“They tried to put my eyes out with their ‘religion,’” declared Raymond. “They shall not have the amulet back again. They are better off without such ‘religion.’”
“That is not for you to judge,” said Arabella, staidly.
They were all strolling along the rampart within the stockade after retreat. The parade was visible on one side with sundry incidents of garrison life. The posting of sentinels was in progress; a corporal was going out with the relief, and the echo of their brisk tramp came marching back from the rocks of the river-bank; the guard, a glitter of scarlet and steel, was paraded before the main gate. From the long, dark, barrack building rose now and again the snatch of a soldier’s song, and presently a chorus of laughter as some barrack wit regaled the leisure of his comrades. The sunset light was reflected from the glazed windows of the officers’ quarters; several of the mess had already assembled in their hall to pass the evening with such kill-time ingenuities as were possible in the wilderness. Now and again an absentee crossed the parade with some token of how the day had been passed;—a string of mountain trout justified the rod and reel of an angler, coming in muddy and wet, and the envy of another soldier meeting him; at the further end, toward the stables, a subaltern was training a wild young horse for a hurdle race, and kept up the leaping back and forth till he “came a cropper,” and his sore bones admonished him that he had had enough for one day.
The air was soft and sweet; the Keowee River, flush to its brim with the spring floods, sang a veritable roundelay and vied with the birds. Sunset seemed to have had scant homing monitions, for wings were yet continually astir in the blue sky. All the lovely wooded eminences close about the fort, and the Oconee mountain, and the nearer of the great Joree ranges, were delicately, ethereally green against the clear amethystine tone of the mountain background.
And as if to fairly abash and surpass the spring, this dark-eyed, fair-haired girl herself wore green, of a dainty shadowy tint, and carried over one arm, swinging by a brown ribbon, a wide-brimmed hat, held basket-wise, and full of violets, while the wind stirred her tresses to a deeper, richer glitter in the sunset after-glow. For these violets Raymond had rifled the woods for fifty miles as he came, and she turned now and again to them with evident pleasure, sometimes to handle a tuft especially perfect.
Despite his hopelessness, in view of the impression he had received as to Mervyn’s place in her good graces, Raymond set a special value on aught that seemed to commend him. He had greatly enjoyed the pose of a successful soldier, who had returned from the accomplishment of a difficult and diplomatic mission. He cared not a sou marqué for the criticism of several of the other officers of the post who opined that it was a new interpretation of the idea of diplomacy to train cannon on commissioners in session and bring off the subject of negotiation amidst the thunders of artillery. He had felt that it was enough that he was here again, all in one piece, and so were the cannon,—and he had brought off, too, it seemed, the “religion” of the Cherokees. He experienced a sudden reaction from this satisfaction when Arabella turned from the violets, and pronounced him unfit to judge of the Indian’s religion.
“Why not? I am as good a Christian as anybody,” he averred.
Mervyn at this moment had a certain keenness of aspect, as if he relished the prospect of a difference. This eagerness might have suggested to Raymond, but for his own theory on the subject, that the placid understanding which seemed to him to subsist between Arabella and the captain-lieutenant was not as perfect as he thought.
The Reverend Mr. Morton paused, with his snuff-box in his hand, to cast an admonitory glance upon the young ensign.
“There is none good,—no, not one,” he said rebukingly.