As for me, my Sagamore had not arrived; and I finally cast a cloak about me and went out to the horse-sheds, where our rifleman lolled, chewing a lump of spruce and holding our three horses.
"Well, Jack," said I, "this is rare weather for Colonel Tarleton's fox hunting."
"They say he hunts an ass, sir, too," said Jack Mount under his breath. "And I think it must be so, for there be five score of Colonel Sheldon's dragoons in yonder barns, drawing at jack-straws or conning their thumbs—and not a vidette out—not so much as a militia picket, save for the minute men which Colonel Thomas and Major Lockwood have sent out afoot."
There was a certain freedom in our corps, but it never warranted such impudent presumption as this; and I sharply rebuked the huge fellow for his implied disrespect toward Colonel Sheldon.
"Very well, sir. I will bite off this unmilitary tongue o' mine and feed it to your horse. Then, sir, if you but ask him, he will tell you very plainly that none of his four-footed comrades in the barn have carried a single vidette on their backs even as far as Poundridge village, let alone Mile-Square."
I could scarcely avoid smiling.
"Do you then, for one, believe that Colonel Tarleton will venture abroad on such a night?"
"I believe as you do," said the rifleman coolly, "—being some three years or more a soldier of my country."
"Oh! And what do I believe, Jack?"
"Being an officer who commands as good a soldier as I am, you, sir, believe as I do."