Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

MADAM CONSTANTIA

‘A fourth time I tried and, failing, gave over ... and laid my face against the saddle.’ p. [273]

Madam Constantia
THE ROMANCE OF A PRISONER OF WAR IN THE REVOLUTION (SOUTH CAROLINA)

EDITED BY

JEFFERSON CARTER

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1919

Copyright, 1919, by

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

EDITOR’S PREFACE

Although the Historical Manuscripts Commission (England) has dealt with several of the Northumberland Collections, the Commission has not thought fit to print among the papers of the Craven family of Osgodby, the narrative of the fifth baronet’s experiences in South Carolina during the War of American Independence. The reason for this decision may be either a belief that the episode is not of value from a historical standpoint; or a suspicion that the facts owe something to the expansion of a man writing many years later. However this may be, the story seemed to the present Editor to possess a certain poignancy, and, notwithstanding some intimate passages, to be worthy of a public wider than that of the County of its birth. He has, therefore, with such skill as he possesses prepared it for publication.

It will be noticed that Sir Edward Craven nowhere names the regiment in which he served, but it appears from other sources that it was the 33rd Regiment of Foot, now styled the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.

The Editor has thought proper to retain the fanciful title prefixed by the writer, but has added some Chapter headings.

MADAM CONSTANTIA

CHAPTER I
SIR EDWARD’S PREFACE

So here is this fatal war commenced!

‘The Child that is unborn shall rue

The hunting of that day!’

H. Walpole.

Not Lord Chatham, not Alexander the Great, nor Cæsar has ever conquered so much territory in the course of all their wars as Lord North has lost in one campaign!

C. J. Fox.

Six months ago I went through the old papers in the Strongroom. I noted that neither my father nor my grandfather had added a line, save in the way of leases and the like, to the records which the first and second baronets left of the Siege of Newcastle, and of the Union troubles. It occurred to me that we owed something to posterity; and that, for lack of more important matter, my fortunes en campagne in America were a part of the family history, and proper to be preserved.

For an idle man, however, to will and to do are two things; and I might never have proceeded beyond the former if I had not a day or two later taken up the Gentleman’s Magazine and learned that General Washington of the United States of America had passed away at his seat at Mount Vernon on the fourteenth of the preceding month. That gave me the needed fillip. I never knew him; at least I never knew him by that title, since on the few occasions on which I met him, it was beyond my duty as an officer in His Majesty’s service to admit the existence of the States. I believe him, however, to have been a gentleman of good family, kindly and dignified, somewhat of the old school, and of considerable military ability; one, too, whose influence went some way towards checking within his sphere of action the rancour that in the Southern Colonies stained the Continental Cause and did not spare ours. Unfortunately from ’80 onwards my duty led me into the Carolinas; and it was to the sad and unusual nature of the war in those provinces that what was singular in my experiences was due.

Previously, to be brief, I had served for three years in the north, I had suffered the humiliation of surrendering with that gallant and loyal gentleman, General Burgoyne, I had been exchanged. But my experiences in Canada and on the Hudson were those of a hundred others and I pass over them, proposing to begin my relation at the point at which the fortunes of war cast me adrift, and flung me on my own resources.

From where I write, looking out on the barren, frost-bound hills of the Border, it is a far cry to the rice-fields and tropical lands of the Tidewater of Carolina; and a farther cry to the rolling country of pleasant vale and forest that sweeps upwards to the foothills, and so to the misty distances of the Blue Ridge. In those days it was often a three months’ passage, on salt meat and stale water; a passage of which many a poor fellow never saw the end. To-day I cross in a moment. But before I do so, let me add a word of preface, that all who read this may view the matter from our standpoint in ’80, midway in the fighting, rather than from the point at which we stand to-day, with the end behind us and an American Minister at St. James’s.

I say nothing about the Tea Duty or the claim to tax the Colonies. I believe that we had a right to have money from them; our fleet covered their trade. But whether we should not have left it to them to tax themselves is another matter, and seems more English. What is certain is, that we had through the war the most worthless government that ever held power in England; and so my father said a hundred times—and voted for them steadily till the day they fell!

In the City and at Brooks’s the war was never popular. There were many in both who asked with Mr. Walpole what we should gain by triumph itself; would America, laid waste, replace America flourishing, rich and free? And here and there an officer declined to serve against his kinsmen and was allowed to stand aside. But for the most part we ran to it, younger sons and eldest too, from my neighbor Lord Percy downward, as to an adventure. All who could beg or buy a commission mounted the cockade. The thing was fashionable—with two results that I came to think unhappy.

The first was that too many of our people—those in particular who had the least right to do so—looked down on the Colonials from a social height as on a set of farmers and clodhoppers; forgetting that many of them were our own cousins once or twice removed, and that some had been bred up beside us at Westminster and Oxford. The second was that those of us who had seen service under the great Frederick, or had learned our drill at Finchley or Hounslow, sneered at the rebel officers as tailors, called them Mohairs—God knows why!—and made light not only of their skill but their courage, treating even the Loyalists who joined us as of a lower grade.

For these two prejudices we were to pay very dearly. They not only brought into the struggle a bitterness which was needless and to be deplored, but, as things turned out, they reacted very unpleasantly on ourselves. It was bad enough to be worsted by those whom the meaner and more foolish among us regarded as of lower clay; it was still more mortifying for old soldiers, who had learned their drill in the barrack-yard, to find that it went for little in face of the immensities of that unknown continent; and that among the forests of the Hudson or in the marshes of the Savannah our military art was of far less value than the power to shoot straight, or to lay an ambush after the Indian fashion.

Owing to these two prejudices the lessons we had to learn in the war were the more painful. Not that our poor fellows did not fight. Believe me, they fought with the most dogged courage—sometimes when the only powder they had was the powder on their queues, and the steel or the clubbed musket was their only weapon. But the others fought too and stubbornly—what else could we expect? They were of our blood and bone; they, too, were Britons. And they were in their own forests, on their own rivers,—which seemed to be seas to us—they were fighting for their homes and barns and orchards. Whereas we were twelve weeks from home, ill-fed, ill-found, and ill-supported, scattered over hundreds of leagues, and lost in pathless wilds that grew more hostile as outrage on the one side or the other embittered our relations.

The first half of the war was fought in the northern colonies. It ended sadly, as all remember, in our surrender at Saratoga, and in the retreat of General Clinton from Philadelphia to the sea-coast. After that, the fighting was transferred to the south, to Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. We took Charles Town, we defeated the Continental Army at Camden, we had South Carolina in our hands, we looked hopefully towards the north. And then, in the late summer of ’80, when the south seemed to be in our hands, the country on all sides rose against us as by magic and the war took on a new and more savage character. But enough has been said by way of general preface.

For myself. On the fifth of October of that year ’80, I was sent from Charlotte—whither my Lord Cornwallis had advanced on his way into North Carolina—with important orders to Colonel Ferguson, who at the time was covering the left flank with a strong body of royalists. On the sixth, accompanied by Simms, my orderly, and after a perilous ride, I reached Ferguson’s camp on King’s Mountain. He knew that the enemy were in strength in the neighbourhood, and, after falling back some distance, he had taken up a strong position on a ridge, which rose above the forest—a more active and able officer was not in the service. But this time he had either under-valued his opponents, sturdy hunters and settlers from the Backwaters, or he had over-estimated the strength of his position; and the lamentable issue of the fight on the following day is well known. After a fierce struggle Ferguson’s men were out-flanked and surrounded, and he himself fell, striving bravely to the last, while the greater part of his force was captured or cut to pieces. Of the few who had the good fortune to break through the ring I was one. Nor was I only fortunate for myself, for I carried off poor Simms on my crupper. From this point my relation starts.

CHAPTER II
UNDER KING’S MOUNTAIN

But Major Ferguson by endeavoring to intercept the enemy in this retreat unfortunately gave time for fresh bodies of men to pass the mountains and to unite into a corps far superior to that which he commanded. They came up with him and after a sharp action entirely defeated him. Ferguson was killed and all his party either slain or taken.

Rawdon Correspondence.

