“Oh! yes, sar,” said old Jacob, his face radiant with delight. “Habn’t you heard? Dat great news, sar. ’Spose you know Sargent Macdonald?”
“What of him?” said the major, beginning to suspect he was making a ridiculous figure. “He’s a savage. Why he shot Lieut. Torriano yesterday three hundred yards off.”
“Dat he did,” said the old butler, waxing grandiloquent, “he hit de leftenant judgematically, I insure you. But dat is not de news. You knows Sargent Macdonald sent in word, toder day, dat if his baggage, took in de sally, was not recorded immediately to him again, he would kill eight of your men. You know dat? To-day de baggage was sent back, for dat sargent be de berry debbil, and now he send word dat, since his baggage be recorded punctiliousy, he will only kill four of your men!” And the speaker, though too well-bred to laugh at what he considered so good a joke, grinned from ear to ear.
“The cannibal!” said Lindsay, shrugging his shoulders, “but what can be expected of the men when their leaders countenance the firing on pickets.”
“Yet you hang them for rebels,” said Kate, with spirit.
“They shoot down officers,” continued Lindsay, not thinking it advisable to reply to her palpable hit, “as if this Mr. Marion paid for them at so much a head. I never saw such unchristian fighting. They are a set of boors; and cowards at heart, all of them, I’ll be sworn.”
“Cowards they are not,” said Kate, her eyes flashing to hear her countrymen thus stigmatized. “At least you did not seem to think them such when Capt. Preston, at the head of his troop, dashed up to your lines, and challenged you to fight singly, or otherwise. I heard myself the alarm with which the soldiers cried, ‘Here comes Preston again!’ ”
“He well knew no one would accept his challenge: so his bravado cost him nothing.”
“Go meet him when he comes again, and see whether he meant it for bravado!” retorted Kate; then, all at once remembering the enthusiasm into which she had been hurried, she colored, and resumed her work in some embarrassment.
Major Lindsay stifled a muttered execration on his American rival, for he began to fear, from the spirit which Kate had shown, that the chivalric exploits of Capt. Preston were making a decided impression on her heart. The desperate daring which the rebel officer had shown within the last few days, Major Lindsay had attributed, in his own mind, to a desire on the part of Preston to dazzle his mistress; but Kate’s behavior toward himself had been so flattering, in comparison to that bestowed on others, that, until this moment, he had consoled himself that these exploits had been thrown away. He sat, therefore, silent and moody; and the conversation ceased.