“Don’t quite know, sir. Teasing one of the prisoners, I think.”
Feeling that his father would be angry if the prisoners were annoyed in any way, he walked sharply to the throng, and, as he reached it, he heard a familiar voice say—
“Now, that’s what I call behaving like a brother should, gentlemen. He goes away into bad company and disgraces his name, lets his hair grow ragged and greasy and long, and comes here a prisoner with a nasty dirty face, so what have I done? I give him my supper because he was hungry, and he ate it all, and called me a crop-eared rebel for my pains. So after that I washed his face for him and cut his hair, and made him look decent, but I didn’t crop his ears, though the shears went very near them two or three times. But look at him now.”
There was a roar of laughter at this, and Fred could hardly keep from joining in, so comical was the aspect of Sir Godfrey Markham’s old servant, as he stood there with his hands bound behind him.
For, as Samson said, his brother was now quite clean, and he had cut his hair, which had grown long, in a bad imitation of a Cavalier’s. But this was not merely cut off now, but closely cropped, so that Nat’s head was round and close as a great ball.
“All right, Sam,” he said, as his brother came close to him. “Wait a bit till our side wins, and then perhaps I may take you prisoner, and if so—”
“Well, if you do—what then?”
“Wait, my lad, and see.”
Fred Forrester could never after fully explain his feelings. He left the group feeling as if some spirit of mischief had taken possession of him, and kept suggesting that he too had fed his brother, had given up everything to him, and been reviled for his pains. Why should not he show Scarlett Markham that courtesy was due to those who had made him prisoner of war? As it was, his old companion seemed to have grown arrogant and overbearing. He had spoken to him as if he were a dog, and looked at him as if he were one of the most contemptible objects under the sun.
“No,” he said, with a half-laugh, “I could not do it.”