I was riding my grey, Minden, on that day, and I never wish to ride a better nag. But the weight of two heavy men is much for the staunchest horse, and when it fell, as it did a few yards short of safety, it came to the ground so heavily that the shock drove the breath out of my body. For a moment I did not know what had befallen me. I lay and felt nothing. If I thought at all, I supposed that the horse had stumbled. Then, coming to myself I tried to rise, and sank with the sweat starting from every pore.

Simms, three or four yards from me, lay still. The horse lay as still, but on my right shoulder, pinning me down and it needed no more to tell me that my sword-arm was broken, and that I was helpless. The next thing that I remember, a man was standing some paces from me and covering me with one of their Deckhard rifles.

Instinct speaks before reason. “Don’t shoot!” I cried.

“Why not?” he answered. “D—n you, your time is out! It was your turn at the Waxhaws and it’s little quarter you gave us there! It’s our turn to-day!”

Instinct prevailed once more. I knew that I could not rise, but I tried to rise. Then I fainted.

When I opened my eyes again—to the circle of blue sky and the feathery tree-tops waving about the little clearing—the man was standing over me, a dark figure leaning on his gun. He was looking down at me. As soon as I could direct my mind to him, “You have the advantage of me, stranger,” he said dryly. “A redcoat’s no more to me than a quail. But shooting a man who shams to be dead is not in my way. It’s you, that will pay the price, however.”

“You’d not shoot a wounded man,” I muttered—not that for the moment I seemed to care greatly.

“Who shot them at the Waxhaws?” he retorted savagely. “And hung them at Augusta? And gave them to the Indians to do worse things with? By G—d!” and with that he stopped speaking, and with an ugly look, he handled his rifle as if he were going to knock out my brains with the stock.

But I was past fear and I was in pain. “Do your worst!” I said recklessly, “And God save the King!”

He lowered his gun and seemed to think better of it. He even smiled in an acrid sort of fashion, as he looked down at me. “Well, Britisher,” he said, “you have the advantage of me! But if you can tell me what I am going to do with you—”

“Hospital,” I murmured.

“Hospital!” he repeated. “Jerusalem! He says Hospital! Man, do you know that there are nine here who lost their folks at the Waxhaws, and thirty who are akin to them, and who’ve sworn, every man of them, to give no quarter to a Tory or an Englishman! And I’ll not deny,” he continued in a lower tone, “that I’ve sworn the same, and am perjured this moment. And he says—Hospital!”

“But the laws of war!” I protested weakly.

“Ay, you score them plainly enough on your poor devils’ backs!”

“You make a mistake,” I said. I was becoming a little clearer in my mind. “Those are the Articles of war.”

“Indeed!” he replied. And he stared at me as if he had never seen a King’s officer before. Then “Why did you stop to pick up that fellow?” he asked, indicating poor Simms by a gesture. “If you’d ridden straight away, I should have been too late. It was your pause that gave me time to level at your horse and bring it down.”

I raised myself on my elbow and found that the man had released me from Minden and had lifted me to the edge of the clearing. Simms still sprawled where he had fallen, with his arms cast wide and his neck awry. The horse lay half in and half out of the stagnant pool that lapped the roots of the trees on the farther side of the clearing.

“Is he dead?” I asked, staring at Simms.

“Neck broken,” the man replied, “Who was he?”

“My orderly.”

“Rank and file?”

“What else?” I said.

He grunted. “Is that in the Articles of War, too?” he said. “But any way, you did him little good, and wrecked yourself by it!” Then, in a different tone, “See here,” he said, “you’ve tricked me, shamming to be dead and playing ’possum. I can’t leave you to the buzzards, nor yet carry you to the camp, for they’ll be for shooting you—shooting you, my friend, for certain! You’ll have to ride if I can get you a horse. That is your only chance. I shall be away some time and if you wish to live you will lie close. It’s not healthy anywhere this side of the Catawba for that uniform!”

I was in pain, but I was sufficiently myself to be anxious when he had left me; painfully anxious as time went on and he did not return. I lay staring at poor Simms; the flies were clustering on his face. I thought of the light heart with which I had ridden into Ferguson’s camp and joined him and his volunteers the day before. I thought of the gay dinner we had eaten, and the toasts we had drunk, and the “Confusion to the Rebels” which we had planned—campaigning, a man learns to enjoy life as it comes. And then I thought of the day that had gone against us, miserably and unaccountably; of poor Ferguson, dragged and dead, with his foot in the stirrup and enough wounds in him to let out the lives of five men; of Husbands and Plummer and Martin—I had seen them all go down,—those, who had escaped in the fight, shot like rabbits in the last rush for the horses. By the laws of war, or of anything but this blind partisan fighting we should have won the battle against an equal number of undrilled farmers and backwoodsmen. We must have won. But we had lost; and I lay there under the sumach bushes that blended with the red of the old uniform; and if the man who had shot poor Minden at that last unlucky moment did not return, the buzzards would presently spy me out and Simms would not be the less fortunate of the two.

For the sounds of the fight had died away. The pursuit had taken another line, the silence of the forest was no longer torn by shot or scream. Even the excited chatter of the birds had ceased. The little clearing lay lonely, with the short twilight not far off—was that a buzzard already, that tiny speck in the sky?

What if the man did not come back?

But, thank God, even as I thought of this, I heard him. He came into view among the boles of the trees on the farther side of the clearing, riding one horse and leading another. He dismounted beside me and hooked the reins over a bough, and for the first time I took in what he was like. He appeared to be middle-aged, a tallish lean man, with hair that was turning gray. He wore a hunter’s shirt and buckskin leggings, and with this, some show of uniform; a blue sash and a wide-brimmed hat with a white cockade were pretty well the sum of it. He had steely eyes—they showed light in the brown of his thin hard-bitten face. He stepped to the dead man and took from him a strap or two. Then he came to me.

“Now!” he said curtly. “Harden your heart, King George! You’ll wince once or twice before you are in that saddle. But when you are there you’ll have a chance, and there’s no other way you will have one! Now!”

To tell the truth, I winced already, having a horror of pain. But knowing that if I cried out, here was this rebel Yankee—who had no more nerves than a plantation Sambo—to hear me, I set my teeth while, with a splint made of two pieces of wood, he secured my arm in its due position, and eased as far as he could the crushed shoulder. He did it not untenderly, and when he rose to his feet, “You look pretty sick,” he said, “as if you’d be the better for a sup of Kentucky whisky. But there’s none here, and there’s worse to come. So pull yourself together, and think of old England!”

He spoke in a tone of derision, to which the gentleness of his touch gave the lie. I rose to my feet and eyed the saddle. “It’s that or the buzzards,” he said, seeing that I hesitated; and he shoved me up. I did what I could myself and with an effort I climbed into the saddle. “That’s good!” he exclaimed. “For a beginning.”

I cried out once—I could not refrain; but I was mounted now if I could stay where I was. I suppose that he saw that I was on the verge of collapse, for “See here!” he cried roughly. “I can shoot you, I can leave you, or I can take you. There is no other way. What do you say?”

“Go on,” I said. And then, “Wait!”

“What now?” he growled, suspicious, I think, of my firmness.

“His address is on him,” I said, nodding towards Simms. “He wanted his wife to know, if he did not come off. It’s in his hat. I must take it.”

He stared at me. For a moment I thought that he was going to refuse to do what I asked. Then he went and picked up Simms’ hat and from a slit in the looped side he drew a thin packet of letters. “Are you satisfied now?” he said, as he handed the packet to me.

“That’s it,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I thought you held that lot were only food for the triangles,” he muttered. “Well, live and learn, and the last knows most! Now, forward it is, sir, and within five miles I’ll have you under cover. All the same there’s a plaguy bottom to cross that will give us trouble, or I am no prophet!”

I was soon to learn what he meant. For a certain distance, riding where it was level through open park-like land, that closed here and there into forest, the going was good and the pain was bearable, though the thought that at any moment the horse might stumble chilled me with apprehension. But after a while we sank into a shallow valley, where the air was darkened by cypress trees and poisoned by their yew-like odor. And presently, threading the swamp that filled the bottom, there appeared a rivulet. It crossed our path, and my heart sank into my boots.

“Stay here,” the man said shortly; and he left me and rode up and down, hunting for a crossing, while I followed him with scared eyes. At length he found what he wanted and he signed to me to join him. “Give me your rein,” he said, “and hold on with all the strength you have! It’s neck or nothing!”

