“To be sure, Miss,” he answered obsequiously. “To be sure, time is running. Here, give me the ring.” He weighed it a minute in his hand and his eyes sparkled as if he had no mind to part with it. Then he turned to the ladder. The girl rose too. “I will speak to Pete,” she said.
“We need not trouble you,” he answered. “You sit down, Ma’am, and rest.”
“I will speak to Pete,” she said again, as if he had not spoken. And carefully averting her face from me—I wondered if she knew how deeply, how pitifully I felt for her—she followed Levi down the ladder.
CHAPTER XII
THE MILL ON THE WATEREE
With what a leaden and retarding weight
Does expectation load the wing of Time.
Mason.
The thing was done, for good or ill; it remained for me to make the best of it. I was in Levi’s power, but I might still by firmness hold my own for a time. Thinking of this, I turned a case on end, dusted it cooly with the skirt of my coat and setting it near the fire, I sat down on it and warmed myself. The men who had been left with me watched me curiously but did not interfere. They were busy, cooking something in a pot by the light of a wick burning in a bowl of green wax. Meantime, the minutes passed slowly; very slowly, while I waited and listened for news of the others. Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by before the clatter of horses’ shoes on the stones of the paved yard told us that Pete had started. A little later Constantia climbed the ladder, and appeared, closely followed by Levi, and by another man who was doubtless one of those who had slipped by me at the door.
The girl paused on reaching the floor, then deliberately she came forward and chose a seat on the opposite side of the fire and as far from mine as possible. Levi grinned. “Well, Major,” he said “Pete’s gone, whip and spur! If you’ve sense enough you’ll wish him luck.”
“I do,” I said cooly, “but as that matter is not very pressing, and I am hungry, uncommonly hungry—”