I let her push me towards the door of the nearest hut; to hide there, as she said, seemed to be the wisest course for the present. But either the reek of the shack repelled me, or her insistence touched the wrong note. My pride rose and on the very threshold I turned. Why should I hide? I had Marion’s word and the girl’s word. And weeks had elapsed and nothing had happened since Levi’s last attempt. Was this some new trick for my good for if so, I would not stoop to it. The part I had played at the Bluff had been poor so far; I was not going to make it worse and disgrace myself by hiding in a nigger’s hut from a parcel of low rebels whom a single man with a pistol had put to flight.
“No!” I cried; and I resisted the woman’s thrust. “I’ll be hanged if I do, Mammy! I’ll see Levi and all his crew with their father the devil first!”
“Den you’ll hatter hang!” she gibbered, struggling to detain me. “Fer de Lord’s sake, honey, ’tend ter me! Don’t go in dar!” she protested, her voice rising to a shriek. “Don’t go in dar! Dey’ll hang you fer sho! Dey’ll—Marse Craven—fer de Lord’s sake—”
But I wrested myself from her hands, I flung out of the hut. As I did so, some one in the house laughed aloud, a pair of hands clapped applause, a glass shivered on the floor. I was being tricked, I was sure of it now; and I bounded across the short space to the door, Mammy Jacks’ wail of despair in my ears. I evaded a second figure that slipped out of the gloom and tried to stop me, I thrust open the door that was already ajar, and a pace inside the room I stood, confounded.
The table was spread for a meal and spread as I had never seen it laid at the Bluff, with glass and silverware and all that was rarest in the house. On it were meat and drink and whisky and even wine. At the head of the table staring at me with laughter frozen on her lips—aye, and with terror in her eyes—sat Constantia. At the foot was Aunt Lyddy, I believe, but I did not take her in at a first glance. For between them, seated at the table were three men in regimentals that glittered with gold lace. Two of them wore the green of Tarleton’s British Legion, one was in the King’s scarlet. And my amazement may be imagined when I saw that the one in scarlet, was young Paton, my own particular friend on the Staff! While of the others the nearer to me was Haybittle, a grim, hard-bitten veteran, who had never risen beyond a pair of colors in the regular service, but now ranked in the Legion as a Captain. I knew him well.
On both sides there was a moment of silence and astonishment. I glared at them.
The first to recover from his surprise and to find his voice was Paton. He pushed back his chair, and sprang to his feet. “Who-hoop!” he shouted. “Who-hoop! Run to earth, by Gad! Look at him, Haybittle! You’d think he saw a ghost instead of the King’s uniform. Here’s his health!” He swung his glass round his head. “A bumper! A bumper!”
I stood stock still. “But how—how do you come here?” I stammered at last. I stared at Paton in his scarlet, at the glittering table, at the candles that shed a soft light upon it, but it was only the girl’s stricken face that I apprehended with my mind. And even while I put the question to Paton, my brain asked another—what did her look of horror, of despair mean? “How do you come here?” I repeated. “You are not prisoners?”
“Prisoners!” Haybittle answered in his harsher tones. “Good G—d, no! We’ve come for you, Major, and a deuce of a ride we’ve had to fetch you! We’d pretty well given you up too!”
“Thanks to this young lady who lied to us!” the third man struck in. I knew him slightly—a New York Tory holding a commission in Tarleton’s horse and like many loyalists more bitter than the regulars. “It would serve Madam right,” he continued rudely, “if we burned the roof over her head! And for my part I’m for doing it!”