We did it. But the muscles of the crushed shoulder and, in a less degree, the broken arm gave me exquisite pain, and I had to pause awhile on the other side of the water, crouching on the neck of my horse. When I had recovered, we went on and climbed out of the bottom and in another half mile as the light began to fail, we struck into a rough road.

We rode along it side by side, and he looked me over. “Major, ain’t you?” he said by and by.

I admitted it.

“Only came in yesterday, did you?”

“That’s so,” I said. “How did you know?”

“Ah!” he said. “That’s telling. But you may take it from me, there’s little we don’t know. Ever been taken before, Major?”

In pain as I was I wondered what imp of mischief had suggested the question. “If you must know,” I said reluctantly, “I was taken at Saratoga.”

“And exchanged?”

“Yes,” I said.

He chuckled. “Jerusalem!” he said. “You take it as easily as a snake takes skinning! Got a gift for it seemingly! But you escaped better last time than this, I guess?”

“Yes,” I said grudgingly—why should I explain? And luckily at that moment a light showed a little way before us, and relieved me from farther questioning. The forest gave place to two or three ragged fields, divided by snake-fences; and beyond these, where our road crossed another, appeared a small log-house, backed by some straggling out-buildings. If appearances went for anything it was a tavern or a smithy. The light shone from a window of the house.

As we rode up to the door two or three dogs heard us and gave the alarm. The result was not promising. The light went out.

My companion swung his foot clear of the stirrup, and kicked the door. “House!” he cried. “House! Barter!”

There was no answer.

“House!” he cried again. “It’s I! Wilmer!”

A window creaked. “Is that you, Captain?” a thin quavering voice asked.

“Who should it be?” my companion answered. “Don’t be a fool! I want you.”

A bar was removed—not very quickly—and the door was opened. By such firelight as issued from the room I saw an old man standing in the doorway, and behind him three or four white-faced women. He nursed a gun which he had barely the strength to level, and which he made haste to lower as soon as he had taken a look at us. “Lord-a-mercy, Cap’en, what a gunning there’s been,” he piped, peering up at us, all of a tremble. “We’ve been sweating here for hours, not knowing what moment the Tories and redcoats might be on us! Lord-a-mercy! Might ha’ been the last day by the sound of it!”

“Father, let the Captain tell us,” said one of the women.

“We’ve beaten them soundly,” my companion answered with less blatancy than I expected. He seemed, indeed, to have two ways of talking, and to be by no means without education when he pleased to show it. “In a month or less,” he continued, “there’ll not be a redcoat this side of the Santee High Hills; and if Marion does his work as well below, we shall be in Charles Town by Christmas! We shall have cleared Carolina, and you’ll have no more need to sweat! But there, I want you to take in a wounded man, Barter. He’s a broken arm, and a shoulder that, I expect, will give more trouble than the arm, and—”

“He’s welcome!” the woman broke in heartily. “He’s welcome to what we’ve got, Captain, and the Tories have left us! Let him come right in! Talking’s poor fare, and—”

Her voice quavered away to nothing, she left the sentence unfinished. Before I had grasped what was amiss, or understood what was doing, the man and the women had crowded back into the house, the lower half of the door was closed, I heard a bolt shot. “No, no! you’ve no right to ask us!” the old man quavered. “You’ve no right to ask us, Cap’en! He’s a redcoat! We’ll take in no King’s man and no Tory! Not we!”

“We daren’t, Cap’en Wilmer,” the woman said. “If we did the boys would take him out, and hang him, and, as likely as not, burn the house over us! It’s as much as our lives are worth to take him in!”

“See here,” the Captain answered, with more patience than I expected—it was clear that in spite of their refusal these people stood in awe of him. “See here! You can say that I put him here, Barter.”

“And if you were here, it might do!” the woman replied. “May be so and may be not. But you’re not here, Cap’en Wilmer, and when the boys’ blood’s up they’ll not listen to father nor to me! We’re a parcel of women, and you’ve no right to ask it. They’ve said, and you know it as well as I do, that they’ll burn down any house that shelters a redcoat. We’ll not take him!” she continued firmly, “and small kindness to him if we did! Phil Levi was here last Sunday and swore till he was black in the face what he’d do if we so much as fodder’d one of them! More by token, Cap’en, if you think it’s safe—why do you not take him in at the Bluff?”

“It’s a mile farther,” Wilmer said, “and there are reasons.”

“And we’ve reasons, too!” the woman retorted sharply. “I’d not lay a hand on him myself—God forbid I should—but I’ll not shelter him. Jake is out with Colonel Marion below the Forks, and father hasn’t strength to pull a trigger, and we’re a parcel of women and ’tisn’t fair to ask us! ’Tisn’t fair to ask us, and we all alone!”

Wilmer swore softly. “D—n Phil Levi!” he said. “He’s a brave fellow—before and after! But I can’t say that I saw the color of his horse’s tail to-day!” He sat forward in his saddle, undertermined, pondering.

I had borne up pretty well so far. Pride and the habit of a soldier’s life had supported me under this man’s scrutiny. I had told myself that it was the chance of war; that I was fortunate in being alive where so many—alas, so many!—who had sat at table with me a few hours before, had fallen. But, little by little, pain had sapped my fortitude. Every second in the saddle was a second of agony; every moment that my arm hung from the shoulder was a grinding pang. And on the threshold of this house, at the sound of the women’s voices, I had thought that at last the worst was over. Here I had promised myself relief, rest, an end. The disappointment was the sharper. The refusal to take me in seemed to be fiendish, heartless, cruel. At the mere thought of it, of the barbarity of it, self-pity choked me, and I could have shed tears. “Let me be,” I muttered. “I can bear no more.”

“No, I’m d—d if I do,” Wilmer answered angrily. “I had a reason for not taking you to my place, Major, but needs must when the devil drives, and it’s there you are bound to go. We must make the best of it.” He took my rein. “It’s a long way to Salem,” he continued, “but it’s the last mile. Hold up! man, and maybe you’ll see King George yet. He certainly ought to be obliged to you,” he added with a dry laugh. He kicked up his horse.

I moved away with him, biting off the prayer that rose to my lips that he would let me be. I had no other thought now but to persist, to bear, to keep the saddle; and the croak of the frogs, the plaintive notes of the mocking bird in the thicket, the change from clearing to forest and again from forest to open fields—the open fields of a considerable plantation—all passed as the scenes pass in a nightmare; now whelming me in despair, as the blackness of the trees closed about us, now lifting me to hope as lights broke out, twinkling before us. Poor Ferguson, the fight, Simms, my fall, all receded to an infinite distance; and only one thing, only one thought, one aspiration remained—the craving to rest, to lie down, to come to the end of pain. My shoulder was on fire; my arm was red-hot iron. One moment I burned with fever; the next I turned cold and faint and sick.

Only a mile! But from Newgate to Tyburn is only a mile, yet how much lies between them for the wretch condemned to suffer on the gallows.

At last I was aware that my companion had alighted—perhaps he had done so more than once—to pull down a sliprail. This time, whether it was the last, or the only time, the rattle of the timber provoked an outburst of barking, and presently, amid the baying of dogs, a nigger’s voice called out to know who was there. The alarm once given—and the hounds gave it pretty loudly—other voices joined in, in tones of alarm as well as joy. Lights glanced here and there; in a twinkling there were people about us. Black faces and white eyeballs appeared for an instant and sank into shadow. We halted before the porch of a long wooden house, that declared itself, here plainly and there dimly, as the lights fell upon it.

I could only endure. But surely the end was come now! Surely there would be rest for me here. They would come to me, they would do something for me presently.

Wilmer had gone up on the porch, and there was a woman—a woman in white with her arms about his neck. He was soothing her and she was laughing and crying at once; and about them and about me—who sat in the saddle below, in the dull lethargy of exhaustion—shone a ring of smiling, black faces. And then—here was something new, something startling and alarming—the woman was looking down at me, and speaking quickly and sharply; speaking almost as those other women had spoken at Barter’s. She was pointing at me. And the niggers were no longer laughing but staring, all staring at me. I gathered that they were frightened.

It could not be that there was no rest for me here? It could not be that they would not take me in here! Oh, it was impossible, it was inhuman, it was devilish! But I began to tremble. “Anywhere, anywhere but here!” the woman was saying. “It is madness to think of it. You know that, father! Why did you bring him here? When you knew! When you knew, father!”

