Uncle Lawrence paused, but as Major Gordon was silent he went on.
“His family, even Miss Katie, are in fear from his temper. You’ve had a taste of that yourself, and they say its sometimes awful: he’d as lief kill a person, if he was angry, as look at ‘em. Miss Katie, too, pities him, as is natural, for they were children together. I have heerd it was a plan of their fathers to marry ‘em, when they grew up.” His listener winced. “How that’ll be now, however, I can’t tell. Miss Katie worships the very name of her father, and would do a’most anything that she knew he wished: but I’m sartain, if he was alive, he’d sooner see her dead than married to her cousin. Her aunt, I hear, don’t think so, and is a great friend of the young man’s, which is the more odd, because she married just such another, who spent all her money and nigh broke her heart. But they do say, she went a’most crazy with grief, in spite of it all. Women, Major, are queer critters.”
“I suppose it’s this old compact,” said the Major, endeavoring to assume a composure he was far from feeling, “which has brought Mr. Aylesford down to Sweetwater.”
“Most likely. Though there may be something else afloat, as other sarcumstances make me suspect. He’s a tory at heart, I’m sartain. He was always high, and thought nobody good enough for him, talking of his cousin, Lord somebody, just as Mrs. Warren does,” and he laughed that low chuckling laugh, which was all his mirth ever rose to. “Such a man, Major, is naturally a tory; and tories are always on the watch, with their cunning ready, for this youngster’s as cunning as a fox; so I don’t know but there’s mischief afoot. That brings me, too, to my business, which is public, and to that private affairs must always give way, you know. But you’ll go back to the Forks?”
In manly bosoms, love, though the master-passion, is not the selfish and all-engrossing one, which mere romancers would have their readers to believe. Though Major Gordon was as anxious as ever to learn his fate from Kate, he saw that the present was not the time for it, and therefore declared his readiness to return to the Forks, and meanwhile, to hear what Uncle Lawrence had to say.
“It’s about the refugees, Major, that I’ve come to see you,” he said, walking by Selim’s side, as the latter proceeded homeward at a slow pace. “Yesterday, when we were all at meeting, widow Bates’ house was robbed and fired; and it could have been by none but them thieving vagabonds. Poor thing! she has a hard time to get along anyhow. Her husband was killed at Brandywine; and both her oldest sons are ‘listed for the war; so that she had nobody at home but her youngest, a boy of only twelve, and her little darter, who’s still younger. Among us, we manage to plow her little bit of land, so as to give her corn and rye enough to eat; but how she picks up the rest of her living, it’s hard to tell. Yesterday she walked into meeting with her children, though it’s a matter of five miles or more; and when she was away, somebody robbed her, taking everything that was worth carrying off, and then burning down her house.”
“The villains!” exclaimed the listener.
“You may well say that,” continued Uncle Lawrence, “for it’s not charity to call the scoundrels by softer names, as some folks, I hear, do in these times. Nobody but a villain would rob the widow and the orphan. Especially a soldier’s widow. It could only have been the refugees.”
“But have you no clue to them?” said Major Gordon.
“No what?”