“Very well,” continued the cavalier, without appearing to notice the expression. “I want both Dancey and the light-haired man to come to me—so soon as you can summon them. Go to Dancey’s first; and, if you think you cannot find the other, Dancey will go along with you. Tell both to come prepared for a journey of two days. What a pity you can’t talk, my poor fellow! But no matter for that: Dancey will understand your signs.”
The Indian, as if he either did not hear, or heeded not, this expression of sympathy, turned towards the door; and without either sign or ceremony made his spectral-like departure.
“The night of the 29th,” soliloquised Henry Holtspur, as he sate once more pen in hand before his writing-table. “Not much time have they given me. Dick and his prospective son-in-law must start at once. By-the-way, I don’t know whether it’s safe to trust this Walford—though the old deer-stalker believes in him. I’m always suspicions of white eyebrows. I’ve noticed something in his grey green eyes I don’t like; and this very day—after I had espoused the quarrel of his sweetheart too—I saw him looking at me with glances not altogether grateful! Jealous, perhaps, of the girl having given me those flowers? Ah! if he only knew how little her token was cared for, alongside that other token—if he knew how I myself was suffering—perhaps ’twould cure him of his spleen?
“After all he’s but a brutal fellow—far from worthy of being the favourite of this bold forest bird, Bet Dancey. I’faith she’s a hen-hawk, that deserves an eagle for her mate; and I might have given this rough rustic cause to be uncomfortable, but that his black beauty is eclipsed under the glare of that dazzling sunbeam. Ah! Marion! Marion! in thy presence—or absence either—all other faces seem ill-favoured. Charming, or ugly, to my eyes all are alike!
“Come!” continued the cavalier, as the train of his reflections was interrupted by some thought prompting him to the necessity of action. “I must get these letters ready against the arrival of my messengers. There are a dozen, and I’m but an indifferent scribe. Luckily, as they’re only ‘notes of invitation,’ a word to each will be sufficient.”
Saying this, he drew his chair nearer to the table; and proceeded to pen the epistles.
He did not desist from his task, until some ten or twelve letters—sealed and addressed to various individuals, all gentlemen of the county—lay on the table before him.
“These, I think, are all,” muttered he, as he ran his eye over the addresses. “Along with those, whom Garth has gone to summon, a goodly array they will make—all true friends to the cause of England’s liberty!”
This soliloquy was succeeded by the entrance of the Indian—whose dark form came stealing like a shadow under the light of the lamp.
By a pantomimic gesture, his master was told—that the two men, he had gone to fetch, had arrived along with him, and were waiting orders outside.