“Not so!” responded Vale. “You know that I came to this city for a purpose, and, until that purpose has been accomplished, I will not leave this place! My sister, if she be in Charleston, must first be found.”
“Catherine shall be found. I have a spy engaged in searching for her, and, unless our eyes have been greatly mistaken, we can even now walk right to where she is confined.”
“You are indeed my friend,” cried Vale, grasping the rough hand of the blacksmith. “Heaven bless you for the concern which you take for one, a total stranger to you!”
“Never think of that, man; you would do the same for any other true patriot that should chance to be in distress. Remember, then, that you are not to use your instruments until the jailer has gone around for his nightly inspection, and that, at three o’clock in the morning I will be near you. One thing I forgot to tell you—I sent word to Nat Ernshaw concerning the position in which you were placed, and I should not be surprised if his brigade would, some time before this, have set out toward Charleston. But I hear steps coming down the passage—I suppose my time is up. Good-by, till to-night. Keep a good heart, and you yet can snap your fingers to your heart’s content at Gen. Clinton and Timothy Turner.”
The door opened; the jailer made his appearance, crying, “Time’s up!” Accordingly Hunt took leave of his pretended brother-in-law, and followed the man from the cell, chatting all the while very familiarly with him.
It was near ten o’clock, and Simon Hunt was making up a bundle of those things which he would be likely to want. He all the while hummed to himself snatches of a song much in vogue with the rebel partisans of that day.
“At Bunker Hill we met the foe,
To spoil their calculation;
We knock’d the British to and fro,
And lick’d ’em like tarnation.”