"Then why do you take the King's highway?" I asked, blankly.
"You are hurting my feelings," said the Weasel. "Why do you use such terms? Besides, we discriminate; we only offer ourselves some slight recompense for the disgust which overpowers us when we meet with fat Tory magistrates on a moonlit highway."
I stared at him, indignant at the levity with which he used me; but after a moment I was obliged to believe that he intended no levity, for never had I seen such guileless innocence in any features. Clearly the man's past sorrows had been too much for his mind. He was simple.
There was little profit in continuing the subject; if Renard and Mount chose to justify their reputations I could not prevent them. As far as I was concerned they had proved kindly and loyal, and, now that I was so soon to part with them, I desired to do so in gratitude and friendship.
It was already past eight o'clock by the Weasel's large silver watch, and still no reply came to me from either Dunmore or Silver Heels. Renard and I looked out of the window, watching the soldiers conducting the homeless frontier families to the barracks. We spoke of last night's riot, computing the casualties suffered by the soldiers and wondering what proclamation Dunmore would issue, or if he would have the courage to issue any, considering how the people had shown their detestation of him.
"If you were not a deputy of Sir William Johnson, Dunmore would have jailed you for what you said," observed the Weasel. "You have cast the last grain into the scales and they have tipped him out, repudiated and dishonoured. Hic jacet Dunmoreus, in articulo mortis. But Walter Butler lives, friend Michael. Beware, sir! Latet anguis in herba!—there lies the snake perdu!"
"Who are you, Weasel?" I asked, curiously. "Truly, you are smoother in Latin than am I; but I confess myself disguised in this hunting-shirt, whereas you wear it to the manner born. Yet, I swear you are no forest-runner withal."
"I was born a gentleman," said the Weasel, simply. "I read the classics for my pleasure—but I am forgetting, Mr. Cardigan, I am forgetting so many, many things. It is sixteen years now since I met with my trouble—sixteen years to forget in—and that with a mind which is not quite clear, sir, not quite clear. However, I have remembered enough Latin to entertain you, and that is something, after all, if it is not an answer to your question."
He spoke gently, but there was a sting in the tail of his speech which I certainly deserved for my impertinent prying into his past, and I very promptly asked his pardon for my thoughtlessness.
"I am certain it was nothing more than that," he said, cheerfully; "pray you, my dear sir, believe me that I took no offence. Sometimes my tongue is sharp; my infirmity is my poor apology. I do not wonder at your amusement to hear a shabby forest-runner stammer Latin. But I shall forget my Latin, too; I shall forget all save what I pray to forget."