I wondered with bitterness, that she was allowed to
visit me.

Yet when I came to think more calmly, the position surprised me less. It
was in the nature of this war to create a rancour which bred cruel
deeds, and these again produced reprisals. After the capture of Charles
Town in May and the subsequent defeat of Gates, the country had
apparently returned to its allegiance. The King’s friends had raised
their heads. The waverers had declared themselves, opposition in the
field had ceased. If one thing had seemed more certain than another it
was that my Lord Cornwallis’s base in the southern province was secure,
and that he might now devote himself, without a backward glance, to the
conquest of North Carolina and Virginia.

Then in a month, in a week, almost in a day had come a change. God knows
whether it was the result of mismanagement on our part, or of some
ill-judged severity; or, as many now think, of the lack of civil
government, a lack ill-borne by a people of our race. At any rate the
change came. In a week secret midnight war flamed up everywhere. In a
month the whole province was on fire. Partisans came together and
attacked their neighbors, rebels took loyalists by the throat, burned
their houses, harried their plantations, and in turn suffered the same
things. By day the King’s writ ran; at first it was the exception for
these irregulars to meet us in the field. But by night attacks, by
ambuscades, by besetting every ford and every ferry, they cut our
communications, starved our posts and killed our messengers. For a time
the royalists showed themselves as active. They, too, came together,
formed bands, burned and harried. Presently the father was in one camp,
the son in the other; neighbor fought with neighbor, old feuds were
revived, old friendships were broken; and this it was that gave to this
blind, bloody warfare, in the woods, in the morasses, in the
cane-brakes, its savage character.

As quickly as General Gates’s reputation had been lost, reputations were
won. Marion, issuing from the swamps of the Pee Dee carried alarm to the
gates of Charles Town. Sumter made his name a terror through all the
country between the Broad and the Catawba Rivers. Colonel Campbell on
the Watauga, Davy on the North Carolina border flung the fiery torch far
and wide. It was all that Tarleton and his British Legion, the best
force for this light work that we possessed, and Ferguson and his
Provincials, now a shattered body—it was all that these could do to make
head against the rebels or maintain the spirits of our party.

There were humane men, thank God, in both camps. But there were also men
whom the memory of old wrongs wrought to madness. Cruel things were
done. Quarter was refused, men were hung after capture, houses were
burnt, women were made homeless. Therefore, no bitterness of feeling, no
animosity, on one side or the other, was much of a surprise to me;
rather I was prepared for it. But as the soldier by profession is the
last, I hope, to resort to these practices, so is he the most sorely
hurt by them. And we, as I have said, had another grievance. Not only
were we at a loss in this irregular fighting, but we had held our heads
too high in the last war. We had looked down—the worst of us—on the
Colonial officers. And now this was remembered against us. We were at
once blamed and derided; our drill, our discipline, our service were
turned to ridicule. Nor was this shrew of a girl the first who had
scoffed at our courage and made us the subject of her scorn.

Yet, though I understood her feelings, I was hurt. When a man is laid
aside by illness or by an injury, something of the woman awakes in him,
and he is wounded by trifles which would not touch him at another time.
With Wilmer gone, with none but black faces about me, with no certainty
of safety, I had only this girl to whom I could open my views or impart
my wishes. And enemy as she was, she was a woman—in that lay much of my
grievance. She was a woman, and the notion of the woman as his companion
and comforter in sickness and pain is so deeply inbred in a man, that
when she stands away from him at that time, it seems to him a thing
monstrous and unnatural.

I think I felt her aloofness more keenly because, though I had barely
seen her face, I was beginning to know her. The living-room, as in many
of these remote plantations, occupied the middle of the house, running
through from front to rear. There was no second story and all the other
chambers opened on this side or that of this middle room which served
also for a passage. The business of the day was done in it, or on the
veranda, according to the season. It followed that, though my door was
now kept shut, I heard her voice a dozen, nay, a score of times a day.
In the morning I heard its full grave tones, mingling with the
hurly-burly of business, giving orders, setting tasks, issuing laws to
the plantation; later in the day I heard it lowered to the pitch of the
afternoon stillness and the cooing of the innumerable pigeons that made
the veranda their home.

I heard her most clearly when she raised her voice to speak to Aunt
Lyddy; and aware that there is hardly a call upon the patience more
trying than that made by deafness, I was surprised by the kindness and
self-control of one who in my case had shown herself so hard and so
inhuman.

“Confound her!” I thought more than once—the hours were long and dull,
and I was often restless and in pain. “I wish I could see her, if it
were only to rid myself of my impression of her. I don’t suppose she is
good-looking. I had only a glimpse of her, and I was light-headed. When
a man is in that state every nurse is a Venus.”

And then, on the fourth day, I did see her. I heard some one approach my
door and knock. I thought that it was Mammy Jacks and I cried “Come in!”
But it was not Mammy Jacks. It was Madam Constantia at last. She came
in, and stood a little within the doorway, looking down—not at me but at
my feet. And if she had not been all that I had fancied her, and more, I
might have had eyes to read something of shame in her face, and in the
stiffness that did not deign to leave the threshold. She closed the door
behind her. She closed it with care it seemed to me.

“I cannot rise,” I said, taking careful stock of her, “honored as I am
by your visit. Can I offer you a chair, Miss Wilmer?”

“I do not need one,” she replied. She was laboring, I could see, under
strong emotion, and was in no mood for compliments. She was in white as
I had first seen her; and the quiet tones which I had learned to
associate with her, agreed perfectly with the small head set on the neck
as gracefully as a lily on the stem, with the wide low brow, the serious
mouth, the firm chin. “I prefer to stand,” she continued—and still she
did not raise her eyes—I wondered if they were black and hoped but could
hardly believe that they were blue. “I shall not keep you long, sir.”

“You are not keeping me,” I answered with irony. “I shall be here when
you are gone, I fear, Miss Wilmer.”

If I thought to work upon her feelings by that, and to force her to
think of my loneliness, I failed wofully. “Not for long,” she replied.
“We are arranging to send you to Salisbury, sir. You will doubtless be
sufficiently recovered to travel by to-morrow. You will be safer there
than here, and will have better attendance in the hospital.”

I was thunderstruck. “To-morrow!” I echoed. “Travel? But—but I could
not!” I cried. “I could not, Miss Wilmer. The bones of my arm have not
knit! You know what your roads are, and my shoulder is still painful,
horribly painful.”

“I am sorry, sir, that circumstances render it necessary.”

“But, good heavens!” I cried, “You don’t, you cannot mean it!”

“The man who put your arm in splints,” she replied, averting her eyes
from me, “will see that you are taken in a litter as far as the
cross-roads. I have arranged for a cart to meet you there—a pallet and
a—” her voice tailed off, I could not catch the last word. “They will
see you carefully as far as—” again she muttered a name so low that I
did not catch it—“on the way to Salisbury. Or to Hillsborough if that be
necessary.”

“Hillsborough?” I cried, aghast. “But have you reflected? It is eighty
or ninety miles to Hillsborough! Ninety miles of rough roads—where there
are roads, Madam!”

“It’s not a matter of choice,” she replied firmly—but I fancied that she
turned a shade paler. “And it may not be necessary to go beyond
Salisbury. At any rate the matter is settled, sir. Circumstances render
it necessary.”

“But it is impossible!” I urged. “It is out of the question!” The memory
of my ride from King’s Mountain, of the stream I had had to cross, was
too sharp, too recent to permit me to entertain delusions. “The pain I
suffered coming here—”

“Pain!” she cried, letting herself go at that. “What is a little pain,
sir, in these days, when things so much worse, things unspeakable are
being suffered—are being done and suffered every day? Our men whom you
delivered to the Indians at Augusta, did they not suffer pain?”

“It was an abominable thing!” I said, aghast at her attitude. “But I did
not do it, God forbid! I detest the thought of it, Miss Wilmer! And you,
you do not mean that you would be as cruel as those—” I stopped. I let
her imagine the rest. I held her with indignant eyes.

“I am doing the best I can,” she said sullenly. But I saw that she was
ashamed of her proposal even while she persisted in it; and I grew
stronger in my resolve.

“I am helpless,” I said. “Your father can do what he pleases, I am in
his hands. But even he is bound by the laws of humanity, which he obeyed
when he spared me. I cannot think that he did that, I cannot think that
he behaved to me as one soldier to another in order to put me to
torture! If he tells me I must go, I must go, I have no remedy. But
until he does, I will never believe that it is his wish!”

“You will force yourself on us?” she cried, her voice quivering. “On us,
two women as we are, and alone?”

I pointed to my shoulder. “I am not very dangerous,” I said.

“I do not think you are, sir, or ever were,” she retorted with venom.
And now for the first time she met my look, her eyes sparkling with
anger. “As one soldier to another!” she said. “It is marvellous that you
should recognize him as a soldier! But I suppose that the habit of
surrender is an education in many ways.”

“Any one may insult a prisoner,” I said. And I had the satisfaction of
seeing the blood burn in her face. “But you did not come here to tell me
that, Miss Wilmer.”

“No,” she answered. “I came here to tell you that you must go. You must
go, sir.”

“When your father sends me away,” I said, “I must needs go. Until he
does—”

“You will not?”

“No, Miss Wilmer, by your leave, I will not,” I said with all the
firmness of which I was capable. “Unless I am taken by force. And you
are a woman. You will not be so untrue to yourself and to your sex as to
use force to one, crippled as I am, and helpless as I am. Think! If your
dogs broke a raccoon’s leg, would you drag it a mile—two miles?”

The color ebbed from her face, and she shuddered—she who was proposing
this! She shuddered at the picture of a brute’s broken leg! And yet,
strange to say, she clung to her purpose. She looked at me between anger
and vexation, and “If I do not, others will,” she said. “Do you
understand that, sir? Is not that enough for you? Cannot you believe,
cannot you do me the justice to believe that I am doing what I think to
be right? That I am acting for the best? If you stay here after this
your blood be upon your own head!” she added solemnly.

“So be it,” I said. “It would be a very great danger that would draw me
from where I am, Miss Wilmer. I am like the King of France, or whoever
it was, who said ‘J’y suis, J’y reste.’”

“Stubborn! Foolish!” I heard her mutter.

“I hate pain,” I said complacently.

“Do you hate pain more than you fear death?” she asked, gazing at me
with sombre eyes.

“I am afraid I do,” I replied. “I am a milksop.” And I looked at her.

I was beginning to enjoy the discussion. But if I hoped for a farther
exchange of badinage with her I was mistaken. She did not deign to
reply. She did that to which I could make no answer. She went out and
closed the door behind her.

CHAPTER IV
AT THE SMITHY

_Hinc Constantia, illinc Furor._
CATULLUS.

The way in which the girl broke off the discussion and went out did more
than surprise me. It left me anxious and, in a degree, apprehensive. Her
proposal would have been a cruel and a heartless one if nothing lay
behind it. If something lay behind it, some risk serious enough to
justify the step on which she insisted, then I could think better of her
but very much worse of my own plight.

Yet Wilmer had thought that I was safe in his house, if not in the huts.
And if I were not secure here, what risks must I not run on the slow,
painful, helpless journey to Gates’s Head-Quarters, through a district
ill-affected to the British! Once there, it is true, my life would be
safe, and the Colonial Surgeons enjoyed a high reputation for skill. But
the appliances of a rebel hospital were sure to be few, the fare rough
and scanty; it was unlikely that I should be better off there than where
I was. In the end, doubtless, I should have to go thither; it was the
only road to exchange and freedom, unless a happy chance rescued me. But
a life which would be bearable when I could use my arm and had recovered
my strength would be no bed of roses at present.

And to be quite honest I had found an interest where I was. I had
enjoyed my tussle with this strange girl, and I looked forward to a
repetition of it. Her beauty, her disdain, her desire to be rid of me
piqued me—as whom would it not have piqued?—and whetted that appetite
for conquest which is of the man, manly. Madam Constantia! The name
suited her. I could fancy that she governed the plantation with a firm
hand and a high courage.

On the whole I was determined, whatever the risk, to stay where I was;
and yet as the day waned I felt less happy. My shoulder was painful, I
was restless. I told myself that I had some fever. I was tired, too, of
my own company and the house seemed more still than usual. I hoped that
the girl would pay me another visit, would resume the argument, and make
a second effort to persuade me; but she did not, and when my supper came
Mammy Jacks dispensed it with an air, absurdly tragic. She heaved sighs
from a capacious bosom, and looked at me as if I were already doomed.

“Marse, you’r runnin’ up wid trubble,” she said. “Ma’am ’Stantia, she
look like der wuz sump’n wrong. She look like she whip all de han’s on
de plantation.”

“I dare say she is pretty severe,” I said carelessly.

“I des’low you know nothin’ ’bout it,” the woman replied in great scorn.
“She sholy not whip one ha’f, t’ree quarters, ten times ’nough! When
Marse Wilmer come home, sez he, whip all dis black trash! Make up fer
lost time. De last man better fer it! Begin wid Mammy Jacks! Dat’s w’at
he say, but I des hanker ter see him tech ole Mammy! I speck sumpin’ wud
happen bimeby ter ’sprise ’im. Ef Missie got win’ uv it, she up en tell
’im!”

“Is he coming back soon?” I asked.

“Day atter to-morrow. Clar to goodness, when he mounts dem steps,
Missie’ll not mope round no mo’! She not make like she whip de han’s
den.”

“She’s very fond of him, is she?”

“Der ain’t nobody in Car’lina fer ’er ceppin er dad! Seem like she
idol—idol—”

“Idolizes him,” I suggested.

“Mout be dat,” Mammy Jacks assented. She repeated the word to herself
with much satisfaction. It was a long one.

The little vixen, I thought. So she would be rid of me before her father
returned! She knew that he would not send me away, and so—well, she was
a spit-fire!

“Look here, Mammy Jacks,” I said. “I don’t think that I shall sleep
to-night. I am restless. I should like something to read. Will you ask
Miss Wilmer if she can lend me a book. Any book will do, old or new.”

“Tooby sho,’” she said, and she went to do my bidding.

I thought that this might re-open relations. It might bring the girl
herself to learn what kind of book I would choose to have. There was not
likely to be much choice on this up-country plantation, where I need not
expect to find the “Fool of Quality” or “The Female Quixote” or any of
the fashionable productions of the circulating libraries. But a Pope, a
Richardson, or possibly a Fielding I might hope to have.

Alas, my reckoning was at fault. I had none, of these. It was Mammy
Jacks who presently brought back the answer and the book. “Missie, she
up ’n say dat monst’ous good book fer you,” the negress explained, as
she set down the volume with a grin. “Missie say it wuz ole en new, but
she specks new ter you. She tuck’n say she ’ope you read it ter
night—you in monst’ous big need uv it.”

Puzzled by the message, and a little curious, I took the book and opened
it. It was the Bible!

For a moment I was very angry; it seemed to be a poor jest, and in bad
taste. Then I saw, or thought that I saw, that it was not a jest at all.
This queer girl had sent the Bible, thinking to impress me, to frighten
me, to bend me at the last moment to her will!

Certainly she should not persuade me now! Go? Never!

After all I had a quiet night. I slept well and awoke with a keen desire
to turn the tables on her. I counted on her coming to learn the result
of her last step, perhaps to try the effect of a last persuasion. But
she did not come near me, and the day passed very slowly. I thanked
heaven that Wilmer would return on the morrow. I should have some one to
speak to then, some one to look at, I should no longer be cut off from
my kind. And he might bring news, news of Tarleton, news of Lord
Cornwallis, news of our movements in the field. Out of pure ennui I
dozed through most of the afternoon. The sun set and the short twilight
passed unnoticed. It was dark when I awoke. I wondered for a moment
where I was. Then I remembered, and fancied that I must have slept some
hours, for I was hungry.

And then, “Wilmer has come,” I thought; I heard the voice of a man in
the living-room. Presently I heard another voice, nay, more than one.
“Yes, Wilmer has come,” I thought, “and not alone. I shall have some one
to speak to at last, and news perhaps. Doubtless they are occupied with
him, but they need not forget me altogether. They might bring me a light
and my supper.”

And then—strange how swiftly, in a flash, in a heartbeat, the mind
seizes and accepts a new state of things!—then I knew why Mammy Jacks
had brought no light and no supper. I heard her voice, excited, tearful,
protesting, raised in the unrestrained vehemence of the black; and a
man’s voice that silenced her harshly, silenced her with an oath. And
therewith I needed no more to explain the position. I grasped it.

When a few seconds later the door was flung open, and the light broke in
upon me, and with the light three or four rough burly figures, who
crowded one after the other over the threshold, I was prepared. I had
had that moment of warning, and I was ready. There were scared black
faces behind them, filling the doorway, and peeping athwart them, and
murmurs, and a stir of panic proceeding from the room without.

“You come without much ceremony, gentlemen,” I said, speaking as coolly
as I could. For the moment I had only one thought, one aim, one
anxiety—that what I felt should not appear.

“Ceremony? Oh, d—n your ceremony!” cried the first to enter. And he
called for a candle that he might see what he was doing. When it was
handed in I saw them. They were a grim, rough group, the man who had
called for the candle the least ill-looking among them; as he was also
the smallest and perhaps the most dangerous. They all wore wide-leafed
hats and carried guns and were hung about with pouches and weapons. They
stared down at me, and I stared steadily at them. “You’ve got to swap
your bed for the road,” the leader continued in the same brutal tone.
“We think you’ll be safer, where we’re going to take you, mister.”

“And where’s that?” I asked—though I knew very well.

“To Salisbury,” he said. But his grin gave the lie to his words.

“I am afraid that is too long a journey, gentlemen,” I answered. “I
could not go so far. I am quite helpless.”

“Oh, you’ll be helped to make the journey,” he retorted; and they all
laughed, as at a good jest. “You’ll not find it long, either,” he
continued, “you can trust us for that. We’re not set on long journeys
ourselves. We must go with you a piece of the way, so we’ll shorten it,
depend upon it!”

“I am Captain Wilmer’s prisoner,” I said clutching at what I knew was a
straw. “He placed me here, and you will have to answer to him,
gentlemen, for anything you may do.”

“We’ll answer him,” growled one of the other men. “I don’t think you’ll
be there to complain,” he added with meaning.

I tried to calculate the chances, but there were none. I could not
resist, I was crippled and unarmed. I could not escape. I was in their
hands and at their mercy. “I ask you to note,” I said, “that I am a
prisoner of war, duly admitted to quarter.”

“And why not?” the last speaker retorted with a curse. “Ain’t we going
to take you to Head-Quarters? And the shortest way?” with a wink at the
others.

At this there came an interruption from the outer room. “Why don’t you
bring the d—d Tory out?” cried a voice that scorned disguise. “What’s
the use of all this palaver, Levi? Might be a Cherokee pow-wow by the
sound of it. Come! If he don’t know what to expect he’d best go and ask
at Buford’s! Bring him out, confound you! Here’s his horse, and a rope
and—”

“You’ll let me dress?” I said. There was no chance, I saw, but clearly
what chance there was lay in coolness and delay, if delay were possible.
“With a long journey before me, a man likes to start handsomely,” I
continued, addressing the smaller man whom they called Levi. “I am sure
that Captain Wilmer would not wish to put me to more inconvenience than
is necessary. He’s been at a good deal of trouble—”

“A vast lot too much,” the man in the outer room struck in. “He needs a
lesson, too, and we’re the lads of mettle to give it him! Here,” with a
mingling of sarcasm and impatience, “pass along my lord’s vally, and his
curling tongs! ’Fraid we can’t stop while he powders! Now, no nonsense,
damme! Where’s his clothes? Where’s that nigger? Tom!”

The nigger was passed in from one to another, getting some rough usage
on the way. “If you could withdraw, gentlemen, for a minute?” I said.
Alone I might think of something.

But, “No, stranger, by your leave,” Levi replied, with a sneer. “You’re
too precious! We’re not going to lose sight of you till—till the time
comes. Go on with your dressing, if you don’t want to go in your shirt!”

Perhaps it was as well that they did not go, for I was shaky on my
legs and I feared nothing so much as that I should break down through
bodily weakness. Their presence braced me and gave me the less time to
think. Tom’s fingers trembled so much that he was not as useful as he
might have been, but with his help I got somehow into my clothes—with
many a twinge and one groan that I could not check. The injured arm was
already bound to my side, but by passing the other arm through the
sleeve of a coat—Wilmer’s I suppose, for my uniform was not wearable—and
looping the garment loosely round my neck, I was clothed after a
fashion. With these men looking sombrely on, and their shadows, cast by
the wavering light of the candle, rising and falling on the ceiling, and
the hurry and silence, broken now and again by some, “Lord ha’ mercy”
from the outer room, it was such a toilet as men make in Newgate but
surely nowhere else.

“That’ll do,” Levi cried by and by. “You’ll not catch cold.”

“We’ll answer for that!” chimed in another. “Bring him on! He’ll be warm
enough where he’s going! We’ve wasted more time than enough already!”

My head swam for a moment. Then, thank God, the dizziness left me and I
got myself in hand. I thought it right to make a last protest, however
useless. “Note,” I said, raising my head, “all here that I go
unwillingly. These gentlemen do not intend me to reach Salisbury, and I
warn them that they will be answerable to Captain Wilmer and to the
Authorities for what they do. I am well known to Lord Cornwallis—”

“Enough of this palaver!” roared the brute in the outer room. “Are you
turning soft, Levi? Why don’t you bring the man through? If he won’t
catch cold, my mare will. Make an end, man!”

It was useless to say more. “Don’t touch me,” I said. “I can walk.”

I went out in the midst of them into the living-room which I had not yet
seen with my eyes. There, in the lamplight the fourth man was standing
on guard over the negro women of whom there were three or four. Apart
from them, with her back to us, and looking through a window into the
darkness, stood Madam Constantia. I had not heard the girl’s voice since
the men had entered the house, and so far as I could judge she had
carried out her threat, had uttered no protest, taken no side. She had
deliberately stood aloof. Now, one does not look for protection to
women. But that a woman, a girl should stand aside at such a time,
should stand by, silent, unmoved, unprotesting, while her father’s guest
was dragged out to death—when even the negroes about her were moved to
pity—seemed to me an abominable thing, a thing so unnatural that it
nerved me more than I believe anything else could have. If I were
English, and she hated me for that, she should at least not despise me!
If she thought so ill of the King’s officers that to her they were but
milksops, she should at least find that we could meet the worst with
dignity. She was abominable in her hardness and her beauty, but at least
I would leave a thought to prick her, a something by which she should
remember me. Better, far better to think of her in this pinch, than of
home, of Osgodby, of my mother!

There would be time to think of these in the darkness outside.

As I entered the room—and no doubt, half-dressed as I was, I looked pale
and ill—the women cried out. At that the men would have hustled me
through the outer door without giving me an opportunity of speaking; but
I managed to gain a moment. Mammy Jacks was blubbering—I called her to
me. “My purse and what little money I have,” I said, “is under my
pillow. It’s yours, my good woman. If Captain Wilmer will be good enough
to let Lord Cornwallis know that Major Craven—Major Craven, can you
remember—but he will know what to say. And one moment!” I hung back, as
the men would have dragged me on. “There are some letters with the purse
from a woman named Simms, who is about the Barracks at Charles Town. I
want her to know that her husband is dead—was killed in my presence. I
promised him that she should know. She should get a pass on the next
Falmouth packet, and—you won’t forget—Major Craven—my address in England
is in the purse.” Then, “I am ready,” I said to the men.

I would not look again at the girl’s still figure; I went out. Half a
dozen horses stood in the darkness before the house, watched by a fifth
man. One of these was thrust forward, and from the edge of the porch I
was able, though weakly and with pain, to get into the saddle. The men
mounted round me. They would have started at a trot, but I told them
curtly that I could not sit the horse. On that they moved away,
grumbling, at a walk.

I cast a backward glance at the long dark line of the house, and
especially at the lighted window in which the girl’s figure showed as in
a frame. She was watching us go, watching to the last without concern or
pity. Certainly she had warned me, certainly she had done her best to
persuade me to go while there was time. But in the bitterness of the
moment I could not remember this. I could only think of her as
unfeeling, unwomanly, cruel. I had read of such women, I had never met
one, I had never thought to meet one; and I would think of her no more.
I knew that in leaving the house I left my last hope behind me, and that
outside in the night, in the power of these men, I must face what was
before me without a thought of help.

A man dismounted to lower a sliprail, and even while I told myself that
there was no hope I wondered if, crippled and weak as I was, I might
still find some way to elude them. Clopety-clop, the horses went on
again. The night wind rustled across the fields, crickets chirped, the
squeal of some animal in its death-throe startled the ear. Clopety-clop!

I tried to direct my thoughts to that future now so near, which all must
sometime face. I tried to remove my mind from the present, so swiftly
ebbing away, and to dwell on the dark leap into the unknown, into the
illimitable, that lay before me. But I could not. Hurried pictures of my
home, of my mother, of the way in which the news would reach
Osgodby—these indeed flitted across my mind. But though I knew, though I
told myself, that escape was hopeless, and that in a few minutes, in an
hour, according as these ruffians pleased, I should cease to exist, hope
still tormented me, still held me on its tenter-hooks, still swung my
mind hither and thither, as the chance of reprieve distracts the poor
wretch in the condemned cell.

What if I broke away, one-armed as I was, and thrust my way through the
men, taking my chance of obstacles? It would be useless, reason told me;
and it might be the thing which they wished. It would absolve them from
the last scruple, if any scruple remained. And at best I must be
recaptured, for I knew neither my horse nor the country. Then—the mind
at such times darts from subject to subject, unable to fix itself—I
caught a word or two spoken by the riders in front.

“We can get one at the smithy,” Levi said.

“Confound you, you make me mad,” the other grumbled. “Why break our
backs just to put him—” I missed the last word or two.

“You’re a fool, man! We must give Wilmer no handle,” Levi replied. “Let
him suspect what he pleases, he can’t prove it. If he can’t show—” his
voice dropped lower, I lost the rest.

So they were afraid of Wilmer, after all! But what was it that they were
going to get at the smithy? And if we stayed there, was there any chance
of help? I thought of Barter and the frightened women. Reason told me
that there was no hope in them.

We were on the road now, riding in thick darkness under trees. The pain
in my shoulder was growing with the motion, and from one moment to
another, it was all I could do to restrain a groan. Frogs were
croaking—cold for them I thought, with that strange leap of the mind
from one subject to another. The men were silent, and save for the
trampling of the horses and such sounds as I have named, the night was
silent. How far were we going? Why need they be at the trouble of
riding, and I at the pain, when the end, soon or late, would be the
same?

Ha! there, before us was the faint glow of the smithy fire. Apparently
the forge was at work to-night. It had not been lighted on the night of
the King’s Mountain fight.

As we sighted it, one of the men spoke. I caught the word “Spade.” It
was that which they were going to get at the smithy, then? A spade!

The word chilled my blood—I shivered. The glow of the smithy fire grew
stronger as we advanced, the ring of a hammer on metal reached us. The
men seemed to be disturbed by something and spoke low to one another.
They even drew rein for a moment and conferred, but on second thoughts
they moved on. “It can’t be old Barter,” said one. “But I’m mighty
surprised if there was a fire when we came by. Who’s lit it?”

“Perhaps his lad’s come back?”

“Jake? Maybe. We’ll soon know.”

They drew up towards the forge at a walk.

When we were twenty yards from the doorway whence the light issued, a
man strolled out of the shed, his hands in his pockets. He stood in the
glow of the fire, looking towards us; doubtless he had heard the sound
of the horses’ hoofs above the clink of the hammer. He had a cigar in
his mouth, and as he stood watching our approach he did not remove it,
nor take his hands from his pockets. He stood quietly watching us, as we
came towards him.

“Halloa!” said Levi, as we pulled up two or three paces from the
stranger. “Lit the forge, have you?”

“Cast a shoe,” the man replied. He was a small man, plainly, but, for
the up-country, neatly dressed, and wearing a black leather jockey-cap.
A rather elegant finical little man he seemed to me, and unarmed. Such
as he was, my hopes flew to him, and rested on him, though in the way of
help old Barter could scarcely have seemed less promising.

“You alone?” Levi asked, looking him over.

“You’ve said it,” the man replied placidly. His eyes traveled from one
to another of us. He did not move.

Levi bent his head and looked under the low eaves of the smithy. “You
ride a good horse,” he said. “A d—d good horse!” he repeated in a rising
voice.

The man nodded.

Levi glanced over his shoulder. “Fetch it,” he said to one of his
followers—and I knew that he meant the spade, not the horse. Then, “What
are you doing here?” he asked the stranger.

It was on this that the first real hope awoke in me. The man’s calmness
in face of this bunch of armed men—he had never removed his hands from
his pockets or the cigar from his mouth—and a certain gleam in his eyes,
that gave the lie to his mild manner—these two things impressed me. And
his answer to Levi’s question.

“I’m just looking round,” he said gently.

For a moment I think that Levi was on the point of turning on his heel,
and letting the man go his way. But his greed had been roused, I
suppose, by a second look at the stranger’s horse; and “That’s no
answer,” he said roughly. “What’s your errand here? Who are you? What
are you doing? Come!” he continued more violently. “We want no strangers
here and no spies! We’ve caught one already, and it’s as easy, s’help
me, to find two halters as one!”

“And there are plenty of trees,” the man answered coolly, with his eyes
on me. “No lack of them either! Spy is he. He might well be English by
the look of him.”

“We’ll take care of him!” Levi retorted roughly. “Who are you? That is
the point! You’re none of Shelby’s men, nor Campbell’s! Where do you
live?”

“Well, I don’t live here.”

“Then—”

“Do you know Wilmer? Captain Wilmer?” the stranger asked.

“Yes, but—”

“He knows me. Ask him.”

I struck in before Levi could make the angry rejoinder which was on his
lips. “I am Captain Wilmer’s prisoner,” I cried, thrusting my horse
forward. For the moment I forgot pain and weakness. “And I take you to
witness, sir, whoever you are, that I am no spy, and that these men have
carried me off from Captain Wilmer’s house.”

“D—n you, hold your tongue!” cried one of the other men, pushing forward
and trying to silence me.

“I am Major Craven of the English Army!” I persisted. “I am a wounded
man, taken at King’s Mountain, and given quarter, and these men—”

One of them clapped his hand on my mouth. Another seized my horse’s head
and dragged it back. They closed round me. “Knock his head off!” cried
Levi. “Choke him, some one!”

“That man, Barter—the smith!” I shouted desperately—the old man had just
come to the smithy entrance—“he knows! He saw me with Captain Wilmer!
Ask him!”

I could say no more. One of the men flung his arm round my neck and
squeezed not only my throat but my shoulder. I screamed with pain.

“Take him on! Take him on!” Levi cried furiously. “I and Margetts will
deal with this fellow. Take him on!”

“Stop!” said the little man; and more nimbly than I had ever seen it
done, he whipped out a pistol, cocked it, and covered Levi, who was
sitting in his saddle not three paces from him. “Don’t take him,” he
went on. “And stand still. If a man goes to draw his weapon I shoot.”

Never was a surprise more complete. The man who had tried to choke me
let his arm fall from my shoulder, the men’s mouths opened, Levi gaped.
Not a hand was raised among them.

“Wilmer’s prisoner, is he?” the little man went on; he spoke as quietly
as he had spoken before. “And you were going to hang him? Mighty
hurried, wasn’t it?”

“What the h—ll is it to you?” Levi cried.

The muzzle rose from his breast to his head. “Better tell that man of
yours to be still!” the stranger said—this time he spoke rather grimly.
Then to me “Taken at King’s Mountain, sir?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve a broken arm and my shoulder was crushed. I appeal
to you to rescue me from these men. If you leave me in their hands—”

The man stopped me by a nod. He took his cigar from the corner of his
mouth, threw it away and substituted for it something that gleamed in
the light. He whistled shrilly.

“Better stand still!” he said, as one or two of the horses backed and
sidled, “I miss sometimes, but not at three paces.” He whistled again,
more loudly. “On second thoughts, you’ll be wise to take yourselves
off,” he added.

