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Title: The Carolinian (1924)
Author: Rafael Sabatini
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Language:  English
Date first posted: February 2008
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Title: The Carolinian (1924)
Author: Rafael Sabatini




To
J. E. HAROLD TERRY


MY DEAR HAROLD,

Some few years ago you and I, labouring jointly, delved into the romantic
soil of Carolinian history for certain elements from which to construct a
play of the American War of Independence. Out of these same elements I
have now fashioned this book, and in dedicating it to you I do so not
merely as a pledge of the warm esteem in which I hold you, but as an
acknowledgment that is due,

Believe me, my dear Harold,
Your friend,
RAFAEL SABATINI.

LONDON, November, 1924.




CONTENTS

PART I

I.     TWO LETTERS
II.    CHENEY
III.   THE GOVERNOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA
IV.    FAIRGROVE
V.     THE REBEL
VI.    THE DECEPTION
VII.   MANDEVILLE AS MACHIAVEL
VIII.  DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
IX.    TAR AND FEATHERS
X.     THE MAIL-BAG
XI.    STALEMATE
XII.   REVELATION
XIII.  DEA EX MACHINA
XIV.   THE SOLUTION
XV.    THE NUPTIALS
XVI.   THE CHAPLAIN OF THE "TAMAR"
XVII.  GROCKAT'S WHARF
XVIII. THE PISTOL-SHOT


PART II


I.     MARRIAGE
II.    FORT SULLIVAN
III.   SEVERANCE
IV.    GOVERNOR RUTLEDGE
V.     JONATHAN NEILD
VI.    PREVOST'S ADVANCE
VII.   RUTLEDGE'S NERVES
VIII.  THE SPY
IX.    THE LIE CONFIRMED
X.     CONCERNING TOBACCO
XI.    VIA CRUCIS
XII.   THE TEST
XIII.  THE STRATEGY OF RUTLEDGE
XIV.   THE ARREST
XV.    THE AWAKENING
XVI.   THE INQUIRY
XVII.  JUDGMENT
XVIII. RECONCILIATION


* * * * *




PART I



CHAPTER I - TWO LETTERS


With compressed lips and an upright line of pain between his brows, Mr.
Harry Latimer sat down to write a letter. He had taken--as he was
presently to express it--his first wound in the cause of Liberty, which
cause he had lately embraced. This wound, deep, grievous and apparently
irreparable, had been dealt him by the communication in the sheets which
hung now from his limp fingers.

It had reached him here at Savannah, where he was engaged at the time,
not only on behalf of the Carolinian Sons of Liberty--of which seditious
body he was an active secret member--but on behalf of the entire colonial
party, in stirring the Georgians out of their apathy and into
co-operation with their Northern brethren to resist the harsh measures of
King George's government.

This letter, addressed to him at his Charles Town residence, had been
forwarded thence by his factor, who was among the few whom in those days
he kept informed of his rather furtive movements. It was written by the
daughter of his sometime guardian, Sir Andrew Carey, the lady whom it had
been Mr. Latimer's most fervent hope presently to, marry. Of that hope
the letter made a definite end, and from its folds Mr. Latimer had
withdrawn the pledge of his betrothal, a ring which once had belonged to
his mother.

Myrtle Carey, those lines informed him, had become aware of the
treasonable activities which were responsible for her lover's long
absences from Charles Town. She was shocked and grieved beyond expression
by any words at her command to discover this sudden and terrible change
in his opinions. More deeply still was she shocked to learn that it was
not only in heart and mind that he was guilty of disloyalty, but that he
had already e so far as to engage in acts of open rebellion. And at, full
length with many plaints and upbraidings, she .displayed her knowledge of
one of these acts. She had learnt that the raid upon the royal armoury at
Charles. Town in April last had been undertaken at his instigation and
under his personal direction, and this at a time when, in common with all
save his fellow-traitors, she believed him to be in Boston engaged in the
transaction of personal affairs. She deplored--and this cut him perhaps
more keenly than all the rest--the deceit which he had employed; but it
no longer had power to surprise her, since deceit and dissimulation were
to be looked for as natural in one so lost to all sense of duty to his
king.

The letter concluded with the pained assertion that whatever might have
been her feelings for him in the past, and whatever tenderness for him
might still linger in her heart, she could never king herself to marry a
man guilty of the abominable disloyalty end rebellion by which Harry
Latimer had disgraced himself for ever. She would pray God that he might
yet be restored to sane and honourable views, and that thus he might
avoid the terrible fate which the royal government could not fail sooner
or later to visit upon him should he continue in his present perverse and
wicked course.

Three times Mr. Latimer had read that letter, and long had he pondered it
between readings. And if each time his pain increased, his surprise
lessened. After all, it was no more than he should have expected, just as
he had expected and been prepared for furious recriminations from his
sometime guardian when knowledge of his defection should reach Sir
Andrew. For than Sir Andrew Carey there was no more intolerant or bigoted
tory in all America. Loyalty with him amounted, to a religion; and just
as religious feeling becomes intensified in the devout under persecution
or opposition, so had the loyalty of Sir Andrew Carey burnt with a
fiercer, whiter flame than ever from the moment that he perceived the
signs of smouldering rebellion about him.

To Harry Latimer, when his generous, impulsive young heart, had first
been touched four months ego in Massachusetts by the oppression under
which he found the province labouring, this uncompromising monarcholatry
of Sir Andrew's had been the one consideration to give him pause before
ranging himself under the banner of freedom. He had been reared from
boyhood by the baronet, and he owed him a deep debt of love and other
things. That his secession from toryism would deeply wound Sir Andrew,
that sooner or later it must lead to a breach between himself and the man
who had been almost as a father to him, was the reflection ever present
in his mind to embitter the zest with which he embraced the task thrust
upon him by conscience and his sense of right.

What he does not appear to have realized, until that letter came to make
it clear, was that to Myrtle, reared in an atmosphere of passionate,
unquestioning devotion to the King, loyalty had become as much a
religion, a sacrosanctity, as it was to the father who preached it.

At the first reading the letter had made him bitterly angry. He resented
her presumption in criticizing in such terms a conduct in him that was
obviously a matter of passionate conviction. Upon reflection, however, he
took a more tolerant view. Compromise in such a matter was as impossible
to her as it was to him. He would do much to win her. There was, he
thought, no sacrifice from which he would have shrunk; for no sacrifice
could have been so great as that which he was now called upon to make in
relinquishing her. But the duty he had taken up, and the cause he had
vowed to serve, were not things that could be set in the balance against
purely personal considerations. The man who would yield up his conscience
to win her would by the very act render himself unworthy of her. Lovelace
had given e the world a phrase that should stand for all time serve such
cases as his own: "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not
honour more."

There was no choice.

He took up the quill, and wrote quickly; too quickly, perhaps, for a
little of the abiding bitterness crept despite him into his words:

"You are intolerant, and therefore it follows that your actions are cruel
and unjust. For cruelty and injustice are the only fruits ever yielded by
intolerance. You will never again be able to do anything more cruel and
unjust than you have now done, for never again will you find a heart as
fond as mine and therefore as susceptible to pain at your hands. This
pain I accept as the first wound taken in the service of the cause which
I have em braced. Accept it I must, since I cannot be false to my
conscience, my duty and my sense of right, even to be true to you."

Thus he double-bolted the door which she herself had slammed. A door
which was to stand as an impenetrable barrier between two loving, aching,
obstinate, conscience-ridden hearts.

He folded, tied and sealed the letter, then rang for Johnson, his valet,
the tall, active young negro who shared his wanderings, and bade him see
it dispatched.

