CHAPTER XLI.

THE PRISONERS

Be just, and fear not! Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s and truth’s, then if thou fall’st, O Cromwell! Thou fall’st a blessed martyr. —Shakespeare.

Seek not to know to-morrow’s doom, That is not ours which is to come. —Congreve.

Though Major Gordon had been pinned to the earth by a bayonet, in the breach of the fortification, he was fortunately not killed. For a moment, indeed, he believed his last hour had come. He would, in fact, have perished, had it not been for Uncle Lawrence. When he saw all hope of victory gone, he dexterously threw himself down, across the prostrate body of our hero; by this stratagem, both covering his friend, and inducing the belief that he also was dead.

In the hurry and confusion of the melee it was not difficult to carry out this deception. The eager soldiery, fired with emulation of their comrades, hurried to be within the works as soon as possible, and consequently did not care to stop, in order to examine in whom of their fallen enemies life yet remained. It was enough for the victors that the way was now clear before them, and accordingly they rushed forward, pell-mell, with loud shouts, over the prostrate heap of wounded and slain.

In this way our hero escaped with only a bayonet thrust in his left arm, while Uncle Lawrence received only a few bruises, the result of being trodden upon. Others, however, of the brave band were less fortunate. Charley Newell lay stark and stiff, with a bullet through his heart, having fallen in the early part of the conflict; while Mullen was seriously injured by a wound in the side, from a bayonet. Three others also paid the forfeit of their lives for their gallant defence.

When the fight was over, and all danger of being murdered in hot blood had passed away, Uncle Lawrence rose, surrendered himself a prisoner, and besought for a surgeon to examine his friend’s wound. The rank of Major Gordon obtained for him immediate attention. His hurt was found, however, not to be dangerous, though it would incapacitate his arm for awhile.

“All the inconvenience you will be subject to,” said the doctor, “will be the having to carry your arm in a sling. Perhaps a little fever may set in, but we can soon reduce that: I will look you up, later in the day, and give you some medicine, if necessary.”

For the present the prisoners were placed in a barn, Major Gordon being accommodated, as an officer, with a place by himself. This was a small apartment, partly shut off from the rest of the building, in which meal had been kept. A few armsful of sweet, salt hay, thrown upon the floor, rendered the accommodations a palace comparatively, at least to one who had experienced the hardships of Valley Forge. Uncle Lawrence was permitted to remain with our hero at his own request.

Here, as evening closed in, the two friends sat, conversing in low tones. Major Gordon was regretting that Uncle Lawrence had not availed himself of a chance to retreat, instead of remaining to save the speaker’s life.

“I have no family,” said the Major, “no ties on earth whatever. I have lost this post. Life is comparatively of little value to me.”

“Don’t say that, Major,” interrupted the veteran. “It’s agin religion, if not agin natur. No man knows what the Lord may have in store for him. You’ll not be long a prisoner, maybe, and you’ve friends, and warm ones, where you least suspect, perhaps.”

“No, my good, kind Herman; I will not affect to misunderstand you; I know to whom you allude; but it is not so. Your partiality has misled you. That lovely creature, whom I shall never cease to reverence, through my whole life, is too far separated from me by fortune, social position, and difference of political opinion, for me ever to hope to be honored with her love. I talk to you as to a father, you see, frankly and unreservedly. She can never be mine. It was folly in me to think otherwise, even for a moment.”

“You are low-speerited, Major,” said the honest old patriarch. “You’re worn out, body and soul, just as I’ve been sometimes after hunting all day. The loss of this post sticks in you too, I see; though a braver fight was never made than you made, and so everybody, even the tories, will say. Cheer up! It’s always darker, you know, just afore the dawn.”

“Ah!” answered the Major, “it’s less for myself than for you I am cast down. For my sake you are a prisoner. And do you know,” he said, looking earnestly at his companion, “what that means?”

In the uncertain twilight of the place, the countenance of the speakers could still be faintly discerned; yet Major Gordon saw no perceptible change in the face of the old man, as the latter replied.

“It means a prison-ship, the fever, and maybe death,” he said, “but I am in the Lord’s hands, and his will be done. I’d do it over agin, Major, this minit,” he said, earnestly, “if I had the chance; for it was duty; and my notion is that a man’s got to do that, if wife, and children, and life too, all go for it.”

The veteran’s voice quivered at this thought of his family. But he resumed almost immediately, and in a firm voice.