“Not before I know who you are,” Levi retorted with an oath. His mean
face was livid with anger—and fear.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” the stranger answered in the tone of a man making
a concession; and to my astonishment he dropped the muzzle of his
pistol, cooly uncocked it, and returned it to his pocket. “I am Marion
of Marion’s Rangers, Marion of the Pee Dee River. My men will be here
presently and if you take my advice you will be gone before they come.
There are plenty of trees about and we have ropes. I will be responsible
for your prisoner,” he added sternly. “Leave him to me.”

Levi gasped. “Colonel Marion!” he cried.

“At your service, sir. Captain Wilmer is acting as my guide and if he
finds you gentlemen here he may have something to say to this matter.
Bring out my horse, my friend,” he continued, addressing the old smith.

I rode clear of Levi’s gang, no one raising a hand or attempting to stay
me. I ranged myself beside Marion. Levi and his men conferred in low
voices, their heads together, their eyes over their shoulders.

Marion turned his back on them while the smith brought out his horse, a
beautiful black thorough-bred. I did not wonder that at the sight of it
Levi’s greed had been whetted. “I’d have shod him with gold,” Barter
said as he held the stirrup, “if I’d known whose he was, Colonel—and a
little bit for his own sake. I might have known when I saw him, as he
carried no common rider.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Marion said as he settled himself in the saddle.
“I won’t offer to pay you.”

“God forbid!” cried the old man.

Marion turned to the five scowling, angry men who still held their
ground. Even they were ashamed, I fancy, to back down before one man.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a small hard voice. “When I say, Go! I mean,
Go.”

“You’re not on the Pee Dee now!” one of the men answered with insolence.

“You can tell that to my men.” he replied. “When they come.”

Far off, breaking the silence of the night, the beat of hoofs came dully
to us. Levi heard it, and he turned his horse’s head, and muttered
something to his men. “Another day!” he cried aloud—but only to cover
his retreat. Then he and these four brave men moved off with what
dignity they might. The beat of hoofs came more loudly, and clearly from
the eastward. The five began to trot.

Marion laughed softly. “They are grand folks—in a tavern!” he said.

A man who has had such an escape as I had had, and whose throat aches as
he thinks of the rope that he has evaded, is not at his best as an
observer. If he is capable of thought at all, he is prone to think only
of himself. But I had heard so much of the partisan leader, whose craft
and courage had defied the energy of Tarleton, and whose name was a
terror to our people from the Pine Barrier to the ocean, and from the
Santee River to the Gadkin, that I could not take my eyes off Marion.
His marvellous escapes, the speed of his horse which was a fable through
the Carolinas, the stern discipline he maintained, and his humanity to
royalists and regulars alike—these things had already made his name
famous. Pursued to his haunts in the marshes of the Pee Dee, he issued
from them the moment the pressure was relaxed; and while Sumter and Davy
and Pickens, all leaders of note, harassed us on our borders, it was
Marion who sapped the foundations of our power, cut off our detachments,
and harried our friends to the very gates of Charles Town. Tarleton,
whom he had evaded a dozen times, called him the Swamp Fox, and grew
dull at his name. But Tarleton could bear no rival, friend or foe, and
carried into war a spirit far too bitter. For most of us Marion’s
exploits, troublesome as they were and rapidly growing dangerous, were a
theme of generous interest and admiration.

He saw that I was observing him and probably he was not displeased. But
after a moment’s pause, “Are you in pain, sir?” he asked.

“Not more than I can bear,” I replied. “Nor in any that should deter me
from acknowledging the service you have rendered me.”

“I am glad it fell out so,” he replied courteously. “Here is Wilmer.”

CHAPTER V
THE SWAMP FOX

_Giving the rein to the most intrepid gallantry and in battle
exhibiting all the fire and impetuosity of youth, there never was an
enemy, who yielded to his valor, who had not cause to admire and
eulogize his subsequent humanity.—It would have been as easy to turn
the sun from his course as Marion from the path of honor._

GARDEN.

Wilmer rode up to us a minute later, followed by two horsemen, rough
wild-looking men, who wore leather caps like their leader’s. When he saw
who Marion’s companion was even his aplomb was not equal to the
occasion. He stared at me open-mouthed. “What diversion is this, Major?”
he cried at last. “You here? What in the name of cock-fighting are you
doing here?”

“I am afraid Major Craven has considerable ground for complaint,” Marion
said, a note of sternness in his voice.

“Which Colonel Marion has removed at risk to himself,” I said politely.
“I am afraid that if it had not been for him I should have had no throat
to complain with! A man called Levi and four others entered your house
an hour ago, Captain Wilmer, and dragged me out, and in spite of all my
remonstrances—”

“Were going to hang him,” Marion said grimly. “Fortunately they called
at the forge, I was here, and Major Craven appealed to me. I
interfered—”

“And they cried ‘King’s Cruse,’ I warrant you!” Wilmer struck in.

“Well, they withdrew the stakes,” Marion said with a ghost of a smile.
“They were not a very gallant five. So all is well that ends well—as it
has in this case, Wilmer. In this case! But—”

“But what was Con doing?” Wilmer cried turning to me. “That she let them
take you out of the house?”

I fancied that the moment he had spoken he would have recalled his
words; and acting on an impulse which I did not stay to examine, “She
did what she could, I have no doubt,” I answered. “What could she do?
Colonel Marion may think little of facing five men—”

“Five corn-stalks!” he interpolated lightly.

“But for a woman it’s another matter! A very different matter!”

“And yet,” Wilmer said—but I thought that he breathed more freely—“Con
is not exactly a boarding-school miss. She’s—”

“She’s my god-daughter for one thing,” Marion said with a smile.

“I should have thought that she could manage a cur like Levi!”

“And four others?” I said. “Come, come!”

He shrugged his shoulders, but I saw that he was relieved by my words.
“Well, it’s over now,” he said, “and she will tell us her own tale. I
have no doubt that she did what she could. For the rest, I’ll talk to
Levi, Colonel, be sure. I am with you, that we have had too much of
this. But that can wait. The Major looks shaken and the sooner he’s in
bed again the better. Never was a man more unlucky!”

“I am afraid that others have been still more unlucky,” Marion said
gravely. And I knew that he referred to some incident unknown to me.
“But you are right, let us go. I am anxious to see my god-daughter and
almost as anxious to see a pair of sheets for once.”

He said good-night to the old smith and we started. Marion and Wilmer
rode ahead, I followed, Marion’s two men brought up the rear. So we
retraced the way that I had traveled an hour before in stress of mind
and blackness and despair. The night cloaked me in solitude, stilled the
fever in my blood, laid its cool touch on my heated brow; and far be it
from me to deny that I hastened to render thanks where, above all,
thanks were due. I had been long enough in this land of immense
distances, of wide rivers and roadless forests—wherein our little army
was sometimes lost, as a pitch-fork in a hay-stack—to appreciate the
thousand risks that lay between us and home, and to know how little a
man could command his own fate, or secure his own life.

Clop, clop, went the horses’ hoofs. The same sound, yet how different to
my ears! The croak of frogs, the swish of the wind through the wild
mulberries, the murmur of the little rill we crossed—how changed was the
note in all! Deep gratitude, a solemn peace set me apart, and hallowed
my thoughts. How delicious seemed the darkness, how sweet the night
scents—no magnolia on the coast was sweeter!—how fresh the passing air!

But as water finds its level, so, soon or late, a man’s mind returns to
its ordinary course. Before we reached the house, short as was the
distance, other thoughts, and one in particular, took possession of me.
What face would the girl put on what had happened? How would she act?
How would she bear herself to them? And to me?

True, I had shielded her as far as lay in my power. I had given way to a
passing impulse and had lied; partly in order that her father might not
learn the full callousness of her conduct, partly because I wished to
see her punished, and I felt sure that no punishment would touch her
pride so sharply as the knowledge that I had been silent and had not
deigned to betray her. I wanted to see her punished, but even before
revenge came curiosity. How would she bear herself, whether I spoke or
were silent? Would she own the truth to her father? Would she own it to
Marion of whom, I suspected, she stood in greater awe? And, if she did
not, how would she carry it off? How would she look me in the face,
whether I spoke, or were silent?

As we drew up to the house the lighted windows still shone on the night,
and a troop of dogs, roused by our approach, came barking round us,
after the southern fashion. But no one appeared, no one met us;
doubtless the white men had ordered the negroes to keep to their
quarters. Wilmer, who was the first to reach the ground, helped me to
dismount. “But keep behind us a minute,” he said. “We need not give my
daughter a fright.”

I assented gladly, hugging myself; I was to see a comedy! I stood back,
and Marion and Wilmer mounted the porch and opened the door. Cries of
alarm greeted them, but these quickly gave place to exclamations of joy,
to cries of “Missie! Missie, he come! Marse Wilmer come!”

I pressed up to the doorway to see what was passing. Mammy Jacks was
pounding at the door of an inner room—doubtless her mistress’s. The
other women with the vehemence of their race were kissing the Master’s
hand and even his clothes. “Steady! Steady!” Wilmer was saying, “Don’t
frighten her!” And he raised his voice,

“Con, it’s I!” he cried. “All is well, girl. Here’s a visitor to see
you!”

She appeared. But I saw at a glance that this was not the same girl who
on the night of my arrival had met Wilmer with flying skirts and cries
of joy. This girl came out, pale, shrinking, frightened. True, in a
breath she was in her father’s arms, she was sobbing in abandonment on
his shoulder. But, believe me, in that short interval my desire for
vengeance had taken flight; it had vanished at the first sight of her
face. The sooner she knew that I was safe, the better! I did not
understand her, she was beyond my comprehension, she was still a puzzle.
But I knew that she had suffered, and was suffering still.

“There, honey, all’s well, all’s well!” Wilmer said, soothing her. I
think that for the time he had completely forgotten me and my affairs.
“What is it? What’s amiss, child? Here’s your god-father—a big man now!
Look up, here’s Marion!”

On that I crept away. I felt that I ought not to be looking on. It
seemed to be a—well, I gave it no name, but I felt that I had no right
to be there, and I went down into the darkness below the veranda, and
stood a dozen yards away where I could not hear what passed, or could
hear only the one sharp cry that the news of my safety drew from her.
Marion’s men had taken the horses round to the cabins, and I was alone.
I had the puzzle to amuse me still, if I chose to work upon it; and I
had leisure. But it was no longer to my taste and not many minutes
passed before Wilmer summoned me.

I had no choice then, I had to go up into the room. But so changed were
my feelings in regard to this girl that I loathed the necessity. I was
as unwilling to face her, as unwilling to shame her, as if I had been
the criminal. I would have given many guineas to be a hundred miles
away.

I might have spared my scruples for she was not there, she was not to be
seen. Instead, I met the men’s eyes; they glanced at me, then away
again. They looked disconcerted. For my part I affected to be dazzled by
the light. “It has been a little too much for my daughter,” Wilmer said.
“I don’t quite understand what happened,” he continued awkwardly, “but
she seems to think, Major—she seems to have got it into her head—”

“It was a shock to Miss Wilmer,” I said. “And no wonder! I am not the
steadier for it myself.”

“Just so,” he replied slowly. “Of course. But she’s got an idea that she
did not do all—”

“I hope that they did not strike her,” I said.

It was a happy thought. It suggested a state of things, wholly different
from that which was in their minds. Wilmer’s face lightened. “What?” he
said. “Do you mean that there was any appearance of—of that?”

“A cur like that!” I said contemptuously. “A devil of a fellow in a
tavern!” I looked at Marion whose silence and steady gaze embarrassed
me. “Or among women!”

“Ah!”

“But you must pardon me,” I said. “I am done. I must lie down or I shall
fall down. My shoulder is in Hades. For God’s sake, Wilmer, let me go to
bed,” I continued peevishly—and indeed I was at the end of my strength.
“You are worse than Levi and company!”

They were puzzled I think. They could not make my story tally with the
words that had escaped her. But, thus adjured, they had no choice except
to drop the subject, and attend to me. I was helped to bed, Tom was
summoned, my shoulder was eased, I was fed. And they no doubt had other
and more important things to consider than how to reconcile two accounts
of a matter which was at an end and had lost its importance. I heard
them talking far into the night. Their voices, subdued to the note of
caution, were my lullaby, soothed me to slumber, went murmuring with me
into the land of dreams. While they talked of ferries and night attacks,
of Greene replacing Gage, of this man’s defection or that man’s
persistence, of our weakness here and strength there, of what might be
looked for from the northern province and what might be feared in
Georgia, I was far away by the Coquet, listening to the music of its
waters, soothed by the hum of moorland bees. The vast and troubled ocean
that rolled between my home and me was forgotten. Alas, of the many
thousands who crossed that ocean with me, how few were ever to return!
How few were destined to see the old country again!

Late in the night I awoke and sat up, sweating and listening, my arm
throbbing violently. And so it was with me until morning, fatigue
imposing sleep, and jarred nerves again snatching me from it. At last I
fell into a calmer state, and awoke to find the sun up and Marion
standing beside me. His bearing was changed, he was again the leader,
watchful, distant, a little punctilious.

“I make no apology for rousing you,” he said. “I have to leave. I have
discussed your position with Captain Wilmer and he will be guided by my
advice. I could take you north to-day and see that you were conveyed
safely to our Headquarters; but you are in no condition to travel. It
would be barbarous to suggest it. I propose therefore to leave you here.
In a month I or some of my people will be passing, and the opportunity
may then serve. In the meantime I must ask you to give me your parole
not to escape, while you remain here.”

“Willingly,” I said. “From the present moment, Colonel Marion, until—it
is well to be exact?”

“Until I take you into my charge,” he replied rather grimly. “Once in my
hands, Major, I will give you leave to escape if you can.”

“Agreed,” I said laughing. “Have you the paper?”

He handed it to me. While he brought the ink to the bedside, I read the
form and found it on all fours with what he had said. I signed it as
well as I could with my left hand—the exertion was not a slight one.
Then, “One moment,” I said, my hand still on the paper, “How am I to be
saved from a repetition of yesterday’s outrage?”

“It will not be repeated,” he answered, his face stern. “I have taken
steps to secure that.” I handed him the paper. “Very good,” he
continued. “That is settled then?”

“No,” I said, “not until I have thanked you for an intervention which
saved my life.”

“The good fortune was mine,” he replied courteously. And then with
feeling, “Would to God,” he cried, “that I could have saved all as I
saved you! There have been dreadful things done, damnable things, sir,
in the last week. The things that make war—which between you and me is
clean—abominable! And they are as stupid as they are cruel, whether they
are done by your people or by mine! They are the things of which we
shall both be ashamed some day. For my part,” he continued, “I believe
that if the war had been waged on either side, with as much good sense
as a Charles Town merchant, Horry or Pinkney, brings to his everyday
business, the States would have been conquered or reconciled these
twelve months past! Or on the other hand there would not have been one
English soldier south of the St. Lawrence to-day!”

I smiled. “My commission only permits me to agree to the first of your
alternatives,” I said. “But I owe you a vast deal more than agreement. I
won’t say much about it, but if I can ever serve you, I hope, Colonel
Marion, that you will command me.”

“I accept the offer,” he said frankly. “Some day perhaps I shall call
upon you to make it good.” And then, “You were with General Burgoyne’s
force, were you not?”

“I was,” I answered. “I was on his staff, and surrendered with him at
Saratoga. I have been—unlucky.”

“Confoundedly unlucky!” he rejoined with feeling. “North and South!”

“Miss Wilmer,” I began impulsively, “seemed to think—,” and then I
stopped. Why had I brought in her name? What folly had led me into
mentioning her?

He saw that I paused and he shrugged his shoulders. He seemed to be
willing to let it pass. Then he changed his mind, and spoke. “Do you
know her story?” he asked. “She lost her mother very unhappily. Mrs.
Wilmer was staying for her health at Norfolk in Virginia in ’76, when
your people bombarded it—an open town, my friend. The poor lady,
shelterless and in such clothes as she could snatch up, died later of
exposure. My god-daughter was devoted to her, as she is to her father.
Women feel these things deeply. Can you wonder?”

“No,” I said gravely. “I don’t wonder. I knew nothing of this.”

“I am sorry to say that that is not all,” he went on. “Her only brother,
a lad of eighteen, fell into your hands in the attack on Savannah. He
was embarked, with other prisoners, for the West Indies. He has not been
heard of since, and whether he is alive or dead, God knows. These things
eat into the heart. Do you wonder?”

“No,” I said, earnestly, “I don’t! But in heaven’s name why did they not
tell me? I am known to the Commander-in-Chief, I have some small
influence. I could at least make inquiries for them. Do they suppose
that after the treatment I have received at Captain Wilmer’s
hands—though it be no more than the laws of war require—do they suppose
that I would not do what I could?”

He looked at me a little quizzically, a little sorrowfully. “I am
afraid,” he said, “that all British officers—and all British
sympathizers—are not like you. They have come here to deal with rebels.”
His face grew stern. “They forget that their grandsires were rebels a
hundred years ago, their great grandsires thirty years before—and rebels
on much the same grounds. They think that nothing becomes them but
severity. Ah, we have had bitter experiences, Major Craven, and I do not
deny it, some nobles ones! Your Lord Cornwallis means well, but he has
much to learn, and he has made big mistakes.”

I evaded that. “I will write at once,” I said.

He raised his head sharply. “No!” he replied. “I am afraid, I must put
an embargo on that. I have to think of Wilmer, and—” He checked himself.
“He does not want a troop of horse to pay him a visit,” he added, rather
lamely.

“Of course, I should not say where I was,” I answered, a little piqued.
“Captain Wilmer may see the letter.”

“Of necessity,” Marion rejoined dryly. “But there are circumstances”—he
hesitated—“this is a peculiar case, and I can run no risks. There must
be no writing, Major Craven. I will see that news of your safety is sent
in to Winnsboro’.”

“Lord Cornwallis is at Charlotte.”

“He was,” Marion replied with a smile. “But your affair at King’s
Mountain has touched him in a tender place, and yesterday he was
reported to be falling back on Winnsboro’ as fast as he could. In any
case, word shall be sent to his quarters wherever they are, that you are
wounded, and in safe hands. That will meet your wishes?”

“I am afraid it must,” I said grudgingly. “If you insist?”

“I do,” he said. “It may seem harsh, but I have reasons. I have reasons.
It is a peculiar case. And now, good-bye, sir. In a month I hope to
travel north with you.”

“Or rather I with you,” I said, sighing.

“It’s the fortune of war,” he replied with a shrug, and that alert
movement of the hands which sometimes betrayed his French origin.
“Wilmer is going with me to-day, but he will return to-morrow or the
next day. Then you will have company.”

He took his leave then, and though he had treated me handsomely and I
had reason to be grateful to him, I looked after him with envy. He was
free, he was about to take the road, he had plans; the world was before
him, already a reputation was his. And I lay here, useless, chained by
the leg, a prisoner for the second time. I knew that I ought to be
thankful; I had my life, where many had perished, and by and by, I
should be grateful. But as I thought of him trailing over the flanks of
the wind-swept hills, or filing through the depths of the pine-barrens,
or cantering over the wide, scented savannahs, my soul pined to go with
him; pined for freedom, for action, for the vast spaces with which two
years had made me familiar. That I sighed for these rather than for home
or friends was a token perhaps of returning strength; or it may be that
the sight of this man, who within a few months had written his name so
deeply on events, had roused my ambition.

Be the cause what it might I found the day endless. It was in vain that
Tom fretted me with attentions; I was useless, I was a log, any one
might look down on me. To be taken twice! Could a man of spirit be taken
twice? No, it was too much. It was bad enough to stand for that which
was hateful, without also standing for that which was contemptible.

It was a grey rainy day such as we have in England in July after a spell
of heat; soft and perfumed, grateful to those abroad but dull to the
housebound. And Wilmer was gone. I heard no voices in the house, no
spinning-wheel, the business of the plantation was no longer transacted
within my hearing. There was nothing to distract me, less to amuse me. I
fumed and fretted. When my eyes fell on the Bible which Madam Constantia
had sent me, it failed to provoke a smile. Instead, the sight chilled
me. How deep must be the enmity, how stern the purpose that could
foresee the night’s work, and foreseeing could still send that book!

I asked Tom if I could get up. He answered that I might get up on the
morrow. Not to-day.

“But I am feeling much stronger,” I said.

“Want no flust’ations,” he replied. “Marse take dose sassaf’ac tea now.”

I swore at him and his sassafras tea. “You v’ey big man ter-day,” Mammy
Jacks said.

“And pickaninny yesterday,” I rejoined angrily.

This time she did not answer. Instead she grinned at me.

Presently, “Isn’t Miss Wilmer well?” I asked.

“She sorter poorly,” Mammy Jacks said. “She skeered by dat low white
trash,” with a side glance at me, to see how I took it.

“Isn’t she afraid that they may return?” I asked.

“Marse Marion see to dat,” the woman said, with pride. “He mighty big
man. He say de wud, dey not come widin miles o’ the Bluff! You des hev
de luck uv de worl’,” Mammy Jacks continued. “Dey hang nine, ten your
folks day befo’ yistiddy.”

“Oh, confound you, you black raven!” I cried, “Leave me alone.”

It was grim news; and for a time it upset me completely. For a while the
service which Marion had done me and Wilmer’s humanity were alike swept
from my mind by a rush of anger. The resentment which such acts breed
carried me away, as it had carried away better men before me. I cursed
the rebels. I longed to strike a blow at them, I longed to crush them. I
hated them. But what could I do, maimed and captive as I was? What could
I do? Too soon the wave of anger passed and left behind it a depression,
a despondency that the grey evening and the silent house deepened. I had
escaped, I had been spared. But they, who might have been as helpless
and as innocent as myself, and guilty only of owning the same
allegiance, had suffered this! It was hard to think of the deed with
patience, it was pain to think of it at all; and I was thankful when at
last the night came, and I could turn my face to the wall and sleep.

But no man is fit to be a soldier who cannot snatch the pleasures of the
passing moment; and when the next day saw me out of doors, when I found
myself established on the veranda and the view broke upon me, liquid
with early sunshine, and my gaze travelled from the green slopes that
fringed the farther bank of the creek to the wooded hills and so to the
purple distances of the Blue Ridge—the boundary in those days of
civilization—I felt that life was still worth living and worth
preserving. From the house, which stood long and low on a modest bluff,
a pasture, shaded by scattered catalpas, dropped down to the water,
which a cattle track crossed under my eyes. On the left, in the
direction of the smithy, the plantation fields lay along the slope,
broken by clumps of live oaks and here and there disfigured by stumps.
On the right a snake-fence, draped with branches of the grape-vine,
enclosed an attempt at a garden, which a magnolia that climbed one end
of the veranda and a fig tree that was splayed against the other, did
something to reinforce. All under my eyes was rough and plain; the place
differed from the stately mansions on the Ashley River or the Cooper, as
Wilmer himself differed from the scarlet-coated, periwigged beaux of
Charles Town, or as our home-farm in England differed from Osgodby
itself. But a simple comfort marked the homestead, the prospect was
entrancing, and what was still new and crude in the externals of the
house, the beauty of a semi-tropical vegetation was hastening to veil.
At a glance one saw that the Bluff was one of those up-country
settlements which men of more enterprise than means were at this time
pushing over the hills towards the Tennessee and the Ohio.

That Wilmer was such a pioneer I had no doubt, though I judged that he
had more behind him than a dead level of poverty. Indeed I found
evidence of this on the little table that had been set for me beside my
cane chair. It bore a jug of spring water, some limes, and a book in two
volumes. I fell on the book eagerly. It was _The Rambler_, published in
London in 1767. Now for a house on the distant Catawba to possess a copy
of _The Rambler_ imported some education and even some refinement.

No one but the girl could have put the book there; and had she done this
before the news of the murder of my comrades reached me I should have
received the act in a different spirit. I should have asked myself with
interest in what mood she proffered the boon, and how she intended it;
whether as an overture towards peace, or a mere civility, rendered
perforce when it could no longer be withheld.

But now I was too sore to find pleasure in such questions. What softer
thoughts I had entertained of her, thoughts that her agitation and her
remorse on the evening of the outrage had engendered in me, were gone
for the time. I found her treatment of me, viewed by the light of other
events, too cruel; I found it too much on a par with the acts of those
who had murdered my comrades in cold blood. I forgot the story of her
mother and her brother. I believed even that I did not wish to see her.

For I had not yet seen her. As I passed through the living-room I had
caught a glimpse of Miss Lyddy’s back; who, unprepared for my visit, had
fled and slammed a door upon me, as if I were indeed the French. The
negro women had grinned and curtsied and cried, “Lord’s sake!” and
fussed about me, and been scolded by Mammy Jacks. But of the girl I had
seen nothing as I passed through.

Doubtless she was on the plantation taking her father’s place and
managing for him. And doubtless, too, I must presently see her. For at
the farther end of the veranda, where the glossy leaves of the magnolia
draped the pillars and deepened the shade, was a second encampment, a
chair, a table, a work-basket; and beside these a spinning-wheel and an
old hound. Nor even if she shunned this spot, could she long avoid me.
Though I sat remote from the doorway, no one could enter or leave the
house without passing under my eyes.

I fancied that after what had passed she would not be able to meet me
without embarrassment, and for this reason, she might choose to surprise
me; she might come out of the house and appear at my elbow. But two
hours passed, the beauties of Johnson were losing their charm, even the
prospect was beginning to pall on me, and still she did not come. Then
at last I saw her on the farther side of the creek, coming down to the
ford—a slender figure in white, wearing a broad hat of palmetto leaves.
A black boy carrying a basket ran at her side and two or three dogs
scampered about her. She was armed with a switch, and she crossed the
stream by a line of stepping-stones that flanked the ford.

I watched her with a mixture of curiosity and indignation, as she
tripped from stone to stone. She had to mount the slope under my eyes,
and I had time to wonder what she would do. Would she come to me and
speak? Or would she pass me with a bow and enter the house? Or would she
ignore me altogether?

She did none of these things. I think that she had made up her mind to
bow to me as she passed. For at one point, where she was nearer to me,
she wavered ever so little, as if she were going to turn to me. Then a
flood of red dyed her face, and blushing painfully, sensible I am sure
of my gaze, but with her head high, she crossed the veranda and entered
the house.

“Well, at least she can feel!” I thought. And if I regretted anything,
it was not that I had stared at her, but that she might not now choose
to come to me. She would not soon forgive the humiliation of her hot
cheeks.

CHAPTER VI
ON PAROLE

“_But who can tell what cause had that fair maid
To use him so that loved her so well?_”
SPENCER.

A moment later the girl proved that her sensibility was less or her
courage higher than my estimate, for just as I had pictured a little
earlier, she surprised me. I found her at my elbow, and I rose to my
feet. Unluckily as I did so, I struck my injured arm against the chair,
and she—winced.

That might have disarmed me, but it did not. I remembered the nine men
who had been murdered in cold blood, and I thought of my narrow escape;
after all I was not a dog to be hung without ceremony and buried in a
ditch! And now she was in my power, now, if ever, was the time to bring
home to her what she had done. Still, she was a woman, I owed her
courtesy, and I endeavored to speak with politeness. “I see that you are
more merciful,” I said, bowing, “in fact than in intention, Miss
Wilmer.”

Her agitation was such—she did not try to hide it—that for a moment she
could not speak. Then “If you knew all,” she said in a low voice, “you
would know that I had grounds for what I did, Sir.” “That you had good
grounds, I cannot believe,” I answered. “And for knowing all, I think I
do. I know that you have suffered. I know that you have lost your mother
and your brother. I know that you have grievances, sad grievances it may
be against us.”

“You don’t know all,” she repeated more firmly. “But I know enough,” I
rejoined—I was not to be moved from my purpose now. “I know that I was
your father’s prisoner and your guest; and that you stood aside, you did
not raise a hand, not a finger to save me, Miss Wilmer. You did not
speak, though a word might have availed, and I believe would have
availed to preserve me! You let me go out to a cruel death, you turned
your back on me—”

“Oh, don’t! don’t!” she cried.

“You quail at the picture,” I retorted. “I do not wonder that you do. I
was your guest, I was wounded, I was in pain, alone. Has a man, when he
is maimed and laid aside, no claim on a woman? No claim on her
forbearance, on her pity, on her protection? For shame, Miss Wilmer!” I
continued warmly, carried farther than I intended by my feelings. “Men,
when their blood is hot, will plan things, and do things, God knows,
that are abominable. But for a woman to consent to such, and, when it is
too late, to think that by a few tears she can make up for them—”

“Stop!” she cried—I suppose that I had gone too far, for she faced me
now, hardily enough. “You understand nothing, sir! Nothing! So little
that you will scarcely believe me when I say that if the thing were to
do again—I would do it.”

“I cannot believe you,” I said coldly.

“It is true.”

I stared at her; and she returned my look with a strange mixture of
shame and defiance. “Why?” I said at last. “In heaven’s name, why, Miss
Wilmer? What have I done to you? Your mother I know. But had I a hand in
it? God forbid! Was I within a hundred miles of it? No. Your brother—and
there again, I find that hard to forgive. Your father had spared my
life, sheltered me, brought me here; could you not believe that I was
grateful? Could you not believe that I would do much to serve him and
something to repay him? That all that it was in my power to do for your
brother, by my exertions or my influence, I would do? But you did not
tell me. You did not ask me?”

“No,” she said.

“Why?” I asked bluntly. She did not answer. “Why?” I repeated. I was at
the end of my anger. I had said what was in my mind and said it with all
the severity I could wish. And I was sure that I had made her suffer.
Now I wanted to understand. I sought for light upon her. There was a
puzzle here and I had not the clue.

But she stood mute. Pale, forbidding, not avoiding my eyes but rather
challenging them, and very handsome in her sullenness, she confronted
me. At last, as I still waited, and still kept silence, she spoke. “And
after I had told you?” she said. “If you had offered help, would it then
have been easier to—to stand aside?”

“And let me go to my death?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good God!” I cried. I could not check the words, I was so deeply
shocked. If she had deliberately considered that, she was indeed
determined, she was indeed ruthless; and there was nothing more to be
done. “I am sorry,” I said. “I had thought, Miss Wilmer, that I might
say what was in my mind and then let the thing be as if it had never
been. I wished to speak and then—to let there be peace between us. I
thought that we might still come to be friends. But if we are so far
apart as that, there can be nothing between us, not even forgiveness.”

“No,” she answered—but her head sank a little and I fancied that she
spoke sadly. “There can be nothing between us. Nothing, sir. We are
worlds apart.”

Before I could reply Mammy Jacks came to summon her. One of the blacks
wanted her, and she broke off and went into the house.

She left me adrift on a full tide of wonder. What a woman, I thought!
Nay, what a girl, for she was not more than twenty, if she were not
still in her teens! If all the women on the Colonial side were like her,
I thought, if but a tithe of her spirit and will were in them, the
chances of poor old England in the strife which she had provoked were
small indeed! I could compare the girl only to the tragic heroines of
the Bible, to Judith, or to Jael, who set her hand to the nail and her
right hand to the hammer. Very, very nearly had she driven the nail into
my temple!

And yet she had, she must have a gentler side. She had broken down on
that night, when she thought that the deed was done. I could not be
mistaken in that; I had seen her fling herself in a passion of remorse
on her father’s breast. And then how strong, how deep was the affection
which she felt for that father! With what tenderness, with what tears
and smiles and caresses had she flown to his arms on his return from the
field!

She was a provoking, a puzzling, a perplexing creature; and alas, she
began to fill far more of my thoughts than was her due. I was idle, and
I could not thrust her from them. Because she did not come near me I
dwelt on her the more. The chair at the other end of the veranda
remained empty all that day and the next, and it was not until noon of
the third day that I again had a word with her. Then, as she passed by
me with her head high, she saw that something was lacking on the little
table on which I took my meals, and she fetched it herself. I wished to
bring on a discussion; and as she set the thing down, “Thank you,” I
said politely. “But can I be sure that I am safe in eating this?”

She did not fire up as I expected. “You think that I may poison you?”
she said, making no attempt to evade the point.

“Well, you told me,” I replied, somewhat taken back, “that you were
prepared to do it again, you know?”

She sighed. “If I meant it then, I do not mean it now,” she said. “I
have done all that I can. I leave the rest to God!”

