"There he goes! another insult!" cried the disabled soldier, partially appealing to the ladies. Under any other circumstances than those just then existing, either or all the four would have made some attempt to prevent what they believed would eventuate in an outright quarrel; but Mrs. Owen, as the hostess, did not like to interfere with the right of a guest to quarrel or even to fight, if he thought proper to do so, and neither of the others dared say a word for fear of forcing a betrayal of the disguise.
"Well, then," said the Colonel, who had spirit enough, sometimes, as we have before seen, to grow angry and be even threatening when he saw no personal danger before him. "If you do not like that, I will say something more. You are either crazy or drunk, Captain Slivers, and I do not know or care which!"
"I will fight you to-morrow, cripple as I am!" cried the Captain, while the ladies had now all risen to their feet in real alarm. Then, as if suddenly recollecting: "Stop! no, I will punish you in another way. You wear a Colonel's uniform—where is your regiment, sir? I will make you join it to-morrow and march within the week. Every regiment in the city is to be ordered off at once. See if I have not influence enough with my uncle, the Governor, to send you packing!"
"Find my regiment first—find it, sir!" said the Colonel, now fairly (and reasonably) exasperated beyond any recollection of what he was saying.
"Ah!—h!—h!" cried the Captain with one of those tones of stage exultation which he had so often heard proclaiming the final triumph of the villain or the discovery of that lost will which was to restore the flagging fortunes of persecuted virtue. "Ah!—h!—h! now I have got you! You have no commission, you do not belong to any regiment, and you are subject to the draft that is already ordered! Do you hear me?—the draft! the draft!" and he howled it out towards the Colonel as if he suspected him of a very material failure in his sense of hearing.
Achilles had his vulnerable heel, and there are times in the lives of each of us when the arrow of accident, harmless at all other periods, can enter and ruin. Colonel Bancker had kept his secret, or believed that he had kept it, inviolate; but his fatal moment had come. Whether really frightened out of all recollection at the thought of that terrible "draft" which has already twice re-peopled Canada[17] at the expense of the population of the United States, or whether exultant beyond bounds at the knowledge that he could escape it, by his age, in spite of them all,—he uttered the fatal word, oblivious that Judge Owen stood angry and astonished at the parlor door, and that others to whom he had so roundly sworn that he was only thirty-two, were within hearing.
[17] March 20th, 1863.
"You meddling fool!—what can that draft do to me? I am exempt by age!"
"It is false! it is false!" cried the pseudo-Captain, driving the victim to the wall more closely than even he knew. "You are not an exempt, and the Governor shall take care of you."
"It is a lie!" yelled the Colonel, now incensed beyond all recollection of time, place or auditors. "I am fifty-four!"