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?”