Certainly she said the most singular things! However, what surprise I
felt I hid, and I tried to meet her on her new ground. “That being so,”
I said smoothly, “why should we not bury what is past—for the time? I
have to live for a month under your roof, Miss Wilmer. We must see one
another, we must meet hourly and daily whether we will or not. Cannot
you forget for a month that I am an enemy?”

“No,” she answered with the utmost directness, “You are an enemy. Why
should I pretend that you are not? We are rebels and we are proud of the
name. You are of those who are paid to reduce us, to make war on us”—her
color rose, her eyes dilated as she spoke—“to burn our towns, to waste
our fields, to render our old homeless and our children motherless! And
why? Because you are false to your traditions, false to your liberties,
false to that freedom for which your forefathers died, and for which we
are dying to-day!”

The spirit, the tone, the brooding fire in her eyes filled me with
admiration. But I was wise enough to let no trace of this escape me. “I
cannot admit that,” I said, “naturally.”

“No,” she replied swiftly. “Because you are paid to see it otherwise.”

“At any rate you are frank, Miss Wilmer,” I said. “And you really do see
in me the mercenary of a cruel tyrant?” I smiled as I said it, and I
flattered myself that the jest pierced her armor. At any rate she lost
countenance a little. “And I suppose I ought to see in you a rebel,” I
continued. “But it may be that I do not in my heart think much worse of
you for being a rebel. And it is possible that you do not think so very
badly of me for being—paid!”

“It does not sound well,” she said with disdain.

“No,” I replied. “Beside romance, duty sounds poorly, and makes a dull
show.”

“The tea duty does!” she exclaimed viciously—and saw before the words
were well said that her wit had betrayed her into familiarity. She
colored with annoyance.

I seized the chance. “And what of it?” I said. “Tolls and taxes and the
like! What are they to us here? If I admit that a tax, which has turned
thirteen loyal colonies into what we see, was an unwise one, surely, if
I admit that, you may admit that it is hard for a proud nation to
retrace its steps.”

“I am not concerned to admit anything,” she answered haughtily.

“Still if that is all that is between us?”

“It is not!” she exclaimed. “It is not!” For a moment she stood a prey
to strong agitation. Then she muttered again, “It is not all!” and she
went deliberately away from me. But she went like one under a heavy
burden or the weight of a distressing thought.

Still I was not ill-pleased with the result of our interview. She had
stepped down from her pedestal. She had left for a while the tragic
plane on which she had hitherto moved and from which she had stooped to
me. I had climbed a step nearer to her. In future she would not find it
so easy to keep me at the distance that suited her pleasure and that at
the same time whetted my curiosity.

And perhaps something more than my curiosity. For I could not deny that,
handsome and perplexing, cold, yet capable of ardor, she had taken a
strong grip upon my thoughts. I could not keep her out of my mind for an
hour together. A dozen times a day I caught myself looking for her,
listening for the sound of her voice, watching for her appearance. The
morning was long, the hour dragged that brought neither the one nor the
other. Nay, there were times—I was idle, be it remembered, and
crippled—when the desire to bridge the distance between us and to set
myself right with her became a passion; when I would have given very
much for a smile from the averted face, or a look from the eyes that
passed coldly by me.

It was absurd, but I have said I was idle. And yet after all was it so
absurd? I compared her with the women whom I had known at home; with the
women of fashion with their red and white cheeks, their preposterous
headdresses, their insipid talk of routs and the card table; or again
with our country-bred hoydens, honest and noisy, with scarce an idea
beyond the stillroom or the annual race meeting: and I found that she
rivaled the former in dignity and the latter in simplicity. Adorable,
inexorable creature, she was well named Constantia! I was glad—such a
hold was she getting on my mind—when her father returned, two days later
than he had said, and brought news that distracted my thoughts.

The check at King’s Mountain had stopped Lord Cornwallis in his advance
on North Carolina. He had fallen back and established himself again at
Winnsboro’, so that he was still not more than sixty or seventy miles
from us. “If your bone were set, I should send you north, Major,” Wilmer
said with a look more than commonly thoughtful. “But I fancy that your
friend, Tarleton, has learned his lesson from Ferguson, and won’t stray
far from Headquarters. And now Greene has taken over Gates’s command—”

“Is that so?”

“It is—he won’t leave your people so much time to look about them. I do
not think that they will journey as far as this, but if I thought they
would, you would have to travel, my friend, fare as you might.”

That with a little more, not to the purpose, was the only talk I had
with him for some days. And presently I conceived the idea that this was
no accident. I began to suspect that Madam Constantia, not content with
sending me to Coventry herself, was bent on keeping him from me. I came
even to think that I owed to this desire on her part the fact that I now
saw something, though little more, of her. For she would interpose
between us rather than let me talk to him. If her father, as he crossed
the veranda or came in from the fields had the air of drifting towards
me, she was sure to see it, and to draw him aside, sometimes by a word,
more often by a look, rarely by speaking to me herself. More than once
when he approached me—he was in his cynical way a good-natured man—she
appeared so pat to the occasion that I gave her the credit of watching
us, and believed that her eyes were upon me more often than I knew.

I fancied even that there was an understanding between them on this
point. For when she surprised him in my neighborhood, though he might
have stood only to say “Good morning!” or “Good fall weather!” he would
wear an air half guilty and half humorous, as of a child caught
transgressing. And once when this happened, I had a queer illusion. It
seemed to me that the look of amusement that Wilmer shot at the girl,
and which I was not meant to catch, transformed his face in the most
curious way. It shortened it, vulgarized it, widened it. For a moment I
saw him no longer as the shrewd, lean Southerner he was, but as a
jovial, easy, smiling person, for all the world like an English yeoman
or innkeeper. The fancy lasted for an instant only, and I set it down to
the shadow cast by his hat or to a tricky cast of the sunshine as it
shimmered through the leaves of the magnolia behind him. But later I
thought of it more than once. The change in the man, though passing, was
so great that I should not have known him for himself; and it haunted
me.

I believe that it was about three days after this, when he was abroad
upon the plantation, on which he spent most of his time, that Madam
Constantia and I came again to blows. Time lay heavy on my hands—he may
be thankful who has never known the aimless hours and long tedium of the
prisoner—and though I had no prospect of forwarding letters, I thought
that I would amuse myself by learning to write with my left hand. It was
not a thing to be done in a moment, but Mammy Jacks provided the means
and I fell to the task in the leisurely way of an invalid, now scrawling
a few words in round hand, now looking away to the purple distances that
reminded me of our Cheviots on a fine October day, and now lazily
watching the blacks who were trooping past, bringing in the last of the
cotton. It was sunny, it was warm, and the slaves in their scanty white
clothes with baskets on their heads formed a picture new to me. I was
gazing at it, pen in hand, when the girl came through the veranda,
glanced my way, and in a twinkling descended on me like a whirlwind.

She snatched away the paper that lay under my hand and before, taken by
surprise, I knew what she was about, she tore it across and across.

“Ungrateful!” she cried. “Have you forgotten your parole, sir? Were
Colonel Marion here, you would not dare to do this!”

“To do what?” I retorted, rising to my feet. I was as angry as she was.
“What should I not dare to do?”

“What you are doing!” she rejoined, her eyes sparkling and her breast
heaving with excitement.

“I am learning to write with my left hand. Why not?”

“Why not?” she exclaimed. “And what did you promise Colonel Marion?” She
pointed to the paper which she had flung on the ground. “What did you
undertake on your honor?”

“That I would not communicate with my friends,” I answered sternly.
“Nothing more!”

“And what are you writing?” she cried. But her tone sank by a note, and
uncertainty fluttered in her eyes.

“That is my business!” I answered. “What is it to you, pray, what I
write? Or see!” I stooped, and with difficulty owing to my stiff arm, I
recovered one of the scraps of paper. “See! Satisfy yourself. It is but
a tag from the book that you lent me.”

She took it. “‘Sure such a various creature ne’er was seen!’” she read
mechanically, and with a falling face. “‘Sure—’” she stopped.

“Is it sufficiently harmless?” I asked ironically. “Is there dishonor in
it? At least I can say this—I know of no one here, Miss Wilmer, to whom
the words can be applied. From your father I have met with consistent
kindness and attention. And from you equally consistent—but I will not
define it. I leave you to judge of that.”

She was now as angry, I believe, with herself as with me; but she did
not see how she could retract and for that reason, whatever the original
cause of her attack, she would not own herself in the wrong. “I believe
there is such a thing,” she said stubbornly, “as cipher writing.”

I stared at her with all the contempt I could throw into my gaze.
“Cipher writing!” I said. “Certainly I have come into this wilderness to
learn strange things! Cipher writing! But enough—and too much!” I
continued wrathfully. “I am not used to have my honor doubted. When your
father returns I shall refer the matter to him and I shall ask him if I
am to be assailed under his roof—assailed in a manner as insulting as it
is outrageous!”

“I will ask him myself,” she said in a much lower tone. “If I am wrong I
am sorry. But Colonel Marion told me—”

“That I was not to communicate with my friends? Am I doing it? But, no,”
I concluded loftily, “I will not discuss it. I will refer the matter to
your father.”

And I turned my back on her without much courtesy—the attack was so
wanton, so silly! I heard her move away and go into the house.

She was crazy, positively crazy, I thought. What was it to her whether I
wrote or did not write? What was it to her if I did communicate with my
friends? She was not my keeper, she could not judge of the risk or the
importance of the step which Marion had forbidden. Placed as we were
within less than seventy miles of the British Headquarters and within
the scope of a cavalry raid, he was doubtless right in making the
stipulation. But what did she know of it? What was it to her? Why should
she attach importance to the matter?

Confound her impudence! I might be one of the bare-footed slaves
trudging through the heat, I might be a wretched Sambo fresh from
Guinea, and she could scarcely treat me with greater contumely. She was
a fury, a perfect fury, and as passionate as she was beautiful! But I
would speak plainly to Wilmer. I would tell him that I was his prisoner,
and owed something to him, but that I could not, and would not, be
subject to his daughter’s whims and caprices. Write? Why should I not
write? Sheets, quires, reams if I pleased, so long as I did not forward.
And how in heaven’s name was I to forward? Through whom? Did she suppose
that the postman called once a day as in Eastcheap and Change Alley? The
whole thing was monstrous! Monstrous!

I waited, fuming, for Wilmer’s return from the fields, and meantime the
delay brought to my mind another grievance, though one which I could not
name. I had supposed that when he came back, after leaving Marion, I
should be invited to make one at the common table. But no invitation had
reached me, my meals were still served apart, and this seemed absurd in
a house in which life was pleasantly primitive. Certainly this was a
minor complaint. But he who has lived for months with men whom a common
danger has rendered respectable but could not render congenial, he to
whom a woman’s voice has grown strange and the decencies of home a
memory, will understand what I felt when scraps of Aunt Lyddy’s chatter,
the girl’s grave voice, the cackle of Mammy Jack’s laughter came to
me—outside.

A small grievance and one that I could not air, one that I must keep to
myself. But it rose vividly before me. I was sure that it was not
Wilmer, I was sure that it was the girl who shut me out and would have
none of my company.

Noon came without bringing Wilmer, and soon I guessed that Madam had
played a trick on me. She intended to keep us apart. At that the anger
which time and thought were cooling, flamed up afresh, and I longed to
thwart her.

Hitherto I had limited my exercise to a turn or two in front of the
house. But I saw no reason why I should not go farther, and seek Wilmer
in the fields where the blacks were picking. After dinner, accordingly,
I chose my time and set out. She should not have it all her own way. If
he would not come to me I would go to him.

I had to cross the horse-paddock and the rails were up. They were heavy,
I had only one arm, and bandaged as I was I could neither stoop freely,
nor use my strength such as it was; for now I moved I found to my
disgust that I was only half a man. I tried to shift the upper rail, but
a pang that brought the sweat to my brow shot down my arm, and I
desisted. The sun beat down upon me, the flies swarmed about my head,
the din of the crickets filled my ears. I leant upon the rail, enraged
at my helplessness but unable for the moment to do more.

I was in that position when she found me.

“You must come in,” she said. “Let me help you.” I suppose I looked ill
for there was a tone in her voice that I had not heard before.

“I wish to go on,” I said pettishly, turning from her that she might not
see my face. “I am going to your father.”

“You must come in,” she replied firmly. “The sun is too hot for you. You
have never been as far as this.”

“But I—”

“You must do as I say,” she insisted. “Lean on me, if you please. Don’t
you know that if you fell you might hurt yourself seriously?”

“I am only a little—giddy,” I said, clinging to the rail. “Which—I don’t
seem to see—the way?”

I went back to the house on her arm—there was nothing else for it—but
the only incident of the journey that I could recall was that at a
certain place I stumbled, and she held me up. I tried to laugh. “A—a
milksop! A weakling!” I said.

She did not answer.

When she reached the house she put me into my chair on the veranda, and
disappeared. She returned with a glass of Madeira. “You must drink
this,” she said, “you are not used to the sun”; and she stood over me
until I had done so. Then when the giddiness had passed off and things
were clear, “My father tells me,” she continued hurriedly, “that I must
ask your pardon. He says that I ought to have taken it for granted that
you would keep your word—that nine out of ten English officers—”

“Would do so?” I said stiffly. “We are much obliged to him.”

“And that men can tell very quickly when they can trust one another.”

“As a rule they can.”

“I will bring you some more paper,” she said meekly. “And I beg your
pardon.”

“Please don’t say any more,” I replied. “Can you not believe, Miss
Wilmer, that I am grateful—most grateful for what has been done for me?
And that, enemy as I am, I would not willingly injure the meanest person
in this house.”

“I do believe that,” she said in a low voice.

“You do?” I cried, pleased at the concession. “Then surely—”

“But you might have no choice in the matter,” she replied gravely.
“Honor—” she paused, looking away from me, apparently in search of a
word—“is a two-edged weapon. It protects us to-day, sir. It may wound us
to-morrow.”

“If you mean,” I answered, “that after I am exchanged I shall fight
against you, it is true. But we can fight without ill will and suffer
without rancor. While we observe the rules of the game, we are
brothers-in-arms though we are in opposite camps. That is the legacy,
Miss Wilmer, that chivalry has left to us.”

She seemed to think this over. “And honor?” she resumed, her face
averted. “It binds always, I suppose? It imposes rules which it is not
possible to evade, no matter what the exigency may be? If you had to
choose between your mother’s life—shall I say?—and your honor, what
then, Major Craven?”

“I cannot conceive the situation,” I answered, smiling at the absurdity
of the idea.

“You might be on parole as you are to-day,” she rejoined. “Suppose that
your mother’s life depended, no matter how, on your presence, on your
breach of your word? What would you do? Would you still put your honor
first?”

“I do not know what I should do,” I answered. “The thing is apart from
ordinary experience. But I know what my mother would say. She would say,
‘Keep your word!’”

She was silent for a moment. “And to betray your country even in a small
matter, that too would be a breach of honor, I suppose?”

“I am afraid that it would be a very bad one,” I answered, smiling. “If
you are thinking of bribing me to disclose our secrets, I had better
tell you at once that I have no secrets, Miss Wilmer.”

“And if you had you would not sell them?”

“Neither sell them, nor tell them. I hope not.”

“No,” she replied. “I do not think you would.” I heard her sigh deeply.
Then, “I will take your glass,” she said. And she took it and went into
the house.

She left me puzzled, puzzled to the last degree; but at the same time I
felt that the girl had come nearer to me. She left a picture of herself
a little different from that which I had hitherto possessed. Perhaps it
was the hat, the wide-brimmed shadowy hat that softened her features and
by taking from her height, lowered the stately carriage of her head.
Perhaps it was the vague elusive sadness of her tone. Perhaps something
else. She had named my mother. I wondered what my mother would think of
her, with her perplexing ways, her reserve, her aloofness, the hostility
which she had not stooped to veil. Often my mother had said in jest that
she did not know where I should find a wife, since I looked shyly on our
country belles, and she would have none of our town ladies. To which my
father had answered that such fastidiousness generally ended in a
milkmaid—and that he believed that the next Lady Craven would be no
better.

A milkmaid? Would they consider—I lost myself in wild and extravagant
dreams. Blowsabella? Surely no one could be less like a Blowsabella. Or
for the matter of that less like the Hartopps our neighbors, who talked
of nothing but plaited bits, lived in riding coats, and romped through a
country dance like so many Dulcineas del Toboso!

No, no one could say that she was a milkmaid. On the other hand I
doubted if she had ever seen a Panache—the latest headdress—or held
cards at Loo, or squalled a bar of Sacchini’s music, or chattered down
players and pit at a tragedy. She belonged to no category. She was
herself, and an odd, troubling, haunting self at that!

CHAPTER VII
HICKORY KNOB

_For I must go where lazy peace
Will hide her drowsy head,
And for the sport of Kings increase
The number of the dead._

_But first I’ll chide thy cruel theft
Can I in war delight?
Who being of my heart bereft
Can have no heart to fight?_
DAVENANT.

I don’t know how long I had been lost in these musings when Wilmer’s
return to the house put an end to them. As he crossed the veranda,
carrying his gun and followed by a black boy trailing two wild turkeys
after him, he turned as if he were going to join me. But he changed his
mind at the last moment and paused some paces from me. “It’s a pity it’s
that arm, Major,” he said. “There’s a glut of turkeys in the woods. But
you’ve had other sport at home, I hear?”

A little offended I put a question with my eyes.

He grinned. “They’re hard to understand are women,” he said. “Beyond you
and me, Major. We’ll say no more than that.”

He nodded and went on, entering the house before I could answer. But
again I had that queer passing impression of another man, a jovial,
easy, talkative fellow, fond of a glass and a toast. Perhaps it was his
smile. A smile would naturally shorten a man’s face. Perhaps it was the
sunlight. Or perhaps it was just a fancy that had taken hold of me.
Wilmer, like most Southerners, had humor of a kind, but he was certainly
neither jovial nor talkative, and I should not have described him as an
easy companion. His wit was of the dry and caustic sort, that leaves the
person addressed at a disadvantage.

He left home again three days later—to join Davy’s band I gathered; and
I had seen so little of him, while he was at the Bluff, that I did not
miss him. I was beginning to recover my strength and from day to day I
went farther afield. Sometimes I passed the ford and wandered up the
pasture, a vast park-like meadow, broken by clumps of oaks and
chestnuts, trees that in that country mark good soil as poplars indicate
a poor site. Or I might venture into the forest and amid the undergrowth
of sweet-scented myrtle and dogwood and honeysuckle—and other shrubs
less healthy—I would put up a deer or come on the tracks of a bear; or
in the sombre twilight of the pine woods, with their melancholy festoons
of gray moss, I would hear the tapping of the Southern woodpecker. Aunt
Lyddy made friends with me and talked of Braddock and Washington and
Wolfe and the heroes of the last war; and at times would betray by a
look of distress and a tremor of the hands that she was conscious that
something was amiss in her world and that things did not consort with
reality as they should. On these occasions the girl, if she were
present, would humor her and reassure her with incredible tact and
kindness; and at the same time she would dare me with stormy eyes to
come within so much as a mile of explanation. Her patience with Aunt
Lyddy was indeed the measure of her impatience with me. And set me far
from her.

Yet at a distance we were better friends now. She never joined me where
I sat on the veranda, but she would sometimes of an afternoon take her
seat at the spinning-wheel at the farther end by the old blood hound;
and I would, though timidly, wander that way and draw her into unwilling
talk; at any rate it seemed to be unwilling on her side and it was
certainly jejune. She never asked me to be seated, and seldom, while I
was there, looked up from her task; but she would answer, and bit by bit
I learned something of her family story. On her mother’s side she was of
French blood; it was on that side that she was akin to Marion, and the
result was that she spoke French in a way that put me to shame. When she
named her mother.

“You were greatly attached to her?” I ventured.

“She was my mother,” she answered.

“And your father?”

“He is more to me than anything in the world,” she replied with the same
simplicity. “He was my mother’s last charge to me.”

“And no doubt you are often anxious about him?”

“Anxious?” For once she looked at me. And then in a tone of feeling, too
tragic, as it seemed to me, for the occasion, “God knows how anxious!”
she said. “God knows what is the weight I have to bear!”

I thought her answer over-strained. I thought her anxiety more than the
occasion required; and I felt about for an explanation. “You are so near
the fighting,” I said lamely, for I felt that I was making excuse for
her. “Doubtless it is more trying to you.”

“I am so near,” she answered with the same depth of feeling. “And so
helpless! So helpless! I sit and wait! And wait!”

“That is too often the woman’s part, I fear.”

“God forbid,” she replied with extraordinary bitterness, “that my part
should fall to the lot of many women. He cannot be so cruel!”

I drew away after that. I did not dare to press her farther, for I
thought that she was overwrought and hardly herself. The note of tragedy
seemed to be out of place in face of this calm country-side, of the
still woods, of the lowing cattle, of the smiling negroes going about
their tasks under our eyes.

But all our talks were not of this nature, and stoutly as she guarded
the approaches to intimacy, there were times when I caught her in a
gentler mood or by sheer meekness broke down the barrier of her reserve;
so that perforce she grew more kind. At such times she listened while I
talked of my home and my people and the England, which she knew only
through the pages of Addison and Goldsmith and Richardson; or I
described the long voyage with its stale water and sour beef which had
brought me hither; or she spoke herself, not willingly, of the old
plantation on the Ashapoo, of society on the French Santee, where she
had visited the Marions, of her boarding school at Charles Town, of the
Cecilia Society with its concerts, and the old Provincial Library. It
was clear that Wilmer had been in better circumstances, but when I
ventured to sympathize with her on her isolation her only answer was,
“Give us peace! Only give us peace!”

“Peace?” I echoed. “Yes.”

And I knew that I was losing my own peace. I knew that the pose of her
small head, as it bent over the wheel or the needle, the slender grace
of her figure, the proud sadness of her eyes were coming between me and
the rest of the world; and that beside a kind look from those eyes, that
now dwelt absently on things unseen by me, and now viewed me with a cold
attention, hardly anything in life had any value for me, or any
sweetness. Had I met her elsewhere and in ordinary conditions, I believe
that I should have succumbed to her charm. But here, where she was the
one woman, set in this lonely place as in a frame, encircled by the
peace of green glades and scented hemlocks, by myrtle and reddening
sumach, and where, besides, she walked a perplexing puzzle, a sphinx, a
figure for vain imaginings—was any other issue possible?

A rebel? The daughter of a planter? I thought no more of such things.
Here, where every morning I looked across the valley to the far-off
mountains, where the endless spaces of the air smiled beneath my eyes,
here, within touch of the primitive forest and the wide prairies, such
distinctions lost their meaning. The busy life of the camp, the Norfolk
Discipline—how often had I cursed it!—the jovial dinner, the ride, the
foray, faded into a dream; and even the quarrel which had brought us—a
mere handful of pigmies, over the boundless ocean to this land, seemed
no longer of moment, but a mere trifle, the play of children quarreling
in some squalid alley of a distant town.

And whether in this, love opened my eyes or closed them, whether I now
saw things by the light of truth or duped myself for a season, what
matter? In a month from my coming I had waded in over shoes, over boots.
For me the die was cast and I knew that I dreaded nothing so much as the
day that should see my back turned on the Bluff. The old life had lost
its savour and seemed, as I looked back, an impossible procession of
dull routine and distasteful days.

Doubtless had I been French I must have spoken. But there is in us a
vast force of silence. Where the Frenchman is proud we, until a certain
day comes, are ashamed of passion. And apart from the distance which she
maintained between us, there was a dignity about Constantia as she moved
in the midst of her household, and governed her slaves, that set all
thought of love at defiance. I could not bring myself to believe that
she regarded me as anything but an unlucky encumbrance, one of the evils
of war. Indeed, as my arm improved and my strength returned, and I stood
in less need of help or pity, I fancied that her intolerance of my
presence grew and increased. She noted when the month that Marion had
named came to an end. She showed trouble at his non-appearance, and
fretted without disguise at the delay. At times she was ice to me. And
then I, who would have given the world for a kind word from her lips,
could have cursed her for her unconsciousness!

Not that I had not once or twice intoxicating moments. Once I looked up
from my book as I sat on the porch and I found her eyes brooding upon
me. For a few seconds mine held them—it seemed as if she could not drag
hers away! Then, as she at last turned her head, I saw the blood dye the
whiteness of her neck and cheek to the very hair; and for a delicious
minute my heart rioted madly. Again I was standing over her one day and
I had fallen silent, gazing at and worshipping her slender neck and
high-braided head. I suppose she felt my eyes upon her, for slowly I saw
the same blush spread over the white—slowly and irresistibly; and to
stay the foolish words that rose to my lips I had to go away and hide
myself in my room, where I sat gripping the cold fingers of my bandaged
arm until the blood burned in them. Why, why had she blushed, I asked
myself? For when I met her next, she was cold as Diana and distant as a
star. And as if she were not satisfied with that, but must punish me
farther, she presently sent to me to ask if I would be good enough to
leave the veranda free next day, as she wished to examine a small parcel
of a new staple of cotton. As the veranda was the only place where I had
the chance of seeing her, this was enough to vex me; but I had no choice
except to obey, and I spent the greater part of the morrow in my own
room and in a bad temper. I was there about three in the afternoon
fretting and fuming and trying to read when I heard the patter of naked
feet crossing the porch, a sound that was quickly followed by a stir in
the house. A moment later the commotion grew to something like an alarm.
Voices rose here and there in various keys, I caught cries of affright,
a door was slammed hurriedly, silence followed. And on that, to tell the
truth, my heart sank.

“Marion is here,” I thought. “He has come for me.” And if Marion’s
return had meant release and freedom instead of a prison hospital at
Hillsboro’ I do not know that I should have been much better pleased!

I did not go out or make inquiry. I considered that I had been cast on
my own company with little thought and small ceremony; and pride bade me
wait until I was summoned. I clung, too, to hope as long as it was
possible to do so. It might not be Marion. The stir might have nothing
to do with me. And so some minutes, five perhaps, passed. Then with no
warning there came a sharp knock at my door, and Mammy Jacks entered.
The woman looked flustered and alarmed.

“Marse Craven”, she said, “Missie, she up’n sond fer you. She des
tarryin’ fer you de no’th aidge uv Hick’ry Knob, en I ’low de sooner’n
you go de better. A little mo’ en you miss er en de kindlin’ll be in de
fier. You gwine?”

I stared at the woman. I fancied at first that I had not understood her.
“Hickory Knob?” I said. “Why it is two miles from here! Madam Constantia
cannot have walked there! I heard her voice less than—”

“Go ’long! Aint I done tell you she ridin’ Injun Belle?” Mammy Jacks
replied scornfully. “She tuck’n sond piccaninny fer you. You gwine ter
go? Co’se,”—she turned away with great dignity—“ef you hev udder fish
ter fry, it’s notin ter Mammy Jacks. She done tell you.”

“Stop!” I said, my mind a jumble of impossible conjectures, “Don’t be in
such a hurry. I’ll go, of course, if I can be of use. But I don’t
understand—”

“Dat’s needer yer nor dar,” Mammy Jacks answered. “Ef you ’er too
bigitty ter go, Marse, dar’s an eend. Eh? You gwine? Clar to goodness
den, sooner’n you skip de better! Ef you not fine Missie no’th aidge uv
de Knob you ter wait an hour twel she come. Bimeby she trompin’ round.
She sholy boun’ ter come.”

I followed the woman from the room, still marvelling, still questioning,
my head in a whirl. She hurried me through the living-room to the door
at the rear of the house which looked towards the negroes’ cabins—low
huts of shingle, vine-clad, mushroom-like, dwarfed by the giant shade
trees that rose above them. Beside the house-door stood a black boy with
a single cloth about him, who still panted from the speed at which he
had come. His face was strange to me, and I asked if he were coming with
me.

“Look like you know de track widout him!” the woman rejoined. “Aint you
bin ter de Knob de las’ week uz ever wuz? You better run ’long er
Missie’ll be dar befo’ you! Den you’ll hear mo’ en you pleez’d ter like.
Dat’s w’at I’m thinking, Marse Craven.”

I strode off without waiting for more, passed beside the cabins and
skirted the negroes’ patches of corn and vegetables. Beyond these I
plunged into the woods, following a fairly-marked track. The Knob was a
rocky point, rising well over a hundred feet above the forest roof, some
two miles southwest of the Bluff. I had visited it for the sake of the
view which I was told its summit afforded; and I should have gone a
second time if about the same distance northwest of the Knob, there had
not risen above the trees another hill—King’s Mountain. Its slopes were
greener, it was more pleasant to the eye. But I knew that on those
slopes, above which vultures and crows hovered in the air, the bodies of
my fellows lay unburied. And that thought had been too much for me. I
had not gone again.

But to-day that and all kindred thoughts were far from my mind as I
pushed my way along the narrow track, now thrusting aside the scented
plants that form in Carolina so large a part of the undergrowth, and now
traversing the gloom of a pinewood where the feet sank without a sound
in the rotting leaves. Even the heat and flies, even the scurry of a doe
and fawn across my path were little heeded. My mind was in a tumult of
wonder and conjecture. I thought only of Constantia, of her summons, of
her possible need. I strove to imagine what had happened, what had, or
could have, happened, to lead her to send for me; above all, I wondered
what she could want with me at Hickory Knob, a place distant and
solitary—she who had never offered me her company abroad, never gone
farther with me than to that sliprail?

Wondering, I sought the answer to these questions and sought it
fruitlessly. I could find no answer that consorted with her character or
was at one with her treatment of me. Had she met with an accident? She
would not send for me. Had she fallen into hostile hands? I could do
nothing, maimed and unarmed as I was. Was Marion with her? Then, why did
he not come to the house? No conjecture that presented itself agreed
with the facts, and I could only hasten my pace as much as my arm
permitted, and look forward to seeing her.

Where should I find her? At the foot of the rock? Or at the summit? Or
would she perhaps be waiting for me at a certain flat stone on a level
with the tree-tops, which formed a convenient seat, and which a carpet
of nutshells and broken corncobs pointed out as a favorite resort of the
negroes? I could not tell. The tangle of forest vines about me was not
more blind or more confused than were my thoughts.

I came at last, sweating at every pore, and fighting the swarms of flies
that accompanied me to the foot of the little hill. She was not there; I
could hear nothing. The stillness of afternoon lay heavy on the woods.
Impatient of delay, I paused for a moment only, then I started to scale
the hill and in less than a minute I stood beside the flat stone I have
mentioned. She was not there, and I did not tarry, I climbed on, now
slipping on the shale, and now clutching at branches of the myriad
azaleas that earlier in the year clothed the bare hill with flame. At
length I reached the summit which was no bigger than the floor of a
barn.

She was not there and I stood awhile, glad to take breath and to cool my
heated face. I looked abroad over the silent trees, over the carpet of
forest which autumn was beginning to dye to its pattern. I viewed for a
moment the smooth green head of King’s Mountain, that to the westward
rose above the trees. Then I turned to mark, in the direction whence I
came, the cleft in the woods which marked the clearing about the Bluff.
Beyond it the forest sank and was replaced by the more distant view of
the mountains.

I waited, expecting, with each moment that passed, to hear the movements
of her mare on the path. How would she look? What countenance would she
put on? What would she, what could she have to say to me? I lost myself
in a fever of anticipation. Ten minutes passed, twenty minutes, at last
the full half hour! And still she did not come. Still there was no sign
of her, no sound of her approach.

At length the heat of expectancy began to give place to the chill of
doubt. Had I mistaken, could I have mistaken the place? Or was there
another path up the Knob and could she be waiting for me at the foot of
the farther side. I hurried across the top, I descended some distance, I
called, I whistled. I strove to pierce the thickets with my eyes. Then,
harassed by the thought that while I lingered, she might be mounting by
the proper track, I toiled again to the summit and looked abroad. She
had not appeared, and my heart sank. Doubt in its turn began to give
place to suspicion. Had I been tricked? And if so, to what end?
Desperately I searched the trees with my eyes. She might still come, but
the hour I had been told to wait was nearly up. Indeed in no long time
the sun would set, and twilight in Carolina is brief. If I remained on
the Knob until it was dark, I should have small chance of returning
through the woods without a fall that in my crippled condition might be
serious.

