“Ah, you have spirit, have you,” cried the officer, his laugh sounding harsh and unpleasant upon the evening air. “Well, you’ll need it before many minutes, my lad, if you don’t loosen that tongue of yours.”
“I tell you again, I know nothing about the American general’s army; I did not see them; I do not know how many or how few men there are in Richmond.”
“Corporal, the halter,” cried the officer; “there is no use in our wasting words here.”
The British corporal brought the rope; the boy’s eyes widened as he looked upon it, but his lips closed firmly. Without a word more it was tossed over the limb of a near-by tree and the corporal was widening the noose when Tom rode up.
“Just one moment,” said Marion’s young scout. “I would like to know what this little pleasantry means, if you please.”
He sat upon Sultan’s back and gazed coolly into the faces of the three redcoats. The officer had put down his pistol some few minutes before, and now clapped his hand to his sword. He was a handsome man, with piercing eyes that contained, also, something that was cold and cruel; his nose and chin were prominent and aggressive, demonstrating a bold and enterprising spirit—a spirit capable of great things or the most base. He looked at the young swamp-rider for a moment, and then said, sneeringly,
“So you would like to know what this little pleasantry, as you call it, means, would you?”
“Yes,” replied Tom Deering, his voice as even as though he were talking to Cole by the camp-fire, and his eyes as steady as though he were gazing at an empty horizon line, “I have some curiosity on that point. If you see your way clear to enlightening me I should be obliged to you.”
“And, suppose,” said the British brigadier, “suppose I should refuse?”
“In that event,” spoke the scout, “I would venture a guess—and a pretty accurate one, I fancy.”