“And a hundred to that! I admit it, Con,” the man answered, “I have. But there was something about this fellow if you’ll believe me—”
“About him!” she retorted, blazing up. “A weakling! A milksop! A poor thing who swoons under a minute’s pain!”
“But if you had seen him pick the man up?” he pleaded. “It was that that took me, honey. It ran right athwart of all that I had heard of his like, and had seen of some of them! It was the devil of a mellay I can tell you! Of five who made off together after Ferguson was down he was the only one who fought his way through; and we were after him whip and spur. He was all but clear of us, when there came the other man running through the bush and calling to him, calling to him to take him up for God’s sake! For God’s sake! He stopped, Con! And I can tell you that to stop with the muzzles of our Deckhards between his shoulderblades and not forty yards off—”
“Who wouldn’t have?” she retorted scornfully. “Is there a man that wouldn’t have stopped? Is there a man who calls himself a man who could ride away—”
“Well, I fancy,” he replied dryly, “I could put my hand on one or two, Con. I fancy I could.”
“And because he did that,” she continued stubbornly, “because he remembered, for just that one moment, that he and the men whom he hires to fight his battles were of the same flesh and blood as himself, you do this foolish, this mad, mad thing! To bring him here, father! To bring him to the Bluff of all places! Why, if it were only that I am alone—alone here—”
“There’s Aunt Lyddy.”
“And what is she?—it would be reason enough against it! But to be left here,” the girl continued angrily—and it seemed to me that she was pacing the room—“alone for days together with this insolent Englishman who looks down on us, who calls us colonials and mohairs, and thinks us honored if he doesn’t plunder us—and if he plunders us, what are we but rebels? Who will hardly stoop to be civil even to the men who are risking their all and betraying Carolina in his cause! Oh! it is too much!”
“He’s not the worst of them at any rate,” Wilmer replied with good humor. “Sit down, girl. And as to your being left with him, I don’t know any one more able to take care of herself! If that be all—”
“But it’s not all!” she cried. “It’s not a quarter! If that were all I’d not say a word! But it’s not that, you know it is not that!”