“In the cabins, honey, if you like,” the man answered patiently. “But he’ll not be safe out of our sight.”

She flared up. She poured out her anger upon him. “Safe!” she cried. “And what of you? Where will you be safe? And what is it to me if he be not safe? Don’t do it, father, don’t,” she continued, her voice sinking to a note of entreaty. “Don’t bring him here! It will end ill! You will see, it will end ill! Let him go to Barter’s.”

“We’ve been to Barter’s—”

“And he won’t take him! No! he’s more sense, though the risk to him is small. But you, think how the day has gone, and left you safe and well! And now, now at the end, you will spoil all!”

“Let be, Con,” the man struck in, speaking with decision. “He must come in. There’s nothing else for it. We’re not Cherokees, nor savages. There’s nothing else that can be done. You must put up with it, and—”

In a twinkling she was at the foot of the steps and at my rein—a girl, young, slender, dark and fiercely excited. “If you are a man,” she cried, seizing my arm, “if you are a gentleman, you’ll not come here! Do you hear, sir! There are reasons, a thousand reasons why we cannot take you in. And more—”

On that word she stopped. A change came over her face as she looked into mine. The only answer I could give her—she had gripped my wounded arm and I could bear no more—was to faint away. As the man had said, I was in sore need of a sup of Kentucky whisky.

CHAPTER III
MADAM CONSTANTIA

I see how she doth wry,

When I begin to moan;

I see when I come nigh,

How fain she would be gone.

I see—what will ye more?

She will me gladly kill:

And you shall see therefore

That she shall have her will.

Anon.

When I came to myself I was, by comparison, in a haven of comfort. I was in a clean bed, in a clean room, I was wearing a shirt that was also clean and was certainly not my own. A negro woman with a yellow kerchief bound about her head was holding a lamp, while a colored man who was bending over me, contrived a cage to lift the coverlet clear of my shoulder and arm. The room was small, with boarded walls, and the furniture was of plain wood and roughly made, of the kind that is found in the smaller plantations of this upper country. But my eye alighted on a framed sampler hung between two prints above the bedhead; and this and one or two handsome mahogany pieces told a story of changes and journeys, which these, the cherished relics of an older house, perhaps in the Tidewater, had survived.

I noted these things dreamily, blissfully, resting in a haven of ease. Presently the man stood back to admire his work, and the woman, turning to glance at my face, saw that my eyes were open. She set down the lamp and fetching a cup held it to my lips. I have reason to believe that it held milk-punch; but for me it held nectar, and I drank greedily and as long as she would let me. Whatever it was, the draught cleared my mind; and when the man turned to the table and began to occupy himself with rolling up a monstrous length of bandage, I saw the woman sign to him. They looked towards the door, and I became aware of the voices of two people who were talking in an outer room. The speakers were the two who had debated my fate before, while I hung, worn out, over my horse’s neck; and the question between them was apparently the same.

“But I can’t see it, father!” the girl was saying, repeating it as if she had said it half a dozen times before. “I can’t see it. What is he to us? Why should we do it? Think of my mother! Think of Dick! Haven’t I heard you say a hundred times—”

“And a hundred to that! I admit it, Con,” the man answered, “I have. But there was something about this fellow if you’ll believe me—”

“About him!” she retorted, blazing up. “A weakling! A milksop! A poor thing who swoons under a minute’s pain!”

“But if you had seen him pick the man up?” he pleaded. “It was that that took me, honey. It ran right athwart of all that I had heard of his like, and had seen of some of them! It was the devil of a mellay I can tell you! Of five who made off together after Ferguson was down he was the only one who fought his way through; and we were after him whip and spur. He was all but clear of us, when there came the other man running through the bush and calling to him, calling to him to take him up for God’s sake! For God’s sake! He stopped, Con! And I can tell you that to stop with the muzzles of our Deckhards between his shoulderblades and not forty yards off—”

“Who wouldn’t have?” she retorted scornfully. “Is there a man that wouldn’t have stopped? Is there a man who calls himself a man who could ride away—”

“Well, I fancy,” he replied dryly, “I could put my hand on one or two, Con. I fancy I could.”

“And because he did that,” she continued stubbornly, “because he remembered, for just that one moment, that he and the men whom he hires to fight his battles were of the same flesh and blood as himself, you do this foolish, this mad, mad thing! To bring him here, father! To bring him to the Bluff of all places! Why, if it were only that I am alone—alone here—”

“There’s Aunt Lyddy.”

“And what is she?—it would be reason enough against it! But to be left here,” the girl continued angrily—and it seemed to me that she was pacing the room—“alone for days together with this insolent Englishman who looks down on us, who calls us colonials and mohairs, and thinks us honored if he doesn’t plunder us—and if he plunders us, what are we but rebels? Who will hardly stoop to be civil even to the men who are risking their all and betraying Carolina in his cause! Oh! it is too much!”

“He’s not the worst of them at any rate,” Wilmer replied with good humor. “Sit down, girl. And as to your being left with him, I don’t know any one more able to take care of herself! If that be all—”

“But it’s not all!” she cried. “It’s not a quarter! If that were all I’d not say a word! But it’s not that, you know it is not that!”

“I know it’s not, honey!” he said in a different tone—and I wondered to hear him, so gentle was his voice. “I know it’s not.”

“If you were away altogether it would be different! If you kept away—”

“But I can’t keep away,” he answered mildly. “I must come and go. I can’t let the plantation go to ruin. Times are bad enough and hard enough—we may be burnt out any night. But until the worst comes I must keep things together, Con, you know that. It’s fortunate that we’re above King’s Mountain. After this Tarleton and his Greens—d—n the fellow, I wish he had been there to-day—will spread over the south side like a swarm of wasps flocking to the honey-pot. But they’ll be shy of pushing as far north of Winsboro’ as this—we’re too strong hereabouts. For the Englishman I’d send him to the cabins at once, but he wouldn’t be safe from our folks outside the house.”

She spoke up suddenly. “If they come for him,” she cried, “I warn you, father, I shall not raise a finger to save him!”

“Pooh! pooh!”

“I vow I will not! So now you know!”

“Well, I don’t think that they’ll come,” he replied lightly. “They know me, and—”

“To shelter a Britisher!”

“I’ve sheltered worse men,” he responded reasonably.

“At least you’ve had warning!” she retorted—and I heard the legs of a chair grate on the floor of the outer room. “If I have to choose, your little finger is more to me than the lives of twenty such as he!”

“Unfortunately,” he answered dryly, “it’s not my little finger, my dear, that’s in peril! It’s my—”

“Father!” she cried, pain in her voice. “How can you! How can you!”

“There, there,” he said, soothing her, “a man can but die once, and how he dies does not matter much! Courage, Con, courage, girl! Many is the awkward corner I have been in, as you know, and I’ve got out of it. You may be sure I shall take all the care I can.”

“But you don’t!” she retorted. “You don’t! Or you would never let this man—” I lost the rest in the movement of a second chair.

For some minutes the two blacks had made hardly a pretence of attending to me. They had listened with all their ears. Once or twice when what was said had touched me nearly they had goggled their eyes at me between wonder and amazement. And I, too, wondered. I, too, saw that here was something that needed explanation. Why should this girl, scarcely out of her teens—I judged her to be no more that twenty—feel so strongly, so cruelly, so inhumanly? Why should she show herself so hard, so unnatural, where even her father betrayed the touch of nature that makes us all akin? This was a question, but it was one that I must consider to-morrow. For the present I was too comfortable, too drowsy, too weary. Sleep pressed on me irresistibly—the blessed sleep of the exhausted, of the wounded, of the broken, who are at last at rest! The room grew hazy, the light a dim halo. And yet before I slept I had a last impression of the things about me.

The girl came to the open door and stood on the threshold, gazing down at me. She was tall, slender, dark, and very handsome. She looked at me in silence for a long time, and with such a look and such a curiosity as one might turn on a crushed thing lying beside the road. It hurt me, but not for long.

For I slept, and dreamt of the Border and of home. I was in the small oak parlor at Osgodby. There was no fire on the hearth, it was summer and the bow-pots were full of roses. The windows were open, the garden, viewed through them, simmered in the sunshine.