I was now angry as well as suspicious. I had been duped—for some reason;
duped by a trick too transparent to deceive a child. I had been sent out
of the way; I had not a doubt of it now. I only wondered that I had been
so easily gulled. Still I would not act in a hurry. They should not say
that I had left the rendez-vous before the time. They should not have
that excuse. So I waited fuming and fretting until the hour expired, and
then reckoning that I should have no more daylight than would suffice
for my return, I scrambled down the rocky slope, and in a state of cold
anger very different from the heat of anticipation in which I had come,
I made the best of my way towards home.

A man, and a soldier, does not like to be tricked. He does not choose to
be treated as a child even for his own good. And in this case the lure
which they had used, the bait which I had swallowed so greedily, seemed
to imply a knowledge of my feelings that made me hot only to think of
it. Had the girl been amusing herself with me? Had she, cold and distant
as she seemed, been laughing at me? Worst of all, had she taken that d—d
grinning black woman into her confidence? No wonder that as I labored on
I cursed the boggy piece that delayed me, the roots over which I
stumbled, the thorns that snatched at my clothes?

I did not consider what I should say. My one longing was to confront
them. But I had not reckoned with the darkness that fell earlier in the
woods than in the open, and soon I had to pick my way for fear of a fall
which might injure my arm. When I came in sight of the cabins it was
dusk and a light already shone from one of the windows of the house.

I was making for this light, with angry words on my lips, when a figure
rose suddenly in the path before me and barred my way. It was Mammy
Jacks. Apparently she had been crouching on the ground on the look-out
for my coming.

“Fer de Lord’s sake, stop, honey!” she gibbered, bringing her ugly face
close to mine, her eyeballs and her teeth shining in the gloom. “Der’s
Cap’en Levi dar, en de udder rapscallions! Ef you go in, you no mo’
chance den a rooster in de pan! Der ain’t no Marse Marion ter ’elp you
loose de rope dis time! Ain’t you no eyes ter see de hosses?” And she
clutched me by the arm and held me.

I did see then—with a decided shock—a row of saddled horses standing
beside the porch, thirty yards from us. With them were a couple of men
lounging, as if on guard. The row extended round the corner of the house
so that I could not count either men or horses and the dusk made all
indistinct. The windows, now that I was nearer, showed more than one
light, though these were darkened from time to time as a figure passed
across them. A murmur of voices, a stir of feet, the clink of glass, and
now and again a loud laugh issued from the windows and mingled with the
jingle of bit and stirrup-iron.

“See dat? W’at I tell you?” Mammy Jacks repeated in terror that was
certainly not feigned; and she clung firmly to my sleeve. “You go in, en
you sholy hang! Cap’en Levi, he mighty mad atter you en he make an eend
dis time! Look like dey sarched de cabins, en you kin hide in dar! Hide
in dar, Marse Craven! Fust thing you know de Cap’en’ll get up en go. He
go fer sho’ in ten minutes.”

I let her push me towards the door of the nearest hut; to hide there, as
she said, seemed to be the wisest course for the present. But either the
reek of the shack repelled me, or her insistence touched the wrong note.
My pride rose and on the very threshold I turned. Why should I hide? I
had Marion’s word and the girl’s word. And weeks had elapsed and nothing
had happened since Levi’s last attempt. Was this some new trick for my
good for if so, I would not stoop to it. The part I had played at the
Bluff had been poor so far; I was not going to make it worse and
disgrace myself by hiding in a nigger’s hut from a parcel of low rebels
whom a single man with a pistol had put to flight.

“No!” I cried; and I resisted the woman’s thrust. “I’ll be hanged if I
do, Mammy! I’ll see Levi and all his crew with their father the devil
first!”

“Den you’ll hatter hang!” she gibbered, struggling to detain me. “Fer de
Lord’s sake, honey, ’tend ter me! Don’t go in dar!” she protested, her
voice rising to a shriek. “Don’t go in dar! Dey’ll hang you fer sho!
Dey’ll—Marse Craven—fer de Lord’s sake—”

But I wrested myself from her hands, I flung out of the hut. As I did
so, some one in the house laughed aloud, a pair of hands clapped
applause, a glass shivered on the floor. I was being tricked, I was sure
of it now; and I bounded across the short space to the door, Mammy
Jacks’ wail of despair in my ears. I evaded a second figure that slipped
out of the gloom and tried to stop me, I thrust open the door that was
already ajar, and a pace inside the room I stood, confounded.

The table was spread for a meal and spread as I had never seen it laid
at the Bluff, with glass and silverware and all that was rarest in the
house. On it were meat and drink and whisky and even wine. At the head
of the table staring at me with laughter frozen on her lips—aye, and
with terror in her eyes—sat Constantia. At the foot was Aunt Lyddy, I
believe, but I did not take her in at a first glance. For between them,
seated at the table were three men in regimentals that glittered with
gold lace. Two of them wore the green of Tarleton’s British Legion, one
was in the King’s scarlet. And my amazement may be imagined when I saw
that the one in scarlet, was young Paton, my own particular friend on
the Staff! While of the others the nearer to me was Haybittle, a grim,
hard-bitten veteran, who had never risen beyond a pair of colors in the
regular service, but now ranked in the Legion as a Captain. I knew him
well.

On both sides there was a moment of silence and astonishment. I glared
at them.

The first to recover from his surprise and to find his voice was Paton.
He pushed back his chair, and sprang to his feet. “Who-hoop!” he
shouted. “Who-hoop! Run to earth, by Gad! Look at him, Haybittle! You’d
think he saw a ghost instead of the King’s uniform. Here’s his health!”
He swung his glass round his head. “A bumper! A bumper!”

I stood stock still. “But how—how do you come here?” I stammered at
last. I stared at Paton in his scarlet, at the glittering table, at the
candles that shed a soft light upon it, but it was only the girl’s
stricken face that I apprehended with my mind. And even while I put the
question to Paton, my brain asked another—what did her look of horror,
of despair mean? “How do you come here?” I repeated. “You are not
prisoners?”

“Prisoners!” Haybittle answered in his harsher tones. “Good G—d, no!
We’ve come for you, Major, and a deuce of a ride we’ve had to fetch you!
We’d pretty well given you up too!”

“Thanks to this young lady who lied to us!” the third man struck in. I
knew him slightly—a New York Tory holding a commission in Tarleton’s
horse and like many loyalists more bitter than the regulars. “It would
serve Madam right,” he continued rudely, “if we burned the roof over her
head! And for my part I’m for doing it!”

“Hold your tongue, Carroll!” Paton cried angrily. “You’re always for
burning some poor devil’s house or playing some silly trick of that
sort! Don’t be afraid, Miss Wilmer,” he continued, “You played your
hand, and had a right to play it, and played it well! And by jove, such
a face as yours, if you will allow me to say so, knows no laws. But I
can tell you,” he went on, addressing me, “my lady came pretty near to
bamboozling us, Major! We were just toasting her in a last glass when
you came in looking like Banquo’s ghost—and damme, almost as pale! Five
minutes more and we should have been off and away!”

“And we ought to be away now!” Haybittle said, rising to his feet.
“Sergeant! Get ’em to horse. Don’t lose a minute!”

“I’m on parole,” I said.

“Parole be hanged!” Haybittle answered bluntly. “We retake you! Hit in
the arm, eh, Major? Well, you can ride and we’ve a horse for you. And
ride we must as if the devil were behind us. I’m not for doing anything
to this young lady,” with an awkward look at her, “because she fibbed to
us! But I don’t trust her for that reason, and—”

“Steady, Captain Haybittle,” I said, regaining my voice and my
faculties—the girl continued to sit and look before her with the same
stricken face. “This lady’s father saved my life when I was wounded and
helpless. He has sheltered me and treated me more than well, and more
than humanely. Not a dog must be injured here, or a truss taken, or you
will have to reckon with me. I am the senior officer here—”

“No, by G—d, you’re not, Major,” Haybittle retorted bluntly. “Not till
your name’s replaced on the active list, and that can’t be till you have
reported yourself at Headquarters as returned to duty. General Tarleton
put me in charge of the expedition, and I’ll give up the lead to no
one—with all respect to you.”

“And I’m for doing something! I’m for teaching these rebels a lesson!”
Carroll protested, encouraged by Haybittle’s action.

“You’ll learn a lesson yourself, Lieutenant,” Haybittle rejoined, “and
that pretty quickly if you don’t see the men to horse. While we’re
mounting, throw forward vedettes as far as the smithy we passed. Off,
man, and see to it!” Then to me, “We’re thirty miles from Fishing Creek,
where our supports are, and seventy miles from our lines. Green is at
Charlotte, a deal too near us for my taste, and has thrown forward
Sumter’s men. I’ll give you three minutes, Major, by my watch to get
your things together—not a second more. We’re only twenty, all told, and
before we are ten miles from here we shall have the country swarming on
our backs.”

He hurried out. Carroll had already gone. Paton with a sly look at me
and a glance at the girl—who still sat silent in her chair—went after
him.

I approached her diffidently, “Miss Wilmer,” I said, “have you nothing
to say to me before I go?”

She awoke as from a dream. She met my eyes. “You are going then?” she
said.

“I have no choice.”

“And your parole—is nothing?”

“It is put an end to by my re-capture,” I said. “Colonel Marion will
understand that. But I want you to understand something more; that
nothing—nothing can put an end to the gratitude which I owe to your
father and to you. When it shall be safe for me to return—”

“To the Bluff?”

“Yes—for I shall return, Miss Wilmer, be sure of that. And when I do
return to the Bluff I shall be free to tell you, and to prove to you—”

“How great is your gratitude!” she cried, rising to her feet and
substituting other words for mine—for indeed it was of something more
than gratitude I was going to speak. “Your gratitude?” she repeated,
with a look and in a voice that cut me to the heart. “Will it be worth
more than your word? Will it sever one of the meshes that bind you? Will
it evade one of your cruel laws? Will it save one life? No, Major
Craven! If the day comes for me to ask a return, to crave a favor, to
plead to you, aye, even on my knees, I know that the law that frees you
to-day will bind you then! And I shall find your gratitude no better
than your word! For me, you can take it, sir—where it may mean more!”

She pointed scornfully to the old lady who sat, wondering and bemused,
at the farther end of the table. And yet I doubt if Aunt Lyddy was more
bemused at that moment than I was. The girl’s outbreak was to me beyond
all understanding. I was astonished, indignant, nay, sorely hurt! For
what had I done. What beyond that which I was doing, could I do? “You
are cruel, and unjust!” I cried. “What have I done that you should wound
me, at this moment? Believe me, if you could read my heart, Miss
Wilmer—”

“I do not wish to read it!” she answered passionately. “Take it there
with your gratitude! I value both at their true worth!” Again she
pointed to poor Aunt Lyddy who gazed at us, understanding nothing of the
debate. And that was the end, for before, hurt and angry, I could find
words with which to answer the girl or to reproach her, the opportunity
was past. Haybittle bustled in, his sword clanking on the floor.

“Time! Time!” he cried. “You must come, Major. Not another moment!” He
took me by the sound arm and forced me towards the door. “You are
playing with lives,” he continued, “and I don’t choose to hazard mine
for the sake of a girl’s eyes. No offence to you, Miss,” he flung over
his shoulder. “You’d make a fine tragedy queen, be hanged if you
wouldn’t. To look at you one would think that we’d done God knows what
to you, and a good many would! There’s temptation and to spare. Now boot
and saddle, Major! We’ve risked more than enough to get hold of you! Let
us be going!”

CHAPTER VIII
THE MAN WITH TWO FACES

_This outward sainted Deputy,
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i’ the head and follies doth emmew
As falcon doth the fowl—is yet a Devil!_
SHAKESPEARE.

Haybittle dragged me out. From the porch I had a last view of the room.
It showed me the table set for a feast, as I had left it, the old lady
seated in her chair, Constantia on her feet, motionless, and gazing
after us. Was it fancy or did I read something besides scorn and
defiance in the girl’s eyes as they followed me; a shadow of fear, of
appeal, of unutterable sorrow? I could not tell, and I had no time to
dwell on the fancy. In a twinkling I was half-lifted and half pushed
into the saddle of a troop-horse, the reins were thrust into my hand,
the word was given, we moved off, the lighted windows faded as by magic.
I had one glimpse of Mammy Jacks’ face amid a knot of staring negroes, a
moment in which to press my purse—once before given and returned—into
her hand, and we had left all behind, and were filing down the field
road, amid the jingle of bits, the trampling of hoofs, the curt orders,
all the familiar sounds of a troop of horse on the march.

I was among my own people, Paton’s cheery tones cried, “Hark Forrard!”
in my ears, his kind hand had knotted my spare rein to his saddle. I was
free, with friendly hands and voices round me, and a good horse between
my knees. I should have been jubilant, I should have been happy, I
should have been content at least; and Heaven knows I was wretched. It
was not only that we were parted, but in the moment of parting the girl
had judged me unfairly and hurt me wantonly, God only knew why! She had
flung my thanks in my face and poured scorn on the affection of
which—for she was a woman—she must at least have had some suspicion.

Sore with the pain of parting, I cried out passionately against her
injustice: that injustice which, had I been indifferent to her, must
still have been cruel. As it was I loved her; and at this our last
interview, when I had been on the point of telling her, hurried and
ill-timed as the moment was, something of what I felt, she had—oh, but
it was cruel! For I might never—I might never see her again. This might
be my last memory of her.

Yet at this moment her stricken face, her eyes, wells of grief and
appeal, rose up before me, and gave me a strange bewildering certainty
that I was loved. That I was loved! She might pour contempt on me, she
might insult me; but the very violence of her language proved that there
was something in her heart akin to that which swelled in mine. There was
a bond between us. Miles might part us, but her eyes followed me, and
her heart. For, here was the old mystery, the old puzzle. But of pain is
born knowledge; and with her reproaches in my ears, and every pace of my
horse carrying me farther from her—and never perhaps should I see her
again!—I was sure at last that I had touched her heart.

Yes, out of my wretchedness I came suddenly to that knowledge. The eyes
that had followed me had given the lie to the eyes that accused me.
There was a mystery still, but—at this point Paton broke in upon my
thoughts.

“Major, rouse yourself!” he cried in my ear. “Come, you’ve cheated the
Jews and bilked the sponging house, and you’re as mum as one of these
confounded trimmers who are neither on one side nor the other! Cheer up!
Your heart will be whole as soon as your arm,

Though now they are moaning on ilka green loaning
The flowers of the Forest are all wede away!

There I’ll say no more! But you’ve never asked how we came to find you?
It was due to me, my lad, due to me! One of Ferguson’s men came in a
week ago. He’d been hiding by day and walking by night. He heard from
some loyalists—few enough in this part!—who sheltered him, that there
was a wounded officer lying at a plantation not far from King’s
Mountain. Greene had let us know you were alive—quite a courteous
message it was—and putting two and two together with the help of a man
who knew the district we fixed upon the place where we found you. But we
did not say a word—far too much has crept out lately. I saw Tarleton and
he consented to push ten miles up Fishing Creek, and to lie there thirty
hours. He gave me Carroll and twenty men, but—in your ear,
Major—Carroll’s too much given to burning and harrying for my taste, and
I insisted on having Haybittle as well, who’s a good fellow, though not
thorough-bred. And here we are!”

“How’s my lord?” I asked, forcing myself—it was no small effort—to take
an interest in things.

“He has gone down the country for his health for ten days; he has left
my other lord in charge.”

“Rawdon?”

“The same—and gallant old Webster to nurse him. Poor Ferguson’s death
has set us back damnably. You left us at Charlotte—Gates was then at
Hillsborough a long way north. Now we’re back at Winnsboro’ and Greene,
in Gates’s place, and worth six of him, the devil take him! is at
Charlotte. Sumter is out on the Broad, west of us, and Davy is across
the Catawba east of us, and it was no small feat, Major, to slip in
between them; they’re no fools at the business. And we’re not out of the
trap yet. However, if you can ride through the night in spite of your
bad arm, we shall be with Tarleton by daybreak. He’s lying, as I said,
on Fishing Creek where he defeated Sumter a couple of months ago, but he
has a party out watching the fords of the Catawba and Davy will be
clever if he surprises him.”

“Where’s Marion?” I asked. My curiosity was natural.

“Who can say?” Paton answered, shrugging his shoulders. “Wemyss has been
hunting him on Lynch’s Creek but to no purpose. Tarleton fancies that
he’s back on the Pee Dee now and far to the right of us. I hope it is
so. He’s a wily old fox, if you please.”

“Well, I must do my best,” I said, “but why have you let Davy and Sumter
push in so close to us. That’s not Tarleton’s ordinary fashion.”

“Because they’ve more friends than we have,” Haybittle answered dryly.
He had reined his horse back to us. “They don’t know when they’re
beaten, these Southerners. Since we broke them up at Camden, hanged if
things are not worse instead of better! Every hand is against us and
some of the hands are in our dish. If we bring you off safe—which way is
that fool of a guide turning?” He broke off to shout, “Look out,
Carroll, where you are going!—it will be because we have kept a still
tongue—a still tongue, Major, and told no one except Tarleton what we
were doing!”

“Haybittle’s right,” Paton said. “Every movement we’ve made during the
last month has been known to Sumter and Davy before we made it!”

“Aye, there’s a leak in the vessel somewhere,” Haybittle growled. “And
it’s one that nothing but a halter will stop—six feet of hemp is what is
needed. My lord is altogether too easy. He is hail-fellow-well-met with
too many of these loyalists. There is one or other of them at his ear
from morning till night, and not a plan is made but, in place of keeping
it to himself, he must needs discover the lie of the land from some Jack
Tory or other. My lord learns a little and the Tory learns more, and it
is my opinion, he does not keep his knowledge to himself. It’s either
that, or we have a Benedict Arnold on our side. And then, the sooner we
catch their André and hang him up the better. Sergeant!” raising his
voice, “pass on to Lieutenant Carroll to be careful that he takes the
right fork at the next ford, and loses no time in crossing that strip of
hill! The moon is shining on it.”

Trot, trot, trot, trot, through the mud, and up the slope! There is
something in a night march across a hostile country, something in the
caution which is necessary, in the low curt orders, and the excitement,
which appeals strongly to the spirit of a soldier. In spite of the
sudden halts and jolting starts which many a time put my fortitude to
the test, in spite of sad thoughts—for surely to be misread by one we
love is sharper than a serpent’s tooth!—I began to take pleasure in what
was passing. Whether we wound quickly over the flank of a hill with
moonlight gleaming on spur and bit, or tracked the course of a stream
through a fern-clad ravine, where the mimosas and the yellow jessamine
scented the spray, or plunged knee-deep through a quaking bog where the
clamor of the frogs covered the splashing of the horses, I owned the
charm. Regret began to give place to ambition. Since I was free I longed
also to be hale and strong. I yearned to be in the field once more.
After all, life held war as well as love; war that on such a night puts
on its fairest face, its garb of Border story; love that on such a march
seems sad and distant, bright and pure, as the star that gleams through
the wrack of clouds above us.

The sun was an hour high when, a long line of crawling horses and weary
men, we surmounted the last ridge and sighted far to the south of us the
dark head of Rocky Mountain. Fishing Creek, the bridge, and the distant
valley of the Catawba lay below us, and by and by we espied Tarleton’s
pickets thrown far out as was his custom. I could endure the shaking no
longer, and at this point I slid from the saddle, and trudged down the
last mile on my feet. From the Camp below rose presently a sound of
cheering voices! The men had counted our number as we descended the face
of the hill, and they had made us one more than had started on the
expedition the day before. Ten minutes later the old flag waved over our
heads, I was safe as well as free. Tarleton, with the courteous
insouciance which was natural to him and which could at need give place
to an unsparing energy, came forward to welcome me to his camp.

* * * * *

“My lord Rawdon’s compliments, sir, and he will be glad if you will
report yourself at his quarters.”

“Very good,” I said. “Does his lordship wish to see me at once?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Very good, Tomkins. I will be with his lordship as soon as I can borrow
a sword.”

The order reached me early on the morning after my arrival at
Winnsboro’. But owing either to the fatigue of the ride—though I had
rested six hours at Fishing Creek—or to other causes, I had already
begun to experience, early as the hour was, the lassitude and ennui
which await the man, who after startling adventures returns to a dull
routine. The scarlet of the King’s uniform, peeping here and there
through the trees that shaded the village street, the smart sentries who
paced the walk before this door or that, the Twenty-Third drilling in an
open space with their queues and ribbons and powdered heads, the old
flag flying above Headquarters—these were sights pleasant enough. And
the greetings of old friends were welcome; the camaraderie of an army
campaigning abroad is a thing by itself. But when that was said, all was
said. A camp is a camp, and the older it is the worse it grows. After
the life of the Bluff, with its primitive cleanliness, its great spaces,
its comfort and its stillness, the close air and squalor of billets, the
shifts and dirty floors, the sharp orders and sounds of punishment, even
the oaths and coarse talk to which custom had once inured me, jarred on
me unspeakably. Nor was the distaste with which I looked about me, as I
passed along the village street, lessened by the thought that for some
time to come my wound would withhold me from action and confine me to
the narrow bounds of the camp.

I had not many minutes to spare for these or for any reflections. It was
but a short distance, the length of a measured stroll, from the lodging
where Paton had taken me in, to where my Lord had his headquarters,
nearly at the end of the village. I soon arrived at the place, a low
white house, set back a little from the street and separated from it by
a row of fine shade trees which sheltered a rough table and some
benches. There was the usual throng about the door, but I pushed my way
through it, and the orderly who had summoned me, and who was on the
look-out, ushered me without delay into my Lord’s presence.

A man of my own age, twenty-seven or twenty-eight, was seated at the
head of a table strewn with papers and maps. Webster, who commanded the
Twenty-Third, sat at the foot of the table and between the two were
ranged five or six men of varying ages, of whom one or two were not in
uniform. I saw as much as this at a glance, as I crossed the threshold.
Then my Lord rose and came forward to meet me with a cordiality that sat
well on his years without derogating from his rank.

“My dear Craven,” he said, shaking me by the hand, “welcome back to
life! Tarleton has done some good work, but he has never done His
Majesty’s cause a greater service than by restoring you to it. Your arm?
How is it?”

“Doing well, my lord,” I murmured. And I thanked him.

“Excellent! Well, an express went to your father three weeks ago
enclosed in the Commander-in-Chief’s despatches, which told him of your
safety. You will dine with me to-night and tell me about poor Ferguson’s
affair. Poor fellow! Poor fellow! But there, sit down now! No,
gentlemen, you must keep your congratulations until later. Time presses
and the matter we are on brooks no delay. Brigadier,” he continued,
addressing Webster, “find room for Major Craven beside you—and have a
care of his arm. He is here just in time to be of service to us, and
now—” He broke off, his attention diverted by a movement at the table.
“What is it?” he asked, turning sharply in his chair, and extending his
arm so as to bar the way to the door.

One of the men in civilian dress, who had risen from his seat at my
entrance, muttered something. He would be glad of his lordship’s
permission to—and with a murmur and a low bow, he was for leaving the
room.

But my lord stopped him. “No, sir,” he cried peremptorily. “Sit down!”
And without deigning to hear the man’s reasons, he motioned him back to
his chair. “Sit down, sir! Sit down! Nonsense, man we shall not be
fifteen minutes, and your matter can wait. We may need you, we shall
almost certainly need you. Now Major Craven, I require your attention.
Am I right in saying that about three months ago you rode across the
country that lies between the forks of the Congaree—from the Enoree to
the Broad River? That is so, is it not?”

“I did, my lord,” I said. “I spent three days in the district, mainly on
the Tiger River.”

“About the level of Fishdam?”

“Yes, my lord, and a little farther north—as far as Brandon’s Camp.”

“Then just take that map—give it him, Haldane—and describe for us the
nature of the country west of Fishdam Ford. It’s high ground, isn’t it?
A sort of spine? Sumter is lying in that neighborhood, as you probably
know. If you don’t, it is the fact, and we propose, all being well, to
surprise him to-night.”

“To-morrow night, by your leave, my lord,” some one interjected.

“To-night,” Rawdon replied dryly and with emphasis; and he withered the
interrupter with a look. “That is a detail,” he continued, “which I
confess I have kept from you, gentlemen,—with the exception of the
Brigadier and Major Wemyss—until this moment. A mounted force of the
63rd has gone forward, and should be already beyond Mobley Meeting
House. Major Wemyss who is to command them rides express from here
within the hour. The attack will be made to-night, or in the small hours
of the morning, but it entirely depends for its success on surprise. Our
numbers are not large and General Sumter is in some strength, with
reinforcements not far off—Triggs, Clarke, and their irregulars. If he
has warning he may turn the tables on us. That being so, gentlemen, and
because so many of our plans have been disclosed of late—God knows
how!—I have advanced the time of the attack to to-night.”

There was a general murmur of assent and approval.

“Now, Major Craven,” my lord continued, “will you detail for us the
nature of the country as you remember it, and as precisely as you can.
We have other information, of course, but I wish to see if it tallies
with yours. Your return to-day is a piece of good fortune.”

I explained with the map before me the main features, as I remembered
them. My former journey had been made at some risk just before Gates’s
advance to Camden and with a view to an advance on our side. What I
detailed seemed to confirm the information already in our possession as
well as the report of Sumter’s position. Wemyss, who was naturally the
most deeply concerned, and who followed my explanation with great care
on another map, put a number of questions to me; and in this he was
seconded by Webster. When I had answered these questions to the best of
my power, Wemyss addressed the man on my right—the same who had risen
and sat down again.

I should explain that Webster, the Brigadier, was on my left hand,
sitting at the end of the table. I could apprehend by this time who were
there. There were seven altogether, five soldiers and two civilians.

“What I want to know is this, Mr. Burton,” Wemyss asked. “Are you sure
that Triggs and Clarke, with the southern rebels, have not joined
Sumter? This is a point of the utmost importance. It is life or death to
us. Are you clear about it?”

“Yes, Mr. Burton, let us hear you on that,” my lord said.

The question was put at an unlucky moment for my neighbor had just taken
a pinch of snuff which set him sneezing. With difficulty he managed to
say that—tishoo! on that point he was—tishoo! clear—quite clear, my
lord!

“And just one point more, my lord,” Wemyss insisted. “Are you sure, Mr.
Burton, that Triggs and Clarke are not near enough to join Sumter
to-day? Before the time of my attack, sir, do you see? Because that is
just as important.”

“Yes, we want no more mistakes,” my lord chimed in. “Let us be certain
this time. What do you say to that, Mr. Burton?”

Mr. Burton, a stoutish man in brown, with a neat well-floured head—I
could see so much of him, but little more, as he was next to me—sneezed
again and violently. It was all he could do to answer in a
half-strangled voice that—’tishoo! he was sure of that also—quite sure,
my lord!

One or two laughed at his predicament, but my lord was not pleased. “If
you can’t take snuff without sneezing,” he said sharply, “why, the
devil, man, do you take it! Why do you take it? Now, Wemyss, have you
all the information you need, do you think? Are you sure? Don’t be
hurried. You must not let Sumter get the better of you, as Marion did.”

I think that Wemyss was not well pleased with the reminder that he had
not been lucky on the Pee Dee. At any rate he did not take the hint to
ask further questions. He was already on his feet and he answered that
he thought that he now had all that he wanted. “If I don’t do it with
what I know,” he continued rather sulkily, “I shall not do it at all.
And by your leave, my lord,” he continued, moving towards the door, “I
will lose no more time. My horses are outside and it will be as much as
I can do to overtake my men. We can’t go by the cross-cuts and
wood-roads that these d—d fellows use.”

“Nor by the marshes,” some one said, hinting slyly at his Pee Dee
campaign.

“No, we are not web-footed,” Wemyss grunted.

“Well, very good,” my lord answered indulgently. “Go, by all means, and
good luck to you, Wemyss. Catch that d—d fellow Sumter if you can! By
G—d, I hope you may, and good luck to you!”

We echoed the wish, one after another. My lord rose from the table,
others rose. There was a little confusion. I turned to say a word to my
snuff-taking neighbor, but he had turned his shoulder towards me and was
already on his feet, speaking to Haldane, the General’s aide, who was
between him and the door.

Webster saw that I looked at him. He winked. “A good man that,” he said
in a low voice. “He has given us a great deal of information, a vast lot
of information. He comes from the other side of the hills on the
Tennessee slope. He is a backwaters man, but he knows this country well.
A strong King’s man and damned useful to us of late, d—d useful, I can
tell you.”

“If he comes from the Tennessee slope,” I said pricking up my ears, “he
may know the place I was at. It’s on this side, but not far from the
foot of the mountains. The man’s name was Wilmer—the man who took me. He
treated me well, too, General, very well! Shall we ask him?”

Webster was still in his seat at the table—a stout heavy man, slow in
his movements, but shrewd and a very able soldier. He raised his voice.
“Mr. Burton!” he cried. “Hie! I want you.”

But Burton was now within a pace or two of the door. He did not hear,
and would have escaped if he had not been forced to give place to the
Chief who was in the act of passing out at that moment. This detained
Burton, but for an instant only—he seemed to be in a great hurry; and
seeing this and that in another moment he would be gone, Webster
appealed to Haldane who was also going out.

“Haldane!” he cried. “Stop Mr. Burton! I want to speak to him. Damme,
has the man turned deaf all in a minute! What has come to him? Here,
bring him back!”

The aide did as he was told, tapping his man on the shoulder, and
pointing to us.

“The Brigadier wants you,” he said. “He’s speaking to you.”

“D—n the man, he’s as deaf as a post! Mr. Burton!” Webster cried. “Mr.
Burton! One minute! Didn’t you hear me call you? Major Craven wants to
ask you a question.”

Webster rose as he spoke. I rose. My lord had disappeared, but could
still be heard in the passage speaking to some one. There were only
Webster and I, Haldane and Burton left in the room. The civilian, thus
summoned—and Webster’s voice had grown peremptory—turned back to us; a
big clumsy figure of a man with his head sunk low between his shoulders,
an enormous stock, and a thick queue. He looked more like a quaker than
a planter, and he seemed to be an inveterate snuffer, for in the act of
turning he had his box out again and a pinch raised to his nose. A
heavy, good-natured-looking man he seemed; one who might have stepped
out of a counting-house in ’Change Alley, and whose appearance would
have surprised me more if I had not seen the queer wigs and queues in
which the New Hampshire farmers, even in the backwoods, took the field.

“Your servant, sir,” he said, civilly enough, now we had got him.

“You come from the Tennessee slope, Mr. Burton, I understand?” I said.

“There or thereabouts, sir,” he answered in the same tone. And he blew
out his cheeks after a clownish fashion.

“Do you know by any chance the man who took me?” I asked. “His
plantation lies about four miles east of King’s Mountain and just over
the colony line. It’s on Crowder’s creek or one of the small creeks west
of the Catawba. They call the place the Bluff and it cannot be very far
west of Wahub’s Plantation?”

He pondered, a pinch of snuff at his nose. “Well, I am not sure, sir,”
he said slowly, “I think I should know it.”

“His name is Wilmer.”

“Wilmer? Wilmer?” he muttered. “Umph?”

“A tall, lean man,” I said, thinking to assist his memory, which, it was
plain, worked sluggishly. “I should say a man of some standing in his
district. He treated me well. He could not have treated me better or
behaved more handsomely, indeed. In fact, I may say that he saved my
life—”

I stopped. I stared at the man, at his short wide face, which would have
been jovial if it had not been so heavy, at his powdered head. His
fingers, raised to convey the pinch of snuff to his nose covered the
lower part of his countenance, but I noted that he had a shaky hand—some
of the snuff fell on his stock. He puffed out his cheeks as he prepared
to answer, but when he did so, it was only to repeat my last words.
“Saved your life, sir, did he?” he murmured. “So I have heard. He took
you into his house, I understand?”

I stared at him. “That was so,” I said. Where had I seen some one—some
one? My heart began to beat quickly.

He sneezed. “Of Wilmer’s Bluff?” he muttered. “Well, I think I should
know him, Major, I b’lieve I know him. And he saved your life, sir, did
he? He saved your life?”

