"Very kind of you to come and see me, my lord," he said, in a dull, sad tone. "What do you want with me? Have you got anything for me to do?"
"I am sorry to see you looking so melancholy, captain," said Lord H----, evading his question. "I hope nothing else has gone amiss."
"Haven't I cause enough to be melancholy," said the other, looking round at the people in the room, "cooped up with a penful of swine? Come out--come out to the door. It's cold enough there; but the coldest wind that ever blew is better than the filthy air of these pigs."
As he spoke, he rose; and a little, pert-looking Frenchman, who had overheard him, exclaimed, in a bantering tone, "Why you call us pigs more nor yourself, de great hog?"
"Get out of my way, for fear I break your back," muttered Woodchuck, in a low, stern voice. "If your neck had been broken long ago, it would have been better for your country and for mine." And taking up the little Frenchman by the nape of the neck with one arm, he set him upon the table from the side of which he had just risen.
A roar of laughter burst from a number of the assembled guests; the little Frenchman spluttered his wrath, without daring to carry the expression of his indignation further; and Woodchuck strode quietly out of the room, followed by his military visitor.
"Here--let us sit down here," he said, placing himself on a bench under a leafless tree, and leaving room for Lord H---- by his side. "I am gloomy enough, my lord, and haven't I reason to be so? Here I am for life. This is to be my condition, with the swine that gather up in these pigsties of cities--suffocating in such dens as we have just left. I guess I shall drown myself some day, when I am druv quite mad. I know a man has no right to lay hands upon himself. I larnt my Bible when I was young, and know what's God's will; so I shan't do anything desperate so long as I am right here." And he laid his finger on his forehead. "No, no, I'll just take as much care of my life," he continued, "as though it were a baby I was nursing; but, unless them Ingians catch some other white man, and kill him--which God forbid--I've got to stop here for life; and even if they do, it's more nor a chance they'd kill me too, if they got me; and when I think of them beautiful woods, and the pleasant lakes, with the picture of everything round painted so beautiful on 'em, when they are still, and the streams that go dancing and splashing along over the big black stones and the little white pebbles, seeming for all the world to sing as if for pleasure at their freedom, and the open friendly air of the hill-side, and the clouds skimming along, and the birds glancing through the branches, and the squirrels skipping and chattering, as if they were mocking everything not so nimble as themselves, I do often believe I shall go crazed to think I shall never see those things again."
Lord H---- felt for him much; for he had a sufficient portion of love in his own heart for the wilder things of nature, to sympathize in some degree with one who loved them so earnestly.
"I trust, Woodchuck," he said, "that we shall be able to find some employment for you with the army--if not with my own corps, with some other, which may give you glimpses, at least, of the scenes you love so well, and of the unconfined life you have lived so long. But I have come to consult you upon a subject of much and immediate importance, and we must talk of that the first thing."
"What is it?" asked Brooks, in an indifferent tone, fixing his eyes upon the stones of the street, faintly lighted by the glare from within the house.