My mother was sitting on the other side of the empty hearth, fanning herself with a great yellow fan, and we were both looking at the picture of Henrietta Craven that is set in the overmantel. “Ill will come of it, ill will come of it,” my mother was repeating over and over again. And then I found that it was not my mother who was saying it but the portrait over the fireplace; and—which did not seem to surprise me at the time—it was no longer the portrait of Henrietta Craven in her yellow sacque that spoke, but a woman in white, tall and slender and dark and very handsome.

It was noon when I awoke; not the sultry noon of Charles Town, for the rains had come and the day was grey and cool. I was alone, in the pleasant stillness, but the door into the living-room was ajar, perhaps that I might be heard if I called. Pigeons were cooing without, and not far away, probably on the veranda, some one was crooning in tune to the pleasant hum of a spinning-wheel. Sleep had made another man of me. My head was clear, I was free from fever, I was hungry; such pain as I felt was confined to the shoulder and arm. Yesterday I had come near to envying those who had fallen in the fight. To-day I was myself again, glad to be alive, free to hope, ready to look forward. After all, things might be worse; our Headquarters were at Charlotte, barely thirty-five miles away, and if my Lord Cornwallis moved towards King’s Mountain, to avenge Ferguson, I might be rescued. If he did not, I must contrive to be sent, as soon as I was well enough to travel, to the rebel Headquarters in the northern colony, whence I might be exchanged. I should be safe there—I was not safe here. I must see this man Wilmer by and by and talk to him about it. He had shown a measure of humanity and some generosity, mingled with his dry and saturnine humor. And he had saved my life, I had no doubt of that. In the meantime I was famished, positively famished!

I called, “Hi! hi!”

The low crooning stopped, the hum of the spinning-wheel ceased. The negro woman who had held the lamp appeared in the doorway. “How you find yo’self dis mawning?” she asked. And then in a lingo which at this distance of time I do not pretend to reproduce correctly, she asked me what I would take to eat.

“There’s nothing I could not eat,” I said.

She showed her teeth in a wide smile. “Marse mighty big man, dis mawning,” she answered. “He sorter lam-like yistiddy. He mo’ like one er de chilluns yistiddy. W’at you gwine ter eat?”

“Breakfast first!” I said. “Some tea, please—”

She shook her head violently. “Hole on dar,” she said. “I ’ear Ma’am Constantia say der ain’t no tea fer Britishers! De last drap er dat tea bin gone sunk in Cooper River!”

“Oh!” I replied, a good deal taken aback. Confound Madam Constantia’s impudence! “Then I will have what you will give me. Only let me have it soon.”

“Marse mighty big man dis mawning,” the woman said mischievously. “He’low he’ll eat de last mossel der is. Yis’dy he mo’ like one er de chilluns.”

Well, I had the last morsel—without tea; while Mammy Jacks stood over me with her yellow kerchief and her good-natured grinning black face. “Who’s Madam Constantia?” I asked after a time.

“W’at I tole you,” the woman replied with dignity, “She, Ma’am Constantia ter cullud folks. She, missie ter me.”

“The young lady I saw yesterday, is she?”

“Tooby sho’.”

“She is Captain Wilmer’s daughter, I suppose?”

“Dat’s w’at I laid out fer to tell you.”

I did not want to seem curious or I should have asked if “Madam” was married. I refrained out of prudence. I went on eating and Mammy Jacks went on looking at me, and presently, “I speck you monst’ous bad, cruel man,” she said with unction. “I hear Ma’am Constantia say you make smart heap uv trubble fer cullud folks, en tote em to ’Badoes en Antigo! She say you drefful ar’ogant insolent Englishman! You too bad ter live, I’ low.”

“And Madam Constantia told you to tell me that?”

The woman’s start and her look of alarm answered me. Before she could put in a protest, however, the negro who had been with her the previous evening appeared and relieved her from the difficulty. He came to attend to my arm, and did his work with a skill that would not have disgraced a passed surgeon. While he was going about the business, I was aware of a slender shadow on the threshold, the shadow of some one who listened, yet did not wish to be seen. “Confound her!” I thought. “The jade! I believe that she is there to hear me whimper!” And I set my teeth—she had called me a milksop, had she?—well, she should not hear me cry again. The shadow lay on the threshold a short minute, then it vanished. But more than once on that day and the two following days I was aware of it. It was all I saw of the girl; and though I knew, and had the best of grounds for knowing her sentiments respecting me, I confess that this steady avoidance of me—lonely and in pain as I was, and her guest—hurt me more than was reasonable.

As for Wilmer he was gone, without beat of drum, and without seeing me; and save Mammy Jacks and the nigger, Tom, no one came near me except Aunt Lyddy, and she came only once. She was a little old lady, deaf and smiling, who labored under the belief that I had met with my injuries in fighting against the French. She was quite unable to distinguish this war from the old French war; when she thought of the fighting at all, she thought of it as in progress in Canada or Louisiana, under the leadership of Braddock and Forbes and Wolfe. The taking of Quebec was to her an event of yesterday, and I might have drunk all the tea in the world, and she would not have objected. Such was Aunt Lyddy; and even, such as she was, I wondered with bitterness, that she was allowed to visit me.

Yet when I came to think more calmly, the position surprised me less. It was in the nature of this war to create a rancour which bred cruel deeds, and these again produced reprisals. After the capture of Charles Town in May and the subsequent defeat of Gates, the country had apparently returned to its allegiance. The King’s friends had raised their heads. The waverers had declared themselves, opposition in the field had ceased. If one thing had seemed more certain than another it was that my Lord Cornwallis’s base in the southern province was secure, and that he might now devote himself, without a backward glance, to the conquest of North Carolina and Virginia.

Then in a month, in a week, almost in a day had come a change. God knows whether it was the result of mismanagement on our part, or of some ill-judged severity; or, as many now think, of the lack of civil government, a lack ill-borne by a people of our race. At any rate the change came. In a week secret midnight war flamed up everywhere. In a month the whole province was on fire. Partisans came together and attacked their neighbors, rebels took loyalists by the throat, burned their houses, harried their plantations, and in turn suffered the same things. By day the King’s writ ran; at first it was the exception for these irregulars to meet us in the field. But by night attacks, by ambuscades, by besetting every ford and every ferry, they cut our communications, starved our posts and killed our messengers. For a time the royalists showed themselves as active. They, too, came together, formed bands, burned and harried. Presently the father was in one camp, the son in the other; neighbor fought with neighbor, old feuds were revived, old friendships were broken; and this it was that gave to this blind, bloody warfare, in the woods, in the morasses, in the cane-brakes, its savage character.

As quickly as General Gates’s reputation had been lost, reputations were won. Marion, issuing from the swamps of the Pee Dee carried alarm to the gates of Charles Town. Sumter made his name a terror through all the country between the Broad and the Catawba Rivers. Colonel Campbell on the Watauga, Davy on the North Carolina border flung the fiery torch far and wide. It was all that Tarleton and his British Legion, the best force for this light work that we possessed, and Ferguson and his Provincials, now a shattered body—it was all that these could do to make head against the rebels or maintain the spirits of our party.

There were humane men, thank God, in both camps. But there were also men whom the memory of old wrongs wrought to madness. Cruel things were done. Quarter was refused, men were hung after capture, houses were burnt, women were made homeless. Therefore, no bitterness of feeling, no animosity, on one side or the other, was much of a surprise to me; rather I was prepared for it. But as the soldier by profession is the last, I hope, to resort to these practices, so is he the most sorely hurt by them. And we, as I have said, had another grievance. Not only were we at a loss in this irregular fighting, but we had held our heads too high in the last war. We had looked down—the worst of us—on the Colonial officers. And now this was remembered against us. We were at once blamed and derided; our drill, our discipline, our service were turned to ridicule. Nor was this shrew of a girl the first who had scoffed at our courage and made us the subject of her scorn.

Yet, though I understood her feelings, I was hurt. When a man is laid aside by illness or by an injury, something of the woman awakes in him, and he is wounded by trifles which would not touch him at another time. With Wilmer gone, with none but black faces about me, with no certainty of safety, I had only this girl to whom I could open my views or impart my wishes. And enemy as she was, she was a woman—in that lay much of my grievance. She was a woman, and the notion of the woman as his companion and comforter in sickness and pain is so deeply inbred in a man, that when she stands away from him at that time, it seems to him a thing monstrous and unnatural.