We stared at one another. Haldane, summoned by a voice from the passage
turned to leave the room. Webster laughed—evidently the man’s oddities
were known to him and he saw nothing out of the common in his manner.
“Gad, Craven! You look surprised,” he said with a chuckle. “But Mr.
Burton has a vast deal of information. He knows what is passing as well
as any man, by Gad! Well, I must be going. See you at dinner? You had
better be going soon, for the Chief is coming back, and he likes to have
the room to himself.”

Sharp as the shock had been, the moment of time that Webster’s words
gained for me, helped me to collect myself. Before he was out of the
room I spoke. “Yes, Mr. Burton,” I said, “we had better be going!”

His eyes questioned me.

“We’ll go to my quarters—in the first place,” I said.

He had still a hope I think that I had no more than suspicion in my
mind—that I did not know; for he fenced with me, his eyes on my face.
“In an hour, sir,” he said, “I can be at your service. Heartily at your
service, sir.”

“In an hour,” I replied gravely, “it will be too late for either of us
to be of service to the other. You know many things, Mr. Burton,” I
continued, “but I know one thing. You will be wise to give me your arm
and to come with me to my quarters at once. Will you go before me?”

I made way for him and followed him closely from the room and the house.
Outside I saw Paton seated on one of the benches before the door.
“Paton,” I said, “come with me. I want you.”

My tone surprised him, and reinforced by a glance at my face put him on
the alert. He rose at once and joined us. By this time I had a pretty
good notion what I should do, and when we had walked a few yards in
silence, “Paton,” I said, “Mr. Burton is going to give me some
information and we want no listeners and no interruption. I am going to
take him to our quarters and I want you to keep the door below and to
see that no one comes in or goes out while we are together. Do you
understand?”

Paton looked at me and looked at Burton and no doubt he saw that the
thing, whatever it was, was serious. He whistled softly. “I understand!”
he said. And then, “There is my man,” he added, “would you like him
too?”

“Yes, I would,” I said. “Bid him be within call.”

Burton maintained an easy silence as he moved beside me, and in this
fashion, followed by Paton’s man who had fallen in at a sign from his
master, we walked up the village street, threading the motley crowd of
blacks and whites who thronged it. Soldiers, leaning against garden
fences or lounging under the trees, saluted us as we passed. Sutlers’
carts went by in a long train. In an interval between two houses the
drums were practicing. Here an awkward squad was at drill under a
rough-tongued sergeant, whose cane was seldom idle, there a troop of the
14th Dragoons were drawn up awaiting their officer. A shower had fallen
earlier in the day, but the sun had shone out and the lively scene, the
white frame-houses, the bowering foliage around them, the bright
uniforms, the movement, formed one of the cheerful interludes of war.

In other eyes than mine. For my part I walked through it, execrating,
bitterly execrating it all—the sunshine, the leaves just touched by
autumn, the fleecy sky—all! And fate. The mockery of it and the irony of
it, overcame me. Of what moment are the bright hues of the trap to the
wild creature that is caught in it?

However, lamentations must wait for another season. I had but a few
moments, and I must act, not think. A very short walk brought us to
Paton’s house in which he had secured for me the sole use of a tiny
attic, the only room above stairs in what was but a small cottage. On
the threshold I turned to him. “You will keep the door,” I said. “No one
is to be allowed to go in or out, Paton, until you see me. You
understand? Has your man his sidearms?”

Paton looked askance at my companion. “I understand,” he said. “You may
depend upon me, Major.”

“Now, Mr. Burton,” I said. “I will follow you, if you please. I think
that we can soon despatch this matter.”

We went in. I pointed to the narrow staircase—it was little better than
a ladder—and he went up before me. The room was a mere cock-loft lighted
by a tiny square window on the level of my knee and looking to the rear.
But it was private and we could just stand upright in the middle of the
floor. I closed the door, and turned to him.

CHAPTER IX
THE COURT IS CLOSED

_As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane
The tane unto the tither say:
‘Where sall we gang and dine to-day?’_

_‘Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane
And I’ll pick out his bonnie blue een,
Wi’ ae lock o’ his gowden hair
We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.’_
ANON.

“We had better speak low, Mr. Burton,” I said. “I will be as short as I
can. You know the position as well as I do, and that if I do my duty the
result will be a long rope and a short shrift before night.”

He looked about him, and drawing forward his ample skirts, he took with
much calmness—but I suspected that he was not as cool as he looked—a
seat on my bed. “Have you not made a mistake, Major?” he drawled.

“No,” I answered. “I have made no mistake, I understand many things now
that were dark to me before; what your daughter feared, and why she kept
you apart from me, and—and the enemy’s knowledge of our plans, Mr.
Burton.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and made no farther attempt to baffle me or
to deny his identity. He sat, a little hunched up on the low bed with
his hands in his pockets; and he looked at me, quizzically. Certainly,
he was a man of great courage. “Well,” he said, “we’re in trouble, sir.
It has come to that. Poor Con always said that it would, and that if I
took you in I should pay for it. Good Lord, if she saw us now! But, as
it turns out, the shoe is on the other foot, Major. It is you who will
have to pay for it. I saved your life, and you cannot give me up. You
cannot do it, my friend!”

I confess that his answer and his impudence confounded me and roused in
me an anger which I could hardly control. How I execrated alike the ill
luck that had brought my rescuers to the Bluff and the impulse that had
led them to wait for a last stirrup-cup—and so to find me! How above all
I cursed the chance that had put it into the Chief’s head to seek my
advice that morning—that morning of all mornings—before the news of my
return had gone abroad!

Even for the man before me I was concerned; he had saved my life, he had
treated me well, and he had done both in the face of strong temptation
to do otherwise. But I was not so much concerned for him as for
Constantia. Poor Constantia! The picture that rose before me, of the
girl, of her love for her father, of her anxiety, of the Bluff, of all,
rent my heart.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked harshly. My voice sounded
in my own ears like another man’s.

He raised his eyebrows. He did not answer. He left the burden on me.

“You won’t say anything?”

“Only that I saved your life, Major,” he replied quaintly. “I’ve done my
stint, it is for you to do yours. You can’t give me up.”

He leaned back, his hands clasped about his knees, his eyes smiling.
Apparently he experienced no doubt, no anxiety, no alarm; only some
faint amusement. But probably behind the mask, which practice had made
to sit easily on him, fear was working as in other men; probably he felt
the halter not far from his neck. For when I did not answer, “You’ve not
brought me here for nothing, I suppose?” he said, speaking in a sharper
tone.

I had no difficulty in finding an answer to that. “No,” I said with the
bitterness I had so far repressed. “No, if you must know, I have brought
you here, to sink myself something lower than you! To pay the bill which
I owe for my life with my honor! Oh, its a damned fine pass, sir, you’ve
brought me to!” I continued savagely. “To soil hands that I’ve kept
clean so far, and dirty a name—”

“Stop!” he cried. He was on his feet in a moment, a changed man, sharp,
eager, angry. “Lower than me, you say? By G—d, let there be no mistake,
Major! If you think I’m ashamed of the work I am doing, I am not! And
I’ll not let it be said that I am! I am proud of it! I am doing work
that not one in ten thousand could do or dare do. Plenty will shoot off
guns and face death in hot blood—it’s a boy’s task. But to face death in
cold blood, and daily and hourly without rest or respite; to know that
the halter may enter with every man who comes into the room, with every
letter that is laid on the table, with a dropped word or a careless
look. To know that it’s waiting for you outside every house you leave.
To face that, day and night, week in week out—that needs nerve! That
calls for courage, I say it, sir, who know! And what is the upshot?” He
swelled himself out. “Where others strike blows, I win battles!”

“Ay,” I cried—he had more to say, had I let him go on—“but sometimes you
lose, and this time you have lost. And having lost, you look to me to
pay! You look to me, sir! You take the honor, d—n you, and you leave me
the dishonor! But by G—d, if it were not for your daughter,—”

“Ah!” he said, low-voiced and attentive.

“You should pay your losings this time, though you saved my life twice
over!”

“Oh, oh!” he said in the same low voice. He sat back on the bed again,
and stared at me, as if he saw a different man before him. After a
pause, “Well,” he said, “I was a fool, Major, to blow my trumpet, and
ruffle your temper. If I wanted to put my head in your folks’ noose,
that was the way to do it. But every mother dotes on her own booby.
Well, you’ll hear no more singing from me. I’m silent!”

“When I think,” I cried, “of your boasts of what you have done!”

“Don’t think of them,” he answered. “Set me dawn for a fool, Major, and
let it rest there. Or think of the Bluff and Con. She’s a good girl, and
fond of her father and—well, you know how it is with us.”

I was able to collect myself within a minute or two, and—“Mark me,” I
said firmly, “I will give you up, Wilmer, I will give you up still, if
you depart one jot from what I tell you. You will remain in this room
for twenty-four hours. By that time Major Wemyss will have done his
work, and as the time of the attack has been advanced by a night, what
you may have communicated to your people should not change the issue.
To-morrow I will release you, and give you two hours start. You will be
wise to avail yourself of it, for at the end of that time I shall see
Lord Rawdon, make a clean breast of it, and take the consequences. I
shall be dismissed, and if I get my deserts I shall be shot; in any case
my name will be disgraced. But if I am not to give you up, there is no
other way out of the pit in which you have caught me.”

He thought for a moment. Then “I will give you,” he said, “my word if
you like, Craven, not to pass on any more—”

“What, a spy’s word?” I cried—and very foolish it was of me to say it.
But the man had brought so much evil on me that I longed to wound him.
“No! I’ll have no truck with you and no bargain, Captain Wilmer. It
shall be as I have said, exactly as I have said,” I repeated, “or I call
in the nearest guard. That is plain speaking.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “As you please, my friend,” he said. “But why
not open Rawdon’s eyes as to me—when I’m gone? and say no more?”

“And leave myself in your power?” I cried. “No! I tell you I will make
no bargain with you and have no truck! That way traitors are made!”

“I will swear if you like, Major—”

“No,” I replied angrily, “if I do this, I will pay for it.”

He shrugged his shoulders once more. “Well! it’s your difficulty,” he
said dryly, relapsing into his earlier manner. “And it is for you to get
out of it.”

“Yes,” I said, “and I shall get out of it in my own way and on my own
terms.”

He did not answer and I turned to go, but I cast my eyes round the
place, before I left him. A glance was enough to assure me that a man of
his size could not pass through the window, while there was no other way
from the room except through the guarded door. I went down to Paton. I
must secure his help for I had still something to do.

Naturally a lively soul, he was agog with curiosity, which the trouble
in my face did not lessen. “What is the trouble, Major?” he asked,
taking my arm, and drawing me apart. “And where’s old Snuff and Sneeze?”

“He’s in my room and he’s going to stay there,” I said. Then I told him
a part of the truth; that I had a clue to a spy, a man in the camp at
this moment. I added that I believed Burton also knew the man and might
be tempted to warn him, if he were free to do so. That if Burton
attempted to leave the house, therefore, he must be arrested; but that I
aimed at avoiding this if possible, as I did not wish to estrange the
man. “I leave you on guard,” I said. “I depend on you, Paton.”

“But I’m on duty, Major,” he objected, “in an hour.”

“I shall be back in half an hour,” I explained. “After that I will be
answerable.”

“Very good,” he rejoined. “But you know what you are doing? You have no
doubt I suppose? Burton has the Chief’s ear, and Webster believes in him
and makes much of him. There’ll be the deuce of a fracas if he’s
arrested and there’s nothing in it.”

“Do you arrest him if he leaves the house,” I said, “and leave it to me
to explain. I don’t think he will, and as long as he remains upstairs
let him be. That’s clear, is it not?”

He allowed that it was, and with a heavy heart I left him in charge and
went on my errand.

I suppose that there were the same splashes of red among the trees,
where the King’s uniform peeped through the foliage, the same men
lounging about, the same squads practicing the Norfolk discipline, the
same rack of thin clouds passing across the sunshine, the same drum
playing the Retreat and the Tattoo, or the plaintive notes of Roslyn
Castle. But I neither saw nor heard any of these things. My whole mind
was bent on finding my lord and getting an express—no matter on what
excuse—sent after Wemyss to warn him, and to put him on his guard. An
orderly on a swift horse might still by hard riding overtake him; and
such a message as “the enemy expect you to-morrow night, but do not
expect you to-night—have a care” might avail. At worst it would relieve
my conscience, at the same time that it lessened the heavy weight of
responsibility that crushed me.

I should then have done all that I could, and nearly all that could be
done, were the truth known.

But my lord was not at Headquarters, nor could they say where he was;
and when I sought Webster, who had his lodgings at a tavern, a hundred
yards farther down the road, he, too, was away. He had gone to visit the
outposts eastward. Time was passing, Wemyss had a start of two hours,
and was himself riding express; every moment that I lost made it more
doubtful if he could be overtaken. With a groan I gave up the idea, and,
turning about, I made the best of my way back towards Paton’s quarters.

Fifty yards short of the house whom should I meet but Haybittle,
red-faced, grey-haired, and dogged, his green uniform shabby with hard
usage. He was riding up the street with an orderly behind him, and when
he saw me, he pulled his horse across the road and hailed me with a
grin. “Major,” he said, “What’s this? There’s a young woman of the name
of Simms hunting you like a wild cat. It’s easy to see what it is she
has against you! Come, I didn’t think it of you—really I didn’t, Major!
A man of your—”

“Pooh!” I cried, “it’s her husband that she wishes to hear of.”

“Oh, of course, it’s always the husband is the trouble!” he laughed.
“You are right there!”

“Well, come on,” I answered irritably, “I want to hear about the woman,
but I cannot stop now. Come to Paton’s and tell me what she said. He’s
waiting for me, and he’s next for duty. I am late as it is!”

I pushed on, and Haybittle turned his horse and followed at my heels.
Over my shoulder, “I wish you’d seen that Quaker fellow, Burton, a
minute ago,” he said. “Lord, he was a figure, Major! He’d borrowed a
troop-horse, he told me, and it had tripped over a tent-rope in the
lines and given him a fall. His stock was torn—”

I turned on the man so sharply, that his horse had much ado not to knock
me down. “What?” I cried. “You met Burton—now?”

“Two minutes ago. He was riding express for—”

“Riding?”

“To be sure, riding towards Mobley’s Meeting House, and sharp, too! Why,
what is it, man? You look as if you had seen a bailiff!”

I did not doubt. In a moment I knew. Though the house stood only twenty
paces from us and Paton was at the door, I did not go in to see. A wave
of anger, fierce, unreasoning, irresistible swept me away—and yet had I
reasoned what else could I have done? I seized Haybittle’s rein with my
free hand. “Then follow him!” I cried, pointing the way with my crippled
arm. “After him! Ride like fury, man! He’s a spy! After him! Stop him,
or shoot him!”

Haybittle stared at me as if I had gone mad. “Do you mean it?” he asked.
“Are you sure, Major? Quite sure?” He held his cane suspended in the
air.

“Go, man, go!” I cried, wildly excited. “My order! Follow him, follow
him! Fishdam is his point! Turn all after him that you meet. A spy!
Shout it before you as you go!”

“A spy?” Haybittle yelled. “D—n him, we’ll catch him!” His cane fell,
his horse leapt off at a galop. The orderly followed, his knee abreast
of the Captain’s crupper. Two troopers of the Fourteenth who were
passing, heard the cry, turned their horses, and spurred after them.
With a loud View Halloo the four pounded away down the road, spreading
the alarm before them, as they rode.

Paton who had heard what was said rushed into the house. He did not
believe it, I think. In a trice he was out again. “I can’t open the
door,” he panted. “The bed is against it. Round the house, Major!”

He led the way, we ran round the house. At the back the little window,
ten feet from the ground, was open. Below it a plot of rough orchard
ground, in which two or three trees had been felled, ran down to a
branch. On the farther side of the water were some horse lines. We
stared up at the window. “But, d—mme, man, he couldn’t do it!” Paton
cried. “He couldn’t pass. Burton is as fat as butter!”

I swore. “That’s what I forgot!” I said. “He’s padded! He’s as lean as a
herring!”

We ran round to the front again. The hallooing came faintly up the road.
Already all the camp in that direction was roused and in a ferment. Two
troopers galloped by us as we reached the road. An officer followed,
spurring furiously. “That’s Swanton on the bay that won the match last
week,” Paton said; and he yelled “Forrard away! After him! If Burton is
on a common troop-horse,” he continued, “and he cannot have had time to
pick and choose, his start won’t save him! The bay will be at his girths
within five miles!”

“If they are to catch him they must do it quickly,” I groaned. “If he
draws clear of the settlement, he knows the roads and they don’t.”

“He’ll be afraid to extend his horse until the alarm overtakes him,”
Paton answered. “He would be stopped if he did, and questioned. There
are many on the roads this morning. Haybittle noticed him, you see. But
what does it all mean, Craven?” he continued.

We were standing, looking down the road. Half a hundred others, all
staring the same way, were grouped about us. “He’s gone to warn Sumter,”
I said dully. The excitement was dying down in me and I was beginning to
see what lay before me—whether he escaped or were taken. “If he reaches
Sumter before Wemyss attacks—and Wemyss may not attack before
daybreak—heaven help us! The surprise will be on the wrong side!”

Paton whistled. “Our poor lads!” he said.

For a moment my anger rose anew. But, Paton looking curiously at me and
wondering, I don’t doubt, why I had given the man the chance to escape,
my heart sank again. Wilmer’s determined act, his grim persistence in
his damnable mission, had sunk me below anything I had foreseen. If he
escaped, the blood of our men lay on my conscience. If he were taken, I
had bargained with him to no purpose, and soiled my hands to no end. My
act must send him to the gallows, my very voice must witness against
him! And Con? Ay, poor Con, indeed, I thought. For even as I stood
stricken and miserable, gazing with scores of sight-seers down the road,
and waiting for the first news of the issue, she rose before my mind’s
eye, tall and slender and grave and dressed in white, as I had seen her
on that evening, when she had flung herself into her father’s arms; the
father whom I, then crouching in pain in the saddle below, was destined
to bring to this! To bring to this! I thought with horror of my arrival
at the Bluff, of the lights, the barking dogs, the blacks’ grinning
faces and staring eyeballs! I thought with terror of her cry that ill
would come of it—ill would come of it! I felt myself the blind tool of
fate working out a tragedy, which had begun beside poor Simms’s body in
that little clearing fringed with the red sumach bushes!

Why, oh why had not the man been content to stay where I had placed him?
And why, oh why—I saw the error now—had I not taken the parole he had
offered me? I did not doubt that he would have kept it, if I had trusted
him. But I had refused it, and the chance of striking a new and final
blow had tempted him to my undoing.

So different were my thoughts from the unconscious Paton’s, as shoulder
to shoulder we stared down the road; while round us the crowd grew dense
and men of the 23rd tossed questions from one to the other, and troopers
of the Legion coming up from Headquarters drew bridle to learn what was
on foot—until presently their numbers blocked the road. Bare-armed men,
still rubbing bit or lock, made wagers on the result, and peered into
the distance for the first flutter of news. A spy? Men swore grimly.
“Hell! I hope they catch him!” they growled.

Presently into the thick of this crowd there rode up the Brigadier,
asking with objurgations what the men meant by blocking the road. The
nearest to him gave ground, those farther away explained. One or two
pointed to me. He pushed his horse through the throng to my side.

“What’s this rubbish they are telling me?” he exclaimed peevishly.
“Burton, man? A spy? It’s impossible! You can’t be in earnest?”

“Yes, sir,” I said sorrowfully; and I knew that with those words I cast
the die. “He was fighting against us at King’s Mountain. He is
disguised, but I knew the man—after a time.”

“His name is not Burton?”

“No, sir,” I said. “His name is Wilmer.”

“What? The man who—” he stopped. He looked oddly at me, and raised his
eyebrows. My story was pretty well known in the camp by this time. Paton
had spread it. “Why, the very man that you—”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “The man who captured me—and treated me well.”

“Well, I am d—d! But there, I hope to God they take him, all the same!
Why he’s known everything, shared in everything, sat at our very tables!
Not a loyalist has been trusted farther, or known more! He must have
cost us hundreds of our poor fellows, if this be true. He’s—”

“He’s a brave man, General,” I said, speaking on I know not what
impulse.

“And he’ll look very well on a rope!” Webster retorted. “Still, Craven,
I’m sorry for you.”

I could say nothing to that, and a few moments later an end was put to
our suspense. A man came into sight far down the road, galloping towards
us. As he drew nearer I saw that it was a sutler on a wretched nag. He
waved a rag above his head, a signal which was greeted by the crowd with
a volley of cheers and cries. “They’ve caught him! Hurrah! They’ve
caught him!” a score of voices shouted.

I could not speak. Alike the tragedy of it, and the pity of it took me
by the throat, and choked me. I could have sworn at the heedless jeering
crowd, I could have spat curses at them. I waited only until another man
came up and confirmed the news. Then I went into the house and hid
myself.

Afterwards I learned that the horse which Wilmer had seized was a sorry
beast incapable of a gallop and well known in the troop. Viewed before
he had gone a mile, and aware that he was out-paced, the fugitive had
turned off the road, hoping to hide in the woods. But to do this he had
had to face his horse at a ditch, and the brute instead of leaping it,
had bundled into it. Before Wilmer could free himself or rise from the
ground his pursuers had come up with him.

I have said that I went into the house and hid myself. Poor Con! The
girl’s face rose before me, and dragged at my heartstrings. I saw her,
as I had seen her many times, bending her dark head over the
spinning-wheel, while the pigeons pecked about her feet, and the cattle
came lowing through the ford, and round the home pastures and the quiet
homestead stretched the encircling woods, and the misty hills; and I
turned my face to the wall and I wished that I had never been born! My
poor Con!

* * * * *

Owing to my lord’s absence from the camp during the greater part of the
day a court for the trial of the prisoner could not be assembled until
four in the afternoon. I dare not describe what those intervening hours
were to me, how long, how miserable, how cruelly armed with remorse and
upbraidings! Nor will I say much of the trial. The result from the first
was certain; there was no defence and there was other evidence than
mine. Since his disguise had been taken from him two men in the camp,
one a Tory from the Waxhaws, the other a deserter, had recognized the
prisoner; and for a time I hoped that the Court, having a complete case,
would dispense with my presence. My position, and the fact that he had
spared my life and sheltered me in his house had become generally known,
and many felt for me. But the laws of discipline are strict, and duty,
when the lives of men hang upon its performance, is harshly interpreted.
The Court saw no reason why I should be spared. At any rate they did not
spare me.

When the time to enter came I was possessed by a sharp fear of one
moment—the moment when I should meet Wilmer’s eyes. They had taken his
stuffed clothes from him and brushed the powder from his hair, and when
I entered he stood between his guards, a lean, straight sinewy
Southerner, very like the man who had stood over me with a Deckhard in
the little clearing. The light fell on his face, and he was smiling.
Whatever of inward quailing, whatever of the natural human shrinking
from the approach of death he felt, he masked to perfection. As for the
moment I had so much feared, it was over before I was aware.

“Hello, Major!” he said, and he nodded to me pleasantly. I don’t know
what my face showed, but he nodded again, as if he would have me know
that all was well with him and that he bore me no malice. “You want
another sup of whisky, Major,” he cried genially.

“I need hardly ask you after that,” the President said, clasping his
hands about the hilt of the sword which stood between his knees, “if you
know the prisoner?”

“I do, sir.”

“Tell your story, witness.”

The sharp, business-like tone steadied me, helped me. With a calmness
that surprised myself I stated that the prisoner before the Court, who
passed in Camp, and in disguise, under the name of Burton, was the same
man who under the name of Wilmer had fought against us at King’s
Mountain, and had there taken me when wounded, and cared for me in his
own house.

“You were present,” the President asked, “when the plans for Major
Wemyss’s advance were discussed at Headquarters before my Lord Rawdon?”

“I was, sir.”

“Was the prisoner also there?”

“He was, sir.”

“In disguise and under a false name?”

I bowed.

“He was taking part in the debate as one knowing the district?”

“He was.”

“You recognize the prisoner beyond a shadow of a doubt?”

“I do.”

Had the prisoner any questions to ask the witness? He shrugged his
shoulders and smiled. No, he had none. Other formalities followed—curt,
decent, all in order. A stranger coming in, ignorant of the issue, would
have thought that the matter at stake was trivial. The President’s eye
was already collecting the votes of the other members of the Court, when
I intervened. I stood forward. I desired to say something.

“Be short, sir. On what point?”

The prisoner’s admirable and humane conduct to me, which by preserving
my life had directly wrought his undoing. I desired some delay, and a
reference to Lord Cornwallis—

“The matter is irrelevant to the charge,” the President said, stopping
me harshly. “You can stand back, sir. Stand back!”

Finding—guilty. Sentence—in the usual form. Execution—within twenty-four
hours. All subject to confirmation by the acting Commander-in-Chief.

“The Court is closed.”

I have but sketched the scene, having no heart for more and no wish to
linger over it. There are hours so painful and situations so humiliating
that the memory shrinks from traversing the old ground. Wilmer, on his
side, had no ground for hope, and so could bear himself bravely and with
an effort could add magnanimity to courage. He could smile on me, call
me “Major” in the old tone, banter me grimly. But my part was harder. To
meet his eyes, aware of the return I had made; to know that I, whose
life he had saved and whom he had taken to his home, had doomed him to
an ignominious death; to shrink from the compassionate looks of friends
and the curious gaze of those who scented a new sensation and enjoyed
it; and as a background to all this to see in fancy the ashen face and
woful eyes of the girl I loved and had orphaned, the girl who far away
in that peaceful scene knew nothing of what was passing here—with all
this was it wonderful that when I went back to my quarters Paton refused
to leave me?

“No, I am not going,” he said. “You are too near the rocks, Major! It’s
no good looking at me as if you could kill me. I brought you away from
that place, I know, and I’m d—d sorry that I did! When you are next
taken you may rot in Continental dungeons till the end of time for me!
I’ll not interfere I warrant you. I’ve had my lesson. All the same,
Major, listen! You’re taking this too hardly. It’s no fault of yours.
The man himself doesn’t blame you. He had his chance. He knew the stake,
he went double or quits, and he lost; and he’s going to pay. Through
you? Well, or through me or through another—what does it matter?”

“And Con? His daughter?” I said. “It’s the same to her, I suppose! Oh,
it’s a jest, a d—d fine jest that fate has played me, isn’t it!” And I
laughed in his face, scaring him sadly, he told me afterwards.

For two or three minutes he was silent. Then he touched me on the
shoulder. “I was afraid of this,” he said softly. “See, here, man,
you’ll be the better for doing something. Go and see my lord. He’s a
gentleman. Tell him. Tell him all. See him before he goes out in the
morning—he will be dining now. I excused you, of course. I don’t think
he’ll grant your request; frankly I don’t think he dare grant it—it’s a
flagrant case! But you will be doing something!”

I agreed, miserably, because there was nothing else I could do. But I
had no hope of the result. And the slow and wretched hours went by while
I walked the room in a fever of suspense, and Paton in spite of my angry
remonstrances stayed with me, sometimes poring over a soldier’s
song-book by the light of the single candle, and at others going down
for a few moments to answer some curious friend. I could not face them
myself, and when the first came, I started to my feet. “Don’t for God’s
sake,” I cried, “tell them!”

“Lord, no!” he answered. “Do you think I’m an ass, Major? Your arm’s the
size of my leg—that’ll do for them! It’s all they’ll hear from me!”

The longest night has an end; and mercifully this was not one of the
longest. For about midnight, worn out by my feelings and broken by the
fatigue of the journey from Rocky Mount, I lay down, and promptly I fell
asleep and slept like a log till long after reveillé had sounded, and
the camp was astir. The awakening was dreary; but, thank God, I drew
strength from the new day. The sharpest agony had passed, I was now
master of myself, resigned to the worst and prepared for it. True, I
felt myself years older, I saw in life a tragedy. But in my sleep I had
risen to the tragic level, and, waking, I knew that it became me to face
life with the dignity with which her father was confronting death.

CHAPTER X
THE WOMAN’S PART

_You no doubt are acquainted with the great attention and tenderness
shown my son at Camden by all the British officers that he has seen,
and the Gentlemen of the Faculty, as well as the maternal kindness of
Mrs. Clay._

CORRESPONDENCE OF MRS. PINKNEY.

I was at Headquarters soon after nine in the morning. There are joints
in the armor of all, the great have their bowels, and I have no doubt
that had he told the truth, my lord would have given much to avoid me
and my petition. But he did not try to do so, and in the spirit which
now inspired me, I recognised the law under which we all lay. He, I, the
man who must suffer, all moved in the clutch of remorseless duty, all
were forced on by the mind that over-rode the body and its preferences.

Willing or unwilling, he met me with much kindness. “What is it,
Craven?” he said. “But I fear, I very much fear that I know your
errand.”

“If you could see me alone, my lord?” I said.

“Certainly I will.” He nodded to Haldane and in a moment we were left
together.

I told him the story, all the story; and he heard me with sympathy. I
have said that he was a man of my age, not yet thirty, but authority had
given him force and decision, and the patience that goes with those
qualities. “In Lord Cornwallis’s absence, it lies with you, my lord,” I
concluded, when I had told my tale, “to confirm the finding and
sentence. The man’s life is forfeit, I cannot deny it. I do not attempt
to say otherwise. But the circumstances are such—he gave me my life, I
am taking his—that I am compelled to put forward my own services and
implore on my own account what I cannot ask, my lord, on his. If he were
confined in the West Indies, for the duration of the war, or were sent
to England—”

He stopped me. “My dear Craven, the thing is impossible,” he said
gently. “Impossible! You must see that for yourself. In another man’s
case you would see it. I should be unworthy of command, unworthy of the
post I hold, unworthy of the obedience of the men whose lives are in my
hands, if I listened to you! Frankly, I could not hold up my head if I
did this. And that is not all,” he continued in a firmer tone. “I have
news, by express this moment. Wemyss’s force has been repulsed, badly
repulsed near Fishdam. He is wounded and a prisoner. The account that we
have is confused, but it is certain that the enemy knew that the attack
was coming and awaited it a gunshot behind their campfires; so that when
our poor lads ran in they came under a heavy fire from the woods. I have
not a doubt, therefore, that this man, Wilmer, had a confederate in the
camp, and short as his time was, contrived to pass on tidings of the
change of date.”

It was a home blow and I reeled under it. I had had little hope before;
I had none now. Still I had made up my mind as to my duty, and I strove
afresh to move him. He listened for a moment. Then he cut me short.

“No!” he replied, more curtly, “No! you have no case. The punishment of
a spy is known, fixed, unalterable, Craven. It was carried out in the
case of Major André, a hard, an extreme case. But it was carried out.
This is a flagrant case. You ask an impossibility, man, and you ought to
know it!”

“Then I will trouble your lordship for one moment only,” I said. “I have
a duty to the King—I have discharged it by informing against Captain
Wilmer; I have discharged it at great cost to myself. But I have a duty,
also, to the man who saved my life at the price, as it has turned out,
of his own! That duty I have not discharged until I have done all that
it is in my power to do to save him. May I remind your lordship that my
father has supported the government steadily and consistently in the
House with two votes, and has never sought a return in place or pension.
Were he here, I will answer for it, that he would not only indorse the
request I make that this man’s life be spared, but that he would
consider its allowance a full return for all his services in the past.”

“And, by God!” Rawdon replied, striking the table with his hand, “I
would not grant that request, no, not if Lord North himself endorsed it,
Major Craven. In his Excellency’s absence I command here, mine is the
responsibility! I will not make that responsibility immeasurably more
heavy, sir, by stooping to a weakness which must rob me, and rightly rob
me, of the confidence of every soldier in the camp. I should deserve to
be shot, if I did so! There, I have been patient, Craven—I have been
patient because I know your position. I have given you a good hearing,
but I can hear no more. The thing you ask is impossible. The man must
suffer.”

“Then, my lord,” I replied, “I am compelled to take the only other step
open to me. Since neither my own services nor my father’s are thought to
be sufficient to entitle me to a thing which I have so much at heart, I
beg leave to resign his Majesty’s commission. Here is my sword, my lord,
and I no longer consider myself—”

“Stop!” he replied. “This is nonsense. D—d nonsense!” he continued
angrily, “I’ll not allow you to resign. Take up your sword, Major
Craven, or by G—d, I’ll put you under arrest!”

