“I would remind you, Mr. Cope, that you’re not addressing a trooper,” he said stiffly; and Cope spluttered and spat.
“O--my--dear--God!... Is this a time for your airs and dignities? Will you make dainty with your seminary manners when--aaaah!”
The left-hand lamp-glass of the yellow chaise was shattered by a bullet. The candle leaped out, cut in two. Echoes were following the report, and a puff of smoke drifted slowly along the edge of the Scout. Captain Ritchie sprang aside.
“Fire as you are!” he ordered; “mind the others----”; and, save for a figure that was seen running far along the skyline, every man on the face of the Scout had dropped for cover. The muskets came up as if for birds; quick dropping shots rang out; and sharp cracks from the soldiers up the Scout seemed to answer them like echoes.
“Draw this chaise to one side,” said Cope, biting at his finger again.
Captain Ritchie strode up the lane to the parson’s house and knocked loudly at the door. The parson himself answered the knock.
“You know whom it is we seek?” the officer said curtly.
“We must be assured of your house also. It is my desire to respect your cloth----”
“I take that to mean that, on my word, you are willing to forego a search?”
The parson lied like a layman, without a quiver. “I pass it you,” he said; and immediately the officer retired.
By half-past two the searching of Wadsworth was completed.
It was much that a chaise had got as far as Wadsworth; legs alone could clear the Scout. A man was despatched with a couple of horses to strike the Causeway lower down the valley and then to wait on the heights, and Cope descended from the chaise with the broken lamp-glass. At that, out stepped the parson from his house, and earnestly besought him to remain behind.
“Look!” he cried, pointing up the Scout, that seemed to crawl with ascending figures, “and not a man among them but bears you the worst will in the world! If not for your own safety, yet to save these from a deadly sin----”
The captain added his entreaties. His presence was unnecessary; with so much depending on him he had no right to accept the risk; he should be informed of every movement where he was. Cope, in a paroxysm of anger, shouted for him to be silent.