He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed to. But his spoken word belied the nods.
"The ways of Providence are inscrutable—something inscrutable, Captain Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' for all your mercies."
"Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it. As a soldier, I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the field."
"Well said, sir; brawly said; 'tis the part of a good soldier to be ay wanting to be in the thick o' the fighting. But now that ye're a man of substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country than the one ye can pay with a hantle o' steel."
"'Our country,' did you say, Mr. Stair?" I asked, feigning a surprise which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.
"And what for no? 'Tis the birthland of some—yourself, for example, and the leal land of adoption for others—your humble servant, to wit. I've taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I'd have ye to know."
At this I must needs laugh outright.
"Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?"
"Laugh and ye will," he said, quite placably; "ye shall never laugh the peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice, Captain Ireton."
Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.