He pointed back to the Manor House through the oaks. Four belated dragoons dashed up at the same moment. What had detained them explained itself at once. Faint cries from the terrified group left masterless about the open door; a column of smoke suddenly rising against the sky—the defenceless old house was fired! Two of Danforth's cruel emissaries had slipped around to the rear and set brands to the thatch of an odd wing. In a moment the flames leaped high in air, roaring and crackling, before the eyes of its owner and his heir.
Boyd groaned. But he said no word. He watched the destroyer blaze from casement to casement, seethe against the old stone walls and surge upward in rolling masses of smoke, consuming all that was perishable before it. He had to stand there and hear his live-stock career in a panic down distant lanes as the great barn caught in turn and swelled the conflagration. Andrew covered his face. He could not bear the spectacle.
Once, however, he looked across at his father, and observed him still determined not to give his tormentors the satisfaction of a word of protest or despair over what was leaving him a ruined man; but the strong old face was working convulsively, and the overarched eyes were filled with tears.
Long afterward, Andrew used to say that it was the only time that he remembered seeing his father shed them.
"On!" commanded Danforth, abruptly, "the show is over!"
The father and son were separated; neither could they converse. They rode along, now too miserable over the past to be concerned for the future. The laughing and talking of the dragoons they heeded no longer. Once Boyd was heard to say, in a suffocated voice, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away!" He knew what that meant now.
After about an hour's slow progress, they entered a little defile between two low hills covered with pine-trees. As the middle of it was attained, Colonel Danforth, from the van of the column, raised his eyes to a covert, and then exclaimed, "Captain Jermain! Mr. Barkalow! Look up there—beside the white bowlder. Isn't that a man skulking?"
Before the other two could answer, a shot rang out on the breeze. A dragoon cried out in anguish and fell from his horse, dead. Another shot followed—another. The figures of several men were now discernible above, leaping between the trees.
"A surprise! a surprise! At them, every man of you! 'Tis a rescue!" called out Danforth and the other officers.
But the volley that hailed on them with this order was so full and galling that it struck the troop with panic. Men were calling out in pain, or falling, right and left. A wild slogan echoed above and around from the dense shrubbery. The horses plunged, their riders rolling in the dust under their hoofs. Encumbered with their steeds, the soldiers were utterly unprepared for such an ambush. Each second came the bullets from the ensconced sharp-shooters.