“Who has done this?” questioned Jane, firing up, “and if they have how can I help it?”
“I’ll tell you how it was, Jane Derwent. Last night, nigh on to morning, Walter Butler and young Wintermoot, with three or four other rank Tories from the fort, came to my house, banging away at the door for us to get up and give them something to drink. Now, I hate these young fellers worse than pison, but one can’t keep tavern and private house at the same time when a sign swings agin your door; any loafer has a right to call you out of bed when he pleases. Well, they knocked and hammered till I woke up the bar-keeper, and sent him down with orders to make their sling weak, and get rid of them the minute he could; but, mercy on us, gal, they had come down the river like a flock of wolves, and was just as easy to pacify. The amount of whiskey they drank among them in less than an hour no one would believe that hadn’t seen it. There was nothing but a board partition between me and the bar-room; so I heard every word they said, and considering that I was a respectable female that might be called upon to accept an offer of marriage any day, their conversation was not exactly what it should have been.”
“And they mentioned me—you said that?”
“Mentioned you? I should say they did—Butler, Wintermoot, and all the rest of em. I declare it made my blood bile to hear the language they used.”
“Will you tell me what it was, Aunt Polly—me, and no one else, for I would not have grandma and Mary know it for the world?”
“Yes—that is what I came for. Young Wintermoot began first—teasing Butler because he’d tried to run away with you, and had to give it up after you’d both started, when a little hunchback and a sneak of a minister said he mustn’t. These were his exact words. Then another set in and wanted to drink success to the next time in bumpers of hot toddy. Directly there was a crash of glasses and a shout, and in all the noise I heard your name over and over. Some were laughing; some said you were a beauty and no mistake, while Butler talked loudest, and said he was sure to get you away from the hunchback yet, spite of all your pride and ridiculous nonsense.”
“He said that, did he?” cried Jane, biting her lips with silent rage.
“Yes, he said that, and more, yet. When one of the fellows asked what the pretty squaw would do, he laughed, and answered, as well as he could for hiccuping, that after he’d got some money that he expected from Sir John Johnson, she might go to Amsterdam, or where she could find more fire and less water, for all he cared. Then he went on telling how he had left her in the woods above Falling Spring, only a few hours before, crying like a baby because he would not stay and tramp back to Seneca Lake with her tribe.
“The young Tories received all this with bursts of laughter, joking about his squaw wife, and telling him what a fool he was to let you go when once a’most off. They said it was clear enough you didn’t want to go with him, that he’d got the mitten straight out, because you liked Edward Clark better than him, and so he had married the squaw out of spite.
“That set him to swearing like a trooper; he said there wasn’t a word of truth in it, that you were crazy in love with him, and would follow him like a dog to the ends of the earth, wife or no wife, if you could only escape from the island, and no one the wiser—more, he said that he left you crying your eyes out that very night because he went off with the Indian girl instead of you.”