“Howsomever, as I said afore, the Lord’s will be done. He took Daniel out of the lion’s den, and saved Shadrach, Meschid and Abednego in the fiery furnace; and if his ends are to be sarved by it, he’ll open my prison doors as he did those of Peter.”

“Alas! I don’t wish to say anything to shake your beautiful faith,” answered Major Gordon, “but the days of miracles are over. It’s because I see no way in which you are to be restored to your family, that I blame myself so; for I was—say what you will—the instrument of bringing you to this pass.”

Uncle Lawrence paused a moment, when he replied, in a voice slightly husky, but which he evidently tried to deprive of every evidence of emotion.

“If you please, Major, we’ll say no more about the wife and boys at home. It’s not the wisest plan, I take it, when a man’s never to see ‘em agin, perhaps, to aggervate it by telling him of ‘em.”

“Forgive me,” said the Major, deeply touched, and grasping his hand; feeling more poignantly than ever the evil he had unconsciously done.

“Well, we’ll say nothing about it,” continued Uncle Lawrence, “but there’s nothing to forgive.”

There was a moment’s silence; and then the old man spoke again.

“You’re mistaken, though, Major,” he said, “in what you say of Miss Katie. She’s no more a tory than you and me.”

“Not a royalist!” exclaimed Major Gordon, surprised out of his depression. And he added, after a pause for reflection. “Indeed, you must be mistaken. What grounds have you for your opinion?”

“Did you ever hear her say she was for the King?”

The Major thought awhile. He could, to his surprise, recall no such circumstance.

“Never!” he said at last.

“Haven’t you heerd her say that she was a patriot?”

Again Major Gordon reflected.

“I have,” he said, “but only in jest.”

“Only in a joke, you mean, I suppose,” answered Uncle Lawrence. “And don’t you know Miss Katie well enough to know, that she says many a true thing in that gay, joking way of hers? Have you ever heerd her make fun of the poor fellers in General Washington’s army, the Lord bless him! as she makes fun of the red coats and their dandy officers?”

Major Gordon was compelled to acknowledge, greatly to his own astonishment, that he never had. In fact a light began to break in upon him. He suspected that he had been in error all along, simply for having started with a fixed impression that Kate was a royalist, and having consequently viewed her acts and weighed her words under that delusion. Uncle Lawrence confirmed his opinion.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said the veteran, with a triumphant chuckle, “you’re like what I was once, when I put on the preacher’s green spectacles, which he wore for his eyes; everything was sort of colored by the glasses; the sand looked as green as a meadow in spring, and the sky all over sickish-like, as if it had been on a spree, as they used to call it when I was a wild youngster. You’ve thought Miss Katie was a tory because her aunt was, and her cousin; but she’s as good a whig as Lady Washington herself; and what’s more, she’d as soon marry a monkey as one of them red coated captains,” and the old man snapped his fingers with a gesture of sovereign contempt.

“There’s her cousin,” Major Gordon ventured to say; for since the conversation had became so familiar, he no longer avoided questions, which, at an earlier period of his acquaintance with Uncle Lawrence, he would have omitted from motives of delicacy to Kate.

“Her cousin!” and the veteran snapped his fingers even more scornfully than before. “If there wasn’t another man on airth, she’d never marry Charles Aylesford. I tell you, Major,” he added decisively, “she’d never marry where she don’t love; and there’s one man she loves already, or my name ain’t Lawrence Herman.”

His hearer’s heart leaped into his throat, but he dared not ask who the man was.

The veteran saw, by the faint light the conflagration cast through the chinks, the emotion of our hero; and his gratification was evinced by another silent chuckle. He waited awhile, but receiving no answer, went on.

“You don’t ask who the lucky man is,” he said. “Now what if I was to tell you it was yourself?”

“You can’t mean it!” cried Major Gordon, half starting to his feet; a glow of happiness, such as he had never experienced, shooting through his frame.

Uncle Lawrence was about to answer, when the door opened, and a stranger stooped to enter. He carried a lantern, which, though it threw a vivid glare on the two prisoners, did not at first reveal the face of the intruder. But, when the door was closed, this person raised the light so as to show his countenance, and held out his hand to the Major, whom he called by name.

“Captain Powell!” exclaimed our hero in astonishment, rising and grasping the proffered hand. “It is—isn’t it?”

“It is Captain Powell,” was the reply. “The last person, no doubt, you expected to see. But I owe you a heavy debt, and I have come to pay it, by setting you free.”

“The Lord’s hand is in it,” cried Uncle Lawrence, lifting up his eyes reverently. “Did I not say, ‘trust in the Lord,’ Major?”