The peddler beckoned him to be silent, and walking to the door, opened it, with the stiff, formal air with which he had entered the apartment.
“Friend, let no one enter,” he said to the sentinel. “We are about to go to prayer, and would wish to be alone.”
“I don’t know that any will wish to interrupt you,” returned the soldier, with a waggish leer of his eye; “but, should they be so disposed, I have no power to stop them, if they be of the prisoner’s friends. I have my orders, and must mind them, whether the Englishman goes to heaven, or not.”
“Audacious sinner!” said the pretended priest, “have you not the fear of God before your eyes? I tell you, as you will dread punishment at the last day, to let none of the idolatrous communion enter, to mingle in the prayers of the righteous.”
“Whew-ew-ew—what a noble commander you’d make for Sergeant Hollister! You’d preach him dumb in a roll call. Harkee, I’ll thank you not to make such a noise when you hold forth, as to drown our bugles, or you may get a poor fellow a short horn at his grog, for not turning out to the evening parade. If you want to be alone, have you no knife to stick over the door latch, that you must have a troop of horse to guard your meetinghouse?”
The peddler took the hint, and closed the door immediately, using the precaution suggested by the dragoon.
“You overact your part,” said young Wharton, in constant apprehension of discovery; “your zeal is too intemperate.”
“For a foot soldier and them Eastern militia, it might be,” said Harvey, turning a bag upside down, that Caesar now handed him; “but these dragoons are fellows that you must brag down. A faint heart, Captain Wharton, would do but little here; but come, here is a black shroud for your good-looking countenance,” taking, at the same time, a parchment mask, and fitting it to the face of Henry. “The master and the man must change places for a season.”
“I don’t t’ink he look a bit like me,” said Caesar, with disgust, as he surveyed his young master with his new complexion.
“Stop a minute, Caesar,” said the peddler, with the lurking drollery that at times formed part of his manner, “till we get on the wool.”