Awhile thereafter he sat there, lost in thought, that line of pain deeply
furrowed between his brows. Then he stirred, and sighed and took up from
the writing-table another letter that had reached him that same morning,
a letter whose seals were still unbroken.. The superscription was in the
familiar hand of his friend Tom Izard, whose sister was married to Lord
William Campbell, the royal Governor of the Province of South Carolina.
The letter would contain news of society doings in Charles Town. But
Charles Town society at the moment was without interest for Harry
Latimer. He dropped the letter, still unopened, pushed back his chair and
wearily rose. He paced away to the window and stood there looking upon
the sunshine with vacant eyes.

He was at the time in his twenty-fifth year and still preserved in his
tall, well-knit figure something of a stripling grace. He was dressed
with quiet, patrician elegance, and he wore his own hair, which was
thick, lustrous and auburn in colour. His face was of that clear, healthy
pallor so often found with lust such hair. It was an engaging face, lean
and very square in the chin, with a thin, rather tip-tilted nose and a
firm yet humorous mouth. His eyes were full without prominence, of a.
brilliant blue that in certain lights was almost green. Habitually they
were invested with a slightly quizzical regard; but this had now given
place to the dull vacancy that accompanies acute mental suffering.

Standing there he pondered his case yet again, until at last there was a
quickening of his glance. He stretched himself, with a suggestion of
relief in the action. The thing is evil indeed out of which no good may
come, which is utterly without compensation. And the compensation here
was that at least there was end to secrecy. The thing was out. Sir Andrew
knew; and however hardly Sir Andrew might have taken it, at least the
menace of discovery was at an end. This, Mr. Latimer reflected, was
something gained. There was an end to his tormenting consciousness of
practising by secrecy a passive deceit upon Sir Andrew.

And from the consideration of that secrecy his mind leapt suddenly to ask
how came the thing discovered. That they should know vaguely and
generally of his defection was not perhaps so startling. But how came
they informed in such detail of the exact part he had played in that raid
upon the arsenal last April? His very presence in Charles Town had been
known to none except the members of the General Committee of the
Provincial Congress. Then he reflected that those members were very
numerous, and that a secret is rarely kept when shared by many. Someone
here had been grievously indiscreet. So indiscreet, indeed, that if the
royal governor knew that Harry Latimer was the author of the raid--a raid
which fell nothing short of robbery and sedition, and amounted almost to
an act of war--there was a rope round his neck and round the neck of
every one of his twenty associates in that rebellious enterprise,

Here was something to engage his thoughts.

If his activities were known in Sir Andrew's household; it followed
almost certainly that they would be known also in the Governor's. He was
sufficiently acquainted with Sir Andrew to be sure that, in spite of
everything that lay between Sir Andrew and himself, the baronet would be
the first to bear the information to Lord William.

And then he realized that this was no mere indiscretion. Indiscretion
might have betrayed some general circumstance, but it could never have
betrayed all these details of which Myrtle was possessed; above all it
could never have betrayed so vital and dangerous a secret. He was
assailed by the conviction that active, deliberate treachery was at work,
and he perceived that he must communicate at once with his friends in
Charles Town, to put them on their guard. He would write to Moultrie, his
friend and one of the staunchest patriots in South Carolina. Upon that
thought he returned to the writing-table, and sat down. There Tom Izard's
letter once tore confronted him. Possibly Tom's gossip might yield some
clue. He broke the seals, unfolded and spread the sheets, to find in them
far more than he had expected.

"My Dear Harry," wrote the garrulous man of fashion,

"Wherever you may be, and whatever the activities that are now engaging
you, I advise you to suspend them, and to return and pay attention to
your own concerns, which are urgently requiring your presence. Though on
your return you should call me out for daring even to hint at the
possibility of disloyalty in Myrtle, I cannot leave you in ignorance of
what is happening at Fairgrove.

"You know, I think, that soon after the fight at Lexington last April,
Captain Mandeville was sent down here by General Gage from Boston against
the need to stiffen the lieutenant-governor into a proper performance of
his duty by the king. Captain Mandeville has remained here ever since,
and in these past to months has acquired such a grasp of provincial
affairs in South Carolina, that he continues as the guide and mentor of
any brother-in-law, Lord William, who arrived from England a fortnight
since. Mandeville, who has now been appointed equerry to his lordship, is
become the power behind the throne, the real ruler of South Carolina, in
so far, of course, as South Carolina is still ruled by the royal
government.

"In all this there; ay be nothing that is new to you. But it will be new,
I am sure, that a kinship, real or pretended, exists between this fellow
and your old guardian, Sir Andrew Carey. That stiff-necked old tory has
taken this pillar of royal authority to his broad bosom. The gallant
captain is constantly at Fairgrove, whenever his duties do not keep him
in Charles Town. Let me add on the score of. Mandeville, who is
undeniably a man of parts and finds great favour with the ladies, the
following information obtained from a sure source. He is a notorious
fortune-hunter, reduced in circumstances, and it is well-known in England
that he accepted service in the colonies with the avowed intention of
making a rich marriage. His assets are not only a fine figure and the
most agreeable manners, but the fact that he is next heir to his uncle,
the Earl of Chalfont, from whom I understand that he is at present
estranged. I do not myself imagine that a man of his aims and talents
would be so very diligent at Fairgrove unless in Carey's household he saw
a reasonable prospect of finding what he seeks. You will be very angry
with me, I know. But I should not be your friend did I not risk your
anger, and. I would sooner risk that now than your reproaches later for
not having given you timely warning."

There followed a post-script=: "If your engagements are such that it is
impossible for you to return and attend to your own concerns, shall I
pick a quarrel with the captain, and have him out? I would have done so
out of love for you before this, but that my brother-in-law would never
forgive me and Sally would be furious. Poor Lord William would be
helpless without his equerry, and he finds things devilish difficult as
it is. Besides, I understand that, as commonly happens with such rascals,
this Mandeville is a dead shot and plaguy nimble with a small-sword."

At another time the post-scriptum might have drawn a smile from Latimer.
Now his face remained grave and his lips tight. A definite conclusion
leapt at him from those pages. It was not a question of Sir Andrew's
having informed the Governor of Harry Latimer's seditious practices. What
had happened was the reverse of that. The information had been conveyed
to Sir Andrew by this fellow Mandeville, of whom he had heard once r
twice before of late. If Mandeville's intentions were at all as Tom Izard
represented them, it would clearly be in the captain's Interest to effect
an estrangement between Latimer and the Careys. And this was what had
taken place.

But how had Mandeville obtained the information? One only answer was
possible. By means of a spy placed in the very bosom of the councils of
the colonial party.

Upon that Mr. Latimer took an instant decision. He would not write. He
would go in person. He would set out at once for Charles Town, to
discover this enemy agent who was placing in jeopardy the cause of
freedom and the lives of those who served it.

His work in Georgia was of very secondary importance by comparison with
that.



CHAPTER II - CHENEY


William Moultrie, of Northampton on the Cooper River--who had just been
appointed Colonel of the Second Provincial Regiment of South Carolina,
under a certificate issued by a Provincial Congress which was not yet
sufficiently sure, of itself to grant commissions--was aroused from
slumber in the early hours of a June morning by a half-dressed negro
servant, who proffered him a folded slip of paper.

The Colonel reared a great night-capped head from his pillow, and
displayed a broad, rugged face the bone structures of which were massive
and well-defiled. From under beetling brows two small eyes, normally of a
kindly expression, peered out, to screw themselves up again when smitten
by the light of the candle which the negro carried.

"Wha...wha...what's o'clock?" quoth the Colonel confusedly

"Close. on five o'clock, massa."

"Fi...five o'clock!" Moultrie awakened on that, and sat up. "What the
devil, Tom...?"

