“This way, men!” he shouted. “To the front door! Damn the louts! Can’t they understand?” He beat upon the window with his sword, knocking out panes of glass. “Come through that door, I say! Quick, curse you, there’s a prisoner here, with a price for his taking! Ay, that’s it! Some one in the hall there, open the front door to my men!”
The sound now came of knocks bestowed on the outside door, and of Sam’s heavy tread on the hall floor.
“Williams! Sam!” shouted Elizabeth. “Don’t let them in!”
The heavy tread was heard to stop short. The knocking on the outer door was resumed.
“Let them in, I say,” roared Colden, too proud to go himself to the door. “I command it, in the name of the King!”
“Obey your mistress,” cried Peyton, to those in the hall. “I command it, in the name of Congress!”
Colden was silent for a moment, then suddenly threw open the window and called out, “This way, men! Quick!”
And he drew pistol, and stood ready with steel 269 and ball to guard the window by which his men were to enter. A new, wild ferocity was on his face, a new, nervous hardness in his body, as if the latent resolution and strength which a prudent man keeps for a great contest, on which his all may depend, were at last aroused. In such a mood, the man who, governed by interest, may have seemed a coward all his life becomes for the once supremely formidable. At last he thinks the stake worth the play, at last the prize is worth the risk, and because it is so he will play and risk to the end, hazarding all, not yielding while he breathes. Having opened the theme which alone, of all themes, shall transform his irresolution into action, he will, Hamlet like, “fight upon this theme until” his “eyelids will no longer wag.” So was Colden aroused, transfigured, as he stood doubly armed by the window, waiting for his men to clamber in.
“What shall we do, dear?” said Elizabeth.
“Fight!” replied Peyton, tightening at the same time his right palm around his broken sword, and his left around the hand she had let him take,—for she had moved from the embrace of his arm.