“Yes,” he said, with a forced laugh, rushing desperately into the opposite extreme, “but the danger and the courage are not worth talking about. Any man ought to be able to face a robber, single-handed, and as for twenty men, why, when it's once known, Sandy Flash will only be too glad to keep away.”
“Then, do thee do what I've recommended. It may be, as thee says, that the being prepared is all that is necessary,” remarked Dr. Deane.
Thus caught, Mr. Barton could do no less than acquiesce, and very much to his secret dissatisfaction, the Doctor proceeded to name the young men of the neighborhood, promising to summon such as lived on the lines of his professional journeys, that they might confer with the leader of the undertaking. Martha seconded the plan with an evident interest, yet it did not escape her that neither her father nor Mr. Barton had mentioned the name of Gilbert Potter.
“Is that all?” she asked, when a list of some eighteen persons had been suggested. Involuntarily, she looked at Miss Betsy Lavender.
“No, indeed!” cried the latter. “There's Jabez Travilla, up on the ridge, and Gilbert Potter, down at the mill.”
“H'm, yes; what does thee say, Alfred?” asked the Doctor.
“They're both good riders, and I think they have courage enough, but we can never tell what a man is until he's been tried. They would increase the number, and that, it seems to me, is a consideration.”
“Perhaps thee had better exercise thy own judgment there,” the Doctor observed, and the subject, having been as fully discussed as was possible without consultation with other persons, it was dropped, greatly to Barton's relief.
But in endeavoring to converse with Martha he only exchanged one difficulty for another. His vanity, powerful as it was, gave way before that instinct which is the curse and torment of vulgar natures,—which leaps into life at every contact of refinement, showing them the gulf between, which they know not how to cross. The impudence, the aggressive rudeness which such natures often exhibit, is either a mask to conceal their deficiency, or an angry protest against it. Where there is a drop of gentleness in the blood, it appreciates and imitates the higher nature.
This was the feeling which made Alfred Barton uncomfortable in the presence of Martha Deane,—which told him, in advance, that natures so widely sundered, never could come into near relations with each other, and thus quite neutralized the attraction of her beauty and her ten thousand dollars. His game, however, was to pay court to her, and in so pointed a way that it should be remarked and talked about in the neighborhood. Let it once come through others to the old man's ears, he would have proved his obedience and could not be reproached if the result were fruitless.