“Hello, Mrs. Bartlett!” cried Yates cheerily. “You see, the professor has got his desserts at last; and I, being in bad company, share his fate, like the good dog Tray.”
“What’s all this about?” cried Mrs. Bartlett.
The constable, who knew both the farmer and his wife, nodded familiarly to them. “They’re Fenian prisoners,” he said.
“Nonsense!” cried Mrs. Bartlett—the old man, as usual, keeping his mouth grimly shut when his wife was present to do the talking—“they’re not Fenians. They’ve been camping on our farm for a week or more.”
“That may be,” said the constable firmly, “but I have the best of evidence against them; and, if I’m not very much mistaken, they’ll hang for it.”
Miss Kitty, who had been partly visible through the door, gave a cry of anguish at this remark, and disappeared again.
“We have just escaped being hanged by the Fenians themselves, Mrs. Bartlett, and I hope the same fate awaits us at the hands of the Canadians.”
“What! hanging?”
“No, no; just escaping. Not that I object to being hanged,—I hope I am not so pernickety as all that,—but, Mrs. Bartlett, you will sympathize with me when I tell you that the torture I am suffering from at this moment is the remembrance of the good things to eat which I have had in your house. I am simply starved to death, Mrs. Bartlett, and this hard-hearted constable refuses to allow me to ask you for anything.”
Mrs. Bartlett came out through the gate to the road in a visible state of indignation.