“Corporal of the guard! corporal of the guard!” shouted the sentinel in the passage to the chambers, “corporal of the guard! corporal of the guard!”
The subaltern flew up the narrow stairway that led to the room of the prisoner, and demanded the meaning of the outcry.
The soldier was standing at the open door of the apartment, looking in with a suspicious eye on the supposed British officer. On observing his lieutenant, he fell back with habitual respect; and replied, with an air of puzzled thought:
“I don’t know, sir, but just now the prisoner looked queer. Ever since the preacher has left him, he don’t look as he used to do—but,” gazing intently over the shoulder of his officer, “it must be him, too! There is the same powdered head, and the darn in the coat, where he was hit the day we had the last brush with the enemy.”
“And then all this noise is occasioned by your doubting whether that poor gentleman is your prisoner or not, is it, sirrah? Who do you think it can be else?”
“I don’t know who else it can be,” returned the fellow, sullenly; “but he has grown thicker and shorter, if it is he; and see for yourself, sir, he shakes all over, like a man in an ague.”
This was but too true. Cæsar was an alarmed auditor of this short conversation, and, from congratulating himself upon the dexterous escape of his young master, his thoughts were very naturally beginning to dwell upon the probable consequences to his own person. The pause that succeeded the last remark of the sentinel in no degree contributed to the restoration of the faculties. Lieutenant Mason was busied in examining with his own eyes the suspected person of the black, and Cæsar was aware of the fact by stealing a look through a passage under one of his arms, that he had left expressly for the purpose of reconnoitering.[117]
Captain Lawton would have discovered the fraud immediately, but Mason was by no means so quick-sighted as his commander. He therefore turned rather contemptuously to the soldier, and, speaking in an undertone, observed:
“That anabaptist, methodistical, Quaker, psalm-singing rascal has frightened the boy with his farrago[118] about flames and brimstone. I’ll step in and cheer him with a little rational conversation.”
“I have heard of fear making a man white,” said the soldier, drawing back, and staring as if his eyes would start from their sockets, “but it has changed the royal captain to a black!”