“But, my good fellow, why do you speak in this manner?” asked the surgeon; “you don’t wish to die, do you?”
“He’s one of the Tory League, doctor, and thought he wor goin’ under,” ventured to say one of the soldiers.
“One of the Tory League, eh?” exclaimed the surgeon, with a look of surprise. “Ah! I understand his wish to die; he’s afraid that he has escaped one mode of dying to suffer a worse, which he has deserved a hundred times for his black deeds.”
With an almost superhuman effort, the wounded man sprung to his feet, his face livid with passion.
“Ye’ve desaved me!” he fairly shrieked, pointing his bloody hand at the commander of the dragoons.
“I told you what I conscientiously thought to be true. I believed you to be dying and I told you so. You betrayed yourself,” calmly replied the lieutenant.
“Ye lie! Ye’ve desaved me, I tell ye!” and with a howl of rage, the ruffian, a fiendish look overspreading his scowling brow, drew forth a dagger he had concealed in his bosom, and sprung at the officer.
In an instant, he was seized by a dozen hands, and disarmed before he could carry out his design. The villain, seeing his plans frustrated, cast a diabolical look at his intended victim, then settled into a dogged quietude.
“Answer the questions I put to you,” said the lieutenant, approaching the Tory, “and you are a free man, though you should have merited a thousand deaths for your bloody acts.”
The man only looked at his interlocutor, but made no answer.