“They are marvellously puissant,” he retorted, “when they number two for one of the enemy.” The General's antipathy for the English was so great he could never do them justice. “I carry some record of their gallantry myself,” he continued, as he took off his hat and parted the bristling hair where the rough welt of a saber-slash proved a refusal to blacken English boots in the storm-torn years of the Revolution, when the General was a boy of twelve. “That fixed my opinion of the English,” he said, as he replaced his hat. “And can you believe it, that scar burned like fire the day at New Orleans. Also, it has felt better ever since.”
“Say what you will of the British,” I insisted—I was turned obstinate now, seeing no sign of Peg—“they make stubborn soldiers. Note what they did with Napoleon.”
“It was not the English,” responded the General, with heat, “who defeated Napoleon; it was Paris. He should have done with Paris what the Russian did with Moscow—burned it, sir; burned it to the ground, and thrown himself for his support upon the country. So I should have done, and my country would have sustained me.”
The General had been a partisan of the Corsican a score of years before; in the energy of his present defence, he arose from the seat and started again for home. I more slowly followed, still hoping the possible appearance of Peg.
As the General rounded a clump of bushes set near the path, he paused abruptly.
“What's this!” he exclaimed. The look of defiance for everything English, which still made hard his face, changed to one of tenderness and regard. “What's this!” he repeated.
There lay a little negro child, well coated and warm, sound and fast asleep for all the frost. The General thought no more on Napoleon, the English, the treachery of Paris, or the disaster of Waterloo. He stooped and gathered up the sleeping pickaninny in his arms.
“He is Augustus' little boy,” he said. “He has tired himself with play. Augustus should have better watch of the child such weather as this. I'll put a flea in his careless ear to that effect.”
Loaded with the small burden of the sleeping boy, the General led the way across the grounds.
Now when I had ceased to hope for her, a light foot on the sod told me how Peg was at hand. I verily believe the perverse witch to have been behind a tree, or hidden of a shrub, and not a score of yards from us during our whole halt in the square. I would have accosted her, but she brushed by with a curt bending of the head and not a word, and joined the General where that chieftain marched ahead with the pickaninny. My heart sank, and I fell still farther to the rear, more lonely than before Peg came.