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"I think you are trying to show us the mettle of a soldier," said Demeré, admiringly. "Mrs. MacLeod would like the king's commission!" cried Stuart, breaking the tension with his bluff raillery, striking the cannon a smart tap with the butt of the pistol he carried in his hand, while the metal gave out a deep, hollow resonance. "Her unbridled ambition was always to be the commanding officer!"
Long, burnished white lines lay upon its gleaming surface, and looking back Demeré could see beyond the shadow and sheen of the sloping bank the cleared space, where the moonbeams fell in unbroken splendor before the stockade, and through its open gate the log-cabin with its primitive porch, where, young and beautiful, she sat in her white dress in the bright light beside the silent little flax-wheel.
Stuart had chanced to address his friend as "Paul," in a fraternal aside on an unofficial occasion, and one or two of the Indians overhearing it, and unaccustomed to the ceremony of a surname, had thus accosted him, to Stuart's delight in the incongruity that this familiarity should be offered to the unapproachable Demeré, rather than to himself, whose jovial methods might better warrant the slack use of a Christian name.
Despite his relish of the episode, Stuart glanced down at them afterward from the block-house tower and said, in a tone of commiseration, "Poor little love-story!" "Why preëmpt ill-fortune for them, John?" broke out Demeré, irritably. "Bless you, my boy, I'm no prophet!" exclaimed Stuart easily.
And so, gradually, by slow degrees, he was led on to talk of the past, of the beautiful Carolina girl who had been his brother's wife, of the quaint babble of Fifine, of Stuart and Demeré, of Corporal O'Flynn, and the big drum-major, and the queer old African cook, and the cat that had been so cherished but he never, never ventured a word of Sandy, to the last day of his life; Sandy! for whom he had had almost a filial veneration blended with the admiring applausive affection of the younger brother for the elder.
Hamish expected to hear no more of him after they parted, and he experienced a sort of repulsion which found an echo in Odalie's exclamation, when Captain Demeré proposed that Gilfillan should live with them. "I should recommend a strong stockade if you go as far from the fort as the bend of the river," the officer commented, when the spot they had selected was made known to him.
The table was now in the center of the floor, spread with some hasty refreshments, of which Captain Demeré invited the forlorn travelers to partake.
Captain Stuart and Captain Demeré would not notice this report, but the junior officers were vehement in their protestations that they and their superiors had had from the beginning of the scarcity the identical rations served out to the others, and that their gluttony had not reduced the general supply. The quartermaster-sergeant confirmed this, yet who believed him, as Mrs.
Then his face fell. "And I told Oconostota that I would not deliver his message to you, Captain Stuart and Captain Demeré, sir," he hesitated; "it was not fit for your worshipful presence; and he said that the deed might go before the word, then." "What message did he send?" asked Demeré, with flashing eyes.
And we know that the exit of the passage at MacLeod Station is fully three miles in the rear of the Indian line. I feel sure that the other two expresses never got beyond the Indian line. This is the best chance we have had." "And a very good chance," said Demeré.
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