She reeled and fell, fainting and exhausted, into the boy’s arms, and he led and dragged her back into her own room, and laid her tenderly on her bed. He chafed her hands and bathed her face, and by and by she returned to consciousness, and told him in more detail of the manner in which his father had left the house, and of the coming of the soldiers. But she never loosened her clasp of his hand until the gray light in the eastern sky announced the approach of dawn.
Then there came a knocking at the hall-door of the house. Bob released his hand from his mother’s, and slipped quietly into his own room and began to put on the rest of his clothes. But, long before he had finished, the knocking was repeated. It came louder, more persistently. He made haste to be ready, but, before he could leave his room, the knocking was again renewed, with strokes that resounded through the house. Somehow it reminded him of the knocking at the gate in Macbeth, and of the awful tragedy which the opening of that gate was to disclose. What tragedy would follow the knocking at the door of the house of Bannister?
[CHAPTER V]
AN UNEXPECTED BREAKFAST
As Bob descended the stairs to open the hall-door in response to the knocking, his mother stood on the upper landing, trembling with excitement and fear. When the door was finally opened, she could see, dimly outlined in the doorway, a man dressed in the uniform of a sergeant in the army of the United States.
“We have come,” he said to Bob, “by order of the provost-marshal, to arrest Rhett Bannister, who has been drafted and has failed to respond.”
The man was courteous in manner, but firm of speech.
“He is not here,” replied Bob.
“Pardon me,” said the man, “but we believe he is here. He was in this house last night. To the best of our knowledge he has not left it. We shall be obliged to search the premises.”