“An honest one—only to get my gun up there, which the squire didn't have put out for me, when he dismissed me with his high-heeled shoes, to-day, and which I darsent name then, fear he'd have that thrown down, like my 'tother duds, and break it—only that—and if you'll say nothing, and let me whip in, and up to get it, I'll lay it up against you, as a great oblige, to be paid for, by a good turn to you some time, miss.”
“If that is all, go—and I may wish to speak with you when you come back.”
So saying, she gently let down the sash, and, withdrawing a little from her window, stood awaiting the result; when she soon heard the other, with the light and stealthy movements of a cat, enter the house, and ascend into the garret, through a small side-door, opening from the passage we have named. Scarcely a minute had elapsed before she again heard his footsteps stealing back by her door to the window, through which he had so noiselessly entered; when, once more raising the sash of her own, she found him already standing on the top of the ladder where she last saw him, he having effected his ingress and egress with such celerity, that but for the light fusil he now held in his hand, she would have believed herself mistaken in supposing he had entered at all.
“Well, miss, I am waiting for your say so,” he said, in a low tone, peering warily around him.
“Have you been to the Court House to-night?” hesitatingly asked the other.
“Well, now,” replied Bart, hesitating in his turn, “without more token for knowing what you're up to, I'll say, may be so and may be no so.”
“You need not fear me, Bart,” replied Sabrey, conjecturing the cause of his hesitation; “I am no enemy of those who have suffered there to-night. But do you know Mr. Woodburn?
“Harry, who got you out of that river scrape? Yes, lived in his town last summer.”
“He is among the wounded and prisoners in jail, it is said?”
“Dreadful true, miss.”