The event verified her opinion, for presently heavy and hurried footsteps of many men sounded below stairs, terminating the brief silence. With little delay the tramp of boots came upstairs, and a loud rap on the door drew a stifled cry from the spinster as she buried her head under the bedclothes, and made the two girls clutch each other with fright.
“Open!” called a commanding voice. “Open, I say!” it repeated, as no answer came. “Batter it in, then!” and at the order the stocks of two muskets shattered the door panels; the bureau was tipped over on its face with a crash, and Brereton, sword in hand, jumped through the breach.
It was an apparently empty room into which the aide entered, but a mound under the bedclothes told a different tale.
“Here are other Hessian pigs who’ve drunk more than they’ve bled,” he sneered, as he tossed back the counterpane and blankets with his sword-point, thus uncovering three becapped heads, from each of which issued a scream, while three pairs of hands wildly clutched the covering.
The nightcaps so effectually disguised the faces that not a one did the officer recognise in his first hasty glance.
“Ho!” he jeered. “Small wonder the fellow lay abed. Come, up with you, my Don Juan,” he added, prodding Miss Drinker through the bedclothes with his sword. “’T is no time for bearded men to lie abed.”
“Help, help!” shrieked Janice, and “’T is my aunt!” cried Tabitha, in unison, but the spinster’s fear was quite forgot in the insulting allusion to the somewhat noticeable hirsute adornment on her face; sitting up in bed, she pointed at the door, and sternly ordered, “Cease from insulting gentlewomen, brute, and leave this chamber!”
“Zounds!” burst out Jack, in his amazement; then he turned and roared to the gaping and snickering soldiers, “Get out of here, every doodle of you, and be—to you!” Keeping his back to the bed, he said, “I pray your pardon, ma’am, for disturbing you; our spies assured us that only Hessian officers slept here.”
“Go!” commanded the offended and unrelenting old maid.
The officer took a step toward the door, halted, and remarked savagely, “Our positions are somewhat reversed, Miss Meredith. ’T is poetic justice, indeed, which threatens you a taste of the captivity you schemed in my behalf; ‘he cries best who cries last.’”