"It is a matter of conscience!" Baynell reiterated.
"I tell you, my friend, I wouldn't have such a conscience as that in the house! It's a selfish beast—a raging monster! exceedingly deadly to the interests of other folks," Ashley retorted with his bright eyes aglow.
Baynell glanced out of the great window, with its white, embroidered muslin curtains, between which he could see the ranges in the distance, Roanoke in the mid-spaces, the white tents of the girdle of encampments on all the hillsides about the little city; at intervals, held in cup-like hollows, were great glittering ponds of water, the accumulations of the storm, glassing the clouds like mirrors, and realizing to the eye the geologist's description of the prehistoric days when lakes were here.
A sudden suspicion was in Ashley's mind. His resolution was taken on the instant. "I hope you will advance no objection; but I intend to see Mrs. Gwynn and Judge Roscoe, and assure them that I had no part in giving this information to the quartermaster's department."
Baynell looked at him with an indignant retort rising to his lips, then laughed satirically.
"Do you imagine I left you under that imputation?"
"You consider it no imputation, but a duty. Now I don't see my duty in that light. And I prefer to make my position clear to them."
Baynell already had his hand on the bell-cord, and it was with pointed alacrity that he gave the order when old Ephraim appeared—"Please say to Mrs. Gwynn and Judge Roscoe that Colonel Ashley and Captain Baynell wish to speak to them a few minutes on a matter of business if they are at leisure."
Uncle Ephraim, in whose soul the misadventure about the horse was rankling deep, surlily assented, closed the door, and took his way downstairs.
"I recken you kin speak ter dem," he soliloquized,—"mos' ennything kin speak hyar. Who'd 'a' thought dat ar horse, dat Ac'obat, would set out ter talk ter de folks in de lawberry, like no four-footed one hev' done since de days ob Balaam's ass. But I ain't never hearn dat de ass was fool enough ter got hisse'f pressed inter de Fed'ral army. 'Fore de Lawd, dat horse wish now he had held his tongue an' stayed in de wine-cellar, wid dat good feed, whar I put him."