Certainly she should not persuade me now! Go? Never!
After all I had a quiet night. I slept well and awoke with a keen desire to turn the tables on her. I counted on her coming to learn the result of her last step, perhaps to try the effect of a last persuasion. But she did not come near me, and the day passed very slowly. I thanked heaven that Wilmer would return on the morrow. I should have some one to speak to then, some one to look at, I should no longer be cut off from my kind. And he might bring news, news of Tarleton, news of Lord Cornwallis, news of our movements in the field. Out of pure ennui I dozed through most of the afternoon. The sun set and the short twilight passed unnoticed. It was dark when I awoke. I wondered for a moment where I was. Then I remembered, and fancied that I must have slept some hours, for I was hungry.
And then, “Wilmer has come,” I thought; I heard the voice of a man in the living-room. Presently I heard another voice, nay, more than one. “Yes, Wilmer has come,” I thought, “and not alone. I shall have some one to speak to at last, and news perhaps. Doubtless they are occupied with him, but they need not forget me altogether. They might bring me a light and my supper.”
And then—strange how swiftly, in a flash, in a heartbeat, the mind seizes and accepts a new state of things!—then I knew why Mammy Jacks had brought no light and no supper. I heard her voice, excited, tearful, protesting, raised in the unrestrained vehemence of the black; and a man’s voice that silenced her harshly, silenced her with an oath. And therewith I needed no more to explain the position. I grasped it.
When a few seconds later the door was flung open, and the light broke in upon me, and with the light three or four rough burly figures, who crowded one after the other over the threshold, I was prepared. I had had that moment of warning, and I was ready. There were scared black faces behind them, filling the doorway, and peeping athwart them, and murmurs, and a stir of panic proceeding from the room without.
“You come without much ceremony, gentlemen,” I said, speaking as coolly as I could. For the moment I had only one thought, one aim, one anxiety—that what I felt should not appear.
“Ceremony? Oh, d—n your ceremony!” cried the first to enter. And he called for a candle that he might see what he was doing. When it was handed in I saw them. They were a grim, rough group, the man who had called for the candle the least ill-looking among them; as he was also the smallest and perhaps the most dangerous. They all wore wide-leafed hats and carried guns and were hung about with pouches and weapons. They stared down at me, and I stared steadily at them. “You’ve got to swap your bed for the road,” the leader continued in the same brutal tone. “We think you’ll be safer, where we’re going to take you, mister.”
“And where’s that?” I asked—though I knew very well.
“To Salisbury,” he said. But his grin gave the lie to his words.
“I am afraid that is too long a journey, gentlemen,” I answered. “I could not go so far. I am quite helpless.”