Tom brought the slip of paper more definitely to his master's notice.
Puzzled, the Colonel took it, unfolded it, dusted his eyes with his
knuckles, and read. Then he flung back the bedclothes, thrust out a hairy
leg, his foot groping for the floor, and commanded Tom to give him a
bedgown, draw the curtains, and bring up this visitor.

And so a few minutes later Harry Latimer was ushered into the presence of
the Colonel, who stood in the pale light of early day, in bedgown,
slippers and nightcap to receive him.

"Odsbud, Harry! What's this? What's brought you back?"

They shook hands firmly, like old friends, whilst the gimlet eyes of
Moultrie observed the young man's dusty boots and travel-stained riding
clothes as well as the haggard lines in his face.

"When you've heard, you may say I've come back to be hanged. But it's a
slight risk at present, and had to be taken."

"What's that?" The Colonel's voice was very sharp.

Latimer delivered the burden of his news. "The Governor is informed of
the part I played in the raid last April."

"Oons!" said Moultrie, startled. "How d'ye know?"

"Read these letters. They'll make it plain. They reached me three days
ago at Savannah."

The Colonel took the papers Latimer proffered, and crossed to the window
to peruse them. He was a stockily built man of middle height, twenty
years older than his visitor, whom he had known from infancy. For
Moultrie had been one of the closest friends of Latimer's father and his
brother-in-arms in Grant's campaign against the Cherokees, in which
the-elder Latimer had prematurely lost his life. And there you have the
reason why. Harry sought him now in the first instance, rather than
Charles Pinckney, the President of Provincial Congress, which the royal
Government did not recognise, or. Henry Laurens, the President of the
Committee of Safety, which the royal government recognised still less.
The offices held by these two should have designated one or the other of
thorn as the first recipient of this weighty confidence. But to either,
Latimer had taken it upon himself to prefer the man who was in such
close, personal relations with himself.

Whilst still reading, Moultrie swore softly once or twice.. When he had
done, he came slowly back, hit brow rumpled in thought. Silently he
handed back the papers to the waiting Latimer, who had meanwhile taken a
chair near the table in mid-apartment. Then, still in silence, the
Colonel took up one from a bundle of pipes on that same table, and slowly
filled it with leaf from a pewter box.

"Faith," he grumbled at last, "you don't lack evidence, for your
assumption. Nobody outside of the Committee so much, as suspected that
you were here in April. God knows the, place is crawling with, spies,
There was a fellow named. Kirkland, serving in, the militia, whom we
suspect of acting as Lord William's agent with the back-country tories.
We durstn't touch him until he was so imprudent as to desert, and come
down to Charles Town with another rogue named Cheney. But before ever we
could lay hands on him, Lord. William had put him safely aboard a man o'
war oat there in the toads. Cheney was less lucky. We've got him. Though,
gadslife, I don't know what we're to do with him, for unfortunately he
isn't a deserter. But that he's a spy only a fool Could doubt."

"Yes, yes," Latimer was impatient. "But that kind of spy is of small
account compared with this one." And he tapped the papers vehemently.

Moultrie looked at him, pausing in the act of applying to his pipe the
flame of the candle which the servant had left burning. Latimer answered
the inquiry of the glance.

"This man is inside our councils. He is one of us. And unless we find him
and deal with him, God alone knows what havoc he may work. As it is there
are some twenty of us whose lives are in jeopardy. For you cannot suppose
that if he has betrayed me to the Governor he hasn't at the same time
betrayed the others who were with me, whether they actually bore a hand
or merely shared the responsibility."

Moultrie lighted his pipe, and pulled at it thoughtfully. He did not
permit himself to share the excitement that was setting, his visitor
aquiver. He came and placed a hand affectionately on Harry's shoulder.

"I'm not vastly exercised by any threat to your life, lad--at least not
at present. Neither the Governor, nor his pilot, Captain Mandeville, want
another Lexington here in South Carolina. And that's what would happen if
they tried any hangings. But as far as the rest goes, you're right. We've
to find this fellow. He's among the ninety members of the General
Committee. Faith, the job'll be singularly like looking for a needle in a
bottle of hay." He paused, shaking his head; then asked a question: "I
suppose ye've not thought of how to go about discovering him?"

"I've thought of nothing else all, the way from Savannah here. But I
haven't found the answer."

"We shall have to seek help," said Moultrie, "and after all it's your
duty to Pinckney and Laurens, and one or two others, to let them know of
this."

"The fewer we tell, the better."

"Of course, Of course. A half-dozen at most, and those men that are well
above suspicion."

Later on in the course of that day, six gentlemen of prominence in the
Colonial party repaired to Colonel Moultrie's house on Broad Street in,
response to his urgent summons. In addition to Laurens and Pinckney,
there was Christopher Gadsden, long and lean and tough in the blue
uniform of the newly-established First Provincial Regiment, to the
command of which he had just been appointed. A veteran firebrand
President of the South Carolina. Sons of Liberty, he was among the very
few who at this early date were prepared to go the length of demanding
American Independence. With him came the elegant, accomplished William
Henry Drayton, of Drayton Hall, who, like Latimer, was a recent convert
to the party of Liberty, and who brought to it all the enthusiasm and
intolerance commonly found in converts. His position as President of the
Secret Committee entitled him to be present. The others making up this
extemporaneous committee were the two delegates to Continental Congress;
the Irish lawyer John Rutledge, a man of thirty-five who had been
prominent in the Stamp-Act Congress ten years ago, and famous ever since,
and his younger brother Edward.

Assembled about the table in Moultrie's library these six, with Moultrie
himself presiding, listened attentively to the reasons/ advanced by Mr.
Latimer in support of his assertion that they were being betrayed by
someone within their ranks.

"Some twenty of us," he concluded, "lie already at the mercy of the royal
Government. Lord William is in possession of evidence upon which to hang
us if the occasion serves him. That, in itself, is grave enough. But
there may be worse to follow unless we take our measures to discover and
remove, by whatever means you may consider fit, this traitor from our
midst."

There followed upon that a deal of talk that was little to the point.
They discussed this thing; they pressed Latimer for details which he
would have preferred to have withheld as to the exact channel through
which this information had reached him, and they were very vehement and
angry in their vituperation of the unknown traitor, very full of threats
of what should be done to him when found. Several talked at once, and in
the alarm and excitement the meeting degenerated for a while into a
babel.

Drayton took the opportunity wrathfully to renew a demand, which had
already once been rejected by the General Committee, that the Governor
should be taken into custody. Moultrie answered him that the measure was
not practical, and Gadsden, supporting Drayton, furiously demanded to
know why the devil it should not be. Then at last John Rutledge, who
hitherto had sat as silent and inscrutable as a granite sphinx coldly
interposed.

"Practical or not, this is not the place to debate it, nor is it the
matter under consideration." Almost contemptuously he added "Shall we
keep to the point?"

It was his manner rather than his words that momentarily quieted their
vapourings. His cold detachment and his obvious command of himself gave
him command of others. And there was, too, something arresting and
prepossessing in his appearance. He was in his way a handsome man, with
good features that were softly rounded, and wide-set, slow-moving,
observant eyes. There was the least suggestion of portliness about his
figure, or, rather than actual portliness, the promise of it to come with
advancing years. His dress, was of a scrupulous and quiet elegance, and
if the grey wig he wore was clubbed to an almost excessive extent yet it
was redeemed from all suspicion of foppishness by the formal severity of
its set.

There was a moment's utter silence after he had spoken. Then Drayton,
feeling that the rebuke had been particularly aimed at himself, gave
Rutledge sneer for sneer.

