“But now, John. Just as we were leaving Pegg’s Run. Could thee find where they went?”
“Oh, Lieutenant Drayton, will you find him for me?” entreated Harriet.
“I will try, Mistress Harriet. If he is to stay in the city, he will be put in one of the jails. If he is to go on to the interior the party would stop at one of the inns for the night, as ’tis now too late in the day to go further. The thing to do will be to go to the jails, and if he be not there, to make the round of the inns. Be not over-anxious. If he is to be found, and surely ’twill be an easy matter, I will soon bring you word of it.”
He lifted his beaver as he finished speaking, and left them. The two girls went slowly into the dwelling, and reported the affair to Mrs. Owen.
“John will find him, Harriet,” said the lady soothingly. “That is, of course, if he stays in the city, and as the lad says, the troopers will of a certainty stop here for the night. Try to occupy thyself until his return. He will do everything he can to find thy brother. Should he be found then we will try to get his release in some manner; but now busy thyself about something. Thee is too much agitated, and will make thyself ill again.”
“I know not what to do,” objected Harriet sinking into her favorite seat on the settle before the fire. “What shall I do, Peggy?”
“Read to me from that poem, Harriet,” suggested Peggy, bringing the volume to her cousin. “Thee was to do that this morning when John came with news of the battle. ’Twill make the time pass more quickly.”
“I would rather talk,” said Harriet, turning the leaves of the book rapidly. “I do not believe that a poem will content me. A tale would be more enthralling. Still there are some beautiful passages, and I will try some of them. Here is one that is considered one of the finest in the poem. Father read it to me once.”
With a voice rendered more expressive than usual by reason of her unwonted emotion Harriet read that wonderful and pathetic invocation to light with which the blind poet begins the third canto of his immortal poem:
“‘Hail, holy Light, offspring of heaven first-born.’”