CHAPTER XII.

HOTEL FLANAGAN AND ITS INTRUDERS.

The position held by the corps of dragoons, we have already said, was a favorite place of halting with their commander.

A cluster of some half-dozen small and dilapidated[79] buildings formed what, from the circumstances of two roads intersecting each other at right angles, was called the Four Corners. As usual, one of the most imposing of these edifices had been termed, in the language of the day, "a house of entertainment for man and beast." On a rough board, suspended from the gallows-looking post that had supported the ancient sign, was written in red chalk, "Elizabeth Flanagan, her hotel," an ebullition[80] of the wit of some of the idle wags of the corps. The matron was the widow of a soldier who had been killed in the service, and who, like herself, was a native of a distant island, and had early tried his fortune in the colonies of North America. She constantly migrated with the troops, and it was seldom that they became stationary for two days at a time but the little cart of the bustling woman was seen driving into the encampment, loaded with some articles she conceived would make her presence welcome. With a celerity[81] that seemed almost supernatural, Betty took up her ground and commenced her occupation. Sometimes the cart itself was her shop; at others the soldiers made her a rude shelter of such materials as offered. But on the present occasion she seized on a vacant building and formed what she herself pronounced to be "most illigant lodgings." The men were quartered in the adjacent barns, and the officers collected in the "Hotel Flanagan," as they facetiously[82] called headquarters. Betty was well known to every trooper in the corps, could call each by his Christian or nickname, as best suited her fancy; and although absolutely intolerable to all whom habit had not made familiar with her virtues, was a general favorite with these partisan warriors. Her faults were, a trifling love of liquor, excessive filthiness, a total disregard of all the decencies of language; her virtues, an unbounded love for her adopted country, perfect honesty when dealing on certain known principles with the soldiery, and a great good-nature. Added to these, Betty had the merit of being the inventor of that beverage which is so well known, at the present hour, to all the patriots who make a winter's march between the commercial and the political capitals of this great State, and which is distinguished by the name of "cock-tail." Such then was the mistress of the mansion, who, reckless of the cold northern blasts, showed her blooming face from the door of the building to welcome the arrival of her favorite, Captain Lawton, and his companion, her master in surgery.

[Footnote 79: falling into decay.]

[Footnote 80: outburst.]

[Footnote 81: quickness.]

[Footnote 82: jocosely.]

Lawton and his companion now entered the building. A long table, made from boards torn from the side of an out-building, was stretched through the middle of the largest apartment, or the bar-room, and on it was a very scanty display of crockery ware. The steams of cookery arose from an adjoining kitchen, but the principal attraction was a demijohn of fair proportions, which had been ostentatiously placed on high by Betty as the object most worthy of notice.

Lawton soon learned that it was teeming with the real amber-colored juice of the grape, and had been sent from the Locusts, as an offering to Major Dunwoodie, from his friend Captain Wharton, of the royal army.

The group within were all young men and tried soldiers; in number they were about a dozen, and their manners and their conversation were a strange mixture of the bluntness of the partisan with the manners of gentlemen. Some were endeavoring to sleep on the benches which lined the walls, some were walking the apartments, and others were seated in earnest discussion on subjects connected with the business of their lives. All this time Dunwoodie sat by himself, gazing at the fire, and lost in reflections which none of his officers presumed to disturb.

A loud summons at the door of the building, and the dragoons instinctively caught up their arms to be prepared for the worst.

The door was opened and the Skinners entered, dragging the peddler, bending beneath the load of his pack.

"Which is Captain Lawton?" said the leader of the gang, gazing around him in some little astonishment.

"He waits your pleasure," said the trooper, dryly.

"Then here I deliver to your hands a condemned traitor; this is Harvey Birch, the peddler spy."

Lawton started as he looked his old acquaintance in the face, and turning to the Skinner with a lowering look, he asked:

"And who are you, sir, that speak so freely of your neighbors? But," bowing to Dunwoodie, "your pardon, sir; here is the commanding officer; to him you will please address yourself."

"No," said the man, sullenly, "it is to you I deliver the peddler, and from you I claim my reward."

"Are you Harvey Birch?" said Dunwoodie, advancing with an air of authority that instantly drove the Skinner to a corner of the room.

"I am," said Birch, proudly.

"And a traitor to your country," continued the major, with sternness; "do you not know that I should be justified in ordering your execution this night?"

