"And who is this pretty little girl?" he asked.
The sergeant, who had heard of her prowess in the havoc of hearts among the herders at the ranch, looked bewildered, then desperate, saluted mechanically, and was circumspectly silent.
"I am not a little girl," said Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane with adult dignity.
"Ah, indeed," said the embarrassed and discomfited officer. Then, turning to lead the way, he added civilly, "Beg pardon, I'm sure!"
If the sight of the sixteen guns on the four bastions of Fort Prince George had caused Peninnah Penelope Anne to shrink from her normal proportions, not too expansive at best, she dwindled visibly and continually when conducted within the palisaded parapets, across the parade, past the barracks, built for a hundred men but now somewhat lacking their complement, and into the officers' quarters, where in a large mess-hall there sat all the commissioned officers at a table, near the foot of which the two strangers were accommodated with chairs. It had so much the air of a court-martial, despite their bland and reassuring suavity, that Peninnah Penelope Anne, albeit a free lance and serving under no banner but her own whim, had much ado to keep up her courage to face them. Naturally she was disposed to lean upon her grandfather, but he utterly failed her. She had never known him so deaf! He could neither hear the officers nor her familiar voice. He would not even tell his name, although she had so often heard him voice it sonorously and in great pride, "Richard Mivane Huntley Mivane, youngest son of the late Sir Alexander Mivane Huntley Mivane, of Mivane Hall, Fenshire, Northumberland." Now he merely waved his hand to deputize her. In truth he shrank from rehearsing to these young men the reason of his flight from home, his duel and its fatal result, although his pride forbade him to suppress it. He had come to think the cause of quarrel a trifle, and the challenge a wicked folly. It was a bitter and remorseful recollection as his age came on, and its details were edifying in no sense. Hence, as Peninnah Penelope Anne knew naught of the story she could not tell it, and he escaped the distasteful pose of a merciless duelist.
She gave his name with much pride, noting the respect with which the officers heard it. She accounted for the incongruities of his presence here as the result of a trip from England to the province, where, as she said, "he was detained by the snare of matrimony." It was his own phrase, for as a snare he regarded the holy estate; but the younger of the officers were pleased to find it funny, and ventured to laugh; whereat she grew red and silent, and they perforce became grave again that they might hear of the French. Here she was vague and discursive, and prone to detail at great length the feud between the Blue Lick Stationers and the "cow-drivers" on the Keowee, evidently hoping that it might lie within the latitude of the commandant's military authority to take some order with the herder gentry,—for which they would not have thanked her in the least! But the officers of the garrison of Fort Prince George had thought for naught but the French, and now and again conferred dubiously together on the unsatisfactory points of her evidence.
"Do you suppose she really knows anything about it?" the commandant said aside to one of his advisers.
Suddenly, however, her grandfather's hearing improved, and they were able to elicit from him the reports which he had had at second hand from the cow-drivers themselves, in retailing which he honestly conceived that he was repeating genuine news, never dreaming that the information had blossomed forth from his own mission.
While less circumstantial and satisfactory than the commandant could have wished, the details were too significant and serious of import to be ignored, and therefore he acted upon his information as far as it was developed.
He ordered out a scouting party of ten men, and, that he might utilize Blue Lick Station as an outpost in some sort where they might find refuge and aid, he dispatched to the settlement a present of gunpowder to serve in the defense of the station, in case of attack by the French, and two of the small coehorns of that day, each of which could be carried between two men, to assist the little piece already at the station. In return for the prospective courtesy and shelter to his troops, he wrote a very polite letter urging the settlers to hold out if practicable, relying on his succor with men, ammunition, and provisions; but if compelled to give way, assuring the stationers of a welcome at Fort Prince George.