“I don't blame you, Miss Hazel. Besides, there can't be anything very pleasant for such a loyal little Red-Coat as you to look forward to, in calling on our American Colonel.”
“I'm not afraid of any American Colonel,” with the air of a grand duchess.
“No, of course not, Miss Hazel, but I'd have a care to that little tongue of yours.”
Hazel did not answer. She would not have allowed many people to offer that unsolicited advice without some sort of a rejoinder, but she had always a most kindly side toward Joe Ainsworth, not entirely accounted for, either, by the fact of the free rides.
For some reason or other the coach horses kept up a good pace that morning, and it was not long before they came to a halt at Hazel's destination.
Colonel Hamilton's law office was in just such another wide-porched double house as the Starlight homestead; and, like it, had been vacated by its rightful owner during the progress of the war, and so had shared the similar fate of being immediately claimed by the English. They were most comfortable-looking dwellings, those old colonial homesteads, cheery and clean without, in their buff coats of paint lined off with generous bands of white, and most hospitable within, with their wide halls running from front to back straight through them. It seemed a shame that such a homelike place should ever be converted into a mere bevy of offices, but, after all, that is but one of many desecrations that follow closely in the train of wretched war. The very sight of the house, and the evident misuse to which it had been put, stirred Hazel's indignation. She did not know who had lived there, but she felt very sorry for them all the same.
It chanced to be her good fortune to find Colonel Alexander Hamilton alone in his office, something that did not often happen in the experience of that great man, and it was also perhaps her good fortune to be altogether unconscious of how truly great he was, else she might not have marched so boldly into his presence and told her story in such a frank and fearless manner. Yet, who knows, there are big and little women the world over, who will stop at nothing, and know neither fear nor shrinking where a friend's interests are concerned, especially such a brave, true friend as Starlight had always proved himself to be.
Colonel Hamilton allowed Hazel to make her statement without interruption, save to ask some lawyer-like question now and then, when, in her childish eagerness, she had failed to put the facts quite clearly; but, notwithstanding her eagerness and the importance of her errand, she took time to note that he was “a lovely-looking gentleman,” and to draw a little sigh of regret that so fine a man should not have been a Tory like herself. When at last she had cleared her mind of all she had to say, she folded her little hands together in her lap, and scanning his handsome face closely, waited for his answer.
But Colonel Hamilton did not answer. With his elbows resting on the arms of his office chair he sat for a few seconds gazing down at his hands, the fingers of which, with thumb pressing thumb, were clasped in meditative fashion before him. Hazel gazed at them too. She thought they were very nice hands, and noticed how fine were the linen frills falling over them from the circle of the tight-fitting, broadcloth sleeve. She was not at all concerned that he did not hasten to reply. She had heard that lawyers gave a great deal of thought to “things,” and she would not hurry him. Meanwhile she sought the arms of the chair in which she was sitting as a support for her own elbows, and endeavored to lock her own little hands together in imitation of his—so will the feminine mind occupy itself with veriest trifles even on the verge of most decisive transactions. But the chair-arms were too wide apart and the child-arms too short by far to successfully accomplish the imitation. Colonel Hamilton noted the attempt and smiled. “My little friend,” he said at last, “I'm thinking I am the very last man you should have come to about all this. How did you happen to appeal to me?”
“Because, sir (Hazel grew a little embarrassed)—because sir, as I told Joe Ainsworth, who drives the Albany coach, you were the gentleman who talked the court into deciding the case against Miss Avery and in favor of Captain Wadsworth.”