An hour later Richard knocked at the door and was admitted by Mistress Cheshire, for Joscelyn had gone to her own room at the sound of his step outside.
“No, I will not come down. I have promised Betty not to quarrel with him, and the only way to keep my word is not to see him,” she said to her mother over the banister. “Tell him I hope he will soon come back whole of body, but as gloriously defeated as all rebels deserve to be.”
In vain her mother urged, and in vain Richard called from the foot of the stair; she neither answered nor appeared in sight.
“Tell her, Aunt Cheshire, that I never thought to find her hiding in her covert; a soldier who believes in his cause hesitates not to meet his adversary in open field; it is the doubtful in courage or confidence who run to cover.” And he went down the step with his head up angrily and his sword clanging behind him.
In the upper hall Joscelyn held her hands tightly over her mouth to force back the stinging retort. Then, with a derisive smile, she went downstairs and sat in the hall window, in plain view of the street and the house across the way.
That afternoon his company marched afield. The town was full of noise and excitement, and the mingled sound of sobbing and of forced laughter, as the line was formed in the market-place and moved with martial step down the long, unpaved street, the rolling drums and clear-toned bugles stirring the blood to a frenzy of enthusiasm. The sidewalks were lined with spectators, the patriots shouting, the luke-warm looking on silently. Every house along the route through the town was hung with wind-swung wreaths of evergreen or streamers of the bonny buff and blue—every one until they reached the Cheshire dwelling. There the shutters were close drawn as though some grief brooded within, and upon the outside of the closed door hung a picture of King George framed in countless loops of scarlet ribbon that flamed out like a sun-blown poppy by contrast with the soberer tints of the Continentals. Here was a challenge that none might misunderstand. The sight was as the red rag in the toreador’s hand to the bull in the arena; and, like an infuriated animal, the crowd surged and swayed and rent the air with an angry roar. The marching line came suddenly to a full stop without a word of command, and the roar was interspersed with hisses. Then there was a rush forward, and twenty hands tore at the pictured face and flaunting ribbons, and brought them out to be trampled under foot in the dust of the road, while a voice cried out of the crowd:—
“Down with the Royalists! Fire!”
And there was a rattle and a flash of steel down the martial line as muskets went to shoulders. But Richard Clevering, pale with fear, sprang to the steps between the deadly muzzles and the door and lifted a hand to either upright, while his voice rang like a trumpet down the line:—
“Stay! There are no men here. This is but a girl’s mad prank. Men, men, turn not your guns against two lonely women; save your weapons for rightful game! Shoulder arms! Forward! March!”
There was a moment’s hesitation, a muttering down the ranks; then the guns were shouldered and the column fell once more into step with the drums, while the crowd shouted its approval. But above the last echoes of that shout a woman’s jeering laugh rang out upon the air; and, lifting eyes, the crowd beheld Joscelyn Cheshire, clad in a scarlet satin bodice, lean out of her opened casement and knot a bunch of that same bright-hued ribbon upon the shutter. With the throng in such volcanic temper it was a perilous thing to do; and yet so insidious was her daring, so great her beauty, that not so much as a stone was cast at this new signal of loyalty, and not a voice was lifted in anger.