“You can do that, my lord,” I said, “if you please. I, for my part
believe that I am only doing what honor requires of me.” And I turned on
my heel, and, though he called me back, I went straight out of the room
leaving my sword on the table. I believe the act was irregular, but it
was the only way in which I could bear witness to the strength of my
feelings.

I had taken in doing this what many would consider a foolish step; but I
knew, too, that nothing short of this would acquit me in my own mind;
and as I left the house I was at no pains to defend the step to myself.
Haldane and the others, who were sitting under the trees before the
door, looked at me as I came out, but taking the hint from my face, they
let me pass without speech. Haldane went in immediately, and thinking
that he might be ordered to carry out the Chief’s threat, I moved away
down the street. Not that I cared whether I were placed under arrest or
no; I was indifferent. But to remain before the house might be taken for
a flouting of authority not in the best taste and beyond what I
intended.

I had tried all that I could, and I had failed. There remained only one
thing which I could do for Wilmer. I must see him. He might have
something to say, some message to leave, some service I could perform at
the last. I looked along the village street with its thronged roadway
and its neat white houses peeping through foliage that blew to and fro
tempestuously. The dust flew, and the flag above Headquarters leapt
against its staff, for the morning though it was not cold was windy and
overcast. As I looked down the road my eyes stopped at the tavern where
Webster had his billet. It was nearly—not quite—opposite the house in
which I knew that Wilmer was confined; and as I gazed, thinking somberly
of the man whose fate had become bound up with mine, and whose last
hours were passing so quickly, I saw a negro, bearing something covered
with a cloth, go across the road from the tavern to the house. I guessed
that he was taking Wilmer’s meal to him and I turned the other way. A
later hour would suit my purpose better. We, English, whatever our
faults may be, bear little rancor, and I had no doubt that even if I
were put under arrest, I should be allowed to see the prisoner.

I passed idly along the street in the direction of Paton’s quarters. On
either hand were loungers perched on the garden fences or leaning
against them. The roadway was crowded with forage wagons driven by negro
teamsters, with carts from the country laden with fruit and vegetables,
with fatigue-parties passing at the double. Troopers rode by me in the
green of the Legion or the blue of the Dragoons and everywhere were
watchful natives and grinning blacks and women in sun-bonnets whose eyes
little escaped. But my thoughts were elsewhere and my eyes roved over
the scene and saw nothing, until my feet had borne me a good part of the
way to Paton’s.

Then I saw her.

She and a negro were standing beside two horses from which they had just
dismounted. A little circle of loiterers and busybodies had gathered
round them and were eyeing them curiously and questioning them. The
horses, jaded and over-ridden, hung their heads, and blew out their
nostrils. The black, scared by his surroundings, glanced fearfully
hither and thither—it was clear that he felt himself to be in the
enemy’s camp. But Constantia showed no sign of fear, or of anything but
fatigue. Her eyes travelled gravely round the circle, questioned,
challenged, met admiration with pride. And yet—and yet, along with the
grief and despair that reigned in her breast—that must have reigned
there!—there must have lurked, also, some seed of woman’s weakness; for
as her eyes, in leaping a gap in the circle, met mine and held them—and
held them, so that for a moment I ceased to breathe—I felt her whole
soul travel to me in appeal.

One thing was clear to me at once: that as yet she did not know the part
I had played. For had she known it, her eyes instead of meeting mine
would have shunned me, as if I had been the plague.

And that gave me courage. Heedless for the moment of what might ensue,
or of what she must eventually learn, I pushed my way through the men, I
uncovered, I reached her side. Then, on a nearer view, I saw the change
that sorrow and fatigue had wrought in her. She was white as paper, and
against the white her hair hung in black clinging masses on her cheeks.
Her eyes shone out of dark circles, and her homespun habit was splashed
with the mud of many leagues. With all this, I was able to address her,
encouraged by her look, as simply as if I had parted from her an hour
before—as if I had expected her and knew her plans. “My quarters are
near here,” I said. “I will take you to them,” I added. That was all.

“Tell him,” she answered, with a glance at her attendant. She spoke as
if, with all her courage, she had hardly strength to utter the words.

I did so, and the idlers about us, noting my rank, fell back. The crowd
broke up. Tom—it was he—led the horses on. We followed, both silent.
Forty yards brought us to the door of Paton’s house.

When we were inside, “Will you give me some wine?” she said.

I looked for the wine and as I did so, I was aware of Paton escaping
from the room with a face of dismay. He recognized her, of course, but I
had other things to do than to think of him. I found some Madeira and
filled a large glass and gave it to her. She took a piece of bread from
her pocket and ate a mouthful or two with the wine, sitting the while on
a box with her eyes fixed on vacancy.

I have written down all that she said; and for my part I stood beside
her, not venturing a word. The knowledge that she must presently learn
all, and in particular must learn that it was I who had done this, I who
had put the halter round her father’s neck, paralyzed my tongue. When
she should have learned all, I could serve her no longer, I could do no
more for her. It was not for me that her eyes would then seek, nor from
my hand that she would take wine.

She set down the glass. “You will take me to Lord Rawdon,” she said.

I don’t know whether I had foreseen this; but at any rate I took it as a
matter of course and made no demur. I suppose Paton heard her also,
wherever he was, for immediately I found him at my elbow. “I’ll go on,”
he muttered in my ear. “I’ll arrange it. But it’s the devil, it’s the
very devil!”

He did not explain himself, but I knew that he meant it was hard,
cruelly hard on us! As for her, she seemed to be unconscious of his
presence.

When he had had five minutes start we set out. Already it had gone
abroad who my companion was, as such things will spread in a camp, and a
curious crowd stood waiting before the door; a crowd that in the
circumstances—for Wemyss’s check was no longer a secret—could not but be
hostile to Wilmer. But when she appeared, looking so proud and pale and
composed—not even the wine had brought the faintest color to her
cheeks—it was to the credit of our people that there was not a man who
did not stand to attention and salute. Not a gibe or a taunt was heard,
and I believe that the looks that followed us as we proceeded along the
street, were laden with a rough but understanding pity.

Halfway she spoke to me, looking not at me but steadily to the front.
“At what hour,” she asked with a shiver which she could not restrain,
“is it to be?”

“Four o’clock,” I replied.

“And it is now?”

“Ten.”

A moment later, “I must see my lord alone,” she said.

“Yes, I understand,” I replied, and so occupied with the matter was I
that, a moment later, unconscious of what I was doing, I met with a
stony stare the astonished gaze of the Brigadier, who was riding by and
drew to the side of the road as if he made way for a procession. “I will
try to arrange it,” I continued with dry lips. “I have seen Lord Rawdon
this morning. It was useless.” Then, “You mustn’t hope,” I muttered.
“Don’t!”

She did not answer.

Outside Headquarters officers were loitering in a greater number than
usual, drawn thither by the news of Wemyss’s defeat. I suppose that
Paton had passed the word to them, as he went by, for those who were
seated rose as we passed between them. Paton himself stood inside the
door, talking urgently to Haldane whom he had taken by the button, and
who reflected to perfection his face of dismay.

“This lady is Captain Wilmer’s daughter,” I said, as we came up to them.
“She desires to see Lord Rawdon.”

Haldane seemed to have a difficulty in speaking. When he did, “His
lordship will see her,” he said, looking not at her but at me. “He
considers it to be his duty to do so, if the lady desires it. But I am
ordered to say that she must draw no hope from the fact, Major Craven. I
am instructed to impress upon her that an interview can do no good. If
after that she still desires to see his lordship—”

Constantia bowed her head.

“You understand, Madam?” Haldane persisted. “You still desire it—in face
of what I have said?”

She bent her head again. He turned on his heel, opened the door behind
him and signed to her to enter the room. Then he closed the door upon
her. By common consent we moved away and went outside. “Poor beggar!”
Haldane muttered. “I wouldn’t be in his shoes at this moment for all his
pay and appointments. Hanged if I would!” Then, “Curse the war, I say!”

“I say the same!” Paton replied, and twitching the other’s sleeve he
drew him aside. They encountered and turned back some men who were
moving towards us—I have no doubt to learn what was on foot.

I took my seat on the most remote bench on the left of the door, and
apart from the crowd; and I waited. How long? I cannot say. I had no
hope that the girl would succeed; I was in no suspense on that account.
All my anxiety centered in another matter. When she came out she would
have heard all from Rawdon. She would have learned the truth and my part
in the story. Between them the facts must come out; they could not be
hid. And then she would stand alone, quite alone in this strange camp,
with four o’clock before her. How would she survive it? What would
become of her? The sweat stood on my brow. I waited—waited, knowing that
that must be the end of it.

I felt that I should be aware of her knowledge as soon as I saw her. She
would feel by instinct where I had placed myself, and she would turn the
other way. Or perhaps she would look at me once, and the horror in her
eyes would wither me. So far there had been a strange mingling of sweet
and bitter in the confidence which she had placed in me, in the way in
which she had turned to me, trusted me, leant on me. But when she came
out, knowing all, there would be an end of that.

Unheeding, I watched the traffic of the camp pass before me. I saw
Carroll go by, and the officer who had presided at the court martial.
Then Tom, the negro, passed, chattering in the company of two other
blacks, one of them a teamster. Apparently he had plucked up courage and
had found companions. They went towards the tavern. Next the
Provost-Marshal appeared; he came towards us, but was waylaid by Haldane
and Paton who entered into a heated argument with him—not far from me
but just out of earshot. He seemed hard to persuade about something; he
glanced my way, argued, hesitated. Finally he yielded and turned away,
flinging a sharp sentence over his shoulder. Paton replied, there was a
distant rejoinder. The Marshal disappeared down the road, shrugging his
shoulders, as if he disclaimed—something.

A man near me laughed. Another said that Paton would get on.

The latter made an angry answer, looking at me. I did not understand. I
was waiting. Would she never come? Was it possible that he was listening
to her? That he would—

Here was the Provost-Marshal returning anew. Apparently he had thought
better of it, for his face was hard with purpose. But again Haldane and
Paton met him. They assailed him, argued with him, almost buffeted him;
finally they took him by the arms, turned him about, and marched him
off. A ripple of laughter ran along the benches. “As good as a play!”
some one said. I did not understand. Surely she must come soon.

Yes, she was coming at last. I caught the tinkle of a hand-bell, the
sentry stood at attention, Haldane hurried into the house. I rose.

She came out and, thank God, she did not know. She did not know, for her
eyes sought mine, she turned towards me. She even gave me a pitiful
shadow of a smile, as if, after wading through deep waters, she saw land
ahead. I went to her. The men about us rose and remained standing as we
walked away together. She turned in the direction of my quarters.

I did not dare to question her and we had gone some distance before she
broke the silence. Then she told me, still looking straight before her
and speaking with the same unnatural calm, that Lord Rawdon had respited
the sentence for twenty-four hours to enable her to carry an appeal to
Lord Cornwallis. But that he had not given her the smallest hope that
the sentence would be altered. He had impressed this upon her almost
harshly.

“But His Excellency is at Charles Town!” I protested, dumbfounded by
this suggestion of the impossible. “You cannot go to Charles Town, and
return in twenty-four hours!”

“He is at the Santee High Hills,” she answered. Her tone implied that
she had known this and had not learned it from Lord Rawdon. Then in a
dry hard voice she explained that she was to be allowed to see her
father at three o’clock. She would start an hour later.

“For the High Hills?”

“Yes.”

“But you will die of fatigue,” I cried. “If you are to do this you must
rest and eat.” I knew that she had ridden sixty miles in the last
thirty-six hours and had done it under the stress of intense emotion.

She assented, saying meekly that she would do as I thought best. Then,
as we entered, “You will come with me?” she said. And with that she
turned to me, and looked at me with something of the old challenge in
her eyes, looked as one not asking a favor, so much as demanding a
right. Or, if the look did not mean that I was unable to say what it
meant, beyond this, that it gave me a sort of shock. It was as if she
had shown a different face for a moment. Had she known the truth, then
she might have looked at me in such a fashion. But in that case she
would not have asked me to go with her, I was sure of that.

Still the look was disturbing, and I hesitated. I reflected that her
father would tell her the truth; that before four o’clock she would
learn all. In the meantime, however, I could be of use to her, I could
save her from some trials. And so “Certainly I will go,” I said, “if you
wish it. If you still wish it, when the time comes.”

“Thank you,” she answered wearily. “I do wish it—and you owe us as much
as that.”

“I owe you—”

She stopped me, raising her hand. “I cannot take Tom,” she continued,
“for reasons. And the horses? Will you arrange about them? I am—I am
very tired.” She turned her back on me, and with a weary sigh she sat
down.

I told her that I would do everything and see to everything, and I
hastened away to find the woman on whom we were quartered. I had a meal
prepared, and Paton’s room made ready, and water brought and brushes and
soap. To do this, to do anything relieved my pent-up feelings, yet while
I went about the task, the look that she had given me, when she had
asked me to go with her, haunted me. What did it mean? It had impressed
itself unpleasantly upon me as at variance with the rest of her conduct,
with her confidence, her docility, her dependence on me. For in other
matters she had turned to me as a helpless child might turn; and though
her acts proved that she had a course of action marked out, and was
following that course, her manner would have appealed to a heart of
stone.

Presently I was aware of Paton looking in to the room with the same
scared face. He beckoned me to him. “You will want horses, won’t you?”
he whispered.

“Yes,” I said.

“How many?”

“Two,” I said. “Good ones.”

“I’ll arrange it,” he answered. “Leave it to me and stay where you are.
At what time?”

“Four,” I said.

He went away. The next to appear was Tom, who talked with his mistress
for some minutes while I was above stairs, making ready for the journey.
Presently he departed. By that time the hasty meal I had ordered was
laid and I induced her to sit down to it, while I waited on her. Need I
say that then, more than ever, the strangeness of the relations between
us came home to me? That she should be here, in my room, in my care,
eating an ordinary meal while I attended on her, handed her this or
that, and caught now and again the sad smile with which she thanked
me—could anything exceed the marvel of it? Her trust in me, the intimacy
of it, the silence—for she rarely spoke—all increased the air of
unreality; an unreality so great that when the meal was finished and she
went to Paton’s room to lie down and rest, it had scarcely seemed out of
the question had I gone in with her, covered her, and tucked her up!

After that, through three hours of stillness and silence I kept guard in
the outer room, staring at the door behind which she lay; and love and
pity choked me, and swelled my heart to bursting. How was she suffering!
How was she doomed to suffer! What a night and a day were before her!
What horror, what despair! For her father was all the world to her. He
was all that she had. I could only pray that the exertions she was
making, the fatigue that she was enduring, the pains of endless journeys
would dull the shock when it came, and that she would not be able to
feel or to suffer or to hate as at other times.

I believe that during these hours Paton kept guard outside, and warned
off the curious. For no one came near us, and all the sounds of the camp
seemed dull and distant and we two alone in the world, until a little
before three o’clock. Then Tom returned. I had made a note that he must
be kept at hand, since she would need him to go with her in my place
when she knew all—as she must know all after she had seen her father.

I cautioned him as to this, but the man demurred. “Marse, I’m feared ter
do it,” he said, showing the whites of his eyes in his earnestness.
“Madam ’Stantia, she ordered me ter stay yer. En I’m tired, Marse. I’m
en ole nigger en dis jurney’s shuk me. Fer sho’ it has.”

“But you rogue, your mistress!”

“I ’bliged ter stay, Marse,” he repeated doggedly. “Dis nigger’s mighty
tired.”

I should have insisted, but the girl had heard his voice and summoned
him. She opened her door and he went into the inner room. They talked
there for some minutes, while I fretted over this new difficulty.
Presently the black came out but she still remained within, and did not
follow him for five long minutes. When she came I saw a change in her.
Her eyes were bright, and each white cheek had its scarlet patch. She
looked like a person in a fever, or on the edge of delirium. What the
wine had not done, something else had effected.

“Tom had better be ready to ride with us,” I said.

“No,” she answered. “It will not be necessary. I wish him to stay here.”

She spoke with so much decision that I could not contest the point, and
we set off towards Wilmer’s prison. All that I remember of our progress
is that once we had to stand aside while a wing of the 23rd marched by;
and that once we ran into a knot of blacks in front of the store. They
were drunk and to my amazement refused to make way for us. My one arm
did not avail much, but a couple of sergeants who were passing on the
other side of the way crossed over and laying their canes about the
rogues’ shoulders, sent them flying down the road. I thanked the two,
they saluted the lady, and we went on.

That is all that I remember of our seven or eight minutes walk. My mind
was bent on the old question—what she would do when she learned my part
in the matter. Would she take Tom—doubtless with a little delay we could
find him? Or would she travel alone, riding the thirty-five miles, many
of them after night-fall, unaccompanied? Or—or what would she do? Then,
and all the long minutes during which she was with her father in the
house opposite the tavern—where a sentry at the front and back declared
the importance of the prisoner—I turned this question over and over and
inside and out. Webster’s quarters were at the tavern, a long low
straggling building, set on a corner, with two fronts; and I might have
entered and waited there. But nothing was farther from my mind. The
thought of company, of the camp chatter, was abominable to me; and I
paced up and down in a solitude which a glance at my face was enough to
preserve.

She came out at last when my back was turned, and she reached my elbow
unseen. “I am late,” she said. “We should be on horseback by this time,
Major Craven. Let us lose no time, if you please.”

Surprised, I muttered assent, and I stole a look at her. Her eyes were
bright, but with excitement not with tears. The patches of scarlet on
her cheeks were more marked. I had expected to see her broken and pale
with weeping; instead she was tense, borne up by the fever of some
secret hope, more beautiful than I had ever seen her, more alive, more
alert.

As for me I was now convinced that she knew all. Nay, enlightened at
last, I saw that she must have known all from the start. Had she not
foreseen that my coming boded ill? Had she not done all in her power to
keep me at the Bluff? Had she not on that last evening strained all to
detain me? Yes, she had known; and only my obtuseness, only the
astonishing way in which she had placed herself in my hands and made use
of me, had blinded me to the truth.

And plainly, she was content to go with me and to use me still. I might
fancy if I chose, that she forgave me, but I did not dare to think so.
There was a hardness in her eyes, a challenge in her voice, a reserve in
her bearing as she walked beside me, silent and proud, that I
misdoubted. And how could she forgive me? To her I was her father’s
murderer, a monster of ingratitude, a portent of falseness. She could
not forgive. Enough that she did not flinch from me, that she was ready
to bear with me, that she was willing to use me a little longer.

We found the horses standing before the door at Paton’s quarters, and
Tom with them. She bade the black farewell, after a few words aside with
him, and ten minutes later we took the road on what I, for my part, knew
to be a hopeless mission. Still it would serve, for it would help to
pass these fatal hours; and afterwards she might comfort herself with
the remembrance that she had done all in her power, that she had spent
herself without stint or mercy in her father’s service.

My latest impression of Winsboro’, as I looked back before I settled
myself in the saddle, was of Paton engaged in a last desperate argument
with the Provost-Marshal. Only then did it occur to me that the
unfortunate Marshal had had orders to place me under arrest and had been
all day held at bay by my friend’s good offices.

CHAPTER XI
THE MAN’S PART

_The High Hills of Santee are a long irregular chain of Sandhills on
the left bank of the Wateree. Though directly above the noxious river
the air on them is healthy and the water pure, making an oasis in the
wide tract of miasma and fever in which the army had been operating._

LIFE OF GREENE.

It was not until we had left the camp a considerable distance behind us,
and were clear of the neighboring roads with their stragglers and wagons
and forage-parties that a word was spoken between us. Even that word
turned only on the condition of the horses, the bay and grey that Paton
had borrowed from the lines of the Fourteenth Dragoons. Let it be said
of the British that, whatever their faults, they are magnanimous. The
life of an enemy might depend—though I did not think, and hardly hoped
that it would depend—on the speed of our horses. Yet the dragoons had
lent us the best that they had, nor did I doubt that when the officer
appeared on parade on the morrow, he would turn a blind eye on the gap
in his ranks. It was I who broke the silence.

“They should carry us to the High Hills in six hours,” I said.

The girl assented by a single word, uttered with an indifference which
surprised me. And that was all.

Her silence had at least this advantage, that it left me free to
consider her more closely, and I dropped back a horse’s length that I
might do this at my ease. As my eyes rested on her, I do not know
whether my admiration or my wonder were the greater. She must have been
weary to the bone and sick at heart. She must have been racked by
suspense and torn by anxiety. Every nerve in her tender frame must have
ached with pain, every pulse throbbed with fever. Probably, and almost
certainly, she had had to face moments when hope failed her, and she saw
things as they really were; when she tasted the bitterness of the coming
hour and recognized that all her efforts to avert it were in vain.

Yet every line of her figure, the carriage of her head, the forward gaze
of her eyes told but one tale of steadfast purpose. She was no longer a
mere woman, subject to woman’s weakness; but a daughter fighting for her
father’s life. She was love in action, moulded to its purest shape. To
suffer the eye to dwell on the curling lock that stained the white of
her neck, to give a thought to the long lashes that shaded her cheek, to
eye the curve of her chin, or the slender fullness of her figure, seemed
to be at this moment a sacrilege. Her sex had fallen from her, and she
rode as safe in my company as if she had been a man. More, I reflected
that if there were many like her on the rebel side—if there were others
who, daughters of our race, grafted on its virtues the spirit of this
new land, then, I had no doubt of the issue of the unhappy contest in
which we were engaged. In that case the thirteen colonies were as safe
from us and as certainly lost to His Majesty as if they were the six
planets and the seven Pleiades.

Nor in anything, I reflected, was her firmness more plain than in her
treatment of me. She knew what I had done. She knew that she owed her
misery to me. She must hate me in her heart. And doubtless when she had
used me she would cast me aside. But in the meantime and because my help
was needful to her plans, she was content to use me. She was willing to
speak to me, to ride beside me, to breathe the same air with me, she
could bear the sound of my voice and the touch of my hand. She could
constrain herself to stoop even to this, if by any means she might save
the father she loved and whom I had betrayed!

But while she did this, she was as cold as a stone, she made no pretence
of friendship or of amity; and the light was failing, we had ridden ten
miles, passing now a picket-guard, and now a lonely vedette on a
hill-top, and many a sutler’s cart on the road, before she spoke again.
Then as we descended a gorge, following the winding of a mountain stream
that brawled below us amid mosses and alders, and under fern-clad banks,
she asked me if we should reach the ferry on the Wateree by eight.

She spoke to me over her shoulder, for she was riding a pace in front of
me and I had made no effort to place myself on a level with her. “I am
afraid not,” I said. “If we reach the ferry by nine we shall be
fortunate. Very soon it will be dark and we must go more slowly.”

“Then let us push on while we can,” she replied. And starting her horse
with the spur she cantered down the uneven winding track, flinging the
dirt and stones behind her, as if she had no neck and I had two arms. If
she gave a thought to my drawback she must have decided that it was no
time to consider it; as from her point of view it was not. Fortunately
the sky was still pale and clear, the light had not quite failed, and
presently without mishap we reached more level ground. Here the road,
parting from the stream, wound on a level round the flank of a low hill,
and for a mile or two we made fair progress. It was only when the
darkness closed in on us at last that we drew rein, and trusting our
horses’ instincts rather than our own eyes pushed forward, now at a trot
and now at a walk.

“When does the moon rise?” she asked presently.

“At eight,” I told her.

“The ferry boat runs all night?”

Now I had not thought of that. It was a much-used ferry situate at a
point where the traffic from Charlestown separated, a part of the
traffic using the boat and crossing to the higher and drier road on the
right bank, the rest pursuing the shorter but heavier way through
Camden. As a second route the ferry road was of value, and a
considerable portion of our supplies came in that way. I knew that there
was a half company of the 33rd posted to protect the crossing, but I
remembered that the ferry house was on the farther or eastern bank.
Probably the detachment also would be on that side.

I had to tell her this, and that I was not sure that the ferry ran at
night. “I hope,” I added, “that we shall be able to make the men hear,
if it does not. But if we fail we may be detained.”

“All night?” she asked and I thought that I read in her tone not only
anxiety but contempt—contempt of my ignorance and inefficiency. “Do you
mean that?”

I told her that I feared that we might be detained until daybreak; and
with pity I wondered how, fatigued as she was, she would be able to
endure a night in the open. “Still, it is not more than two leagues,” I
continued, “from the river to the hills, and when we are across the
stream we should travel the remainder of the distance in an hour.”

Her only answer was a weary sigh. A minute later we passed from the
darkness of the night, which has always a certain transparency, into the
black depths of a pinewood. In an instant it was impossible to see a
yard before us. The carpet of leaves deadened the sound of the horses’
hoofs, the air was close, and great moths flew into our faces. I
pictured bats, the large bats of Carolina, swinging past our heads. The
whip-poor-will warned us again and again from the depth of the forest.
Still for a time the horses stepped on daintily, feeling their way and
snorting at intervals. At last the grey stopped. It refused to proceed.
“We must lead the horses,” I said.

“I will,” she cried quickly. “You have only one arm.” And before I could
remonstrate I heard her slip from her saddle.

So she had not after all forgotten my arm.

But it was humiliating, it was depressing to follow while she led. And
the way seemed to be endless. Once I heard her stumble. She uttered a
low cry and the grey shied away from her. She mastered it again, and
anew she went forward, though with each moment I expected her to propose
that we should halt until the moon rose. Still she persisted, bent on
her purpose, and after a long stage of this strange traveling we came
forth into the light again. She climbed into the saddle. The horses
flung up their heads as they scented the freshness and perfume of the
night, and we broke into a trot. I rode up beside her. It was then or a
little later, when we had slackened our speed on rising ground that she
began to talk to me.

Not freely, but with constraint and an under-note of bitterness which
her story explained. At dawn on the morning after my departure from the
Bluff she had started to ride to Winnsboro’ to warn her father of his
danger. Unfortunately, when she and Tom had traveled a dozen miles they
had fallen in with a band of straggling Tories—one of Brown’s bands from
Ninety-six, she believed. These men, knowing her to be Wilmer’s daughter
and having a grudge against him—and doing no worse than the other side
did—had forced her and Tom to dismount and had taken their horses,
telling them that they were lucky to escape with no other ill-treatment.

Thus stranded on the way, the two had walked seven miles to a friendly
plantation, only to learn that there, too, the horses had been swept off
by the same gang of Tories. In the end they had been forced to return to
the Bluff on foot. Here there were horses indeed, but they were out on
the hill and perforce she rested while they were found and brought in.
Again the pair set out, but twenty-four hours had been lost, and ten
miles short of the camp she learned from friends that she was too late.
A man whom she had no difficulty in conjecturing to be her father had
been seized, tried and sentenced on the previous day.

It was a pitiful story of effort, of strain, of failure, and she told it
piece-meal, with long intervals of silence as her feelings or the
condition of the road dictated. In the telling we covered a good part of
the journey, now riding freely over hills clothed with low brushwood,
where myrtles and dogwood and sweet herbs, crushed by the passage of our
horses, filled the air with fragrance, now plodding through the gloom of
oak-woods where the notes of the mocking bird brought the English
nightingale to mind; and now—this more often at the last—crossing
patches of low country where masses of tall cypress, black in the
moonlight, betrayed the presence of swamps, and where the voices of a
thousand frogs, challenging, insistent, unceasing, bade us look to our
going. We were descending quickly from the uplands to the low country of
South Carolina, the home of the rice-fields and of fever; and except the
High Hills of Santee, scarcely a rising ground of any size now stood
between us and Charles Town neck, ninety odd miles distant.

If she could not tell her tale without agitation I could not hear it
without pain, and pain that grew the keener, as I saw that in the
telling she was working herself into a fiercer mood. Once or twice a
bitter word fell from her and betrayed the soreness she felt; and these
complaints, I came to think, were uttered with intention. If I had
soothed myself at any time with the thought that she did not see events
as I saw them, if I had tried to believe that she accepted my help
willingly, I was now convinced that I might dismiss the notion. It was
no fancy of mine that she shrank from me.

It was at the moment when she had let fall the most cruel of these
gibes, that she pulled up the gray and changed the subject, asking me
abruptly if we had lately passed a road on the left.

I told her—I could not answer her with spirit—that I had not observed
one.

“What time is it?” was her next question.

It was nearly nine, I answered.

“We pass through a village before we reach the ferry, do we not?” she
asked.

“There should be a house or two about a mile before us,” I explained.

After that she rode on in silence. But when we had traveled another half
mile we came to a post set up at a corner; and there a by-way on the
left did run into our road. By this time the moon was high and the
sign-post stood up white and ghastly. “Here is the turning,” she said,
reining in her horse. “Do you know this road?”

“Only that it is not ours,” I answered wondering what she had in her
mind.

“I am not sure of that,” she replied abruptly. “There is an old ferry
half a mile up the stream, and I am told that this road leads to it. Ten
years ago the present ferry crossed there, but it was moved to a point
lower down to shorten the road. Now do you see?”

“What?” I asked.

“That we might cross the river there. The boat is on this side, I
believe. Whereas if we go to the new ferry and can make no one hear, we
shall be detained until morning.”

I was considerably taken aback both by her knowledge of the district and
by a proposal so unlooked for. Moreover, I had never heard of a second
ferry, though there might be one. “I think if we are wise we shall keep
to the high road,” I said prudently, “and go to the proper ferry. At any
rate we ought to go as far as the hamlet. We can learn there if the
ferry be working, and if it is not we may be able to secure a boat. We
don’t know the old crossing—”

“Are you afraid?” she asked.

The taunt did not affect me. “No,” I said, “but a ferry at night, if it
is seldom worked, and the man is old too,—well, it is not the safest of
ventures.”

“A ferry in good moonlight!” she cried in scorn. “Are you afraid, sir?
When the risk is mine and if I do not reach the High Hills in time it
will not be you who will pay the penalty?”

I could not meet that argument, nor the passion in her voice. Yet I
remember that I hesitated. The place was forbidding. We were halfway
down the slope that led to the river, and below us stretched the marshes
that fringed the stream, marshes always dreary and deceitful, and at
night veiled in poisonous mists. At the foot of the sign-post, which
rose pale and stark against a background of pines, there was something
which had the look of a newly-dug grave; while halfway up the mast a
wisp of stuff, the relic, perhaps, of a flag which had been nailed up
and torn down, fluttered dismally in the wind. I looked along the main
road but no one was stirring. The lights of the hamlet were not in
sight.

I suspected that, quietly as she sat her horse, she was in suspense
until I answered, and I gave way. “Very well,” I said reluctantly. “But
you must not blame me if we go wrong. God knows I only want to do the
best for you?”

I do not know why my words displeased her, but they seemed to prick her
in some tender spot.

“The best?” she cried, “and you boast of that? You!”

“God forbid,” I said, breaking in on her speech. “If there were more I
could do, I would do it and gladly, but—”

“Don’t! Don’t!” she said, pain in her tone. And she turned her horse’s
head and plodded down the side-road in silence. I followed.

Still I was uneasy. The night, the loneliness, the scene, all chilled
me; and this tardy suggestion, this change of plan at the last moment
had an odd look. However I reflected that I had nothing to lose; the
loss was hers if we were not in time. And though a one-armed man in an
old and rotten ferry boat—so I pictured the craft we were to enter—is
not very happily placed, if she did not see this, I could not raise the
point.

My perplexity grew, however, when twenty minutes’ riding failed to bring
us to the river, though the road had by this time sunk to the marshes,
and ran deep and foundrous, lapped on either side by sullen pools. The
time came when I drew rein—I would go no farther; the air was laden with
ague, I felt it in my bones. “I don’t think we are right,” I said.

“You would do so much!” she cried bitterly. “But you won’t do this for
me.”

“I will do anything that will be of service, Miss Wilmer,” I said
firmly, “but to waste our time here will not be of serivce.”

“What will?” she wailed. “Will anything?” Then, stopping me as I was
about to answer, “There! a light!” she cried. “Do you see? There is a
light before us! We can inquire.”

She was right, there was a light. Nay, when we had advanced a few yards
we saw that there were two lights, which proceeded from the windows of
some building. I was grateful for the discovery, grateful for anything
that put an end to the contest between us; and “Thank God!” I said as
cheerfully as I could. “Now we shall learn where we are, and we can
decide what to do.”

