For a moment Elizabeth saw more than the writing, she seemed to look into a pair of sad and steady eyes. Once more in a rush of confused emotions a wave of semi-unconsciousness passed over her and she found herself pressing her hands again hard against the rough bark of the old tree. Her eyes, staring at Black Smith, looked wild. She saw a scene of which she often dreamed, the old house surrounded by armed and mounted men. She heard the creak of wagons, the steady, rhythmic beat of marching troops, the cries of the wounded, already being carried to the rear, the throng and press which filled the steep and narrow road. She saw the clear blue moonlight over the wide plain, and the flaring torchlight at hand; she seemed to see John Baring standing in his doorway, looking at it all, hearing a question, a demand which could not be put off. It may have been that his wife stood beside him with her baby in her arms.
“I have built this house the best I know.” He had intended to live here long years, to die here decades from now—perhaps that intention went through his mind.
But he had not been given a long time for dreaming. He must decide at once. There was probably a heavy hand on his shoulder, a harsh voice at his ear.
“Here is a horse for you! We must know another way to Gettysburg and that quickly!”
Then Elizabeth awoke. This was not the time for dreaming, for trying to reconstruct the mental processes of John Baring!
“I cannot think,” she said to herself. “There is something in the back of my mind, but I cannot get at it!”
“I’ll give you one more minute, missy, to decide what you’re goin’ to do.”
Black Smith drew from his pocket a giant silver watch and looked at it.
Elizabeth looked down at the ground, then steadily up at Black Smith. There was in her blue eyes a hard expression. Thus had she looked when she had refused to sell her vegetables to the rude woman in Chambersburg. Thus had she looked also when she had first heard of John Baring’s crime. From some ancestor she had inherited a stubborn will. Her affection, her common sense, her pride, directed that she free Herbert promptly and that they go away as soon and as quietly as they could. But to neither affection nor common sense nor pride would she yield. She would have made a thorough-going early Christian martyr.
“How do I know that after I have given you the paper you will let him go?” she asked. “I might get the paper and you might not be satisfied with it and refuse to bring him.”