“What I want to know is this, Mr. Burton,” Wemyss asked. “Are you sure that Triggs and Clarke, with the southern rebels, have not joined Sumter? This is a point of the utmost importance. It is life or death to us. Are you clear about it?”
“Yes, Mr. Burton, let us hear you on that,” my lord said.
The question was put at an unlucky moment for my neighbor had just taken a pinch of snuff which set him sneezing. With difficulty he managed to say that—tishoo! on that point he was—tishoo! clear—quite clear, my lord!
“And just one point more, my lord,” Wemyss insisted. “Are you sure, Mr. Burton, that Triggs and Clarke are not near enough to join Sumter to-day? Before the time of my attack, sir, do you see? Because that is just as important.”
“Yes, we want no more mistakes,” my lord chimed in. “Let us be certain this time. What do you say to that, Mr. Burton?”
Mr. Burton, a stoutish man in brown, with a neat well-floured head—I could see so much of him, but little more, as he was next to me—sneezed again and violently. It was all he could do to answer in a half-strangled voice that—’tishoo! he was sure of that also—quite sure, my lord!
One or two laughed at his predicament, but my lord was not pleased. “If you can’t take snuff without sneezing,” he said sharply, “why, the devil, man, do you take it! Why do you take it? Now, Wemyss, have you all the information you need, do you think? Are you sure? Don’t be hurried. You must not let Sumter get the better of you, as Marion did.”
I think that Wemyss was not well pleased with the reminder that he had not been lucky on the Pee Dee. At any rate he did not take the hint to ask further questions. He was already on his feet and he answered that he thought that he now had all that he wanted. “If I don’t do it with what I know,” he continued rather sulkily, “I shall not do it at all. And by your leave, my lord,” he continued, moving towards the door, “I will lose no more time. My horses are outside and it will be as much as I can do to overtake my men. We can’t go by the cross-cuts and wood-roads that these d—d fellows use.”
“Nor by the marshes,” some one said, hinting slyly at his Pee Dee campaign.
“No, we are not web-footed,” Wemyss grunted.