“More, there is the river,” she added; and a moment later I, too, caught
the gleam of moonlight on a wide water, that flowed on the farther side,
as it seemed to me, of the spot whence the lights issued.

I was glad to see it, and I said so. I could discern the building now—a
gaunt, dark block set high against the sky; a mill apparently, for a
skeleton frame of ribs rose against one end of it. The lights that we
had seen issued from two windows at some distance from the ground and
not far apart. As well as I could judge, the building stood between road
and river on piles, with a rood or so of made ground to landward, and a
few wind-bent cypresses fringing the river bank behind. It was a lonely
house, and dark and forbidding by night; but by day it might be cheerful
enough.

“I will inquire,” I said, briskly slipping from my saddle. “You had
better wait here while I go,” I added.

I was in the act of leading my horse towards the door, when she thrust
out her hand and seized my rein. “Stop!” she said. And then for a moment
she did not speak.

I obeyed; for the one word she had uttered conveyed to me, I don’t know
how, that a new peril threatened us. “Why?” I muttered. “What is it?” I
looked about us. I could see nothing alarming. I turned to her.

She sat low in the saddle, her head sunk on her breast, and for a moment
I fancied that she was ill. Then in a low, despairing tone, “I cannot,”
she muttered, speaking rather to herself than to me, “I cannot do it.”

I stared at her. To fail now, to succumb now—she who had borne up so
well, gone through so much, endured so bravely! “I am afraid I do not
understand,” I said. “What is the matter, Miss Wilmer?”

Her head sank lower. By such light as there was I could see that the
spirit had gone out of her, that her courage had left her, and hope. “I
cannot do it,” she said again. “God forgive me!”

“What? What cannot you do!” I asked, carried away by my impatience.

“Let us go back,” she said. “We will go back.” And she began to turn her
horse’s head.

But that was absurd, and out of the question, now that we were here; and
in my turn I caught her rein. Here was the ferry, here were persons who
could direct us. Had we traveled so far, and were we at the last moment,
because a house looked dark and lonely, to lose heart and retrace our
steps? “Go back?” I said. “Surely not without some reason, Miss Wilmer?
Surely not without knowing—”

“Without knowing what?” she replied, cutting me short. “Why we are
here?” And then in a different tone, “Do you know, sir, why we are
here?”

“No,” I said, in astonishment. For she who had all day been so calm, so
cool, so steadfast, now spoke with a wildness that alarmed me. “Why?”

“To put you,” she replied, “into the power of those with whom you will
fare as my father fares! Do you understand, sir? To make you a hostage
for him, your life for his life, your freedom for his freedom! Do you
know that there are those, in yonder house, who are waiting for you,—who
are waiting for you, and who, if my father suffers, will do to you as
your friends do to him? Do you know that it was for that that I brought
you hither; yes, for that! And now, now that I am here, I cannot do it—”
her voice sank to a whisper—“even to save my father!”

A dry painful sob shook her in the saddle. She clung to the pommel, the
reins fell from her hands, the tired horse under her hung its head.
“Good Lord!” I whispered. “Good Lord! And you brought me here for that.”

“Yes,” she said, “for that.”

“And—and Lord Cornwallis—you knew that you had nothing to expect from
him?” She bowed her head. “But did you not know, Miss Wilmer, that
this—this, too, was hopeless? Insane, mad? Did you not know that Lord
Rawdon would as soon depart from his duty in order to save me, as the
sun from his course?”

“Men have been saved that way,” she cried, with something of her old
spirit. “And you are his friend, sir, you have influence, you have rank,
oh, he would do much to save you! Yes, I might have saved my father! I
might have preserved him—and now!” her chin sank again upon her breast.

“It was a mad plot!” I said.

“But it might have saved him,” she whispered. “My lord spoke warmly of
you, he shewed me your sword on the table. Yes, I might have saved my
father—but I could not do it. And now—” Her voice died away.

“It was a mad plot,” I repeated. However strong her belief, I, of
course, knew that such a step was hopeless; that no danger in which I
might stand would turn Rawdon from his duty, but on the contrary would
stiffen him in it. It was a mad plan. But apparently she had believed in
it, apparently she had trusted in it; and at the last she had been
unable to harden her heart to carry it through! Why? I asked myself the
question.

She sighed, and the sound went to my heart. She gathered up her reins.
“We had better go, sir,” she said, in a lifeless tone, “before they
discover our presence. They may hear our voices.”

She had not had the strength to carry it through! Why? My heart beat
more quickly as I pondered the question. I no longer felt the fog on my
cheek, the ague in my bones. The note of the bull-frog lost its
melancholy, the sigh of the wind across the marshes its sadness. Warmth
awoke in me, and with it hope, and a purpose—a purpose, wild it might
be, high-strained it might be, and extravagant, but deliberate. For as
certainly as I loved her, as certainly as my heartstrings were torn for
the tenderness of her body broken by so many fatigues, for the agony of
her spirit which had borne her so far, as certainly as she was heaven
and earth to me—and she loved me, I believed it now!—so surely did I
know that there was but one bridge which could cross the gulf that
divided me from her! There was one way, and one way only, which could
bring me to her.

And that way lay through the door of the mill. Yet first—first, strong
as my purpose was, I had to fight the temptation to pay myself a part of
that which fate might withhold from me. To clasp her knees as I stood
beside her, to draw her down to me, to hold her on my breast, to cover
her face, white and woe-begone in the moonlight, with kisses, to tell
her that I loved her—this had been heaven to me! But I had to forego it.
I might not pay myself beforehand. Afterwards—but I dared not think of
afterwards. I dared not think of what lay between the present and the
future. I must act, not think.

“We had better go,” she repeated dully.

“And you thought it might save him?” I said.

“I thought that I could do it!” she answered. She shivered.

“You shall do it,” I replied. “Come!”

I led my horse towards the door, and had travelled half the space that
lay between us and the threshold before she grasped my meaning; before
she moved. Then, “Stop!” she cried. She pressed her horse abreast of me.
“Don’t you understand?” she cried. “Don’t you see—”

“Yes,” I said, “I see.” And for a moment, as we passed from the
moonlight into the shadow, and the horses’ shoes clattered on the stones
before the door, I let my hand rest on her knee. “I see. But I also
remember. I remember that your father saved my life. I remember that I
delivered him up to death. I remember—many things. And if any risk of
mine may avail to save him, God knows that I take the hazard
cheerfully!”

She cried, “No!” with a sort of passion, and she tried to draw me back.
But it was too late. I was at the door. I kicked it.

“House!” I cried. “House!” My mind was made up. Whatever came of it,
whatever the issue, I would go through with the venture.

Immediately a light shone under the door, a voice cried, “Halloa!” And
while, stammering words half-heard, the girl still tried to turn me from
my purpose, the door was opened, and a light was flashed in my face. A
man confronted me on the threshold, two others slipped by me into the
darkness. Probably the purpose of the latter was to cut off my retreat,
but I paid no heed to them.

“Can you direct us to the ferry?” I said.

“Why not?” the man drawled. “Step inside, sir. Ben will hold your horse.
And a lady? Well, we did not expect to see company and we’ll do the best
we can. We shall not be for letting you go in a hurry,” he added with
meaning in his tone.

It was not my cue to notice the sneer, or to show suspicion, and I
followed the man into the lower room of the mill, a damp stable-like
place, where the light fell on the shining, startled eyes of a row of
horses tethered at a rack. I ran my eye along them; it was well to know
what force I had against me. There were six. We passed behind their
heels, and picking our way over the filthy floor followed the man up a
ladder to what appeared to be the living-room of the place. As I climbed
I heard above me a sharp question and an exultant answer; and, I
confess, my heart sank, for I recognized the voice that put the
question. It was with no surprise, and certainly it was with no
pleasure, that emerging from the trap I found myself face to face with
my old acquaintance, Levi.

There were two more of the gang with him—I knew them again. The three
men were seated on boxes before a fire, the smoke from which found a
leisurely exit through a broken chimney of clay. The walls were formed
of squared logs, the shingled roof was festooned with cobwebs. In one
corner lay a heap of dirty cornstraw, in another a pile of drift-wood.
The floor was a litter of broken casks and cases, with some rotting gear
and fishing-nets, and a keg or two.

Levi made me a mock bow. “Evening, Major,” he said, “Well, well, you
surely never know your luck! Never know when you’re going to meet old
friends! I’m d—d if we’ll part this time as easily as we did last time!”

“We only want the ferry,” I said, playing out my part.

“Oh!” he cried rudely. “Our duty to you, and hang the ferry! We’ve
wanted you mightily, Major, and now you are here we mean to keep you.
Here, sirree, get up,” he continued, kicking the box from under one of
the other men, “Let the lady sit down. Cannot you see that she’s
dog-weary?”

The man moved awkwardly out of the way.

“The Captain will have a high opinion of you, Ma’am,” Levi continued in
an oily tone that made me long to wring his neck. “If you’ll be bidden
by me, you will allow me to offer you a sup of Kentucky whisky. It’s the
queen of liquors to bring the color back to your cheeks.”

She did not decline the offer; no doubt she needed support. He put a
cloak on the box and she sat down with her back to me, either to play
her part the better, or because she could not bear to face me. None the
less could I picture the ordeal through which she was passing! Levi,
fussing about her, brought out a bottle and drawing the corn-cob cork
poured some of the spirit into a small bowl. She drank it and said
something to him in a low voice.

“Pete is saddling his horse now,” he answered. “He’s a mighty good man
in the saddle, and he’ll not spare his spurs. He’ll take the message!
But we shall need a piece of the fur to prove that the bear is trapped.
Here you,” he went on truculently, turning to me, “You are in our power
and we are going to hold you as a hostage for Wilmer. Do you understand?
If your folks hang him, we shall hang you! Do you see? Have I spoken
plainly, sir?”

“Plainly enough,” I said. “But you must be very foolish if you think
that that will do Captain Wilmer any good; if you think that a threat of
that kind will make Lord Rawdon hold his hand.”

“D—n my lord and his hand!” he retorted coarsely; and he spat on the
floor. “My lord will decide as he pleases. But as he decides, you,
Major, will hang or go free. So, by your leave do you write and tell
your folks what I say.”

“If I write,” I replied, “I shall tell his lordship to do his duty.”

“Major,” he answered. “Do you see that fire? We have means to persuade
you and if you try us too far—”

“I shall not write,” I said. “If I write those are my terms. That is
what I shall write. But if it’s only proof that I am in your hands that
you require, take my ring. It will be known and will do what you want.
Only I warn you, my friend, that the man who carries the message will
slip his neck into a noose.”

“Do you think that we don’t know that!” Levi replied, grinning. “We need
no Philadelphia lawyer to teach us our business. This country is
ours—ours, Englishman, and it is going to remain ours. We have ten
friends where King George has one, and we shall know how to place your
ring where we want it. Many is the time that I’ve laughed to think of
Wilmer fighting your quails for you, and you putting on the money, and
your bird not worth a continental cent!”

The girl raised her head. She said something that I could not hear.

“To be sure, Miss,” he answered obsequiously. “To be sure, time is
running. Here, give me the ring.” He weighed it a minute in his hand and
his eyes sparkled as if he had no mind to part with it. Then he turned
to the ladder. The girl rose too. “I will speak to Pete,” she said.

“We need not trouble you,” he answered. “You sit down, Ma’am, and rest.”

“I will speak to Pete,” she said again, as if he had not spoken. And
carefully averting her face from me—I wondered if she knew how deeply,
how pitifully I felt for her—she followed Levi down the ladder.

CHAPTER XII
THE MILL ON THE WATEREE

_With what a leaden and retarding weight
Does expectation load the wing of Time._
MASON.

The thing was done, for good or ill; it remained for me to make the best
of it. I was in Levi’s power, but I might still by firmness hold my own
for a time. Thinking of this, I turned a case on end, dusted it cooly
with the skirt of my coat and setting it near the fire, I sat down on it
and warmed myself. The men who had been left with me watched me
curiously but did not interfere. They were busy, cooking something in a
pot by the light of a wick burning in a bowl of green wax. Meantime, the
minutes passed slowly; very slowly, while I waited and listened for news
of the others. Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by before the clatter of
horses’ shoes on the stones of the paved yard told us that Pete had
started. A little later Constantia climbed the ladder, and appeared,
closely followed by Levi, and by another man who was doubtless one of
those who had slipped by me at the door.

The girl paused on reaching the floor, then deliberately she came
forward and chose a seat on the opposite side of the fire and as far
from mine as possible. Levi grinned. “Well, Major,” he said “Pete’s
gone, whip and spur! If you’ve sense enough you’ll wish him luck.”

“I do,” I said cooly, “but as that matter is not very pressing, and I am
hungry, uncommonly hungry—”

“It’ll be mighty pressing this time to-morrow,” he grinned. “You’ve
twenty-four hours, and may make the most of it! Then, if things don’t go
our way!”

“I understand,” I said. “But in the meantime, my man, I am more
interested in my supper. The lady, too, has been riding for six hours—”

“Oh, the lady?” he sneered. “You bear no malice it seems?”

“At any rate I will keep it until I am free,” I answered, carefully
averting my eyes from her.

“If that time comes?” he retorted.

“Just so,” I said.

I think it was his purpose to make me angry; but at this point one of
the others, the ruffian who had kept watch in the outer room on the
night of the outrage at the Bluff, struck in. “Make an end!” he growled
with an oath. “Isn’t it enough,” addressing me, “that you’ve the use of
your throat to-night that you must argy, argy, argy! Keep your breath to
cool your victuals, stranger—while you have it! And, curse me, you’re as
bad, Levi! Let’s have an end! And do you,” to the men at the fire, “get
on with that pork and hominy!”

The girl did not say a word. She sat somewhat apart wrapped in a cloak
and leaning forward. Her elbow rested on her knee, her chin on her hand,
her eyes were fixed on the fire. The pose was one of utter weariness and
dejection, but it was so natural, so unforced that she might have been
sitting in the room alone. She seemed to be unconscious not only of my
presence but of the presence of the men. And they, rough and desperate
as they were, stood evidently in awe of her. As they moved to and fro
about their cooking they passed close to her, and at times they swore.
But I could see that their ease was assumed. Her personality, her tragic
position, the respect in which women are held in the southern colonies,
were as a wall about her—for the present.

And what was she thinking, I wondered, as she sat, apparently as
heedless of me, as of the men who rubbed elbows with her? Was she
thinking only of her father and his peril, and of the chance which her
passing weakness had come so near to forfeiting? Was she weighing that
chance between hope and fear, and with no thought except of him who lay
in the prison house opposite the tavern at Winnsboro’? Or was she
dreaming of me as well as of her father? Thinking of me with pity, with
gratitude, with—love? Had I built the bridge? Had I crossed the gulf?

I could not say, seeing her so still, so remote, so passionless. At any
rate I could not be sure. The whole width of the hearth divided us, and
she sat with her face turned from me. Not a glance of her veiled eyes
sped my way, and apparently she was not conscious of my presence. So
that by and by that of which I had been confident a little earlier began
to seem doubtful, a dream, a mere delusion on my part.

And yet it might be true! It might be that I did exist for her, largely,
filling the room, shutting out her view of the men about us, encroaching
even on her sense of her father’s peril. It might be so. At any rate it
was to this question that my whole mind was directed—what was she
thinking of me? What were the thoughts behind that averted face? Was I
still the betrayer of her father? Or—or what was I?

Presently the men began to pour the mess which they had cooked into
rough bowls, and for a time the steam, savoury enough to the senses of a
hungry man, switched off my thoughts. I took note of the room, while I
awaited my turn. The smoke of the drift-wood fire, mingling with the fog
that eddied in from the marshes, hid the roof, but the air below was
tolerably clear. The men had propped their guns against the wall
opposite me and I counted them. There were five. An active man, I
thought, might have cast himself between the arms and their owners, and
snatching a gun might have held off the five—Levi, I knew, was a
white-livered cur. But a crippled man could not do this; nor, as I found
a moment later when one of the men thrust a bowl and a hunch of
corn-bread on my lap, could he with any success cut up tough pork with a
pocket-knife.

The cooking was coarse, but I was famished, and I wrestled manfully with
the difficulty. I did so to little purpose, however. The bowl slipped on
my knees, I could not steady it. A man sniggered, another laughed. They
stopped eating to look at me. At that I lost patience. “Will you cut it
for me?” I said, holding out the bowl to the nearest man.

He refused—the truth was my difficulty entertained their clownish souls.
“D—n me, cut your own victuals,” he answered churlishly. “Enough, that
I’ve cooked ’em for you.”

“Be thankful you’ve a throat to swallow ’em with!” said a second.

The others laughed; and at that, I who had taken with coolness their
threat to murder me, felt such a rage rise within me, helpless as I was,
that the tears stood in my eyes. I looked at Constantia.

There was the faintest stain of color in her cheeks, but apparently she
was unconscious of what was passing. Still and self-contained, she was
eating and drinking with the steady purpose of one who was set on
maintaining her strength. As quickly as anger had risen, it died in me,
and, alas, my heart sank with it. The men might jeer and taunt and
laugh, I no longer cared. I finished my meal as I could, heeding their
amusement as little as she did. For the savor had left the food. I saw
that I must have been mistaken. Yes, I must have been mistaken. She
could not care for me.

When all was eaten Levi went down with two of the men to set a guard,
and he was absent for some time. When he returned, wood was put on the
fire and the lamp was extinguished. For a time he and the men remained
apart talking in low voices, but soon, one by one, they left the group,
pulled cloaks or blankets about them and lay down—one of them across the
trap-door. Levi made the girl some offer of accommodation, but she
refused it, and dragging a second box to the fire, to eke out the first,
she made a rough couch, on which she sat with her feet raised and her
back against the wall. I lay on the opposite side of the fire, some way
from her; and at times I fancied that her eyes dwelt on me. But I could
not be sure, for her face, half shrouded by her cloak and in shadow, was
hard to distinguish; while I, when I looked that way, met the light.

If I had been sure that her eyes were upon me, if I had been sure that
she thought of me and thanked me, I could have faced the prospect more
lightly. But I had no certainty of this; I had, indeed, much reason to
doubt it, and I looked forward to a night of suspense. I foresaw that as
the warmth died in me and the small hours chilled my bones and damped my
resolution, I should repent of what I had done. A man snored, another
muttered in his sleep, the mosquitoes troubled me. At intervals a horse
moved restlessly in the stable below. A marsh-owl, hunting along the
river bank, tore the night from time to time with its shrill screech. I
had no hope of sleep.

The danger that is thrust on a man, he must meet. But the danger into
which, being no hero, he has thrust himself, is another matter. I knew
that long before morning, I should feel that I had cast away my life.
Thoughts of Osgodby and England, visions of home faces, now thousands of
miles away, would rise to reproach me. I should see—with that terrible
four o’clock in the morning clearness—that for a fancy, for a woman’s
whim, for a fantastic point of honor, I had done what I had no right to
do; I had sacrificed my life and all that I had valued a short time
back. I should remember that she had scarcely touched my hand in
friendship, had never listened to a word of love, never said even that
she forgave me!

But blessed be the soldier’s habit of making the best of the present! In
half an hour, before the strangeness of the situation had quite worn
off, before her near neighborhood, at another time so disturbing, had
grown familiar, before the owl’s sharp note had ceased to startle, I
dozed. And presently worn out by strain—for sorrow sleeps soundly—I fell
into a deep slumber which lasted until long after daylight.

When I awoke there were only two men in the room. They were chopping up
drift-wood in a corner, and it was the sound of their hatchets that had
roused me. The fire had burned low on the hearth, and my teeth
chattered. A fog filled the outer world, poured in through the windows,
laid a clammy touch on everything. Firelight had done much the night
before to redeem the squalor of the room; this morning, daylight showed
it in all its cold and grisly reality. And where was Constantia? Where
was Levi? I crossed the room to one of the windows and I looked out.
They might be below. But at a distance of five yards the eye plunged
into a sea of mist. I could see nothing, and I turned about, shivering,
the cold in my bones.

“You’re a mighty good sleeper,” one of the men said as I met his eye.

“I was tired.”

“Well, it would be more than I could manage!” he answered cryptically.
“Do you think they’ll let him go!”

“Captain Wilmer?”

He nodded. He was a shock-headed man in a frayed hunting shirt, buckskin
leggings and mocassins. A greasy ragged unshaven figure of a man.

“No,” I said, “I’m sure they will not. Would you?”

“D—d if I would,” he answered, grinning. “I never let a ’possum go yet
that I got a grip of! But you’ve spunk, I’ll say that!”

The other man turned and silenced him with an oath, but I marked the
speaker for the best-natured of the band. Something might be made of
him, at a pinch. Meanwhile the two, having finished their task, stirred
up the embers, piled on wood and started the fire. When they had done
this I crouched miserably enough over the blaze, while the two went
about getting a meal. I noticed that the guns had been removed. It
struck me that, were I only fifty yards away in this fog I should be
safe from pursuit. But how was I to win those fifty yards!

As I thought of this and with my mind’s eye measured the height from the
windows to the ground, I heard voices below, and after a short interval
Constantia came up the ladder, muffled in her cloak. She did not look in
my direction, but she came straight to the fire and stooped over it to
warm her hands. Then, hardly moving her lips, and choosing a moment when
the two men had turned their backs, “Be close to me,” she breathed “if
trouble comes. Keep away now.”

She moved some paces from me as soon as she had spoken, and when Levi
and the other two men appeared, we were standing on opposite sides of
the hearth. Levi cast a sharp glance at me; I think he had his
suspicions—God knows what had roused them when I had seen nothing! But
he only swore at the men for letting down the fire and at the fire for
giving no warmth, and at the morning for being cold. If ever there was
an ill-conditioned cur, he was one!

For me, I was no longer cold. Her words, her tone, tingled through my
veins, set my pulses beating, did all but give strength to my useless
arm. I could face anything now, I could face the worst now, and hope to
live through it.

My relief, indeed, was unspeakable. But apart from me—and I masked my
feelings—it was a gloomy party that, shivering in the aguish air,
gathered about the poor meal and ate and drank in a brutish fashion.
Constantia kept her old place on the farther side of the hearth, and
muffled in her cloak preserved a stern silence. Her face by the morning
light looked white and drawn, so that even in a lover’s eyes it lacked
something of its ordinary beauty. But the strain which she was putting
on herself did not appear until the meal was over, and we had risen from
our seats. Then when the men, stuffing their corn-cob pipes, had gone,
some to feed the horses, and some to lean yawning from the windows and
curse the fog, she began to walk up and down the room; while Levi
watched her openly and I in secret. To and fro, she paced, the hood of
her cloak drawn over her head, to and fro, this way and that,
restlessly; only breaking her march at intervals to glance from the
window and sigh, and so to resume her walk.

“There’ll be no news yet, ma’am,” Levi said after a time. He spoke with
servility but I guessed that he was suspicious and uneasy. I wondered if
he had intercepted some glance meant for me.

She gave him no answer by word or look. She continued to walk up and
down. Impatience seemed to be getting the better of her. She could not
be still.

“They’ll be having the message, about this time,” he said, glancing at
me in turn. “Not a minute earlier.”

I nodded. I had no doubt that he was right.

“Curse me,” he continued, “but as sure as there are snakes in Virginia,
you’re a cool fish, Major! You mightn’t have a tongue in your head. What
is it, I’d like to know, you have up your sleeve?”

I laughed. It was easy to laugh since she had spoken to me.

The man with the buckskin shirt was sitting on the sill of the farther
window, swinging his feet. He began to whistle. The girl stopped in her
walk, as if she had been struck. She looked at him with something in her
face that was equal to a man’s worst oath. Then, “oh, hush!” she said.
“Hush!”

The fellow stared at her in astonishment, but he ceased to whistle. She
stood. For a minute or two there was no sound in the room except the
bubbling of a foul pipe, no sound outside but the wailing cry of a
waterfowl. It was the mallard’s cry that she had heard, perhaps; for
presently she resumed her walk, Levi still watching her with a crafty
eye. If she was listening he was thinking, and it was then for the first
time that it struck me with something of a shock that he was not the man
to let me go—however Wilmer might fare. A bad thought that, to intrude
at this time!

One of the horses pawed restlessly in the room below, and the man who
had gone down to feed them, shouted a question from the foot of the
ladder. Levi answered him. The interruption this caused brought the same
look of impatience, of endurance, of sheer suffering to the girl’s face.
She stood, she turned to me; for the first time, as if she could no
longer control herself, she spoke to me openly. “What time is it?” she
asked.

“Half past ten,” I said. “I fear that you cannot expect news yet.” I was
moved indeed, moved to the heart with pity for her; and pained, in the
midst of my own anxiety, to think that she should pass intolerable hours
in expecting what could not come yet—and in my view would not come at
all. By and by things would be better. The sun would suck up the vapors,
we should breathe more freely, we should be able to look abroad, we
should see something if it were but the sun-lit marshes. As it was, the
grizzly room, the choking fog, the men, the suspense, set the worst face
on everything and filled me with loathing.

Presently a flight of birds passed the house with a whirring of wings
and a single note of alarm. The man at the window leant out to follow
them with his eye. He muttered something about a gun, and again there
was silence, while Constantia resumed her restless march, and Levi
followed her with his eyes.

A long, long quarter of an hour followed, and then the silence was
broken. Out of the fog came a faint whooping cry, distant and tremulous.
The girl was the first to hear it and she stood, as if turned to stone.
I saw her stiffen, I saw her eyes dilate, her lips grow white. Her gaze
met mine in an agony of questioning. For a moment she ceased to breathe,
so intently she listened. Then the cry rose again, still distant but
louder. She turned to the trap-door, as if to go down.

But her limbs failed her—at any rate Levi was before her. I suppose he
had studied her as closely as I had. He bounded to the head of the
ladder, and slipped down it, calling out to her that he would see what
it was, calling out to the remaining man to look to me. The girl, thus
forestalled, turned from the ladder, and went to the window. She leant
on the sill, and I saw that she was shaking from head to foot. “It is
Tom!” she murmured.

“Tom!” I exclaimed.

“Yes! Tom!” she said, her breath coming in sobs. “He has news. Oh, God
in His mercy grant that it be good news!”

We saw Levi and two of the men run from the house, and vanish in the fog
that hid the road. We heard the cry once more—it was near at hand
now—but there followed on it a confused outcry, a thudding of feet, a
shot—the flame of which for an instant rent the mist—a struggle. The
girl sank against me, and if I had not put my arm round her and
supported her, she would have fallen. “It was Tom!” she gasped. “It was
Tom!”

“Then there’s some foul play on foot!” I cried.

“Yes, foul play,” she whispered. “They’ll not let us have the news!
They’ll keep the news from us!” For a moment I thought that she would
collapse altogether, but as suddenly as she had given way, she
recovered. She drew a deep fluttering breath, released herself from my
arm, stood up. She glanced, pale and frowning, at the man who leant from
the other window. He, too, was striving to make out what was passing,
and from time to time he gave vent to his excitement in an oath. He had
forgotten us, and forgotten his duty, too, if it was to guard us. While
one might count five she considered him; then deftly, with her eyes
still fixed on him she drew a pistol from some hidden place in her
dress, and slipped it into my hand. “Can you use it?” she whispered.

“Yes,” I muttered.

Then, “Now!” she said.

I cocked it, saw that the priming was in its place, and took two steps
towards the man. “Halloa!” I cried.

He drew in his head and found himself covered by the pistol; a pistol is
a thing a one-armed man can use. “Go down!” I said. “Quick!” He opened
his mouth to speak. “Quick, my man, go down!” I repeated. “Or—that’s
better!” I said, as, still covered by the muzzle he moved unwillingly to
the head of the ladder, and began, swearing furiously, to descend. “Tell
your rogue of a leader,” I went on, “to come under the window and speak
to me!”

I should have followed the man down, seen him out, and barred the outer
door, thus securing the horses; but one of the gang was in the lower
doorway, and though his attention was fixed on the scene that was
passing outside I feared to lose all by trying to gain too much. Instead
I waited until our man’s head was below the level of the floor, then I
dropped the pistol and shut down the trap upon him. As quickly as I did
it, Constantia was at my elbow with the heaviest case she could drag
forward. We set it on the trap-door, furiously piled a second on the top
of it and a third on that. Then we looked at one another. Her eyes were
gloomy. “They have killed him!” she exclaimed. “They have killed Tom!”

“I hope not,” I said. “They may have fired to frighten him!”

“And the news!” she panted. She clasped her hands. “He brought news!”

The news? Ay, it was that which had done it! She was hungering,
thirsting, parched for the news, and they kept it from her! She could
have killed the men, for that! And yet, what news, I wondered, had she
in her mind? What news could she expect at this hour of the day, when
Pete could barely have delivered his message?

Still that was a small question beside the fact that I was out of the
snare, was free, was armed. And she was with me, one with me, leaning on
my care and protection. I looked round the dreary room; it was changed,
it was glorified, I could have shouted with joy. Only now when it had
passed from me did I gauge the depth of the shadow of death! Only now
did I measure, with a pistol in my hand, my fear of the rope!

True, we were still in peril, but my heart rose to meet the danger, and
exulted in it. I knew Levi to be a cur and his men were much of the same
kidney. I reckoned that we were hardly two miles from the main road
along which our patrols would be constantly passing in the day-time; nor
more than four miles as the crow flies, from the detachment at the
ferry. A little shooting on Levi’s part or ours would soon bring our
people about his ears.

Still, we must, for a time, depend on ourselves and our own resources,
and we had only one pistol and six cartridges. A second pistol was a
thing much to be desired. So while I kept watch at the window, the girl
at a word from me fell to ransacking the men’s blankets and saddle-bags.

The search proved fruitless, but by the time it had failed, the man had
taken my message. We heard an outburst of oaths, and the sound of feet
running along the road; a moment and several figures showed phantom-like
through the mist. There was a second outbreak of blasphemy, then for a
time, silence.

“The rascals are consulting,” I said. “That will not raise their
courage. Councils of war never fight.”

The girl did not answer and I looked at her. She was sitting on a box
rocking herself to and fro, her elbows on her knees, her face hidden in
her hands. Then I understood. Our defence, our safety, what was passing
here, these were small things to her. It was still the news, the news
that she craved, the news for which she pined, the news that she
coveted, as she rocked herself to and fro in an agony of impatience.

I thrust my head out of the window. “Are you coming?” I shouted.

At that Levi showed himself, timidly and at a distance. “What cursed
trick is this?” he shouted. “What’d she reckon to fetch us here for to
jockey us in this fashion? Do you hear, if you don’t come down, I’ll
burn the whole house and you in it! S’help me, if I won’t!”

“Then you’ll burn your horses,” I replied. “And bring our detachment
from the ferry on you. See? And see this, too, you cowardly rogue. Give
up the messenger you’ve seized! Give him up! Or we’ll raise such a
racket as shall bring my people on you quickly! We have your horses, and
you cannot recover them without coming under fire.”

This was true for we had found two knot-holes in the floor, that
commanded the stable below. I fancied that this would go some way
towards bringing them to terms, for I knew that in the eyes of such men
as these their horses ranked after their own skins.

Levi was silent a moment, digesting the information. Then, “What is all
this?” he asked plaintively. “What messenger d’you want? We’ve none of
your messengers.”

“The messenger is Tom, Captain Wilmer’s negro,” I answered. “We know
that you’ve seized him. It’s no use lying to us.”

“I’ll come up and talk,” he said.

“No, you won’t!” I replied, scenting a trap. “If you come too close I’ll
put a bullet through you. I’ll give you five minutes to decide. Move
off!”

He drew off sullenly, and disappeared round the corner of the house.

The girl still rocked herself to and fro, and after a moment of thought
I left the window—at some risk—and touched her on the shoulder. “If it
were bad news,” I said, “they would not have kept it from you.”

She looked up at me, a light in her eyes. “Say it again,” she said.

I repeated it. “If I could believe that!” she cried, and clapped her
hands to her face.

“I can see no other meaning in it,” I argued. “If he brought bad news,
would he come so early?”

She stood up. “I must know!” she cried passionately. “I must know! I
will go down! I will make them tell me! I will wring it from them! Am I
to hide here while they know all?” And falling impetuously upon the
litter which we had piled upon the trap-door she dragged away the
uppermost case, heavy as it was, before I could hinder her. She seized
the next, and strove to move it.