"'Tis not the will of God to call a soul so hastily to his presence," said the peddler, with solemnity.

"You speak truth," said Dunwoodie; "but as your offence is most odious to a soldier, so it will be sure to meet with the soldier's vengeance; you die to-morrow."

"'Tis as God wills."

"I have spent many a good hour to entrap the villain," said the Skinner, advancing from his little corner; "and I hope you will give me a certificate that will entitle us to the reward; 'twas promised to be paid in gold."

"Major Dunwoodie," said the officer of the day, entering the room, "the patrols report a house to be burnt near yesterday's battle-ground."

"'Twas the hut of the peddler," muttered the leader of the gang; "we have not left him a shingle for shelter; I should have burned it months ago, but I wanted his shed for a trap to catch the sly fox in."

"You seem a most ingenious patriot," said Lawton. "Major Dunwoodie, I second the request of this worthy gentleman, and crave the office of bestowing the reward on him and his fellows."

"Take it;--and you, miserable man, prepare for the fate which will surely befall you before the setting of to-morrow's sun."

"Life offers but little to tempt me with," said Harvey, slowly raising his eyes and gazing wildly at the strange faces in the apartment.

"Come, worthy children of America!" said Lawton, "follow and receive your reward."

The gang eagerly accepted the invitation, and followed the captain towards the quarters assigned to his troop.

The officer to whose keeping Dunwoodie had committed the peddler, transferred his charge to the custody of the regular sergeant of the guard. After admonishing the non-commissioned guardian of Harvey to omit no watchfulness in securing the prisoner, the youth wrapped himself in his cloak, and, stretched on a bench before a fire, soon found the repose he needed. A rude shed extended the whole length of the rear of the building, and from off one end had been partitioned a small apartment that was intended as a repository for many of the lesser implements of husbandry. The considerate sergeant thought this the most befitting place in which to deposit his prisoner until the moment of execution.

Several inducements urged Sergeant Hollister to this determination, among which was the absence of the washerwoman, who lay before the kitchen fire, dreaming that the corps was attacking a party of the enemy, and mistaking the noise that proceeded from her own nose for the bugles of the Virginians sounding the charge. Another was the peculiar opinions that the veteran entertained of life and death, and by which he was distinguished in the corps as a man of most exemplary piety and holiness of life. Captain Lawton had rewarded his fidelity by making him his orderly.

Followed by Birch, the sergeant proceeded in silence to the door of the intended prison, and, throwing it open with one hand, he held a lantern with the other to light the peddler to his prison.

Harvey thoroughly examined the place in which he was to pass the night, and saw no means of escape. He buried his face in both hands, and his whole frame shook; the sergeant regarded him closely, took up the lantern, and, with some indignation in his manner, left him to sorrowful meditations on his approaching fate. Birch sank, in momentary despair, on the pallet of Betty, while his guardian proceeded to give the necessary instructions to the sentinels for his safe-keeping.

Hollister concluded his injunctions to the man in the shed by saying, "Your life will depend on his not escaping. Let none enter or quit the room till morning."

"But," said the trooper, "my orders are to let the washerwoman pass in and out as she pleases."

"Well, let her then; but be careful that this wily peddler does not get out in the folds of her petticoats." He then continued his walk, giving similar orders to each of the sentinels near the spot.

For some time after the departure of the sergeant, silence prevailed within the solitary prison of the peddler, until the dragoon at his door heard his loud breathings, which soon rose into the regular cadence of one in deep sleep. The man continued walking his post, musing on an indifference to life which could allow nature its customary rest, even on the threshold of the grave.

His meditations were, however, soon interrupted by the approach of the washerwoman, who came staggering through the door that communicated with the kitchen, muttering execrations against the servants of the officers, who, by their waggery, had disturbed her slumbers before the fire. The sentinel understood enough of her curses to comprehend the case; but all his efforts to enter into conversation with the enraged woman were useless, and he suffered her to enter her room without explaining that it contained another inmate. The noise of her huge frame falling on the bed was succeeded by a silence that was soon interrupted by the renewed respiration of the peddler, and within a few minutes Harvey continued to breathe aloud, as if no interruption had occurred. The relief[83] arrived at this moment, and at the same time, the door of the prison was opened and Betty reappeared, staggering back again toward her former quarters.

[Footnote 83: change of sentinel.]