I think I felt her aloofness more keenly because, though I had barely seen her face, I was beginning to know her. The living-room, as in many of these remote plantations, occupied the middle of the house, running through from front to rear. There was no second story and all the other chambers opened on this side or that of this middle room which served also for a passage. The business of the day was done in it, or on the veranda, according to the season. It followed that, though my door was now kept shut, I heard her voice a dozen, nay, a score of times a day. In the morning I heard its full grave tones, mingling with the hurly-burly of business, giving orders, setting tasks, issuing laws to the plantation; later in the day I heard it lowered to the pitch of the afternoon stillness and the cooing of the innumerable pigeons that made the veranda their home.

I heard her most clearly when she raised her voice to speak to Aunt Lyddy; and aware that there is hardly a call upon the patience more trying than that made by deafness, I was surprised by the kindness and self-control of one who in my case had shown herself so hard and so inhuman.

“Confound her!” I thought more than once—the hours were long and dull, and I was often restless and in pain. “I wish I could see her, if it were only to rid myself of my impression of her. I don’t suppose she is good-looking. I had only a glimpse of her, and I was light-headed. When a man is in that state every nurse is a Venus.”

And then, on the fourth day, I did see her. I heard some one approach my door and knock. I thought that it was Mammy Jacks and I cried “Come in!” But it was not Mammy Jacks. It was Madam Constantia at last. She came in, and stood a little within the doorway, looking down—not at me but at my feet. And if she had not been all that I had fancied her, and more, I might have had eyes to read something of shame in her face, and in the stiffness that did not deign to leave the threshold. She closed the door behind her. She closed it with care it seemed to me.

“I cannot rise,” I said, taking careful stock of her, “honored as I am by your visit. Can I offer you a chair, Miss Wilmer?”

“I do not need one,” she replied. She was laboring, I could see, under strong emotion, and was in no mood for compliments. She was in white as I had first seen her; and the quiet tones which I had learned to associate with her, agreed perfectly with the small head set on the neck as gracefully as a lily on the stem, with the wide low brow, the serious mouth, the firm chin. “I prefer to stand,” she continued—and still she did not raise her eyes—I wondered if they were black and hoped but could hardly believe that they were blue. “I shall not keep you long, sir.”

“You are not keeping me,” I answered with irony. “I shall be here when you are gone, I fear, Miss Wilmer.”

If I thought to work upon her feelings by that, and to force her to think of my loneliness, I failed wofully. “Not for long,” she replied. “We are arranging to send you to Salisbury, sir. You will doubtless be sufficiently recovered to travel by to-morrow. You will be safer there than here, and will have better attendance in the hospital.”

I was thunderstruck. “To-morrow!” I echoed. “Travel? But—but I could not!” I cried. “I could not, Miss Wilmer. The bones of my arm have not knit! You know what your roads are, and my shoulder is still painful, horribly painful.”

“I am sorry, sir, that circumstances render it necessary.”

“But, good heavens!” I cried, “You don’t, you cannot mean it!”

“The man who put your arm in splints,” she replied, averting her eyes from me, “will see that you are taken in a litter as far as the cross-roads. I have arranged for a cart to meet you there—a pallet and a—” her voice tailed off, I could not catch the last word. “They will see you carefully as far as—” again she muttered a name so low that I did not catch it—“on the way to Salisbury. Or to Hillsborough if that be necessary.”

“Hillsborough?” I cried, aghast. “But have you reflected? It is eighty or ninety miles to Hillsborough! Ninety miles of rough roads—where there are roads, Madam!”

“It’s not a matter of choice,” she replied firmly—but I fancied that she turned a shade paler. “And it may not be necessary to go beyond Salisbury. At any rate the matter is settled, sir. Circumstances render it necessary.”

“But it is impossible!” I urged. “It is out of the question!” The memory of my ride from King’s Mountain, of the stream I had had to cross, was too sharp, too recent to permit me to entertain delusions. “The pain I suffered coming here—”

“Pain!” she cried, letting herself go at that. “What is a little pain, sir, in these days, when things so much worse, things unspeakable are being suffered—are being done and suffered every day? Our men whom you delivered to the Indians at Augusta, did they not suffer pain?”

“It was an abominable thing!” I said, aghast at her attitude. “But I did not do it, God forbid! I detest the thought of it, Miss Wilmer! And you, you do not mean that you would be as cruel as those—” I stopped. I let her imagine the rest. I held her with indignant eyes.

“I am doing the best I can,” she said sullenly. But I saw that she was ashamed of her proposal even while she persisted in it; and I grew stronger in my resolve.

“I am helpless,” I said. “Your father can do what he pleases, I am in his hands. But even he is bound by the laws of humanity, which he obeyed when he spared me. I cannot think that he did that, I cannot think that he behaved to me as one soldier to another in order to put me to torture! If he tells me I must go, I must go, I have no remedy. But until he does, I will never believe that it is his wish!”

“You will force yourself on us?” she cried, her voice quivering. “On us, two women as we are, and alone?”

I pointed to my shoulder. “I am not very dangerous,” I said.

“I do not think you are, sir, or ever were,” she retorted with venom. And now for the first time she met my look, her eyes sparkling with anger. “As one soldier to another!” she said. “It is marvellous that you should recognize him as a soldier! But I suppose that the habit of surrender is an education in many ways.”

“Any one may insult a prisoner,” I said. And I had the satisfaction of seeing the blood burn in her face. “But you did not come here to tell me that, Miss Wilmer.”

“No,” she answered. “I came here to tell you that you must go. You must go, sir.”

“When your father sends me away,” I said, “I must needs go. Until he does—”

“You will not?”

“No, Miss Wilmer, by your leave, I will not,” I said with all the firmness of which I was capable. “Unless I am taken by force. And you are a woman. You will not be so untrue to yourself and to your sex as to use force to one, crippled as I am, and helpless as I am. Think! If your dogs broke a raccoon’s leg, would you drag it a mile—two miles?”

The color ebbed from her face, and she shuddered—she who was proposing this! She shuddered at the picture of a brute’s broken leg! And yet, strange to say, she clung to her purpose. She looked at me between anger and vexation, and “If I do not, others will,” she said. “Do you understand that, sir? Is not that enough for you? Cannot you believe, cannot you do me the justice to believe that I am doing what I think to be right? That I am acting for the best? If you stay here after this your blood be upon your own head!” she added solemnly.

“So be it,” I said. “It would be a very great danger that would draw me from where I am, Miss Wilmer. I am like the King of France, or whoever it was, who said ‘J’y suis, J’y reste.’”

“Stubborn! Foolish!” I heard her mutter.

“I hate pain,” I said complacently.

“Do you hate pain more than you fear death?” she asked, gazing at me with sombre eyes.

“I am afraid I do,” I replied. “I am a milksop.” And I looked at her.

I was beginning to enjoy the discussion. But if I hoped for a farther exchange of badinage with her I was mistaken. She did not deign to reply. She did that to which I could make no answer. She went out and closed the door behind her.

CHAPTER IV
AT THE SMITHY

Hinc Constantia, illinc Furor.

Catullus.

The way in which the girl broke off the discussion and went out did more than surprise me. It left me anxious and, in a degree, apprehensive. Her proposal would have been a cruel and a heartless one if nothing lay behind it. If something lay behind it, some risk serious enough to justify the step on which she insisted, then I could think better of her but very much worse of my own plight.

Yet Wilmer had thought that I was safe in his house, if not in the huts. And if I were not secure here, what risks must I not run on the slow, painful, helpless journey to Gates’s Head-Quarters, through a district ill-affected to the British! Once there, it is true, my life would be safe, and the Colonial Surgeons enjoyed a high reputation for skill. But the appliances of a rebel hospital were sure to be few, the fare rough and scanty; it was unlikely that I should be better off there than where I was. In the end, doubtless, I should have to go thither; it was the only road to exchange and freedom, unless a happy chance rescued me. But a life which would be bearable when I could use my arm and had recovered my strength would be no bed of roses at present.