"By all means, let us keep to the point. After long consideration you may
reach the conclusion that it's easier to discover the treason than the
traitor. And that will be profitable. As profitable as was the arrest of
Cheney by a committee too timid to commit anything."

That sent them off again, on another by-path.

"Yes, by God!" burst from the leathery lungs of Gadsden who had been
preaching sedition to the working-people of Charles Town for the last ten
years, ever since the Stamp-Act troubles. "There's the whole truth of the
matter. That's why we make no progress. The committee's just a useless
and impotent debating society, and it'll go on debating until the
redcoats are at our throats. We daren't even hang a rascal like Cheney,
Oons! If the wretch had known us better he might have spared himself his
terrors."

"His terrors?" The question came sharply from Latimer, so sharply that it
stilled the general murmurs as they began to arise again. At the mention
of Cheney's name, he remembered what Moultrie had said about the fellow.
An idea, vague as yet, was stirring in his mind. "Do you say that this
man Cheney is afraid of what may happen to him?"

Gadsden loosed a splutter of contemptuous laughter. "Afraid? Scared to
death, Very near. Because he doesn't realise that the only thing we can
do is talk, he already smells the tar, and feels the feathers tickling
him."

Rutledge addressed himself scrupulously to the chair. "May I venture to
inquire, sir, how this is relevant?"

Leaning forward now, a certain excitement in his face, Latimer
impatiently brushed him aside.

"By your leave, M. Rutledge. It may be more relevant than you think." He
addressed himself to Moultrie. "Tell me this, pray. What does the
Committee propose to do with Cheney?"

Moultrie referred the question to the genial elderly Laurens who was
President of the Committee concerned.

Laurens shrugged helplessly. "We have decided to let him go. There is no
charge upon which we can prosecute."

Gadsden snorted his fierce contempt. "No charge! And the man a notorious
spy!"

"A moment, Colonel." Latimer restrained him, and turned again to Laurens.
"Does Cheney know--does he suspect your intentions?"

"Not yet."

Latimer sank back in his chair again, brooding. "And he's afraid, you
say?"

"Terrified," Laurens assured him. "I believe he would betray anybody or
anything to save his dirty skin."

That brought Latimer suddenly to his feet in some excitement. "It is what
I desired to know. Sir, if your Committee's will give me this man--let me
have my way with him--it is possible that through him I may be able to
discover what we require."

They looked at him in wonder and some doubt. That doubt Laurens presently
expressed. "But, if he doesn't know? And why should you suppose that he
does?"

"Sir, I said through him, not from him. Let me have my way in this. Give
me twenty-four hours. Give me until tomorrow evening at latest, and it is
possible that I may have a fuller tale to tell you."

There was a long pause of indecision. Then very coldly, almost
contemptuously in its lack of expression, came a question from Rutledge:

"And if you fail?"

Latimer looked at him, and the lines of his mouth grew humorous.

"Then you may try your hand, sir."

And Gadsden uttered a laugh that must have annoyed any man but Rutledge.

Of course that was not yet the end of the matter. Latimer was pressed
with questions touching his intentions. But he fenced them off. He
demanded their trust and confidence. And in the end they gave it, Laurens
taking it upon himself in view of the urgency of the case to act for the
Committee over which he presided.

The immediate sequel was that some two or three hours later Mr. Harry
Latimer was ushered into the cell in the town gaol, where Cheney
languished. But it was a Mr. Latimer very unlike his usual modish,
elegant self. He went dressed in shabby brown coatee and breeches, with
coarse woollen stockings and rough shoes, and his abundant hair hung
loose about his neck.

"I am sent by the Committee of Safety," he announced to the miserable
wretch who cowered on a stool in a corner and glared at him with
frightened eyes. On that he paused. Then, seeing that Cheney made no
shift to speak, he continued: "You can hardly be such a fool as not to
know what is coming to you. You know what you've done, and you know what
usually happens to your kind when they're caught."

He saw the rascally, pear-shaped face before him turn a sickly grey. The
man moistened his lips, then cried out in a quavering voice:

"They can prove naught against me. Naught!"

"Where there is certain knowledge proof doesn't matter."

"It matters. It does matter!" Cheney rose. He snarled like a frightened
animal. "They durstn't hurt me without cause; good cause; legal cause.
And they knows it. What have they against me? What's the charge? I've
been twice before the Committee. But there never were no charge: no
charge they durst bring in a court."

"I know," said Latimer quietly. "And that's why I've been sent: to tell
you that to-morrow morning the Committee will set you at liberty."

The coarse mouth, about which a thick stubble of beard had sprouted
during the spy's detention, fell open in amazement. Breathing heavily, he
leaned on the coarse deal table for support, staring at his visitor.
Hoarsely at last came his voice.

"They...they'll set me at liberty!" And then his currish demeanour
changed. Now that he saw deliverance assured a certain truculence
invested him. He laughed, slobbering like a drunkard. "I knowed it! I
knowed they durstn't hurt me. If they did they'd be hurt theirselves.
They'd have to answer to the Governor for it. Ye can't hurt a man without
bringing a charge and proving it."

"That," Mr. Latimer agreed suavely, "is what the Committee realizes, and
that is why it is letting you go. But don't assume too much. Don't be so
rash as to suppose that you're to get off scot free."

"Wha--what!" Out went the truculence. Back came the terror.

"I'll tell you. When you are released to-morrow morning; you'll find me
waiting for you outside the gaol, and with me there'll be at least a
hundred lads of the, town, all of them Sons of Liberty, who'll have had
word of the Committee's intention and don't mean to let you go back to
your dirty spying. What the Committee dare not do, they'll never boggle
over. For the Governor can't prosecute a mob. You guess what'll happen?"

The grey face with its shifty eyes and open mouth was fixed in speechless
terror.

"Tar and feathers," said Mr. Latimer, to remove the last doubt in that
palsied mind.

"God!" shrieked the creature. His knees were loosened and he sank down
again upon his stool. "God!"

"On the other hand," Mr. Latimer resumed quite placidly, "it may happen
that there will be no mob; that I shall be alone to see you safely out of
Charles Town. But that will depend upon yourself; upon your willingness
to undo as far as you are able some of the mischief you have done."

"What d'ye mean? In God's name, what d'ye mean? Don't torture a poor
devil."

"You don't know who I am," said Mr. Latimer. "I'll tell you. My name is
Dick Williams, and I was sergeant to Kirkland--"

"That you never was," Cheney cried out.

Mr. Latimer smiled upon him with quiet significance. "It is necessary
that you should believe it, if you are to avoid the tar and feathers. I
beg you then to persuade yourself that my name is Dick Williams, and that
I was sergeant to Kirkland. And you and I are going together to pay the
Governor a visit to-morrow morning. There, you will do as I shall tell
you. If you don't, you'll find my lads waiting for you when you leave his
lordship's." He entered into further details, to which the other listened
like a creature fascinated. "It is now for you to say what you will do,"
said. Mr. Latimer amiably in conclusion. "I do not wish to coerce you, or
even to over-persuade you. I have offered you the alternatives. I leave
you a free choice."



CHAPTER III - THE GOVERNOR OF SOUTH CAROLINE


Mr. Selwyn Innes, who was Lord William Campbell's secretary during his
lordship's tenure of the office of Governor of the Province of South
Carolina, conducted with a lady in Oxfordshire a correspondence which on
his part was as full and detailed as it was indiscreet The letters, which
have fortunately survived, give so intimate a relation of the day-to-day
development of certain transactions under his immediate notice that they
would be worthy to rank as mémoires pour servir were it not that history
must confine itself more or less to the broad outlines of movements and
events, and can be concerned only with the main actors in its human
drama.

