He hung his head in silence before the indignation of my glance.
“Ingrate,” I cried, “thus to thwart and to betray me.”
“The price was too great,” he said, doggedly, but the fear in his eyes was unmistakable. Meantime, Corporal Flickers had found his tongue, and was now engaged in giving the peculiar history of the capture to his commander.
“It’s God’s truth, sir, that that’s the rebel,” he began, in a tone that implied that he was trying hard to set all his own doubts at rest upon that point. Rubbing his eyes with renewed vigour, he repeated: “Yes, sir, that’s ’im, I’ll take my solemn oath. But it’s passing funny how I took ’im. I was asleep in my room and a-dreamin’ of my Mary, when I feels a hand quite sudding like upon my arm. At that I cocks up my eyes, and sees a light afore me, and a man’s figger a-bending across my bed. Like blue blazes, sir, I leaps to my feet, for I sees it is the rebel, and I takes ’im by ’is throat. But he was the most accommodatin’ rebel that you ever saw, for he stood quiet as a mouse, and says that I had done exactly what he had wakened me to do, for he was tired of being hunted for his life, and would I bring him straight to you, sir. I told ’im I would an’ all, and I done it lively, as you can see, sir, for I only stayed to put my breeches and my shirt on. But atween you an’ me, sir, though we’re all assembled here, sir, and a-talking as natural as ninepence as it were, it won’t surprise me much, sir, if I wakes up in the matter of half an hour and finds that I’m asleep, for everything seems that outrageous like that the more I think on it the less I can understand it. For what I asks is this: Is that the rebel that I see afore me or is it ’is counterfeit presentiment? And anyhow, sir, since that business o’ the woods I can’t be sure of ’im at all, sir, for in my opinion he’s a bit of a soopernatural as it were.”
“You are quite right, Corporal,” I interposed. “He’s a supernatural fool.”
All this time the chieftest actor in this play, the Captain, had not said a word beyond a little hollow praise of the Corporal’s sagacity and promptitude. Seen under the lamp his face presented the most ghastly and piteous appearance. False to his cause, false to himself, the dupe of his own passion, the slave of his own weakness, I began to conceive a great compassion for him, and a horror of my own callousness. As for the rebel, now that his headstrong folly had robbed him of his last chance of escape, all hope became abandoned. It was as much as ever I could do to prevent my anger and sorrow mastering my spirit and giving way to a flood of passionate tears. All our strivings to end miserably thus! It was only the severest discipline that could allow me to endure it defiantly. And yet though his own wilful act was to drag him to an ignominious death, I could but reverence his character the more deeply for its natural courage. The wretched fellow’s audacious strength had forged yet another bond about my heart.
Presently the Captain dismissed the Corporal, and thereby held himself responsible for his prisoner’s safe keeping.
“I can also bid you good-night, madam, or, rather, good-morning,” the Captain says. “The day has been most arduous for you, and I am sure you need some recuperation.”
“You are very kind,” says I.
Knowing that all was hopeless now, and that neither prayers nor tears could prevail against the prisoner’s scruples, I decided to retire.