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After another hour of riding, we pulled up at the garden gate of an old grey handsome house which stood at some distance from the road. I asked one of the troopers who lived in this house. He said that it was an old Abbey, which belonged to Squire; but that we were to leave word there of the Duke's movements, "for Squire be very 'tached to the Protestants; besides he'll give us a breakfast.
A young officer of exalted birth, but with a very nasty temper, having found something to complain about concerning the grooming of horses, rounded on Augereau, and in an access of rage offered to strike him with his riding whip in front of the whole squadron.
But for all our care and all our calculated silence, each knew that something had, in these last moments, come very close; it had brushed us in passing; it had retired; and I am inclined to think now that the large dark thing I saw, riding the dusk, probably bird of prey, was in some sense a symbol of it in my mind that actually there had been no bird at all, I mean, but that my mood of apprehension and dismay had formed the vivid picture in my thoughts.
I do not know whether he found his system a profitable one on the whole, but it was certainly so for me. The young Count d'Aranda, to whom I had restored his humble name of Trenti, was quite resigned, but proud of having given me a specimen of his knowingness by riding post.
It proved to be in token of surrender, but after its appearance I saw a shot from our second piece strike so near a horseman riding at speed along the heights as to envelop horse and rider in its smoke and dust. The whole affair, devoid, as it was, of ordinary danger, was one of thrilling interest.
The woman lifted her head and, with the rain beating down upon her, began singing, her fine contralto voice rising above the rattle of the rain on the roof and going on uninterrupted by the crash of the thunder. She sang of a lover riding through the storm to his mistress. One refrain persisted in the song "He rode and he thought of her red, red lips,"
She taught us our lessons while we were little. She and my mother used to entertain us by the hour with tales of life on the Georgia plantations; of hunting fox, deer, and wildcat; of the long-tailed driving horses, Boone and Crockett, and of the riding horses, one of which was named Buena Vista in a fit of patriotic exaltation during the Mexican War; and of the queer goings-on in the Negro quarters.
We knew the necessity of haste. Our only hope lay in being able to reach the mouth of the Obion before the canoe could pass out of it. Otherwise, our journey would be in vain; and we should not only have our long ride for nothing, but would be under the necessity of doubling the distance by riding back again.
He was not precocious. Nature gave no signs of her intentions in his youth. His development, physical and mental, was not rapid, but wholesome. He was fond of horseback riding, and the earliest glimpse we have of him is as a slender lad, with dark eyes and hair slightly touched with auburn, flying through the village, and sometimes carrying on his pony behind him his little brother to school.
I meditated over it for a few minutes, then ran on to the signal-office by the roadside. There I exchanged my old bike for a new one which had been discovered in a cottage. Nothing was wrong with my ancient grid except a buckled back rim, due to collision with a brick when riding without a lamp.
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