“Yes; and by the time we reach the house, that black rascal will have the mad Virginian upon us. By my soul I would rather meet fifty Cowboys than that single man.”
“Fool,” cried the enraged leader, “don’t you know Dunwoodie’s horse are at the Corners, full two miles from here?”
“I care not where the dragoons are, but I will swear that I saw Captain Lawton enter the house of old Wharton, while I lay watching an opportunity of getting the British colonel’s horse from the stable.”
“And if he should come, won’t a bullet silence a dragoon from the South as well as from old England?”
“Aye, but I don’t choose a hornet’s nest about my ears; rase the skin of one of that corps, and you will never see another peaceable night’s foraging again.”
“Well,” muttered the leader, as they retired deeper into the wood, “this sottish peddler will stay to see the old devil buried; and though we cannot touch him at the funeral (for that would raise every old woman and priest in America against us), he’ll wait to look after the movables, and to-morrow night shall wind up his concerns.”
With this threat they withdrew to one of their usual places of resort, until darkness should again give them an opportunity of marauding on the community without danger of detection.
CHAPTER XI.
O wo! O woful, woful, woful day!
Most lamentable day; most woful day,
That ever, ever, I did yet behold!
O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!
Never was seen so black a day as this;
O woful day! O woful day!
—SHAKESPEARE.