“Well, sargeant, how often is it that ye’ve boasted to myself that the corps wasn’t a bit afeard to face the divil?”
“No more are we, in battle array, and by daylight; but it’s foolhardy and irreverent to tempt Satan, and on such a night as this. Listen how the wind whistles through the trees; and hark! there is the howling of evil spirits abroad.”
“I see him,” said Caesar, opening his eyes to a width that might have embraced more than an ideal form.
“Where?” interrupted the sergeant, instinctively laying his hand on the hilt of his saber.
“No, no,” said the black, “I see a Johnny Birch come out of he grave—Johnny walk afore he buried.”
“Ah! then he must have led an evil life indeed,” said Hollister. “The blessed in spirit lie quiet until the general muster, but wickedness disturbs the soul in this life as well as in that which is to come.”
“And what is to come of Captain Jack?” cried Betty, angrily. “Is it yeer orders that ye won’t mind, nor a warning given? I’ll jist git my cart, and ride down and tell him that ye’re afeard of a dead man and Beelzeboob; and it isn’t succor he may be expicting from ye. I wonder who’ll be the orderly of the troop the morrow, then?—his name won’t be Hollister, anyway.”
“Nay, Betty, nay,” said the sergeant, laying his hand familiarly on her shoulder; “if there must be riding to-night, let it be by him whose duty it is to call out the men and set an example. The Lord have mercy, and send us enemies of flesh and blood!”
Another glass confirmed the veteran in a resolution that was only excited by a dread of his captain’s displeasure, and he proceeded to summon the dozen men who had been left under his command. The boy arriving with the ring, Caesar placed it carefully in the pocket of his waistcoat next his heart, and, mounting, shut his eyes, seized his charger by the mane, and continued in a state of comparative insensibility, until the animal stopped at the door of the warm stable whence he had started.
The movements of the dragoons, being timed to the order of a march, were much slower, for they were made with a watchfulness that was intended to guard against surprise from the evil one himself.