“Why didn’t you say so before?” growled the sentry lowering his gun. “What’s the matter with that horse?”
“I think he must have stepped among some thorn bushes,” replied Harriet sweetly. “I will soon quiet him, friend. The underbrush is thick hereabouts.”
“Too thick to be straying around in at night,” he answered with some roughness. “That horse is enough to scare the British. What are you doing in the woods? You are bound to lose your way.”
“We have done that already,” she told him with apparent frankness. She had succeeded by this time in quieting Fleetwood, who now resumed his normal position. By the merest chance they had stumbled upon the password, and she purposed making the most of it. “You see we were at a party in the camp, and coming back my cousin and I thought to make a short cut through the woods so as to get home quickly. We ought to have been there long ago, but ’twas a pretty little frisk, and we just couldn’t make up our minds to leave. You know how it is.”
“Yes,” he rejoined laughing good naturedly. “I know how ’tis. I’ve gals of my own. Well, you just get over to that road as fast as you can. ’Tis a half mile straight to your right. And say! if another sentinel asks for the countersign speak right up. You’re liable to get a ball if you don’t.”
“Thank you,” she said. “We will remember. Come, my cousin.”
“You blessed Peggy!” she exclaimed as they passed beyond the hearing of the guard. “How did you chance upon that watchword?”
“I don’t know,” answered Peggy, who had not yet recovered her equanimity. “I meant to say, ‘Look out!’ I don’t know how I came to say sharp. But what was the matter with Fleetwood? Was he among thorns?”
“Dear me, no! ’Tis a trick that I taught him. You do not know all his accomplishments. ’Twas well for that sentinel that he let us through. Wasn’t it, old fellow?” And her laugh as she patted the animal was not a pleasant one to hear.
Peggy shuddered. She would not like Star to be taught such tricks, she thought, giving the little mare a loving caress. She was beginning to doubt the wisdom of coming with Harriet. The girl appeared to know her way so well, to be so able to care for herself that there seemed no need for Peggy to be along. But let her see her safely to a place where she could reach her own people, and then Peggy resolved, with a quick tightening of the lips, nothing should ever induce her to put herself into such a plight again.