“I cannot pledge a state-prisoner, Colonel Allen; but I will hand you the punch with my own hands, since you insist upon it.”
“Spoken and done like a true gentleman, sir; I am bound to you.”
Then receiving the bowl into his gyved hands, the iron ringing against the china, he put it to his lips, and saying, “I hereby give the British nation credit for half a minute’s good usage,” at one draught emptied it to the bottom.
“The rebel gulps it down like a swilling hog at a trough,” here scoffed a lusty private of the guard, off duty.
“Shame to you!” cried the giver of the bowl.
“Nay, sir; his red coat is a standing blush to him, as it is to the whole scarlet-blushing British army.” Then turning derisively upon the private: “You object to my way of taking things, do ye? I fear I shall never please ye. You objected to the way, too, in which I took Ticonderoga, and the way in which I meant to take Montreal. Selah! But pray, now that I look at you, are not you the hero I caught dodging round, in his shirt, in the cattle-pen, inside the fort? It was the break of day, you remember.”
“Come, Yankee,” here swore the incensed private; “cease this, or I’ll darn your old fawn-skins for ye with the flat of this sword;” for a specimen, laying it lashwise, but not heavily, across the captive’s back.
Turning like a tiger, the giant, catching the steel between his teeth, wrenched it from the private’s grasp, and striking it with his manacles, sent it spinning like a juggler’s dagger into the air, saying, “Lay your dirty coward’s iron on a tied gentleman again, and these,” lifting his handcuffed fists, “shall be the beetle of mortality to you!”
The now furious soldier would have struck him with all his force, but several men of the town interposed, reminding him that it were outrageous to attack a chained captive.
“Ah,” said Allen, “I am accustomed to that, and therefore I am beforehand with them; and the extremity of what I say against Britain, is not meant for you, kind friends, but for my insulters, present and to come.” Then recognizing among the interposers the giver of the bowl, he turned with a courteous bow, saying, “Thank you again and again, my good sir; you may not be the worse for this; ours is an unstable world; so that one gentleman never knows when it may be his turn to be helped of another.”