The cavalry officer, in the course of a checkered existence, had witnessed a plenty of military executions—so many, in fact, that Pity and Horror had long since shrugged their shoulders and gone off to sleep. They had left a certain professional curiosity; a degree of connoisseurship in how men met death. He now pushed his horse through the scrub to the edge of the ring. The action brought him within twenty feet of the small group in the centre, and, upon the blue soldiers standing back a little, face to face with the bareheaded prisoner. The officer looked, then swung himself from the saddle, and, with spurs and sabre jingling, strode into the trodden ground. “A moment, Lieutenant, if you please! I have somewhere seen your prisoner—though where—”
He came closer. Stafford, worn to emaciation, dressed in rough civilian clothes, with the rope about his bared neck, returned his gaze. Memory stepped between them with a hand to each. The air darkened, grew filled with thunder, jagged lightning, and whistling rain, the parched earth was quagmire, the dusty trees Virginia cedars with twisted roots, wet, murmuring in a harsh wind. There was heard the rattle of Stonewall Jackson’s musketry, and, above the thunder, Pelham’s guns.
“Ox Hill!” exclaimed Marchmont with an oath.
Stafford’s eyelids just quivered. “Ox Hill,” he repeated.
Suddenly, with the thunder of Pelham’s guns, the bough above was no longer the arch of a portal. It was an oak bough with the end of a rope thrown across it. Life streamed back upon him. The clarity, the silver calm, the crystal quality went from things. He staggered slightly, and the blood drummed in his ears.
Marchmont was speaking rapidly to the lieutenant and the provost officer. “How do you know that he is a spy? Said he was an escaped prisoner—escaped from Prison X? Couldn’t you wait to find out? Believe it? Yes, I believe it. He’s a Southern officer—he did me the best of turns once—day when I thought I was a prisoner myself—day of Chantilly.—Yes. Colonel Francis Marchmont. Marchmont Invincibles. Remand him, eh?—until we telegraph to the Commandant at X. No use treating him as a spy if he isn’t a spy, eh? Remember once in Italy when that game was nearly played on myself.—You will wait, Lieutenant, until I send an orderly back with a note to your general? Know him well—think I can arrange matters.—Thanks! Here, Roberts!”
Roberts galloped off. The group beneath the tree, the soldiers drawn up at one side, the troopers and their colonel stayed as they were, waiting. The bright sands ran on, the breeze in the oak whispered like a dryad, the bees buzzed, there came an odour of the pine. Stafford’s hand and lip were yet stained with the berries. He stood, the tawny cirque about his neck, waiting with the rest.
Roberts returned. He bore a folded piece of writing which he delivered to Marchmont. The latter read, then showed it to the lieutenant, who spoke to the sergeant of the provost guard. Two not unkindly hands loosened the circle of rope and lifted it clear from the prisoner. Marchmont came across with outstretched hand.
“Major Stafford, I thought I could manage it! As soon as the matter is verified from X—I shall see if I cannot personally arrange an exchange. I am pretty sure that I can do that, too.” His teeth gleamed beneath his yellow mustache. “I haven’t at the moment a flask such as you raised me from the dead with!—Jove! the fine steel rain and the guns with the thunder, and Caliph pressed hard, and it was peine forte et dure—”
“It was a travelled road,” said Stafford; “presently some one else would have come by and released you. But this is not a travelled road and I was very near to death.” He looked at his berry-stained hands. “I don’t think I cared in the least about death itself. It seemed, standing here, a perfectly unreal pasteboard arch, a piece of stage furniture. But I have a piece of work to do on this side of it ... and so, on the whole, I am glad you came by.” He laughed a little. “That has a mighty ungracious sound, has it not? I should thank you more heartily—and I do!”