However, ’twas precious little heed I paid the elements. The shoutings of the soldiers from the meadows was even distincter than before, and by that I knew the men were moving in the direction of the rebel and the house, and that if I hoped to put the lad in some safety not an instant must be lost. First, though, I had to find him.
I peered particularly on all sides for the fugitive, but failed to discover a solitary trace, and yet there was such a lustre in the hour’s bright conditions that the yard was nearly as luminous as day. Sure I was, however, that he must be close at hand, and accordingly was mighty energetic in my quest. And I had taken twenty steps or less when my eyes lit on a stable with an open door. Immediately I walked towards it, and as I did so, remembered that this was the very prison in which the lad had been previously held. This time there was not a bayonet and a sentry to repulse one, else a strategy had been called for; but, walking boldly in, I was rewarded for my labours. The prisoner was lying in the straw in the very posture of the night before. No sooner was my shadow thrown across his eyes than he rose to his feet with every evidence of pain, and, casting the pistol I had lately given him upon the ground, said:
“All right, I am taken; I submit without resistance.”
“On the contrary, my friend,” I answered angrily, being bitterly disappointed of his character, “you are not taken, other than extremely with your cowardice. You do not care for fighting at close quarters, I observe. Bah!” and I turned my back upon him.
“My benefactress!” he cried, in a strangely altered tone, “my benefactress! What do you here at this place, and at this hour?”
“What did I here before?” I said in scorn. “And why, sir, may I ask, are you not footing it to Scotland, as I ordered you, instead of returning in your tracks? I suppose it is, my gallant, that rather than help yourself, you would choose to throw yourself upon the mercy of a friend, heedless of what degree she is incriminated so long as she can contrive to shield your valuable person. So you submit without resistance, do you?”
He was very white and weary, and his breast was heaving yet with the urgence of his flight, but it pleased me to discover that my speeches stung.
“As you will, madam,” he answered, with a head upthrown, but also with a quietude that had a fire underneath, “as you will; but you are a woman and my benefactress, and I bend the knee before you.”
“Not even that,” says I. “Do you suppose I will take a coward for my servant?”
“Madam,” says he, “say no more of this, for perhaps you would regret it at another time; and, madam, do you know that you are the last person in the world that I would have regret anything whatever? You have been so much my friend.”