Over his face the red blood ran. He sat for the briefest second regarding her with a puzzled air.
“To defend the country from the invader, to do anything that can be done to thwart the enemy’s designs, is man’s duty,” he said at length. “But to face a battery of bright eyes requires courage, Mistress Peggy. And that I have not.”
The words were scarcely uttered before he was gone.
The British were at the house, and some of them might stray into her retreat at any moment; the youth who had started forth so bravely might fail to give his warning in time to save the men upon whom the welfare of the state depended; she might never see her own little mare again; but, in spite of all these things the maiden sank upon a rock shaken with laughter.
“The dear, shy fellow!” she gasped sitting up presently to wipe her eyes. “And he hath no courage! Ah, Betty! thy ‘Silent Knight’ hath spoken to some purpose at last. I must remember the exact words. Let me see! He said:
“‘To defend the country from the invader, to do anything that can be done to thwart the enemy’s designs, is man’s duty. But to face a battery of bright eyes requires courage, Mistress Peggy. And that I have not.’
“Won’t the girls laugh when I tell them?”
It was pleasant under the trees. An oriole swung from the topmost bough of a large oak pouring forth a flood of song. Woodpeckers flapped their bright wings from tree to tree. A multitude of sparrows flashed in and out of the foliage, or circled joyously about blossoming shrubs. From distant fields and forests the caw of the crows winging their slow way across the blue sky came monotonously. A cloud of yellow butterflies rested upon the low banks of the ravine crowned with ferns. Into the heart of a wild honeysuckle a humming-bird whirred, delighting Peggy by its beauty, minuteness and ceaseless motion of its wings. And so the long hours of the afternoon passed, and the westering sun was casting long shadows under the trees before Jimmy came with the news that the British had gone.
“And wasn’t that Colonel Tarleton in a towering rage,” commented the mistress of the dwelling as Peggy reëntered the house. “He stormed because dinner was so late. And such a dinner. I’ll warrant those troopers won’t find hard riding so easy after it. Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry will owe a great deal to fried chicken, if they get warned in time. It took every chicken I had on the place, and not a few hams. But it gave that boy a good start, so I don’t mind. Do you think he’ll get through, my dear?”
“Yes, I do,” answered Peggy. “If it can be done I feel sure that Fairfax Johnson can do it. I must tell thee what he said,” she ended with a laugh. “It hath much amused me.”