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The night is dark and cold; all who can will be under roofs, and even the sentinels will hug walls and earthworks. Now is our time." "You must go, Lucia," said Miss Grayson decisively. Miss Catherwood bowed assent and went at once to the next room to prepare for the journey. "Will you care for her as if she were your own, your sister?" asked Miss Grayson, turning appealingly to Prescott.
A clatter and a cloud of dust by the market place, an ecstasy of cheers running in waves the length of the crowd. Make way for the dragoons! Here they come at last, four and four, the horses prancing and dancing and pointing quivering ears at the tossing sea of hats and parasols and ribbons. Maude Catherwood squeezes Virginia's arm.
There was less of fear in her glance than when he came the first time, but reproach took its place, and was expressed so strongly that Prescott exclaimed at once: "I do not come to annoy you, Miss Grayson, but merely to inquire after yourself and your friend, Miss Catherwood." Then he went in, uninvited, and looked about the room.
"A razor, young man! A suit of clothes You know not what you ask." "Are there any gentlemen from St. Louis here?" George Catherwood was brought in, or rather what had once been George. Now he was a big frontiersman with a huge blond beard, and a bowie, knife stuck into his trousers in place of a sword.
"I am not wholly in the power of anybody," replied Prescott proudly. "I repeat that I have done nothing at any time of which I am ashamed or for which my conscience reproaches me." "That is irrelevant. It is not any question of shame or conscience, which are abstract things. It is merely one of fact that is, whether you did or did not help Miss Catherwood, the spy, to escape.
There everything had stopped, but he was still sure that Lucia Catherwood had found him and somehow had brought him here. He would have died without her, of that he had no doubt, and by and by he should learn about it all. Men came into the house and went away, but he felt no curiosity. That part of him seemed to be atrophied for the present, but after awhile something aroused his interest.
A reply to those simple words of his was impossible. At honest Tom Catherwood in the same situation she would have laughed, Clarence never so much as glanced at scenery. Her replies to him were either flippant, or else maternal, as to a child. A breeze laden with the sweet abundance of that valley stirred her hair.
"I don't know; an hour, I suppose; why bother about it?" Certainly Prescott was not troubling his head by trying to determine the exact distance to daylight, but he began to think for the first time of his journey's end. He must leave Miss Catherwood somewhere in comparative safety, and he must get back to Richmond, his absence unnoted.
It was Lucia Catherwood who took the lead, neither Helen nor Mrs. Markham disputing her fitness for the place, too apparent to all to be denied; it was she who never flinched, who, if she spoke at all, spoke words of cheer, whose strength and courage seemed never to fail. Thus the hours passed, and the character of the night in the Wilderness did not change.
We cannot permit you to compromise yourself in our behalf and we do not wish it. You ran a great risk to-night. You might not fare so well the next time." Her tone was cold, and, chilled by it, Prescott replied: "Miss Catherwood, I may have come where I was not wanted, but I shall not do so again." He walked toward the door, his head high. Miss Grayson looked at Miss Catherwood in surprise.
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