II
The Parson ran down into the cellar.
Blob's lantern glimmered on the floor, but there was no Blob.
He felt the door, cold to his hands as a corpse. It was shut fast as death. The catch had snapped; but the bolts were not home.
His first impulse was to open; his second to refrain. A man with a musket anywhere in the drain could not miss him. And he once down, the door open, all was over!—the cottage stormed, the despatches taken, old man Piper slain, and Nelson lost.
His ear against the clammy iron, he listened. Yes; outside the door he could detect the sound of faint breathing.
A distance away, he could hear the scuffling of feet.
He saw it all. They had shot Blob, who lay without, breathing his last. The door, left unguarded, had slammed, and they were nabbing Kit and Knapp in the drain.
His hand was upon the catch once more. Should he go?—dared he stay?
His spirit wrought within him.
Strong man though he was, he was whimpering in the darkness.
To slink behind that iron door was eternal shame; to go was inevitable ruin. Could he save his own old skin at the cost of that boy's? And yet he could not get away from the remorseless fact that to save his own skin might be to save his country.
His agony was short but terrible. The patriot prevailed over the man. The discipline of twenty years' soldiering had taught him life's hardest lesson—to sacrifice his feelings to his duty. He made his choice, and chose the path that has always seemed best to Englishmen in such case.
He slammed the bolts home.
He was up the ramp in a moment, and had banged the trap-door behind him.
Old Piper turned from the loop-hole.
"Seems there's summat up yonder behind the trees, sir. I yeard—Ah! what'll that be?"
From behind the knoll came a sudden holloa, then an uproarious burst of laughter.
"They've got em, by God!" The old man swung his chair about with lion- like eyes. "By your leave, sir, you must go to them lads."
The Parson was tearing off coat and cravat.
"I'm going…. I'll slip out of the dormer-window so as to leave the door shut."
He sped up the ladder, and down again in a twinkling.
"Here are the despatches! If I go down, it'll take em ten minutes to rush the place and give you time to burn the papers. Here are my pistols! one for the first Frenchman, and t'other—well, you're a better man than I am, Piper, you know what's right, but—"
"I'll trust my Maker before the Gap Gang," said the old man. "He'll understand…. Good-bye, sir. God help you."
"He will," cried the Parson. "It's His battle. Good-bye, Piper. I'm cut to the heart to leave you. But—"
He was up the ladder and out of the window in a moment, stealing across the greensward, Polly in one hand, and Knapp's bugle in the other.
No spatter of fire greeted him from the knoll; no flitting figures retreated before him. All was peace, and the fair breeze ruffling the sycamores.
The Gap Gang were at some bloody business behind the trees.