In one of these garrulous letters there occurs the phrase:

"We are sitting on a volcano which at any moment may belch fire and
brimstone, and my lord taking no thought for anything but the mode of
dressing his hair, the set of his coat, ogling the ladies at the St.
Cecilia concerts and attending every race-meeting that is held."

From that and abundant other similar indications throughout the
secretary's letters, we gather that his opinion of the amiable, rather
ingenuous, entirely unfortunate young nobleman whom he had the honour to
serve was not very exalted. A secretary, after all, is a sort of valet,
an intellectual valet; and to their valets, we know, few men can succeed
in being heroes. But with the broader outlook which distance lends us, we
know now that Mr. Innes did his lordship less than justice, After all, no
man may bear a burden beyond his strength, and the burden imposed upon
the young Colonial governor in that time of crisis by a headstrong,
blundering government at home was one that he could not even lift.
Therefore, like a wise man--in spite of Mr. Innes--he contemplated it
with rueful humour, and temporized as best he could, whilst awaiting
events that should either lessen that burden or increase his own
capacity.

There is also the fact that whilst, like a dutiful servant of the crown,
he was quite ready where possible to afford an obedience that should be
unquestioning, it was beyond nature that this obedience should be
enthusiastic. He had examined for himself the lamentable question that
was agitating the empire; and the fact that he was married to a Colonial
lady may have served to counteract the bias of his official position,
leading him to adopt in secret the view of the majority--not merely in
the Colonies, but also at home--that disaster must attend the policy of
the ministry, driven by a wilful, despotic monarch who understood the
cultivation of turnips better than the husbandry of an empire. He cannot
have avoided the reflection that the government he served was determined
to reap the crop that Grenville had sown with the Stamp Act, determined
to pursue the obstinate policy which--the phrase is Pitt's, I think--must
trail the ermine of the British King in the blood of British subjects.
Lord William perceived--indeed, it required no very acute perception--how
oppression was provoking resistance, and how resistance was accepted as
provocation for further oppression. Therefore, he remained as far as
possible supine, thankful perhaps in his secret heart that he was without
the means to execute the harsh orders reaching him from home, and
obstinately hoping that conciliatory measures might yet be adopted to
restore harmony between the parent country and the children overseas whom
she had irritated into insubordination.

Towards this he may have thought that he could best contribute by bearing
himself with careless affability, as an appreciative guest of the colony
he was sent to govern. He showed himself freely with his Colonial wife at
race meetings, balls and other diversions, as Mr. Innes records, and he
affected an amiable blindness to anything that bore the semblance of
sedition.

In the end, as we can trace, Mr. Innes came to perceive something of
this, and I suspect that he began to make the discovery on a certain
Tuesday morning in June of that fateful year 1773, when Captain
Mandeville, his excellency's equerry, waited upon Lord William at the
early hour of eight.

Captain Mandeville, who was himself lodged in the Governor's residence in
Meeting Street, came unannounced into the pleasant spacious room
above-stairs that was Lord William's study. The equerry found his
excellency, in a quilted bedgown of mulberry satin, reclining on a long
chair, whilst his aproned alet Dumergue, was performing with comb and
tongs and pomade his morning duties upon the luxuriant chestnut hair that
adorned the young governor's handsome head. In mid-apartment, at a
writing-table that was a superb specimen of the French art of
cabinet-making, with nobly arching legs and choicely-carved ormolu
incrustations, Mr. Innes was at work.

Lord William looked up languidly to greet his equerry. His lordship had
been dancing at his father-in-law's--old Ralph Izard--until a late hour
last night, so that the air of fatigue he wore was natural enough.

"Ah, Mandeville! Good morning. Ye're devilish early astir."

"Not without occasion." The captain's manner was grim, almost curt. It
was obviously as an afterthought that he bowed and added a shade less
curtly: "Good morning."

Lord William observed, him with quickened interest. He knew no man who
commanded himself more completely than Robert Mandeville, who more fully
conformed with that first canon of good-breeding which demanded that a
gentleman should at all times, in all places and circumstances, control
his person and subdue his feelings. Yet here was Mandeville, this paragon
of deportment, not only excited, but actually permitting himself to
betray the fact. And it was not only his voice that betrayed it. There
was a touch of heightened colour in the captain's clear-cut,
clear-skinned, rather arrogant countenance, whilst in his clubbed blond
hair there was more than a vestige of last night's powder to advertise
the fact that the captain, usually so irreproachable in these matters,
had made a hurried toilet.

"Why--what is it?" quoth his lordship.

Captain Mandeville looked at Innes, disregarding the secretary's nod of
greeting; then at the valet, busy with his lordship's hair.

"It will keep until Dumergue has finished." His tone was now more normal.
He sauntered across to the broad window standing open to a balcony wide
and deep and pillared like a loggia. It overlooked the luxuriant garden
and the broad creek at the end of it, whose waters sparkling in the
morning sunshine showed here and there through the great magnolias that
spread a canopy above them.

His lordship's glance followed the officer's tall graceful figure in its
coat of vivid scarlet With golden shoulder-knots and the sword thrust
through the pocket, in compliance rather with the latest decree of
fashion than with military regulations. His curiosity was aroused and
with it the uneasiness that invariably pervaded him where colonial
matters were concerned.

"Innes," he said, "let Captain Mandeville read Lord Hillsbrough's letter
while he waits." And he added the information that it had just arrived by
the war sloop Cherokee and had been brought ashore an hour ago by her
captain.

Dumergue interrupted him at that point by thrusting a mirror into his
lordship's hand, whilst holding up a second one behind his lordship's
head.

"'Voyez, milor'," he invited. "Les boucles un peu plus series qu' à
l'ordinaire..."

He waited, eyebrows raised, head on one side, his glance intensely
anxious.

In the hand-glass his lordship calmly surveyed the back of his head, as
reflected from the second mirror. He nodded.

"Yes. I like that better. Very good, Dumergue."

Audibly Dumergue resumed his suspended breathing. He set down his mirror
and became busy with a broad ribbon of black silk.

Lord William lowered his own glass to meet the eyes of Captain Mandeville
observing him across the document which the equerry had now read.

"Well, Mandeville? What do you think of it?"

"I think it is very opportune."

"Opportune! Good God, Innes He thinks it's opportune!"

Mr. Innes, a sleek young gentleman, smiled and ventured even a slight
shrug. "That was to be looked for in Captain Mandeville." His voice was
gentle, almost timid. "He is a consistent advocate of...of...strong
measures."

His lordship sniffed.

"Strong measures are for the strong, and to do as Lord Hillsborough
commands us--"

He broke off. Captain Mandeville was holding up the hand that held the
letter.

"When your excellency's toilet is finished."

"Oh, very well," his lordship agreed. "Make haste, Dumergue."

Scandalized by the command, Dumergue began a protest. "Oh, milor'! Une
chevelure pareille...une coiffure si belle..."

"Make haste!" His lordship was unusually peremptory.

Dumergue sighed, and cut short his ministrations. With a final touch he
perfected the set of the ribbon in which the queue was confined; then he
gathered towel, scissors, comb, curling-tongs and pomade into a capacious
basin, made his bow, and retired with wounded dignity.

"Now, Mandeville."

His lordship sat up, swinging his legs round. They were shapely legs in
pearl-grey silk. He considered them complacently. They were among the few
things whose contemplation afforded his lordship unalloyed satisfaction.

But Captain Mandeville required his lordship to pay attention to very
different matters.

"Lord Hillsborough is quite definite in his instructions."
"It's so devilish easy for a politician to be definite in London,"
grumbled his lordship.

Captain Mandeville paid no heed to the comment. He lowered his eyes to
the sheet he held, and read: "The Government is resolved to make an end,
a speedy end, of the ungrateful and unfeeling insubordination of the
American colonies, which is occasioning so much pain to his majesty's
ministers."

