"Yes."
"And if it rains again''
"It will rain all night, but I shall send you the Sagamore. Best go, sir. The real tempest is yet to break. It hangs yonder above the Hudson. But you have time to gain the Lockwood House."
I said to her, with a slight but reassuring smile, most kindly intended:
"Now that I am no longer misunderstood by you, I may inform you that in what you do for me you serve our common country." It did not seem a pompous speech to me.
"If I doubted that," she said, "I had rather pass the knife you wear around my throat than trouble myself to oblige you."
Her words, and the quiet, almost childish voice, seemed so oddly at variance that I almost laughed; but changed my mind.
"I should never ask a service of you for myself alone," I said so curtly that the next moment I was afraid I had angered her, and fearing she might not keep her word to me, smiled and frankly offered her my hand.
Very slowly she put forth her own—a hand stained and roughened, but slim and small. And so I went away through the dripping bush, and down the rocky hill. A slight sense of fatigue invaded me; and I did not then understand that it came from my steady and sustained efforts to ignore what any eyes could not choose but see—this young girl's beauty—yes, despite her sorry mien and her rags—a beauty that was fashioned to trouble men; and which was steadily invading my senses whether I would or no.
Walking along the road and springing over the puddles, I thought to myself that it was small wonder such a wench was pestered in a common soldier's camp. For she had about her everything to allure the grosser class—a something—indescribable perhaps—but which even such a man as I had become unwillingly aware of. And I must have been very conscious of it, for it made me restless and vaguely ashamed that I should condescend so far as even to notice it. More than that, it annoyed me not a little that I should bestow any thought upon this creature at all; but what irritated me most was that Boyd had so demeaned himself as to seek her out behind my back.