After that we sat in a miserable silence for full half-an-hour. It was then growing light, and the dawn came with a sharp burst of sleet that penetrated the bushes and stung our faces as we sat huddled under the bridge. “A dreary morning, cousin,” I says.
A low booming roar came echoing across the fields. I forgot my hurt and tried to start to my feet. “Cannon!” says I. “They are bombarding the old place after all. And yet surely——”
But she had rushed to the mouth of the bridge and forced her way through the bushes, and there she stood, gazing across the dank fields towards the old house. The roar of the cannon came again. She drew back within the bridge, and dropping at my side burst into a passion of bitter weeping.
“Come, cousin,” says I, laying my hand on her arm, “be comforted——”
She turned her face suddenly upon me, all aflame with anger.
“Comforted?” says she, “Shame upon you, Richard Coope! Oh, cowards that we are, to have skulked from the old place like rats from a sinking ship! Doesn’t it shame you,” she says, “to sit here in a ditch when you ought to be there defending your own?”
“Why, cousin,” says I, “considering that it’s through no choice of my own that I sit in this ditch, it doesn’t; and as to defending my own, why, there’s naught in the old house that’s mine save a book or two. It’s not my property,” I says, nursing and groaning over my lame leg.
“But it’s mine,” says she, drying her tears.
“Then go and defend it,” I says, sulkily. “You were better employed in that than in preaching to me.”
She turned her face and stared at me long and hard.