“John Bartine,” I said, “you must try to forgive me, if I am wrong; but with the light that I have at present I cannot concede your right to go all to pieces when asked the time o’night. I cannot admit that it is proper to experience a mysterious reluctance to look your own watch in the face, and to cherish in my presence, without explanation, painful emotions which are denied to me and which are none of my business.”
To this ridiculous speech, Bartine made no immediate reply, but sat looking gravely into the fire. Fearing that I had offended, I was about to apologize and beg him to think no more about the matter, when, looking me calmly in the eyes, he said:
“My dear fellow, the levity of your manner does not at all disguise the hidden impudence of your demand; but happily I had already decided to tell you what you wish to know, and no manifestation of your unworthiness to hear it shall alter my decision. Be good enough to persuade me to have a fresh cigar and you shall hear all that I can tell you about the matter.
“This watch,” he said, “had been in my family for three generations before it fell to me. Its original owner, for whom it was made, was my great-grandfather, Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a wealthy planter of Colonial Virginia and as stanch a Tory as every lay awake nights contriving new kinds of maledictions for the head of Mr. Washington, and new methods of aiding and abetting good King George. One day this worthy gentleman had the deep misfortune to perform for his cause a service of capital importance which was not recognized by those who suffered its disadvantages as legitimate. It does not matter what it was; but among its minor consequences was my excellent ancestor’s arrest one night in his own house by a party of Mr. Washington’s rebels. He was permitted to say farewell to his weeping family and was then marched away into the darkness, which swallowed him up forever.
“Not the slenderest clew to his fate was ever found. After the war the most diligent inquiry and the offer of large rewards failed to turn up any of his captors or any fact concerning him. He had disappeared, and that was all.”
Something in John Bartine’s manner that was not in his words—I hardly knew what it was, or how it manifested itself—prompted me to ask:
“What is your view of the matter, Bartine—of the justice of it?”
“My view of it,” he flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table as if he had been in a public-house dicing with blackguards—”my view of it is that it was a characteristically dastardly assassination by that d—d traitor, Washington, and his ragamuffin rebels!”
For some minutes nothing was said; Bartine was recovering his temper, and I waited. Then I said:
“Was that all?”