"Oh, damn their pain!" said their South-Carolina representative.

The equerry read on. "The excessive leniency hitherto observed must now
be definitely abandoned, and coercion must at once be employed to subdue
these mutinous spirits.

"Therefore I desire your excellency to act without delay, seizing all
arms and munitions belonging to the province, raising provincial troops
if possible and making ready to receive the British regulars that will be
embarked with the least possible delay."

His lordship laughed. "Not without humour, Mandeville--of the unconscious
kind, that so often has a tragic flavour. I am to raise provincial
troops. Gadsmylife! As if the provincial troops were not raising
themselves, whilst I look on, acquiescing in the damned comedy;
pretending not to know the purpose for which they are being raised;
regarding them as the ordinary militia which they scarcely trouble to
pretend to be. They swarm in the streets until the place looks like a
garrison town. They parade, and march and drill under my very nose.
Indeed, I marvel that I am not asked to sign their officers' commissions.
If I were I suppose I should have to do it. And Lord Hillsborough, snugly
at home in England, writes ordering me to raise provincial troops! My
God!"

He rose at the end of his bitterly humorous tirade, a tall, handsome,
almost boyish figure. "And you, Mandeville, think this letter opportune?"

"It is opportune with the business that brings me," said the equerry. You
are forgetting the back country. Charles Town itself may be a hotbed of
rebellion. But up there, beyond the Broad River, they are loyal and tory.
And they'll fight."

"But who wants to fight?" Lord William was almost impatient. "I am sent
out from home with orders to play a conciliatory part--which is the only
part I have the means to play, the only part that I believe it is sane to
play. Other orders follow. I am to coerce; I am to arm. I am to prepare
to receive British troops. The latter I can do. But the rest--"

"That, too, if you have the will," said Mandeville.

"How can I have the will? Who could have the will whilst there is the
faintest chance of conciliation. And why should there not be?"

"Because these people have determined otherwise. Lexington showed us that
clearly enough. Up there in Massachusetts--"

"Yes, yes. But this isn't Massachusetts. The enactments which have
weighed heavily on the Northern provinces haven't touched the people in
South Carolina."

"They have touched their sympathies," Captain Mandeville reminded him.
"And there are enough dangerous spirits here to keep those sympathies at
fever-point."

"And more who are urged by self-interest to remain quiet. It's not for us
to stir them up."

"Yet their Provincial Congress and its very active committees exist, the
Society of the Carolinian Sons of Liberty exists. And between them, these
illegal bodies rule the province. They ru'e you."

"Rule me?" Lord William stiffened. "I don't recognise their existence,"
he declared.

"That is not to abolish them. They exist in spite of you. They come to
you with their seditious demands wrapped in constitutional language, and
force their measures down your throat, making a mock of your authority."

"But they are as unwilling to come to blows as I am; and since they have
the force, and I have not, it says much for their fundamental loyalty
that they are as anxious for conciliation as I am. I believe that in my
heart--nay, I know it. Haven't I close relatives among those you would
call rebels?"

"What does your lordship call them?"

Lord William looked at him, and flushed. He was annoyed, and yet he
curbed the expression of it. He recognized that Mandeville, who had
already spent two months in Charles Town, was infinitely better
acquainted with Carolinian affairs than himself, who had arrived there
only a fortnight ago. And he was completely dependent upon Mandeville in
his struggle with the constitutional Commons House of Assembly
unconstitutionally transforming itself into Provincial Congress and
operating through equally unlawful subordinate committees. Therefore lie
suffered in the equerry certain liberties which in another would never
have been tolerated.

"What else, indeed, can you call them?" Mandeville insisted after a
moment, on another tone. Then his manner became more brisk. "But I've
something else for your excellency this morning. Cheney is here."

The Governor looked up in sharp surprise. "Cheney?"

"He has been set at liberty."

The young face lighted suddenly. "There! You see That's a proof of their
disposition."

"But no explanation is offered of his arrest. Much less regret, as he
will tell you if you'll see him."

"Of course I'll see him."

"He has a friend with him, another back-country settler, an
intelligent-looking fellow who was sergeant to Kirkland."

"Bring them in. Both of them."

Mandeville handed Lord Hillsborough's letter back to Innes, and left the
room. The Governor paced across to the window, and stood there looking
out, pensive, his chin in his hand.

The news of Cheney's release brought relief to Lord William, who had seen
his authority in peril of being openly defied. It was perhaps as a result
of this that his reception of the man was more than ordinarily cordial
when presently Captain Mandeville ushered him in, together with his
companion, Dick Williams.

"He was sergeant to Kirkland," Mandeville repeated as he presented the
latter.

"And before that?" his lordship inquired, simply out of the interest
inspired in him by this young man, so personable and attractive despite
his shabbiness.

"A tobacco planter in a small way," said Williams. "I have some land,
held by the King's bounty, between the Saluda and the Broad. Haven't I,
Cheney?"

"Ay, that's a fact," said Cheney, who wore a hang-dog look.

His lordship thought that he understood the fellow's loyalty.

"And therefore you are properly grateful, sir? That is very well. I would
all were as dutiful in the back country settlements. But what of you,
Cheney? What grounds did the Committee give for your arrest?"

"Just that I came down with Kirkland, as did Dick here. Lucky for him
though, he weren't seen in Kirkland's company."

"But they couldn't hurt you for being with Kirkland."

"They might ha' done, if I hadn't denied it. I swore their spy was
mistook when he said I came as a lifeguard to Kirkland. I said Kirkland
and me had met on the Indian trail beyond the town; that we did happen to
come in together, but that I knew naught of him being a deserter from the
provincial army. I held to that tale, though they tried plaguy hard to
shake me out of it. And when they found they couldn't, why they just let
me go. But I ain't safe in Charles Town, my lord."

"Why not, since they've let you go...?"

"Ay, ay, but they may find out something about me yet, and if they take
me up again..." He broke off, distress on his dull face.

"What then?"

Williams answered for him. "They may tar-and-feather ," he said casually.

His lordship made a sharp gesture of abhorrence.

"Why? Because he's a king's man! That's a bugbear. Why don't they
tar-and-feather me?"

There was a half-smile on the lean face of the false Dick Williams.

"Your lordship is a great man, protected by your station. We are small
fry, whom no one would miss. We play this game with our lives on the
board and if we're put to death," he shrugged and laughed, "no more
notice will be taken of it."

Nay, there you are wrong. I should see them punished."

"That would vindicate your authority, but hardly profit us."

"They daren't do it. They daren't!" Lord William was emphatic.

They'll do it to Kirkland, if they get him. And they want him, eh,
Cheney?"

"Ay, it's a fact," said Cheney. "The Committee made no secret of it.
They'll put Kirkland to death if they lay hands on him, and any other
spy."

"So they hold that against him, do they--that he's a spy?"

"Ay, and if they'd, had grounds enough to hold it against me I shouldn't
be standing here now. If your lordship don't protect me, I'll go in
fear of my life."

Lord William turned to his silent, observant equerry. "What's to be done,
Mandeville?"

"Send them both to join Kirkland," said Mandeville shortly. "Ay, ay; but
where's Kirkland going?" quoth Williams boldly.

"There's nothing yet decided," Lord William answered him. "Meanwhile he's
safe aboard the Tamar."

From Kirkland's pretended sergeant came a frank, pleasant laugh that held
a note of recklessness.

"Your lordship may send Cheney there if he's a mind to go. But I don't
strike my colours yet. I've come to serve the king, and myself, too, at
the same time. There's a fellow named Harry Fitzroy Latimer with whom
I've an old account to settle."

