“Jezebel back ag’in in your own teeth, and damned piddler too, Mr. Sargeant!” cried Betty, who was easily roused. “What have I to do with piddlers, or escapes? I might have been a piddler’s lady, and wore my silks, if I’d had Sawny M’Twill, instead of tagging at the heels of a parcel of dragooning rapscallions, who don’t know how to trate a lone body with dacency.”
“The fellow has left my Bible,” said the veteran, taking he book from the floor. “Instead of spending his time in reading it to prepare for his end like a good Christian, he has been busy in laboring to escape.”
“And who would stay and be hanged like a dog?” cried Betty, beginning to comprehend the case. “’Tisn’t everyone that’s born to meet with sich an ind—like yourself, Mr. Hollister.”
“Silence!” said Dunwoodie. “This must be inquired into closely, gentlemen; there is no outlet but the door, and there he could not pass, unless the sentinel connived at his escape, or was asleep at his post. Call up the guard.”
As these men were not paraded, curiosity had already drawn them to the place, and they one and all, with the exception of him before mentioned, denied that any person had passed out. The individual in question acknowledged that Betty had gone by him, but pleaded his orders in justification.
“You lie, you t’ief—you lie!” shouted Betty, who had impatiently listened to his exculpation. “Would ye slanderize a lone woman, by saying she walks a camp at midnight? Here have I been slaping the long night, swaatly as the sucking babe.”
“Here, sir,” said the sergeant, turning respectfully to Dunwoodie, “is something written in my Bible that was not in it before; for having no family to record, I would not suffer any scribbling in the sacred book.”
One of the officers read aloud: “These certify, that if suffered to get free, it is by God’s help alone, to whose divine aid I humbly riccommind myself. I’m forced to take the woman’s clothes, but in her pocket is a ricompinse. Witness my hand—Harvey Birch.”
“What!” roared Betty, “has the t’ief robbed a lone woman of her all! Hang him—catch him and hang him, major; if there’s law or justice in the land.”
“Examine your pocket,” said one of the youngsters, who was enjoying the scene, careless of the consequences.