A HASTY EXIT
The afternoon following the soldier’s departure from the patroon village went by all too slowly, his jaded horse’s feet as heavy as the leaden moments. That he had not long since overtaken the coach was inexplicable, unless Susan had been a most tardy messenger. True, at the fork of the road he had been misled, but should before this have regained what he had lost, unless he was once more on the wrong thoroughfare. As night fell, the vastness of the new world impressed the soldier as never before; not a creature had he met since leaving the patroon village; she whom he sought might have been swallowed up in the immensity of the wilderness. For the first time his task seemed as if it might be to no purpose; his confidence of the morning had gradually been replaced by consuming anxiety. He reproached himself that he had not pressed his inquiries further at the patroon village, but realized it was now too late for regrets; go on he must and should.
Along the darkening road horse and rider continued 179 their way. Only at times the young man pulled at the reins sharply, as the animal stumbled from sheer weariness. With one hand he stroked encouragingly the foam-flecked arch of the horse’s neck; the other, holding the reins, was clenched like a steel glove. Leaving the brow of a hill, the horseman expectantly fixed his gaze ahead, when suddenly on his right, a side thoroughfare lay before him. As he drew rein indecisively at the turn, peering before him through the gathering darkness, a voice from the trees called out unexpectedly:
“Hitch up in here!”
At this peremptory summons the soldier gazed quickly in the direction of the speaker. Through the grove, where the trees were so slender and sparsely planted the eye could penetrate the thicket, he saw a band of horsemen dismounting and tying their animals. There was something unreal, grotesque even, in their appearance, but it was not until one of their number stepped from the shadow of the trees into the clearer light of the road that he discerned their head-dress and garb to be that of Indians. Recalling all he had heard of the masquerading, marauding excursions of the anti-renters, the soldier at once concluded he had encountered a party of them, bent upon some nefarious expedition. That he was taken for one of their number seemed equally evident.
“Come!” called out the voice again, impatiently. “The patroon is at the manor with his city trollop. It’s time we were moving.”
An exclamation fell from the soldier’s lips. The patroon!––his ill-disguised admiration for the actress!––his abrupt reappearance the night of the temperance drama! Any uncertainty Saint-Prosper might have felt regarding the identity of him he sought, or the reason for that day’s work, now became compelling certitude. But for the tenants, he might have ridden by the old patroon house. As it was, congratulating himself upon this accidental meeting rather than his own shrewdness, he quickly dismounted. A moment’s thought, and he followed the lease-holders.
In the attack on the manor, his purpose, apart from theirs, led him to anticipate the general movement of the anti-renters in front of the house and to make his way alone, aided by fortuitous circumstances, to the room where the land baron had taken refuge. As he sprang into this chamber the young girl’s exclamation of fear was but the prelude to an expression of gladness, while Mauville’s consternation when he found himself disarmed and powerless, was as great as his surprise. For a moment, therefore, in his bearing bravado was tempered with hesitancy.
“You here?” stammered the land baron, as he involuntarily recoiled from his own weapon.