“Where are you going?” faltered Leech.
They moved on without a word.
“Wait—I will—I will give——”
A bag or something was suddenly thrown over his head and pressed down to his elbows, which at the same moment were pinioned to his side, and his pistol was taken. He was afraid to cry out, and perhaps could not have done so even had he tried.
The next instant a hand was put into his breast pocket and his pocket-book and all his papers were taken out; he was conscious of a match being struck and a light made, and that his papers were being looked over. He thought he heard one of his captors say, “Ah!” and the next moment the papers and pocket-book were put back in his pocket, and the light was extinguished; the bag was drawn from over his head, and his captors rode off through the woods. When he tried to move he discovered that his horse was tied to a bush and he had to dismount to untie him. His pistol was lying at the foot of the sapling. Long before he had finished loosing his horse, the sound of his two waylayers had died out.
As the Provost entered the village the sour expression on his face deepened. The clouds had disappeared and the summer night was perfect; the village lay before him, a picture of peace; the glint of white beneath the court-house trees being just enough to suggest that the tents there were hidden. The streets were filled with a careless throng, and all the sounds were those of merriment: laughter and shouting, and the twang of banjos. There was never an unlikelier field for such a plan as the Provost had in mind.
He rode through like a shadow, silencing the negroes and scowling at the whites, and as soon as he had put up his horse, he called on Captain Middleton. It was not a long interview, but it was a stormy one, and when the Provost came out of the Captain’s office he had thrown down the gauntlet and there was an open breach between them. He had complained to Middleton of being beset by highwaymen and robbed of his order, and Middleton had told him plainly he did not believe a word he said.
“How did you get such an order? If there was such an order, why was it not addressed to me?” he asked.
Leech said that he declined to be interrogated, but he would soon show him that he had authority.