She went and stood over the prisoner, looking down upon him coldly, but with compressed lips.
"Well, what do you want of me?"
Sprowl made a motion for Toby to retire. Humbly the old negro obeyed, feeling that he ought not to intrude upon the interview; yet keeping his eye still on the prisoner, and his hand on the pistol.
"Sal,"—in a low voice, looking up at her, and showing his manacled hands,—"are you pleased to see me in this condition?"
"I'd rather see you dead! If I were you, I'd kill myself!"
"There's a knife on the table behind you. Give it to me, free my hands, and you won't have to repeat your advice."
She merely glanced over her shoulder at the knife, then bent her scowling looks once more on him.
"A captain in the confederate army! outwitted and taken prisoner by a boy! kept a prisoner by an old negro! This, then, is the military glory you bragged of in advance! And I was going to be so proud of being your wife! Well, I am proud!"
There was gall in her words. They made Lysander writhe.
"Bad luck will happen, you know. Once out of this scrape, you'll see what I'll do! Come, Sal, now be good to me."