At the mention of that name Captain Mandeville very obviously awoke to
keener interest in Dick Williams. His eyes--dark eyes that seemed
invested with a singular penetration from being set in so fair a
face--levelled a very searching glance upon him.

"Latimer!" he cried sharply, and added after a breathless pause: "What is
there between you and Latimer?"

Williams hesitated, as if the sharp tone had intimidated him. "Does your
honour know him?

"I asked you a question," said the captain stiffly.

Williams smiled, with a touch of deprecation. "My answer might offend
you, captain. Maybe he's a friend of yours."

"A friend of mine!" It was the captain's turn to laugh, and his laugh was
not pleasant. "D'ye think I have friends among the rebels?"

"Oh, but this one." Williams turned to his lordship. "Mr. Latimer is one
of the richest planters in the province, in all the thirteen colonies
maybe, and he has a mort of friends among the tories. Why, there's Sir
Andrew Carey of Fairgrove Barony as red-hot a tory as any man in America,
and Latimer to marry his daughter."

Mandeville looked at him contemptuously. The fellow was not so
well-informed after all.

That may have been the case. It is so no longer. Sir Andrew is my friend,
my kinsman; and I have it from himself that this scoundrel Latimer shall
never darken his doorway again. I'll add that I do not know him, that I
have never seen him, though his deeds are well enough known to me as they
are to Lord William."

"Ay," grumbled his excellency. "The fellow's a nasty thorn in our flesh.
If the province were rid of him and that firebrand Gadsden, there'd be
more hope of a settlement."

"So speak your mind freely about him," the equerry invited. "What is
there between you?"

"Just a matter of some fifty acres the grasping scoundrel has filched
from my bounty lands, by artful shifting of boundaries."

William's voice quivered with scorn. "There's a noble gentleman for you!
A man as rich as Dives, and not above thieving land from a Lazarus like
myself. But that's the spirit of these rebels. They're all alike. Where
there's no loyalty to the king, there's no fear of God, nor virtue of any
kind."

"But there's a law to which you can appeal," Lord William reminded him,
shocked by this revelation of turpitude.

"A law!" Dick Williams laughed outright. "The law's dispensed by such men
as Mr. Latimer in South Carolina. The province is ruled by these wealthy
planters. And they'll never legislate against one another."

"We shall alter all that, Williams, when these troubles are settled."

"That's my hope, my lord, That's my faith." Enthusiasm kindled in the
blue eyes, a flush crept into that lean, pale face. "And that's why I'm
ready to spend my life in the king's service. So that in the end we may
have justice of such nabobs as this Mr. Latimer. He keeps the state of a
prince out of his plunderings. A kite-hearted scoundrel."

"You'll have justice, don't doubt it," said Captain Mandeville slowly.
"The fellow is weaving a rope for his neck. Egad He's woven it already."

"Ye don't say, captain!" Williams was suddenly very eager. "Oh, but I
do," Mandeville answered him, and snapped his lips together on that
subject.

Williams showed a desire to pursue it. At least he hesitated now,
twirling his shabby hat in hands that were none too clean. Then Lord
William diverted the channel of their talk, or, rather, brought it back
from that digression.

"What have you in mind to do, Williams? Where do you propose to go?"

"I? Why, back whence I came. Back beyond the Broad. So if your lordship
has any messages or letters for Fletchall or the Cunninghams or the
Browns, or any other of the loyal folk up yonder, I'm the man to carry
them."

"Letters?" said Lord William, and he smiled. "Yet if it were known you
came with Kirkland...

"No, no. Besides, I have no letters for them."

"If you had you'd find me as safe as the others that have carried for
your lordship."

"For me?" His lordship looked surprised. "Nay, I have sent no letters,
Who says I have?"

"It's what I'm supposing, your lordship. For how else should you
correspond?

"Certainly not by letters," said his lordship, with the air of a man who
knows his business.

"By word of mouth, then. There I'm your man. You'll have some message for
them?"

"Why, nothing but to bid them keep the men in good order."

"But you do not yet sanction them to take up arms?"

"Not yet. Not without they have ammunition in plenty, and think they're
strong enough."

The comely young face of Williams lengthened. "They're not strong enough,
nor have they ammunition in plenty. That I know. Besides, Drayton has
been up there preaching sedition to them, and that has thinned their
ranks."

"Stale news," put in Captain Mandeville.

"Ay, I suppose it is," Williams agreed, and sighed. "If they could depend
upon His Majesty's government for arms."

"Bid them be patient," Lord William answered him, "and should it become
necessary--which God send it may not the arms shall presently be
forthcoming."

Again the face lighted eagerly. "How, your lordship?" he asked
breathlessly.

The young Governor sauntered over to the writing-table. "I could not have
told you yesterday. But to-day I have a letter here from the Secretary of
State." He held it up a moment, and Williams observed that his face was
gloomy, his eyes sad. "His Majesty is resolved to enforce submission from
one end of the continent to the other. Tell them that in the back
country."

"It will rejoice their hearts, as it rejoices mine, my lord. Does your
lordship mean that soldiers will be sent from England?"

"That is what I mean--here to Charles Town." There was no exultation in
his voice. "Unless the rebels bend their stubborn necks, this place will
shortly be a seat of war."

"Now that's good hearing, on my life!" The young man glowed with
satisfaction, until. Captain Mandeville and even the silent secretary,
Innes, smiled to see so much enthusiasm. Lord William alone remained
grave.

"There's only one piece of news would gladden me more than that,"
Williams added after a moment. And that would be really to know, to be
sure, that Latimer was as safe to be hanged as your honour seemed to
promise. If you've those journeys of his in mind, to Boston and
elsewhere, I doubt if there's much in that you can act on. He's not done
as much as Drayton's been doing, and others that you know of. And if you
can't proceed against those, what can you do against Latimer?"

"We've something more than that against him," said Lord William.

"If it's anything about which ye're still lacking evidence, it would be a
joy for me to get it for your lordship."

"Nay," said his lordship affably. "I think the evidence is complete. Ye're
a good fellow, Williams. show you something that'll make you certain of
the recovery of your land, with perhaps a few of Mr. Latimer's acres
added to them by way of interest; something that'll encourage you to
continue to serve your king as stoutly as you have been serving him." He
turned to his secretary. "Innes, give me that April list."

Mandeville moved across to his lordship's side. "Is it quite prudent?"
he asked.

Lord William frowned. It seemed to him that Captain Mandeville was
permitting himself a liberty greater than usual.

"Prudent? And where is the imprudence? What do I betray that may not be
published in Charles Town?"

Mandeville pursed his lips. "Provided that the source of the information
is not divulged. That is too precious to be risked in any way."

"Your talent, Mandeville, is for pointing out the obvious."

"That is because the obvious sometimes eludes your lordship," Mandeville
answered him with that quiet smiling insolence that he was rather prone
to use.

"Be damned to you for your good opinion of me! Let it quiet your timid
heart that the obvious does not escape me now." He took the document that
Innes proffered and unfolded it. He held it out so that Williams could
read it. "What name do you find there at the very top?"

Dick Williams was studying the document as if with effort. "I...I do not
read easily," he said.

Mandeville's dark eyes flashed upon him with a sudden look of suspicion.
"Yet your speech, sir," he said, "is hardly of one who does not read."

"Oh, I read," said Williams, no whit perturbed. "I read printed books.
Indeed, I am a great reader of printed books. But I have no great
experience of handwriting." All the while his eyes were on that written
sheet. "And this is a cursedly crabbed hand. Whatever rogue writ that
should be sent back to school to learn his pothooks. Ah, I have it at
last! Egad, I should have guessed it. Why, the name is Harry Latimer."

