“Madam,” he said, “had you refrained from my defamation I would not have told you this. But I will, to clear my name, for I could not bear to walk the scaffold with such a stigma on it.”
“Bravo!” says I; “boy, you use the grand manner like an orator. What was the school in which you learnt your rhetoric?”
“’Tis the very one in which you learnt your gentleness,” says he.
Being at a loss to answer him I made haste to turn the theme by warning him of his foes’ approach and his great danger.
“The sooner they are come,” he said, “the better I’ll be suited. But if you must know why I am here to-night, ’tis you that brought me, madam.”
I put my finger up and said: “Pray be careful, Mr. Coward, or I shall not believe you.”
“When my enemies four times foiled me,” he said, “in my attempts to make the north, and feeling that I had neither friends nor money in the south, that there every man would be my enemy, I knew that sooner or later I must be caught. It then occurred to me that your kindness, madam, towards a rebel had probably exposed you to a severe penalty from a Government that respects not any person. Wherefore, I thought, should I deliver up my body in the very prison that I had lately broken, without any prejudice to my foes or to myself, the matter might be simplified, and as no one had been incommoded, your pardon would perhaps be made the easier.”
I knew this for the truth, as the simple and deep sincerity of his words cast me in a miserable rage at my own impulsiveness. This speech had taught me that his behaviour, instead of being craven, verged perilously near the fine. And of course in the height of the mortified anger that I indulged against myself, the moon must choose that moment to throw her rays about the lad’s white face, that made it even sterner and stronger than before.
“And,” says I, “had it not been for thoughts of me, what had you done when you found your plight extreme?”
“A bullet would have done my business,” he answered, with an eager, almost joyful, promptness, that showed how welcome to him was that prospect of escape. “Anything is kinder than Tyburn in the cart, madam. I would have you believe that even I have my niceties, and they draw the line at the ignominy of the mob.”