“Demoralized, subjugated, and negotiating with the enemy!” said a third.
“Well, where is the place of meeting—where are the terms being arranged?” I said.
“At a place called Disaways, on the lower Rowanty!”
“Good! I know the road there,” I said.
And with a laugh, which the general and his gay cavaliers echoed, I touched my gray with the spur, and set out toward the south.
XII. — BY A FIRE IN THE WOODS.
I pushed on, having resolved, after finishing my duties, to visit Disaways.
Soon Dinwiddie Court-House came in sight. I entered the small village, and looked attentively—as I had done on more than one occasion before—at the locality which General Davenant’s narrative had surrounded with so strange an interest. There was the old tavern, with its long portico, where Darke had held his orgies, and from which he had set forth on his errand of robbery and murder. There was the county jail, in which General Davenant had insisted upon being confined, and where so many friends had visited him. There was the old court-house, in which he had been tried for the murder of George Conway; and I fancied I could distinguish upon one of the shutters, the broken bolt which Darke had forced, more than ten years before, in order to purloin the knife with which the crime had been committed.