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Updated: May 23, 2025
He had never received a line from her before, and he read and reread this with a sense of such pride and happiness in his face that MacWilliams smiled covertly and bent his eyes upon his instrument. Clay went back into his room and kissed the page of paper gently, flushing like a boy as he did so, and then folding it carefully, he put it away beneath his jacket.
They're not firing at us." His voice was drowned in the noise of the oars beating in the rowlocks, and the reports of the rifles. The boat disappeared in a mist of spray and moonlight, and Clay turned and faced about him. Langham and MacWilliams were crouching behind a rock and firing at the flashes in the woods. "You can't stay there," Clay cried. "We must get back to Hope."
Hope laughed triumphantly, and threw out her arms as though she would embrace the whole beautiful world that stretched around them. "Oh, no," she laughed. "To-night the world has just begun." The carriage stopped, and there was a confusion of voices on the box-seat, and then a great barking of dogs, and they beheld MacWilliams beating and kicking at the door of a hut.
And whistling cheerfully to himself MacWilliams disappeared up the hill, his body hidden in the darkness and his legs showing fantastically in the light of the swinging lantern. Clay walked out upon the veranda and stood with his back to one of the pillars. MacWilliams and his pleasantries disturbed and troubled him. Perhaps, after all, the boy was right. It seemed absurd, but it was true.
The carriage stopped, and the boys tumbled out and walked around in front of it. Hope sat smiling on the box-seat. She was apparently far from sleepy, and she was quite contented where she was, she told him. "Do you know we haven't had anything to eat since yesterday at breakfast?" asked Langham. "MacWilliams and I are fainting.
The two women in the carriage had parted the flaps of the hoods and were trying to hear what was being said, but could not understand, and Langham explained to them that they were about to make a slight detour to avoid San Lorenzo while MacWilliams was going into it to reconnoitre.
"Tell them, if they are loyal, they can live in their shacks rent free hereafter," wrote Clay. "They are always asking for that. It's a cheap generosity," he added aloud to Mr. Langham, "because we've never been able to collect rent from any of them yet." At noon young Langham ordered the best three horses in the stables to be brought to the door of the Palms for Clay, MacWilliams, and himself.
They could hear the singing of the bullets as they passed them whining in the air like a banjo-string that is being tightened, and they knew they were in equal danger from those who were firing from the boat. "They're shooting better," said MacWilliams. "They'll reach us in a minute." "They've reached me already, I think," Langham answered, with suppressed satisfaction, "in the shoulder.
I think from there I shall cross over to Cienfuegos on the Southern coast and then if I can catch a steamer go to Santiago to see my old friends, at the Juraqua mines and MacWilliams' ore road and "the Palms" Everywhere I am treated well on account of Weyler's order and I am learning a great deal and talking very little, my Spanish being bad.
As the speed of the diligence slackened, Hope put her head out of the curtains, and as she surveyed the soldier with apparent surprise, she turned to her brother. "What does this mean?" she asked. "What are we waiting for?" "We are going to the Hacienda of Senor Palacio," MacWilliams said, in answer to the officer.
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