And to be quite honest I had found an interest where I was. I had enjoyed my tussle with this strange girl, and I looked forward to a repetition of it. Her beauty, her disdain, her desire to be rid of me piqued me—as whom would it not have piqued?—and whetted that appetite for conquest which is of the man, manly. Madam Constantia! The name suited her. I could fancy that she governed the plantation with a firm hand and a high courage.

On the whole I was determined, whatever the risk, to stay where I was; and yet as the day waned I felt less happy. My shoulder was painful, I was restless. I told myself that I had some fever. I was tired, too, of my own company and the house seemed more still than usual. I hoped that the girl would pay me another visit, would resume the argument, and make a second effort to persuade me; but she did not, and when my supper came Mammy Jacks dispensed it with an air, absurdly tragic. She heaved sighs from a capacious bosom, and looked at me as if I were already doomed.

“Marse, you’r runnin’ up wid trubble,” she said. “Ma’am ’Stantia, she look like der wuz sump’n wrong. She look like she whip all de han’s on de plantation.”

“I dare say she is pretty severe,” I said carelessly.

“I des’low you know nothin’ ’bout it,” the woman replied in great scorn. “She sholy not whip one ha’f, t’ree quarters, ten times ’nough! When Marse Wilmer come home, sez he, whip all dis black trash! Make up fer lost time. De last man better fer it! Begin wid Mammy Jacks! Dat’s w’at he say, but I des hanker ter see him tech ole Mammy! I speck sumpin’ wud happen bimeby ter ’sprise ’im. Ef Missie got win’ uv it, she up en tell ’im!”

“Is he coming back soon?” I asked.

“Day atter to-morrow. Clar to goodness, when he mounts dem steps, Missie’ll not mope round no mo’! She not make like she whip de han’s den.”

“She’s very fond of him, is she?”

“Der ain’t nobody in Car’lina fer ’er ceppin er dad! Seem like she idol—idol—”

“Idolizes him,” I suggested.

“Mout be dat,” Mammy Jacks assented. She repeated the word to herself with much satisfaction. It was a long one.

The little vixen, I thought. So she would be rid of me before her father returned! She knew that he would not send me away, and so—well, she was a spit-fire!

“Look here, Mammy Jacks,” I said. “I don’t think that I shall sleep to-night. I am restless. I should like something to read. Will you ask Miss Wilmer if she can lend me a book. Any book will do, old or new.”

“Tooby sho,’” she said, and she went to do my bidding.

I thought that this might re-open relations. It might bring the girl herself to learn what kind of book I would choose to have. There was not likely to be much choice on this up-country plantation, where I need not expect to find the “Fool of Quality” or “The Female Quixote” or any of the fashionable productions of the circulating libraries. But a Pope, a Richardson, or possibly a Fielding I might hope to have.

Alas, my reckoning was at fault. I had none, of these. It was Mammy Jacks who presently brought back the answer and the book. “Missie, she up ’n say dat monst’ous good book fer you,” the negress explained, as she set down the volume with a grin. “Missie say it wuz ole en new, but she specks new ter you. She tuck’n say she ’ope you read it ter night—you in monst’ous big need uv it.”

Puzzled by the message, and a little curious, I took the book and opened it. It was the Bible!

For a moment I was very angry; it seemed to be a poor jest, and in bad taste. Then I saw, or thought that I saw, that it was not a jest at all. This queer girl had sent the Bible, thinking to impress me, to frighten me, to bend me at the last moment to her will!

Certainly she should not persuade me now! Go? Never!

After all I had a quiet night. I slept well and awoke with a keen desire to turn the tables on her. I counted on her coming to learn the result of her last step, perhaps to try the effect of a last persuasion. But she did not come near me, and the day passed very slowly. I thanked heaven that Wilmer would return on the morrow. I should have some one to speak to then, some one to look at, I should no longer be cut off from my kind. And he might bring news, news of Tarleton, news of Lord Cornwallis, news of our movements in the field. Out of pure ennui I dozed through most of the afternoon. The sun set and the short twilight passed unnoticed. It was dark when I awoke. I wondered for a moment where I was. Then I remembered, and fancied that I must have slept some hours, for I was hungry.

And then, “Wilmer has come,” I thought; I heard the voice of a man in the living-room. Presently I heard another voice, nay, more than one. “Yes, Wilmer has come,” I thought, “and not alone. I shall have some one to speak to at last, and news perhaps. Doubtless they are occupied with him, but they need not forget me altogether. They might bring me a light and my supper.”

And then—strange how swiftly, in a flash, in a heartbeat, the mind seizes and accepts a new state of things!—then I knew why Mammy Jacks had brought no light and no supper. I heard her voice, excited, tearful, protesting, raised in the unrestrained vehemence of the black; and a man’s voice that silenced her harshly, silenced her with an oath. And therewith I needed no more to explain the position. I grasped it.

When a few seconds later the door was flung open, and the light broke in upon me, and with the light three or four rough burly figures, who crowded one after the other over the threshold, I was prepared. I had had that moment of warning, and I was ready. There were scared black faces behind them, filling the doorway, and peeping athwart them, and murmurs, and a stir of panic proceeding from the room without.

“You come without much ceremony, gentlemen,” I said, speaking as coolly as I could. For the moment I had only one thought, one aim, one anxiety—that what I felt should not appear.

“Ceremony? Oh, d—n your ceremony!” cried the first to enter. And he called for a candle that he might see what he was doing. When it was handed in I saw them. They were a grim, rough group, the man who had called for the candle the least ill-looking among them; as he was also the smallest and perhaps the most dangerous. They all wore wide-leafed hats and carried guns and were hung about with pouches and weapons. They stared down at me, and I stared steadily at them. “You’ve got to swap your bed for the road,” the leader continued in the same brutal tone. “We think you’ll be safer, where we’re going to take you, mister.”

“And where’s that?” I asked—though I knew very well.

“To Salisbury,” he said. But his grin gave the lie to his words.

“I am afraid that is too long a journey, gentlemen,” I answered. “I could not go so far. I am quite helpless.”

“Oh, you’ll be helped to make the journey,” he retorted; and they all laughed, as at a good jest. “You’ll not find it long, either,” he continued, “you can trust us for that. We’re not set on long journeys ourselves. We must go with you a piece of the way, so we’ll shorten it, depend upon it!”

“I am Captain Wilmer’s prisoner,” I said clutching at what I knew was a straw. “He placed me here, and you will have to answer to him, gentlemen, for anything you may do.”

“We’ll answer him,” growled one of the other men. “I don’t think you’ll be there to complain,” he added with meaning.

I tried to calculate the chances, but there were none. I could not resist, I was crippled and unarmed. I could not escape. I was in their hands and at their mercy. “I ask you to note,” I said, “that I am a prisoner of war, duly admitted to quarter.”

“And why not?” the last speaker retorted with a curse. “Ain’t we going to take you to Head-Quarters? And the shortest way?” with a wink at the others.

At this there came an interruption from the outer room. “Why don’t you bring the d—d Tory out?” cried a voice that scorned disguise. “What’s the use of all this palaver, Levi? Might be a Cherokee pow-wow by the sound of it. Come! If he don’t know what to expect he’d best go and ask at Buford’s! Bring him out, confound you! Here’s his horse, and a rope and—”

“You’ll let me dress?” I said. There was no chance, I saw, but clearly what chance there was lay in coolness and delay, if delay were possible. “With a long journey before me, a man likes to start handsomely,” I continued, addressing the smaller man whom they called Levi. “I am sure that Captain Wilmer would not wish to put me to more inconvenience than is necessary. He’s been at a good deal of trouble—”

“A vast lot too much,” the man in the outer room struck in. “He needs a lesson, too, and we’re the lads of mettle to give it him! Here,” with a mingling of sarcasm and impatience, “pass along my lord’s vally, and his curling tongs! ’Fraid we can’t stop while he powders! Now, no nonsense, damme! Where’s his clothes? Where’s that nigger? Tom!”

The nigger was passed in from one to another, getting some rough usage on the way. “If you could withdraw, gentlemen, for a minute?” I said. Alone I might think of something.

But, “No, stranger, by your leave,” Levi replied, with a sneer. “You’re too precious! We’re not going to lose sight of you till—till the time comes. Go on with your dressing, if you don’t want to go in your shirt!”

