"Help Captain Lawton, there!" cried Mason, as he rode up, followed by a dozen of his men; "and some of you dismount with me and search these rocks; the villain lies here concealed."
"Hold!" roared the discomfited captain, raising himself with difficulty on his feet; "if one of you dismount, he dies. Tom, my good fellow, you will help me to straddle Roanoke again."
The astonished subaltern complied in silence, while the wondering dragoons remained as fixed in their saddles as if they composed a part of the animals they rode.
Lawton and Mason rode on in silence, the latter ruminating[63] on the wonderful change produced in his commander by his fall, when they arrived opposite to the gate before the residence of Mr. Wharton. The troop continued its march, but the captain and his lieutenant dismounted, and, followed by the servant of the former, they proceeded slowly to the door of the cottage.
A few words from Mason explained the nature and manner of his captain's hurts, and Miss Peyton cheerfully accorded the required accommodations. While the room intended for the trooper was getting ready, and the doctor was giving certain portentous[64] orders, the captain was invited to rest himself in the parlor.
[Footnote 64: foreshadowing something serious.]
The house of Birch had been watched at different times by the Americans with a view to his arrest, but never with success, the reputed spy possessing a secret means of intelligence that invariably defeated their schemes. Once, when a strong body of the Continental army held the Four Corners for a whole summer, orders had been received from Washington himself never to leave the door of Harvey Birch unwatched. The command was rigidly obeyed, and during this long period the peddler was unseen; the detachment was withdrawn, and the following night Birch reëntered his dwelling.
The father of Harvey had kept his dying situation a secret from the neighborhood, in the hope that he might still have the company of his child in his last moments. The confusion of the day, and his increasing dread that Harvey might be too late, helped to hasten the event he would fain arrest for a little while. As night set in his illness increased to such a degree that the dismayed housekeeper sent a truant boy, who had shut up himself with them during the combat, to the Locusts in quest[65] of a companion to cheer her solitude. Cæsar alone could be spared, and, loaded with eatables and cordials by the kind-hearted Miss Peyton, the black had been despatched on his duty. The dying man was past the use of medicines, and his chief anxiety seemed to centre in a meeting with his child.