“We shall carry you, sir, as far as Enniskillen, and, mayhap, if you so desire it back to Londonderry.”
“I have no desires; I have learnt the uses of adversity.”
“Then you have learnt the last lesson a man can learn,” answered Macpherson, abruptly turning on his heel, and joining Hackett who was looking after one of the men who had been wounded.
The skirmish had in every sense been a complete success. Only one man had been slightly, and another severely wounded, and these raw and undisciplined yeomen had shown a wonderful steadiness and gallantry. When the horses of the dragoons had been collected, for Macpherson believed in gathering the fruits of victory, they were ready to start on the march.
“The prisoner is in your charge, Sergeant Hackett,” he said. “Shoot him through the head if he tries to run away.”
De Laprade shrugged his shoulders. “Bah!” he said, “your Captain eats fire. Whither would he have me run?”
“Not outside the reach of my carbine,” said Hackett drily.
Gervase had fallen into the rear, where he was presently joined by Macpherson, whose passion had apparently died away, and left his face pale with an almost ghastly pallor. They rode side by side, neither speaking a word. Macpherson´s head was bent on his breast, and Gervase could hear him muttering to himself in a low tone, but he could not catch the meaning of his words. He was evidently struggling with some violent emotion. Then he seemed to wake up from the profound reverie in which he had been sunk, and laying his hand on the arm of his companion, said in a low voice,
“Mr. Orme, thou art a well-conditioned and, I think, a godly young man, and though it does not beseem one of my gray hairs and length of years to open his heart to one young and lacking in experience as thou art, yet the spirit within me prompts me to speak.”
Gervase was silent.