“Who but friends would dare to enter Queen Esther’s camp at night?” answered Brant, stepping forward. “You and I are on the same hunt; our warpaths cross each other here, that is all.”
“Ha, Colonel Brant, this is well! I had dispatched a swift runner in search of you. Schuyler has sent a force of armed men into Tryon County, and the settlements are astir. Gi-en-gwa-tah was away when the news came, but I have brought his warriors forward. Our spies send word that they threaten the master of Johnson Hall.”
“He is here,” said Brant, pointing to Sir John; “we got news of Dayton’s approach just in time to fly.”
“In time to fly! Were there no armed men upon the estate, that you should sneak away from your ancestral hall, like a dog which fears the lash? This was not the way that your father defended himself, young man.”
“There were but three of us, besides the servants,” said Brant, laying his hand heavily on Sir John’s arm, to prevent the sharp reply which sprang to the baronet’s lips; “there was no time to summon the tenants; even your new grandson, Walter Butler, counselled escape to the forest, where we can organize at leisure and sweep down upon the rebels when they least expect us.”
“Walter Butler—the husband of my granddaughter—and is he with you?”
Esther spoke without emphasis, and with an intonation sharp as the ring of steel; there was neither softness, anger nor surprise in that voice. She turned her keen glance from Brant to Johnson, questioning them both.
“He was with us a few minutes ago,” answered Sir John, whose indignation was aroused by this cutting composure, “but an ambush scattered us in the woods, and he has not come in yet.”
A cold glitter shot into Queen Esther’s eyes; her lips sunk with a quick pressure, and almost lost themselves between the contracted nostrils and the protruding chin. She beckoned to the Indian who had stood sentinel before her tent, uttered a few words of his own language in a whisper, that sounded like the suppressed hiss of a snake, and, with a slow sweep of the hand, passed from before her guests suddenly and softly, as a cloud precedes the tempest.
“A cold reception this,” said Sir John, when his hostess was swallowed up in the night. “Is her serene highness about to grill us for the loss of her cub?”