Yes, exactly, and that was just how Wully had felt about it! The prisoners made Wully their spokesman in the first hearing. Colonel Ingersoll listened to them kindly till he had finished speaking. He had a boil on the back of his neck and was not able to turn his head, and he sat there, just looking at Wully, a long time, too long, Wully began to fear. And then he said:
“I wouldn’t punish you if you were my man, McLaughlin. And I don’t see why I should because you aren’t.” And he called an orderly and told him to take the men to a mess.
“Ingersoll did that? That infidel?”
“Yes.”
His mother was leaning forward, Peter’s coat forgotten.
“Yon’s a grand man,” she cried with conviction.
“He’s an infidel,” her husband reminded her.
“He’s a grand man for a’ that!” she asserted.
“But he’s an infidel!”
“He’s a grand man, I’m telling you, for a’ that!” After that, every time she sang the antichrist’s praise to her neighbors she had the last word of characterization. (After all, her family had not been Covenanters.) Presently she laid the coat down again—the children were in bed now, and Wully, too, with only his father and mother beside him in the kitchen.