"Is—is he?" His horse blocked the road aggressively. He kept his eyes on Gard.
"Well"—Mavering turned and surveyed the "make-up" critically, complacently—"I slept with him at his old man's last night. If a twenty-minute Dutch prayer is any proof, he's still in the faith of his fathers. I'm leaving you here, brother."
Gard nodded, rode into the ditch with a face conscientiously blank, mild, non-combatant, and passed the obstacle. Morgan watched him ambling leisurely away in the sunlight and the dust. Mavering waited some time.
"Look here, captain. Did I understand you laconically to insinuate I might accompany and chronicle your glories?"
Morgan wheeled his horse slowly.
"I guess so. Yes, you may."
The road went around a sandy hummock and disappeared. Gard did not look back. Beyond the strip of the Potomac the Virginia hills were blue and cool and peaceful.
Mavering meditated a disclosure. Still, whether Morgan had recognized Gard, or for a time had suspected it was he, or had only acted on constitutional aggressiveness, it did not seem likely in any case that he would chatter about the matter. He could hold his tongue without being warned. "It's none of my funeral." Gard had precisely stated what he wanted. Mavering remarked:
"That Dunker had a pass, if you'd asked for it—permit to scatter his tracts wherever he liked."
But Morgan did not comment. Mavering thought him likely to be dull company, and set himself to making other acquaintance and finding entertainment with experienced skill.