“Yes, don’t go,” cried one of the children, a pretty little girl of ten or eleven. “Show Mr. Jason how the doggie can say his prayers.” She hauled Waggie from George’s coat, and held him in front of the farmer. George seized Waggie and returned him to his pocket. There was an angry flush on the boy’s face. He had no kind feelings for pretty Miss Peyton.
Jason’s expression underwent a complete transformation when he saw the dog. An idea seemed to strike him with an unexpected but irresistible force. The sight of the dog had changed the whole current of his thoughts. He stared first at Watson, and then at George, with a frown that grew deeper and deeper. Then he turned to Mr. Peyton.
“I came over to tell you about the Yankee spies who are loose in the county,” he cried quickly, in excited tones. “One of them was a boy with a dog. My son saw them—and I believe this to be the lad. I——”
The farmer got no further.
“Come, George!” suddenly shouted Watson.
At the back of the study there was a large glass door leading out to the rear porch of the house. He ran to this, found that it would not open, and so deliberately hit some of the panes a great blow with his foot.
Crash! The glass flew here and there in a hundred pieces. The next moment the ex-blind man had pushed through the ragged edges of the remaining glass, and was scurrying across a garden at the back of the house. After him tore George. In going through the door he had cut his cheek on one of the projecting splinters, but in the excitement he was quite unconscious of the fact. The children and their father stood looking at Jason in a dazed, enquiring way. They had not heard of the locomotive chase; they knew nothing of Northern spies; they did not understand that the farmer had suddenly jumped at a very correct but startling conclusion.
“After them!” shouted Jason. “They are spies!”
By this time the whole house was in an uproar. Most of the children were in tears (being frightened out of their wits at the mention of terrible spies), and the servants were running to and fro wringing their hands helplessly, without understanding exactly what had happened. Jason tore to the broken door, broke off some more glass with the end of the riding whip he held in his hand, and was quickly past this bristling barrier and out on the back porch. Mr. Peyton was behind him.
At the end of the garden, nearly a hundred yards away, was an old-fashioned hedge of box, which had reached, in the course of many years, a height of twelve feet or more. A little distance beyond this box was a wood of pine-trees. As Jason reached the porch he could see the two Northerners fairly squeeze their way through the hedge, and disappear on the other side. He leaped from the porch, and started to run down the garden. But his enemy, the gout, gave him a warning twinge, and he was quickly outdistanced by Mr. Peyton, who sped onward, with several negroes at his heels.