"Where is it you purpose to conduct me?"
"Silence!" said Habershaw sternly. "Obey orders, sir, and march where you are directed."
Butler folded his arms and looked scornfully at the uncouth savage before him as he replied:
"I am a prisoner, sir, and therefore bound to submit to the force that constrains me. But there will be a day of reckoning, both for you and your master. It will not be the lighter to him for having hired such a ruffian to do the business in which he is ashamed to appear himself."
"Devil's leavings!" screamed Habershaw, almost choked with choler, "dare you speak to me so? By my heart, I have a mind to cleave your skull for you! My master, sir! You will find out, before long, who is master, when Hugh Habershaw has tied the knot that is to fit your neck."
"Peace, villain!" exclaimed Butler; "I cannot come too soon into the presence of those who claim to direct your motions."
Here James Curry interposed to draw off the incensed captain, and Butler, having received another order from the officer of the guard, moved out upon the road and took the place that was assigned him, between two platoons of the foot soldiers.
The troopers being mounted and formed into column of march with Habershaw and his trumpeter at the head and Curry in the rear, now moved forward at a slow gait, followed by the detachment of infantry who had the prisoner under their especial charge.
It was near noon when the party took up the line of march, and they prosecuted their journey southward with such expedition as to tax Butler's powers to the utmost to keep even pace with them over roads that were in many places rendered miry by the late rain. Towards evening, however, the sun had sufficiently dried the soil to make the travel less fatiguing; and by that hour when the light of day only lingered upon the tops of the western hills, the military escort, with their prisoner, were seen passing through a defile that opened upon their view an extensive bivouac of some two or three hundred horse and foot, and occupying a space of open field, encompassed with wood and guarded in its rear by a smooth and gentle river.
The spot at which they had arrived was the camp of a partisan corps under the command of Colonel Innis. A farm-house was seen in the immediate neighborhood, which was used as the head-quarters of a party of officers. Numerous horses were attached to the trees that bounded the plain, and various shelters were made in the same quarter, in the rudest form of accommodation, of branches and underwood set against ridge-poles, that were sustained by stakes, to protect the men against the weather. Groups of this irregular soldiery were scattered over the plain, a few wagons were seen collected in one direction, and, not far off, a line of fires, around which parties were engaged in cooking food. Here and there a sentinel was seen pacing his short limits, and occasionally the roll of a drum and the flourish of a fife announced some ceremony of the camp police.