‘Sh! Keep quiet!’ said Ephraim warningly, as a curious explosive sound, half snort, half cough, came upwards from the undergrowth. ‘Wait till he gits well out er the road, and then ye kin larf. Hold on till I track him down.’
He stole through the belt of trees, and, to his great satisfaction, observed the captain hurrying as fast as he could across the fields. The commotion in the camp, too, had died away, now that it had been ascertained that the alarm had been a false one—like so many more on that eventful day. But Ephraim’s common sense told him that it would not be very long before fresh sentries were placed along the river; and, moreover, the outraged bearer of despatches would lose no time in returning, to prove his identity and reclaim his precious letter.
The Grizzly, therefore, made all haste back to Lucius, whom he found sitting up in the brushwood, apparently the picture of distress, for tears were streaming down his cheeks, and deep, labouring sighs escaped his chest.
‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’ exclaimed Ephraim in real concern. ‘What ye cry in’ for?’
‘Crying!’ snorted Lucius. ‘Ough! ough! Is he gone? Ough! ough! Oh! ho! ho! ha! ha! ha! I can’t help it! Ough! ough! I must laugh if I’m killed for it! Ough! Oh, Grizzly, I never saw anything so funny in my life.’
He went off into fresh paroxysms, while Ephraim, to whom the affair had been serious enough in all conscience, grinned quietly in sympathy.
‘Waal, I ’low it might hev sounded funny ter ye, listenin’ thar, Luce,’ he said. ‘Somehow it didn’t strike me in thet light et the time. I war so sot on gittin’ thet letter.’
‘Sounded funny!’ echoed Lucius, his laughter exhausted to a helpless giggle. ‘It wasn’t only that. You _looked_ so funny. Oh! oh! oh! if you could only have seen your own faces.’
‘I ’low he looked a bit sot back when I got the ba’net agin his chest,’ chuckled Ephraim.
‘Ah! but your own face,’ put in Lucius. ‘Don’t forget that. And the way you talked to him. My! It was the ‘cutest thing in the world. What put it into your head?’
‘It come thar ez we war runnin’ along,’ returned Ephraim; ‘an fer the rest, it jest argued itself out ez it went. But come, thar ain’t too much time. We must be orf out er this before he gits back.’