The cut which Lion, the dog, had received was severe, and the noble animal was consequently an object on which he might exercise his commiseration.
Captain Preston was received with a cool welcome. Mrs. Vale was polite—freezingly so; and Catherine, while she did not manifest decided displeasure, did not seem to be overjoyed at his presence. The gallant captain had not created a very good impression in his three visits.
With a pertinacity, by no means pleasant to the uninvited guest, the widow kept her seat, nor once offered to leave the room, while Kate seemed deaf to the hints which were thrown out concerning the state of the garden, the agreeableness of the weather, and the propriety of exercise. The nimble fingers plied the needle most rapidly, while answering the numerous questions of Reginald. As he did not think it best to commence an offensive warfare upon women, the chances of any private conference with his fair cousin, seemed, to Preston, to be small indeed; so small, that the thought of incontinently beating a retreat, more than once crossed the Briton’s mind, but was as often dismissed; he could not—he would not give it up so!
At length, insensibly as it were, Mrs. Vale was drawn into conversation. The young man had an insinuating manner that was hard to resist, and he taxed his conversational powers to entertain these, to him, simple folk, quite as much as he had ever done to rivet the attention of some wealthy belle, in the days when he flirted in the London salons, and was an honored guest at the table of the richest and most distingué families of the aristocracy. So much did the widow forget herself, that she actually asked the visitor to remain for tea, when she saw him preparing to leave about half an hour before the regular time for that meal. Gratifying as it would, no doubt, have been to the young man, he was, nevertheless, compelled to decline—he had an engagement which it was necessary for him to meet; he did not, however, state this as an excuse, but simply declared his inability to remain.
When Preston had departed, the impression he left behind was rather favorable than otherwise. Kate’s heart told her he was one to be feared rather than respected, and that these visits boded no good. On the contrary, the mother’s first suspicions seemed allayed, and she expressed a fear that she had hastily formed a bad opinion of the honest young man, as Captain Preston appeared to be. He promised her dwelling protection from all foraging parties belonging to their line.
As a general rule, it is wisest not hastily to change first-formed opinions. Mrs. Vale saw into the true character of Reginald almost the moment he crossed her threshold, but suffered her vision to be obscured by the curtain of plausible conversation and insinuating manners, of the shrewd man of the world. She was not the first mother who had been flattered into silence in the same manner!
CHAPTER VI.
HOT WORK AHEAD.
Two weeks have elapsed since the time when Nat Ernshaw first formally enrolled the names of the volunteers, who wished to fight under the continental banner. During that two weeks they have not been altogether idle, for, in addition to the discomfiture of the troop of dragoons, they had attacked and dispersed some fifteen or twenty tories who had assembled at a spot about nine miles from the swamp.
It may, at first, seem strange that the Americans did not make an attack upon the detachment of soldiers which had, for over a fortnight, been holding, as a barrack, the houses of Tappan and Phillips. No doubt they would have been willing enough to attempt an expulsion, had there been a probability of success. Nat considered that his force of thirty-five or forty men would hardly be able to cope with fifty or sixty, unless the larger party could be taken by surprise. Though a scout had been for days watching the houses, it so far seemed as though nothing could be done.
It was late in the evening, and the sun’s last lingering rays had long since ceased to tinge the western horizon, when the majority of the patriot soldiers were already “turned in,” that Capt. Ernshaw was startled by hearing the low, long-drawn whistle of the sentinel stationed at the outskirts of the swamp.