“Tell him to come back,” she answered, “to come back now, or when he will.”
“Or when he will,” he repeated smiling, and went down to order his horse.
At the tavern he found Jack Hicks and a neighbouring farmer or two, seated upon the porch discussing the raid upon Harper's Ferry. They would have drawn him into the talk, but he asked at once for Dan, and upon learning the room in which he lodged, ran up the narrow stair and rapped upon the door. Then, without waiting for a response, he burst into the room with outstretched hand. “Why, they've put you into a tenpin alley,” were his words of greeting.
With a laugh Dan sprang up from his chair beside the window. “What on earth are you doing here, old man?” he asked.
“Well, just at present I'm trying to pull you out of the hole you've stumbled into. I say, in the name of all that's rational, why did you allow yourself to get into such a scrape?”
Dan sat down again and motioned to a split-bottomed chair he had used for a footstool.
“There's no use going into that,” he replied frowning, “I raised the row and I'm ready to bear the consequences.”
“Ah, that's the point, my dear fellow; Aunt Molly and I have been bearing them all the morning.”
“Of course, I'm sorry for that, but I may as well tell you now that things are settled so far as I am concerned. I've been kicked out and I wouldn't go back again if they came for me in a golden chariot.”
“I hardly think that's likely to happen,” was Champe's cheerful rejoinder. “The old gentleman has had his temper touched, as, I dare say, you're aware, and, as ill-luck would have it, he saw you on the stagecoach this morning. My dear Beau, you ought to have crawled under the box.”