I was between two fires. I had left the window unguarded, and I could
not tell what was passing outside. On the other hand I could not let her
go down and place herself in the power of these miscreants, who, unless
they were fools, would hold her as a hostage for my surrender. I caught
her by the arm. “Don’t!” I cried. “You are mad!”

But she would not listen, she persisted. She struggled with me, and I
had only one arm. I had to use my full strength. I dragged her away at
last, and in the excitement, having the unguarded window on my mind and
the fear of what the men might do while she kept me thus, I shook her—I
shook her angrily.

“Come back to your senses!” I said. “I am not going to let you do it! Do
you hear! You are not going down!”

“I must!” she cried, struggling with me.

“You will not!” I said.

She ceased to struggle at that, and appeared to come to herself. Then—I
still held her firmly by the arm—a blush dyed her face to the roots of
her hair. Her eyes fell. “Let me go,” she muttered.

“Will you do as I say?” I cried. “Will you be guided?”

“Yes,” she said, her lips quivering. There were tears in her eyes.

“And give up this mad idea?”

“Yes.”

“That is better,” I replied. “Then put that case back, if you please.
The news will be neither better nor worse because you do not hear it.”
And I let her go, and turned quickly to the window, intent, as far as
appearances went, upon Levi and the gang.

But if there had been anything to note, if Levi had made a move at that
moment, I doubt if I should have seen it. The contest had not taken two
minutes, but it had changed all our relations. The struggle and her
surrender, the contact between us—our hands had hardly met hitherto—had
put the spark to a train that in my case was already laid. My blood was
in a tumult, my face as hot as hers, my heart beat furiously. What her
feelings were I could only guess. But the tell-tale blood that had waved
its signal in her cheek, her sudden confusion, her drooping head, if
these did no more than own the man’s mastery, they were such an advance
on anything that had passed between us that it was no wonder that I
forgot the peril, Levi, the rogues, all.

A minute or two, during which I dared not look at her, brought me to my
senses. I saw that the mist was thinner, that the sun was beginning to
peer through it. Soon we should be able to look abroad, and Levi and his
men, surprised in the open and almost within view of the highway, might
find the boot on the other leg. My spirits rose; and again I remembered,
and they sank as quickly. The news! The news that she longed for so
hungrily, from which she expected so much. How could it be good? I knew
Rawdon too well, and the story of poor André was too fresh in my memory.
Besides, the men’s ultimatum could hardly have been delivered. And were
the news bad, as bad it must be, it mattered little what she felt for me
now. The feeling would not survive the shock.

I stole a glance at her. She was listening. Presently her eyes came to
meet mine. “Surely,” she urged, “the five minutes are past.”

“Yes,” I said, “they must be.” And looking warily out of the window I
shouted.

No one answered, no one appeared. But while I hung over the sill and
waited sounds that I did not understand came to my ears, vaguely at
first, but presently more clearly. It seemed to me that a struggle was
going on not far off. “I believe Tom has got away!” I exclaimed. “Or
they are fighting among themselves. Listen!”

The report of a gun startled us. The girl sprang to the window and
breathless, trembling with anxiety she leant far out; so far that I drew
her back. “Have a care!” I said. “They might take you for me!” Then,
“Who is this?” I asked.

A man had appeared at a little distance from us, and was approaching the
door. I knew at a glance that it was not Levi; Levi would have hailed me
from a distance or sneaked up under cover. This man came forward without
fear, a little switch in his hand. “It’s not Tom!” I said. The mist
blurred the man’s outline.

“Tom? No!” she answered looking at me piteously. Then, “Ask him! He
knows! He—” She could not finish. She clung to me. It was only later
that I took in the full wonder and the meaning of this. She clung to me,
though the news bad or good, was not known to her.

“Halloa!” I shouted to the man who was still a few yards from the door
but was coming on as coolly as if he were approaching his own house. “Is
it good news?” I had no doubt of the answer but it was best to know the
worst, best to have it over.

He looked up and saw me. He nodded. “Yes, it’s good!” he said. Then he
nodded again. “Quite good, Major.”

I stared confounded, while she—for a moment her weight hung heavy on my
arm. Then she sighed, stiffened herself, and drew away from me. I did
not look at her. For one thing I dared not, and for another, what if the
news were not true? Who was this man, and what did he know?

“Is she there?” he asked, looking up and tapping his neat boot with his
switch.

“Yes,” I said, still doubting.

“Well, send her down, will you?” he replied. “There’s somebody waiting
for her at the back of the mill.”

Then I knew the man. It was Marion—General Marion, for he had been
raised to that rank since I had parted from him.

CHAPTER XIII
CONSTANTIA AT SARATOGA

_“We don’t think much of Miss X— Y— my dear,
Quite too fond of the British Officers.”_
LIFE OF ELIZA PINKNEY.

The girl’s wits were so much more nimble than mine that she had
staggered under the news, recovered herself and done much to remove the
boxes from the trap-door before I could turn to help her. Then it hurt
me a little, I confess, that she had not a look for me, or a word. All
her thoughts were with Marion. She flew to the ladder, descended it, and
vanished, as if I had not existed, or as if I had not for twenty-four
hours spent myself in the effort to undo the misfortune which I had
brought upon her!

It was foolish of me to feel this, and more foolish to resent it. But I
did both and that so keenly, that I was in no haste to descend. The news
was good, her father was safe, and that was enough for her. That was all
for which she cared. Why should I go down among them, whoever they were!
There are times when we are all children, and stand aloof in sullenness,
saying that we will not play.

True, I had not done much for her—she had played her own game, it
seemed. But I had done what I could.

So it was Marion who presently, cool and neat and smoking the eternal
cigar, climbed up to me. He took in the wretched room with an
appreciative eye. “Home of the patriot!” he said, smiling. “This is what
you drive us to, Major.”

“It’s as full of fleas,” I cried peevishly, “as a starving dog!”

“I know,” he said. “The Carolina flea is grand. But I suppose that
you’ve not heard the news? We’ve hoodwinked you again, Craven.” This
time his tone was more grave but his eyes still twinkled. “Wilmer walked
past your sentries at nine o’clock last night, and he’s not a hundred
miles away at this moment and as free as air.”

“Thank God!” I said. And I meant it.

“Yes, you can’t fight a people, Major,” he continued. “You can’t fight a
people. You may be what you like on your side of the big water, but here
you’re no more than a garrison! You’re like a blind man plunging hither
and thither among people who see!”

“Suppose you descend to particulars,” I said coldly.

“The particular is Con, God bless her!” he answered. “There’s an
American girl for you! There’s a girl of spirit! Pity,” he continued
demurely, “that she’s a rebel! She wasn’t blind. By heaven, there wasn’t
a stone she left unturned from the moment you left the Bluff! She sent
to me and drew me into her plans. She sent to Levi, and drew him
in—silly girl—as if any good could come of those rogues! She drew you
into the scheme and made use, good use of you, Major. But all the time
she was her own best friend. She won a twenty-four hours respite from
your commander—that was life or death to her. Then, after learning
through her nigger and others the ways of the place, she cast dust in
your folks’ eyes by riding away to appeal to Cornwallis—it was
uncommonly clever that! And there, I give your folks credit—you can play
the gentleman when you please, Major. If all of you played it and played
it always,” he went on with a smile, “things would be very different
south of the Dan River. I should not be web-footed with living in the
swamps of the Pee Dee; and Sumter—” his smile broadened—“would not be
sore with riding bare-backed horses in his shirt.”

“I’m glad that you think we behaved well,” I said dryly. “But the fact
does not explain Captain Wilmer’s escape.”

“No, but Con made her market of the fact, God bless her, as of other
things,” he answered. And he looked at me so meaningly that the color
rose in my face. “She used it to get her interview with her father,
and—of course you were too gentlemanly to search her.”

“Which means?”

“That she took in a nigger outfit, and the rest of it, under her
skirts—wig, stain, and all. That night her boy, Tom, took the place of
the tavern waiter and carried in Wilmer’s supper and stayed while he ate
it. At nine o’clock there was a fight among some negro teamsters in
front of the tavern, and under cover of the skirmish Wilmer carried out
the tray, with a napkin in his mouth, crossed to the tavern, walked up
the yard as bold as brass, and vanished. Clever wasn’t it? Ten minutes
later when the guard was changed his black walked out too, carrying the
plates. I suppose, first and last,” Marion continued, thoughtfully
tapping his boot, “a dozen persons white and black, knew of the plan
before it came off—knew where the ’possum was—and not one peached. Weigh
that, Major, weigh that, if you please, and tell me, if you can, that
you still think you will beat us! Why you’re beaten already!”

“But Tom—”

“Oh, the nigger ran his risk,” Marion replied carelessly. “Wasn’t he
Wilmer’s boy, born on the place? He’d do that and more. And after all he
got clear. And by God—I don’t think that I ever saw a more curious thing
than I saw just now, and I’ll wager something it’s a sight that I shall
never see again.”

“What was it?” I asked dully. Seven words he had said earlier “she made
use, good use of you” were repeating themselves over and over again in
my brain.

“What was it? Why, a white woman on her knees kissing a black man’s
hands! A spoiled nigger, Major! You may take it from me, a spoiled
nigger! Wilmer may as well free him. He’ll never be worth a continental
cent to him again.”

“It was a clever plan,” I said. But I could not throw much spirit into
my words.

“Oh, she’s a jewel is Madam Constantia!” he answered. “It makes me laugh
now to think how she made use of us all. She wanted me to beat up
Winnsboro’ at sunrise to-day if Tom’s plan failed; as if I were likely
to venture my fellows against the whole British army! No, I couldn’t do
that, even for Wilmer. But I told her I would move up to Camden and be
at hand at daybreak to-day in case he was followed; and that if possible
I’d fall back by this road. As a fact Tom was here first with the news,
but those rogues—there’s a woman’s weak point, she don’t know whom to
trust—seized him, poor devil, for some reason of their own and when we
landed we found him tied up in a shed at the back.”

“What’s become of Levi?” I asked. Not that I cared one way or the other.
She had made use of me, good use of me—with the rest!

“Gone!” he said curtly. “And wise to go! We shall take their horses.
That’ll be some punishment. I would have strung him up with good will,
but there are times when we need a dirty tool.”

“Though you prefer a clean one,” I said bitterly. And I thought of
myself.

He laughed. “Madam Con will in future,” he said. “She’s had a lesson.
But, lord, how happy that girl is! Her father is safe, and she has saved
him!”

“Well, he’s no use as a spy any more!” I said. I was feeling mad, as the
saying is.

“That’s true,” he replied, not losing his good humor for a moment. “As
an American André—by your leave, Major—he’s blown upon. The risk always
made the girl miserable, and many’s the night, I fancy, that she has not
slept for thinking of him. Now that is at an end, and she’s doubly
happy. But there,” breaking off, “let us go into the open air. In a few
minutes I must be moving. My men are on the other bank, and when the fog
lifts we are too near your post at the Ferry and too far from our own
supports to be comfortable. I’ve a boat behind the mill and I can cross
in five minutes, but I shall not be happy until we are on the other side
of the Black River. I would not have come so far for any one but that
girl.”

“Nor I,” I said, forgetting myself for a moment.

Fortunately he had his back to me and perhaps he did not hear. A moment
later we were outside. “I am told that Rawdon has ordered you to be put
under arrest,” he said.

“You heard that?”

“Oh, we hear everything. The blind man’s moves are easy to follow. For
the matter of that Con saw your sword on my lord’s table. He was polite
as pie to her,” he continued, with a chuckle. “He was another of them!
He said a good deal about you; said that you’d thrown your commission in
his face, and he didn’t wonder—I suppose that was a compliment to
her—but that discipline must be maintained, and he didn’t know but that
he’d have to send you home.”

“There are times when we are all fools,” I said gloomily.

“Suppose I make you a prisoner?” he suggested.

“You would be a mean cur, General Marion, if you did!” I cried. For the
moment I was alarmed. Then I saw that he was smiling.

“Peppery as that are you?” he said. “I don’t wonder that my lord was for
putting you under arrest. But don’t be afraid. You’ve set us a good
example and we are going to follow it. Your fault, Major, is that you
think you are the only gentlemen in the world. Whereas we are of the
same blood or better!” He drew himself up, a heroic little figure, not
untouched by vanity. “Of the same blood or better!” he repeated. “And if
there are no gentlemen south of the Potomac River, then believe me, sir,
there are no gentlemen anywhere in the world.”

“Granted,” I said cordially. “But the misfortune is that you are not all
of a pattern.”

“No, nor you,” he riposted sharply. “There are good and bad, fine and
mean in every country, sir, and some day we shall understand that, and
shall cease to set down the faults of the few to the account of the
many. War is tolerable, Major; war between you and me! It is the abuse
of war that is intolerable. But I must go, or may be you will be making
me a prisoner. My compliments to Tarleton when you see him—a good man
but over sharp; over sharp, Major! Tell him that the Swamp Fox will give
him many a run yet, and will not be the first to go to ground if I can
help it.”

We had walked a little way from the mill, and while we talked a couple
of men had led out the horses. I had a glimpse of them as they vanished
round the corner of the building. Marion held out his hand.

“If we meet again, Major,” he said, “we will shoot at one another in all
good fellowship—all soldiers of the right sort are comrades in arms.
Meantime I wish you good fortune. And if, when the war is over—I expect
that by that time you will be once more a prisoner on parole—you have a
fancy for a little duck-shooting, there is none better than on the
Marion Plantation in St. John’s Parish.”

I could not resist his good humor and, depressed as I was, I returned
his grasp with spirit. It was impossible not to admire what I had heard
of him, and equally impossible not to like what I had seen of him. There
was in him a sparkle and a gaiety as well as an indomitable spirit that
explained the hold he had over his men, a hold that was firmest in the
darkest days and when the Swamp Fox’s life was not more easy than his.
“Certainly,” I said, “I will remember the duck-shooting, General. And if
I can procure leave for you to reside on your plantation, of which I
have no doubt we shall still be in possession, we may have the pleasure
of shooting the ducks in company.”

“Bah!” he cried laughing. “Long live the Thirteen States!”

“Long live King George!” I answered. “A clement and—”

“A very stupid sovereign!” he retorted gaily. He waved his hat, and I
waved mine. I understood that he did not wish me to learn the strength
of his party, or who were with him; and I made no attempt to follow him.
The sun was shining through the mist as he went round the house and
disappeared in the direction of the river.

Alas, the passing gaiety with which his good temper had infected me went
with him. For days I had lived upon excitement. The exhilaration of
movement, of effort, of danger, had borne me on. Above all the presence
of the girl, whose nearness set my pulses bounding, had filled my
thoughts and buoyed me up. Now in a twinkling I stood stripped of all,
and shivering. Excitement, exhilaration, danger, Constantia, all were
gone and I stood alone, by this cursed morass. I faced a future as flat
and dreary as the prospect before my eyes; and in the rebound, I could
almost have found it in my heart to pitch myself into one of the pale
channels which the sunlight revealed running this way and that across
the moss. The gaunt house beside me was not more lonely than I felt; and
ungrateful as we too often are to Providence—before whom I bow in
reverence as I write—the thought that I had just escaped from a violent
death went for little in my thoughts.

I was digging a hole in the mud with my heel and thinking of this when I
heard footsteps behind me. I turned sharply; who can measure the
swiftness with which hope leaps up in the heart? But the steps were only
Marion’s. He had appeared again at the corner of the house.

He did not approach me but called to me from a distance. “Have you any
message for my god-daughter,” he asked, “before I go?”

She has sent him back, I thought, to cover her retreat. Something, she
feels, is due to me; and this kind of left-handed message saves her
face. I felt it, I felt it sorely, but I pulled myself together—was I to
remind her of her debt? “To be sure,” I said as cooly as I could. “Be
good enough to congratulate her. Say how glad I am to have been of use
to her—along with others.”

“I’ll tell her,” he called out. “Very good!” And he laughed. “Good-bye,
then, till better times. And don’t forget the duck-shooting!”

I made him some reply. He waved his hat. He disappeared.

So it was all over. That was all that she had to say to me.

For a little while, for a few minutes, anger warmed me. Then that, too,
died down and left me chilled and miserable. I ground my heel farther
into the mud. The water welled up and mechanically I went on working at,
and enlarging, the hole.

I was paying dearly for a few hours of happiness; very dearly for the
belief which had lasted no more than a few hours, that she loved me. I
wondered now on what I had founded it. On the fact that she had drawn
back when it had come to hazarding my life? On that moment when she had
turned to me for help? On that other when she had clung to me? On a
blush, a look? Oh, fool! These were nothings, I saw now; things
imponderable, intangible, evasive as the air, fugitive as the wind. She
had not loved me. She had only made her market of me. She had only made
use of me. She had drawn me into her plans with others, with Tom, with
Levi, with her god-father, with Rawdon, with Paton! She had made her
market of us all—and saved her father’s life.

Well, I was glad she had! I would not for the world have had it
otherwise. If my love for her held anything that was good and honest and
unselfish—and I thought it did—I must rejoice with her, and I would. She
owed me nothing, while I owed her father my life. And so at worst we
were quits.

By this time the sun had drunk up the last of the fog, and showed the
flats in all their ugliness. Well, I would be going. There was no more
to be done here. It was all over.

I went into the mill and stood staring at the troop-horses. I saw that
with only one arm I should find it no easy matter to saddle them, but it
had to be done. First, however, I went upstairs to get my cloak, and I
found not mine only—on a box beside the expiring fire lay hers. So she
had left it as lightly as she had left me! Beside it, cast heedlessly on
the floor lay the pistol that had done so much for us. She had not given
a second thought to that either. I took it, and hid it in my breast. It
had lain in hers when she had been unhappy, when the heart, against
which it had pressed, had throbbed to bursting with the pain of fear and
of suspense. I would never part with it.

I went down, carrying the cloaks, and began to deal with the horses.
With some difficulty I saddled and bridled the one I had ridden, but the
gray proved to be a rogue. As often as I forced the bit between its
teeth it flung up its head and got rid of it before I could secure the
cheekstrap. Thrice I tried and thrice the brute baffled me and once hit
me heavily on the chin. A fourth time I tried and failing gave over with
an oath, and laid my face against the saddle. It was her saddle, and
heaven knows whether it was that which overcame me, or my helplessness,
or the feeling that they had left me to do this, but—

“You must let me help you with that.”

I started. The rush of joy was so over-powering, the shock of hearing
her voice so unexpected, that it dazzled me as if a flame had passed
before my eyes. On that instant of rapture followed another—of
unreasoning and unreasonable shame. How long had she been there? What
had she seen—she who had once called me a milksop? “I was tightening a
girth,” I mumbled, keeping my head lowered.

“Yes,” she said, “but it has slipped again, I think.”

I groped for it—it was indeed hanging under the horse’s barrel. I
murmured that the stable was so dark that it was almost impossible—

“You must let me help you.”

“You shall in a moment,” I answered. “I will just fix this.” And then—“I
thought that you had gone,” I muttered.

“Gone?” she cried.

“With General Marion.”

“Gone without thanking you?” she exclaimed. “Oh, impossible! You could
not think that of me! Gone without—”

“It was some mistake,” I said.

“It was a very great mistake,” she answered. “Will you allow me to pass
you?”

I made way for her to pass to the horse’s head. The stable was dark, I
have said, but as she went by, something prompted her to turn, and look
me in the face. “The brute hit me on the chin,” I said hurriedly.

She did not speak. I pulled down the gray’s head, and she thrust the bit
between its teeth. Then she proceeded to fasten the cheekstrap, but she
was so long about it that I saw that her fingers were trembling and that
her breath came as short and quick as if she had been running. “My
fingers are all thumbs this morning,” she said with a queer laugh. “With
joy, I suppose. But there, it’s done, Major Craven. Now I must get my
cloak,” she added, and she slipped quickly by me as if she were in a
hurry.

“I have it,” I said.

“And my pistol?”

“I have that too,” I said.

“Then I suppose that we had better be going,” she answered. “But perhaps
I ought to explain,” she continued, as she stood in the doorway with her
back to the light. “General Marion could not take me with him. He is
making for the Pee Dee and the great marshes, and hopes to be on the
other side of Lynch’s creek by night. He took Tom but he said that I
should embarrass him.”

“I see.”

“He thought that you would perhaps escort me as far as Camden,” she
continued soberly. “I have friends there who will receive me for the
night and send me home to-morrow by Rocky Mount and the fords of the
Catawba. He fancied that I had better avoid Winnsboro’.”

“I agree with him,” I said.

“I might be arrested, he fancied?”

“It is not impossible,” I assented dryly. I felt that something was
closing in on me and stopping all the sources of speech. This ordered
plan, this business-like arrangement—I was to be of use to the end it
seemed. Just of use! I strove desperately to resist the thought and yet
I could not.

“Then if there is nothing else,” she said slowly, “we might—be going, I
suppose?”

“I suppose so,” I answered heavily. And I turned the horses round.

“Or—do you think,” she suggested uncertainly, “that we had better eat
something before we start?”

“Let us eat it outside, then!” I replied. “I cannot breathe in this
place.”

“Yet you were ready enough to enter it!” she retorted. And then before I
could answer, “I must see what they’ve left!” she exclaimed. “There must
be something upstairs.”

She went nimbly up the ladder, leaving me staring after her. I turned
the horses round and secured them. Then, in a brown study, I went out
and for the first time I passed round the building, and saw the wide
river gliding by, and beyond it across the marshes the long low ridge
that goes by the name of the High Hills of Santee. The sun was shining
on the distant ridge, and on the water, and compared with the prospect
from the other side of the mill the view was cheerful and even gay. I
spread her cloak on a pile of lumber that littered the wharf, and then I
went back to fetch her.

She had found some corn-bread and molasses, and some cold cooked rice.
Even with the help of whisky of which there was more than of anything
else, it was a poor feast and she spread it in silence while I looked
on—thinking and thinking. From here to Camden was so many hours, two or
three or four. So long I should have her company. Then we should part.
As I rode away I should look back and see her framed in a doorway; or I
should stand myself and see her grow small as she receded, until she
turned some corner and was gone. And I should know that this was the
end. So many hours, two or three or four! And heavy on me all the time
the knowledge that I should spoil them by my unhappy temper, or my
dullness, or that strange feeling that benumbed my tongue and took from
me the power of speech.

She looked up. “It is quite ready,” she said. And then, lowering her
tone to a whisper, “Let us remember the last time we ate,” she said
reverently, “and be thankful.”

“Amen,” I said. “I thank God for your sake.”

“And I thank too,” she answered in a voice that shook a little, “all who
helped me.”

“Tom?”

“Ah, dear brave Tom!” she cried, tears in her voice.

We were eating by this time, and to lighten the talk, “I am not sure,” I
said, “that General Marion approved of the manner in which you thanked
him.”

“Thanked Tom? Because I kissed his hand? I believe I did,” she added
ingenuously. “Oh, it was a small thing! Surely it was a small thing to
do for him who had risked his life for me!”

Our eyes met. For a moment the red flamed in her cheeks but she met my
look bravely. “I am not ashamed,” she said. “I would do the same again
in the same case.”

The eyes that fell were mine. I was tongue-tied. Here was an opening but
how could I say that I was in the same case. How could I claim that the
risk I had run was to be compared with that which Tom had run. Or how
could I claim at all as a debt—what I wanted. Perish the thought! So I
went on eating, silent and stupid, thinking of the few, few hours that
separated us from Camden, thinking of the long, long time that would
follow. She said one or two things disjointedly; that her father would
free Tom, of course; that he was a very clever negro, and wonderful as a
bone-setter.

“I should know that,” I said.

“Yes,” she assented; and I stole a glance at her. She had found means to
plait up her hair and arrange her dress. She was another creature now
from the desperate, driven, tragical girl who had clung to me that
morning, whose heart had beaten for an instant against mine, whose
pistol at this moment lay hard and cold on my breast. My courage sank
lower and lower. Of that girl I had had hopes, on her I had had a claim.
But this one was a stranger.

Presently we had finished, and she rose and went down to the river to
wash her hands.

When she had done this she turned and came up the bank again, swinging
her hat in her hand, and softly crooning some song of praise. The sun
flamed from the water behind her, and out of that light she came towards
me, tall and slender and gracious, and with such a glory of thanksgiving
in her face, that my pride, or whatever it was, that stood between her
and me, and kept me silent, gave way and broke! What matter what she
thought? What matter if she trod me under foot, held me cheap, disdained
me? What matter? I went to meet her.

“You did that for Tom,” I said. “Have you nothing for me? For me, too?”

Her grave eyes met mine. She was nearly of a height with me. “For you,”
she said, “I have all that you choose to ask.”

“Yourself?” I cried.

“If it be your pleasure.”

And that, it may be thought, should have satisfied me, who an instant
before had despaired. But so presumptuous is success I was already
jealous, already exigent. “Ah, not as a debt?” I cried. “If you cannot
give me your love, Con?”

“I cannot,” she answered with smiling eyes. “It has been given to you
this month past.” Then as she hung back from me, blushing divinely,
“They have touched Tom’s black hands,” she said.

“God bless them for it!” I answered.

Later she told me that she had loved me from the hour I had kept silence
as to her part in the outrage at the Bluff. “I was ashamed, oh, I was
horribly ashamed of it,” she said. “I knew that neither my father nor my
god-father would have done that! Yet, I am not sure that it was not
earlier than that? I think it was your mention of the soldier’s wife
when you were yourself in—in danger—that clung to my memory, and would
not be shaken off, and—”

“Poor Simms!” I said. “And I once envied him!”

* * * * *

At Camden the Wateree becomes the Catawba, and happiness becomes memory
or anticipation, according as you gaze up or down the stream. For there,
in a tiny parlor in a white frame house looking on a poplar wood, I
parted from Constantia, and left her with the friends who were to see
her as far as Rocky Mount on her homeward journey. I fear that they were
rebels. But there are things which it is wise to leave _sub silentio_;
the dog that has found a bone does not bark. And my position was
delicate.

I felt that position grow more delicate in proportion as, with my face
turned towards Winnsboro’, I approached the camp. I was not sad; the
future held that which would make amends for present evils. But I knew
that I had an unpleasant passage before me, and my conscience was not
quite clear. At any rate I had misgivings, and taking care to reach the
camp at sunset, and as the guard was changing, I made my way to Paton’s
quarters without beat of drum. I was lucky enough to find him before the
Provost-Marshal found me.

He shook with laughter when he saw me. “Upon my honor, Major,” he said.
“We are all vastly obliged to you! You are a whole company of players in
yourself. As the hero-errant who relieves the Distressed Damsel and
releases the Beleaguered Knight you fill the stage. The camp is agog
with you. The latest about you is that the rebels have hung you from the
roof of a remote house in the marshes. And, lo, we are all lamenting
you, when in you walk as coolly as if the Dragon at Headquarters, robbed
of his prey, were not breathing Court Martials and Firing Parties and
the worst threats against you.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” I said stoutly.

“Innocent!”

“That is what I am.”

“Well, you will have to persuade my lord of it,” he retorted. “And
you’ll find your work prepared for you! Francis Rawdon-Hastings is in no
mean rage, my lad. The sooner you placate him the better. I hope the
lady has come to give evidence for you?”

I pooh-poohed this, but I took his hint and I went straight to
Headquarters, leaving him mightily amused. There, the storm was not slow
to break over me. My conduct was disgraceful, contumacious, subversive
of all discipline, flat mutiny. I had taken advantage of my position and
his lordship’s friendship, and the rest. I had collogued with convicted
rebels, I had wandered over the country with suspected persons. I should
be tried by Court Martial, I should find, whoever I was, that I could
not do these things with impunity! D—d if I could!

When I could be heard—and Webster, generally kind and easy-going, was
almost as bad as the Irishman, “But, my lord,” I said, “What had I to do
with the escape? It was not I who permitted the lady to visit her
father?”

That hit them between wind and water. They stared. “Then it was she?” my
lord exclaimed.

“Who took in the disguise, my lord? As I have since learned—it was. And
I venture to say that there is not an officer in the service in your
lordship’s position, or in any other, who would punish a daughter for
the attempt to save her father’s life!”

“The devil is that she did save it, sir!” he answered with vexation. But
he could not regain his old fluency, and presently he asked me to tell
him all I knew. I did so, feeling sure that he would be unable to
withhold his admiration; and the final result as far as I was concerned
was a reprimand and ten days confinement to camp—and an intolerable
amount of jesting! Some wag, Paton, I am afraid, discovered that her
name was Constantia and adding it to our Osgodby motto, the single word
“Virtus,” scrawled a whole series of “Virtus et Constantia” over my
books and papers. Perhaps in a silly way I liked it.

Certainly this was the least of my troubles. The greatest, or at any
rate, that which tried me most sharply, was the fact that I could not
communicate with Constantia without laying myself open to suspicion. For
several months I received no news of her and had to content myself with
doing all that I could to procure the release of her brother. Of me,
indeed, she heard through the mysterious channels which were open to her
side. But she was too thoughtful of me and too careful of my honor to
approach me through them. At length there came a change laden with
bitter sorrow to her. Her father fell in the engagement at Guildford
Court House in a gallant but vain attempt to stem the flight of the
Northern Militia. Stricken to the heart—though she had the satisfaction
of knowing that he had fallen on the field of honor—she abandoned the
Bluff which, exposed to incursions from both sides, was no longer a safe
place for her. With Aunt Lyddy and Mammy Jacks she came down to Charles
Town.

For how much the desire to see me counted in inducing her to take this
step, she knew and I guessed. And fortune which had frowned, presently
smiled on us. I was attached to General Leslie’s force in Charles Town,
and there I saw her almost daily and learned to know her as I had
learned to love her. I passed unscathed through the fight at Eutaw
Springs: she uninjured through many months of devoted attendance on her
sick and wounded countrymen. A month before the evacuation of the city
by the British, and when the approach of peace had already softened
men’s minds and made things easy which had been hard before, we were
married at St. Philip’s.

We passed our honeymoon on the Marion Plantation in St. John’s Parish
with a pass granted by General Greene; and there Constantia’s brother,
whose freedom I had procured two months before, joined us. When he, with
Aunt Lyddy and Mammy Jacks, went north to take up again the threads of
life at the Bluff, we crossed to the islands and thence sailed for
Europe in the Falmouth Packet.

With all our love for one another the last night in harbor was a sad
night for both. For Constantia, because she was leaving her native land.
For me it was saddened by the sight of the ships that lay beside us,
laden with those who had supported our cause and must now, for other
reasons than Constantia’s, face a life of exile. My heart bled for them;
nay, as I write twenty years later, it is still sore for them. But the
wound is healing, if slowly, and I look forward in hope and with
confidence to a day when the birth and the traditions which we share
will once more unite the two branches of our race, it may be in a common
cause, it may be in the face of a common peril.

So may it be!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“_It is one of the most beautiful romances he has produced._”

—_Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger._

SIR RIDER HAGGARD’S NEW NOVEL

LOVE ETERNAL

Crown 8vo. Cloth, $1.50 net

“... a romance concerned with two great themes—reincarnation and the
persistence of personal communication after death between persons who
love each other.... it has some excellent character drawing to recommend
it, and not a little basic truth of a kind which many persons are
groping for in these days of danger, loss and harsh handling by
fate.”—_San Francisco Chronicle._

“A sympathetic romance of love triumphant ... stands well above the
average of writings of this kind and will add new credit to the repute
of its versatile author.”—_The Tribune, New York._

“The reader’s attention is held, the glimpses of the war in those early
days when Godfrey was one of that immortal band of heroes to whom we owe
so immeasurable a debt, the ‘contemptible little English army,’ are well
done, and there is much that is both touching and beautiful in the
depiction of the love—love stronger far than death—between Isobel and
Godfrey.”—_The Times, New York._

“To the skeptic and doubter ‘Love Eternal’ will be read merely as a
pleasant love story; to the increasing number who feel there is
‘something in’ psychic communications, the book will carry a deeper
significance.”—_Detroit Free Press._

Longmans, Green & Co.
New York

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Madam Constantia : The romance of a prisoner of war in the revolution (South Carolina)" ***

Home