Perhaps it was as well that they did not go, for I was shaky on my legs and I feared nothing so much as that I should break down through bodily weakness. Their presence braced me and gave me the less time to think. Tom’s fingers trembled so much that he was not as useful as he might have been, but with his help I got somehow into my clothes—with many a twinge and one groan that I could not check. The injured arm was already bound to my side, but by passing the other arm through the sleeve of a coat—Wilmer’s I suppose, for my uniform was not wearable—and looping the garment loosely round my neck, I was clothed after a fashion. With these men looking sombrely on, and their shadows, cast by the wavering light of the candle, rising and falling on the ceiling, and the hurry and silence, broken now and again by some, “Lord ha’ mercy” from the outer room, it was such a toilet as men make in Newgate but surely nowhere else.

“That’ll do,” Levi cried by and by. “You’ll not catch cold.”

“We’ll answer for that!” chimed in another. “Bring him on! He’ll be warm enough where he’s going! We’ve wasted more time than enough already!”

My head swam for a moment. Then, thank God, the dizziness left me and I got myself in hand. I thought it right to make a last protest, however useless. “Note,” I said, raising my head, “all here that I go unwillingly. These gentlemen do not intend me to reach Salisbury, and I warn them that they will be answerable to Captain Wilmer and to the Authorities for what they do. I am well known to Lord Cornwallis—”

“Enough of this palaver!” roared the brute in the outer room. “Are you turning soft, Levi? Why don’t you bring the man through? If he won’t catch cold, my mare will. Make an end, man!”

It was useless to say more. “Don’t touch me,” I said. “I can walk.”

I went out in the midst of them into the living-room which I had not yet seen with my eyes. There, in the lamplight the fourth man was standing on guard over the negro women of whom there were three or four. Apart from them, with her back to us, and looking through a window into the darkness, stood Madam Constantia. I had not heard the girl’s voice since the men had entered the house, and so far as I could judge she had carried out her threat, had uttered no protest, taken no side. She had deliberately stood aloof. Now, one does not look for protection to women. But that a woman, a girl should stand aside at such a time, should stand by, silent, unmoved, unprotesting, while her father’s guest was dragged out to death—when even the negroes about her were moved to pity—seemed to me an abominable thing, a thing so unnatural that it nerved me more than I believe anything else could have. If I were English, and she hated me for that, she should at least not despise me! If she thought so ill of the King’s officers that to her they were but milksops, she should at least find that we could meet the worst with dignity. She was abominable in her hardness and her beauty, but at least I would leave a thought to prick her, a something by which she should remember me. Better, far better to think of her in this pinch, than of home, of Osgodby, of my mother!

There would be time to think of these in the darkness outside.

As I entered the room—and no doubt, half-dressed as I was, I looked pale and ill—the women cried out. At that the men would have hustled me through the outer door without giving me an opportunity of speaking; but I managed to gain a moment. Mammy Jacks was blubbering—I called her to me. “My purse and what little money I have,” I said, “is under my pillow. It’s yours, my good woman. If Captain Wilmer will be good enough to let Lord Cornwallis know that Major Craven—Major Craven, can you remember—but he will know what to say. And one moment!” I hung back, as the men would have dragged me on. “There are some letters with the purse from a woman named Simms, who is about the Barracks at Charles Town. I want her to know that her husband is dead—was killed in my presence. I promised him that she should know. She should get a pass on the next Falmouth packet, and—you won’t forget—Major Craven—my address in England is in the purse.” Then, “I am ready,” I said to the men.

I would not look again at the girl’s still figure; I went out. Half a dozen horses stood in the darkness before the house, watched by a fifth man. One of these was thrust forward, and from the edge of the porch I was able, though weakly and with pain, to get into the saddle. The men mounted round me. They would have started at a trot, but I told them curtly that I could not sit the horse. On that they moved away, grumbling, at a walk.

I cast a backward glance at the long dark line of the house, and especially at the lighted window in which the girl’s figure showed as in a frame. She was watching us go, watching to the last without concern or pity. Certainly she had warned me, certainly she had done her best to persuade me to go while there was time. But in the bitterness of the moment I could not remember this. I could only think of her as unfeeling, unwomanly, cruel. I had read of such women, I had never met one, I had never thought to meet one; and I would think of her no more. I knew that in leaving the house I left my last hope behind me, and that outside in the night, in the power of these men, I must face what was before me without a thought of help.

A man dismounted to lower a sliprail, and even while I told myself that there was no hope I wondered if, crippled and weak as I was, I might still find some way to elude them. Clopety-clop, the horses went on again. The night wind rustled across the fields, crickets chirped, the squeal of some animal in its death-throe startled the ear. Clopety-clop!

I tried to direct my thoughts to that future now so near, which all must sometime face. I tried to remove my mind from the present, so swiftly ebbing away, and to dwell on the dark leap into the unknown, into the illimitable, that lay before me. But I could not. Hurried pictures of my home, of my mother, of the way in which the news would reach Osgodby—these indeed flitted across my mind. But though I knew, though I told myself, that escape was hopeless, and that in a few minutes, in an hour, according as these ruffians pleased, I should cease to exist, hope still tormented me, still held me on its tenter-hooks, still swung my mind hither and thither, as the chance of reprieve distracts the poor wretch in the condemned cell.

What if I broke away, one-armed as I was, and thrust my way through the men, taking my chance of obstacles? It would be useless, reason told me; and it might be the thing which they wished. It would absolve them from the last scruple, if any scruple remained. And at best I must be recaptured, for I knew neither my horse nor the country. Then—the mind at such times darts from subject to subject, unable to fix itself—I caught a word or two spoken by the riders in front.

“We can get one at the smithy,” Levi said.

“Confound you, you make me mad,” the other grumbled. “Why break our backs just to put him—” I missed the last word or two.

“You’re a fool, man! We must give Wilmer no handle,” Levi replied. “Let him suspect what he pleases, he can’t prove it. If he can’t show—” his voice dropped lower, I lost the rest.

So they were afraid of Wilmer, after all! But what was it that they were going to get at the smithy? And if we stayed there, was there any chance of help? I thought of Barter and the frightened women. Reason told me that there was no hope in them.

We were on the road now, riding in thick darkness under trees. The pain in my shoulder was growing with the motion, and from one moment to another, it was all I could do to restrain a groan. Frogs were croaking—cold for them I thought, with that strange leap of the mind from one subject to another. The men were silent, and save for the trampling of the horses and such sounds as I have named, the night was silent. How far were we going? Why need they be at the trouble of riding, and I at the pain, when the end, soon or late, would be the same?

Ha! there, before us was the faint glow of the smithy fire. Apparently the forge was at work to-night. It had not been lighted on the night of the King’s Mountain fight.

As we sighted it, one of the men spoke. I caught the word “Spade.” It was that which they were going to get at the smithy, then? A spade!

The word chilled my blood—I shivered. The glow of the smithy fire grew stronger as we advanced, the ring of a hammer on metal reached us. The men seemed to be disturbed by something and spoke low to one another. They even drew rein for a moment and conferred, but on second thoughts they moved on. “It can’t be old Barter,” said one. “But I’m mighty surprised if there was a fire when we came by. Who’s lit it?”

“Perhaps his lad’s come back?”

“Jake? Maybe. We’ll soon know.”

They drew up towards the forge at a walk.

When we were twenty yards from the doorway whence the light issued, a man strolled out of the shed, his hands in his pockets. He stood in the glow of the fire, looking towards us; doubtless he had heard the sound of the horses’ hoofs above the clink of the hammer. He had a cigar in his mouth, and as he stood watching our approach he did not remove it, nor take his hands from his pockets. He stood quietly watching us, as we came towards him.

“Halloa!” said Levi, as we pulled up two or three paces from the stranger. “Lit the forge, have you?”

“Cast a shoe,” the man replied. He was a small man, plainly, but, for the up-country, neatly dressed, and wearing a black leather jockey-cap. A rather elegant finical little man he seemed to me, and unarmed. Such as he was, my hopes flew to him, and rested on him, though in the way of help old Barter could scarcely have seemed less promising.

“You alone?” Levi asked, looking him over.

“You’ve said it,” the man replied placidly. His eyes traveled from one to another of us. He did not move.