"Harry Latimer it is," said his lordship, refolding the document and
restoring it to his secretary. "It's at the head of the list; and the
list is that of the men who were concerned in the raid on the King's
armoury here two months ago, in Lieutenant-Governor Bull's time. Latimer
was the ring-leader. Robbery and high-treason both in one. That will be
the indictment he will have to answer one of these fine days."

Dick Williams was staring at his lordship, a bewildered look in his eyes.

"But I thought he was away in Boston then?"

"So did a good many others. But he wasn't. He was here in Charles Town
for three days. And that was one of the things he did."

Dick Williams looked gravely at his lordship.

"The man who wrote that list will testify, of course?"

"When the time comes."

"Then why don't you arrest Latimer?"

"Arrest him?"

"He's here in Charles Town," said Williams, whereupon Captain Mandeville
interjected with unusual violence the question:

"How do you know?"

"We saw him this morning in Broad Street as we were on our way here,
didn't we, Cheney?"

Cheney woke with a start from the uneasy dejection in which he had been
standing.

"It's a fact," he stolidly attested.

Mandeville mused aloud as it seemed: "So he's come back, has he?"

"He has. This is your chance since you can bring forward your witness."

Lord William laughed, a little bitterly. "My good fellow, even if the
sheriff's officers would execute my warrant, which I doubt, to bring
forward my witness is not yet desirable. The matter must wait. But it
will lose nothing by waiting. Be sure of that."

"I see," said Williams. "To disclose the witness would be to lose the
services of your spy in the enemy's camp. I understand." He fetched a
sigh. "Ah, well, I'll be patient, my lord and meanwhile we may pile up the
score against our gentleman." His Manner became brisk. "I'll bear your
messages to the back-country. I shall be setting out at once. There's
nothing to be gained by stopping in Charles Town. If your lordship has
any further word--"

"No. I think not. If you'll bear those I have given you, and report to
me when you are next here, I shall be obliged. And now there's still to
settle about you, Cheney."

"May it please your lordship," said Cheney.

But the mercurial Dick Williams settled it for him breezily.

"You come back with me, Cheney. You'll be safe enough beyond the Broad.
And it's as easy to get out of Charles Town that way as by way of the
wharves. Beside, up there with a musket in your hands you'll be more use
to your king than stowed away aboard a man-of-war."

"Faith, I don't much care where I goes, so long as I doesn't stay in
Charles Town."

"You ride with me, my lad."

"Ay, ay! We'd best be going," said Cheney, who seemed to have no mind of
his own.

"Indeed, I think that's best," agreed his lordship. He turned to his
secretary. "Innes, let them have ten guineas apiece."

But Williams recoiled. "My lord!" There was deep injury in his tone.

"Why, what the devil!" His lordship stared at him.

"I'm a spy, my lord. I don't mince words. I'm a spy; and I glory in it.
But I don't take money for it. I do it as a duty and for the sake of the
entertainment it affords me."

Looking into those humorous, dare-devil blue eyes of his, Lord William
found no difficulty in believing the preposterous statement.

"Egad, Mr. Williams," said Captain Mandeville, "ye've an odd sense of
humour."

"I have. Haven't I, Cheney?"

"It's a fact," said Cheney, who was opening a receptive palm to the gold
Mr. Inns poured into it.

Thereupon they took their leave, and Lord William wearily resumed his
place on the couch. "An interesting, attractive fellow that," he said,
feeling for his snuff-box. "It's the first time I've found it possible to
talk to a spy without feeling nauseated. But then he's not really a spy.
He had very little to tell us, after all."

"He was very interesting on the subject of Harry Latimer,". said
Mandeville, who was brooding by the window.

"Interesting, perhaps. But hardly useful. If he had been before the
Committee instead of that oaf Cheney we might have WA something from
him."

"Perhaps you might have had something out of Cheney if you'd questioned
him."

His lordship yawned. "I forgot," he said. "And that fellow Williams
talked so much. No matter. What use is information when you can't act
upon it? And I thank God I can't. That way lies hope." He took snuff
gloomily.



CHAPTER IV - FAIRGROVE


In an upper room of his handsome house on the Bay, Mr. Harry Latimer was
at his toilet with the assistance of Johnson. He was exchanging the
clothes and the grime proper to Dick Williams for garments more suited to
his real station. But when Johnson respectfully asked his honour what he
would wear, his honour bade him lay out a riding-suit, and meanwhile give
him a bed-gown. Wrapped in this, he sat there listless and dejected
before his toilet table what time his valet busied himself with the
clothes Mr. Latimer was presently to don.

When all was ready, instead of proceeding to dress, he dismissed the
valet, and continued sunk in thought. Thus Julius, the butler, found him
when he came a quarter of an hour later with a silver chocolate service
which he set down at his master's elbow. Julius, a short, slight, elderly
negro, in a sky-blue livery, and with a head of crisply-curling white
hair that looked like a wig, poured a cup of the steaming brew, and then,
in obedience to a curt dismissal, withdrew again.

Mr. Latimer sat on, alone with his thoughts. He had succeeded in his aims
that morning beyond anything that you may yet suspect. Once he had seen
that list which Lord William had shown him, there had been no need for
any further questions. He had learnt all that he sought to know. And yet
his success, far from bringing him elation, had plunged him into a
dejection deeper than any he had yet experienced. For that list was in a
hand that he knew as well as he knew his own. It was the hand of a man of
his own age, a man named Gabriel Featherstone, who was the son of Sir
Andrew Carey's factor at Fairgrove. This factor had been in Sir Andrew's
service for thirty years, and not only himself but also his son were held
by Sir Andrew in warm affection. So much had this been the case, that at
one time when, as a boy, Latimer had been given a tutor, Gabriel
Featherstone had been sent to share his lessons. For two years--until
Latimer had gone to England to complete his studies--Gabriel and he had
worked side by side at their school-books, and for some time afterwards
they had corresponded. It was, no wonder, then, that he knew the hand so
well.

The discovery that it was Gabriel Featherstone who had supplied that list
to Lord William and who was, therefore, the traitor in their ranks, had
led Latimer straight to certain very definite and irresistible
conclusions. And he was left wondering now at his own dullness in never
having suspected these things which were suddenly rendered so appallingly
clear.

From the moment that Gabriel Featherstone joined the Carolinian Sons of
Liberty and procured his election to the General Committee of Provincial
Congress, Latimer should have considered the possibility of some such
purpose as he now perceived. Perhaps his own sudden conversion to the
Cause had made him take the conversion of Featherstone too much for
granted. Yet he should have known that self-interest must have restrained
a man who, through his own father, was largely dependent upon Sir Andrew.
He should have known that Sir Andrew's bigotry would have dictated the
instant dismissal of a man who was the father of a rebel. Since this had
not happened, it followed that he was a party to what had taken place.
Possibly--indeed probably--it was at Sir Andrew's own instigation that
Gabriel had been sent to act as a spy upon the doings of Provincial
Congress.

And now Latimer found himself face to face with the clear duty to
announce his discovery. The extemporaneous secret committee by which he
had been empowered to make his investigation was to assemble again that
evening at six o'clock at the house of Henry Laurens to receive his
report. Make it he must, at whatever cost. Of that there was no doubt in
his mind. But the cost was heavy indeed.

It was not that he pitied or sympathized with Featherstone. Whatever
tenderness he might have had for him was eclipsed by the fact that in
spite of the past Featherstone had never hesitated to place a rope round
Latimer's neck. The fellow was revealed to him for a venal scoundrel upon
whom only a fool would waste his pity. But there was Sir Andrew, There
was the breach already existing between himself and the man who had been
his guardian and dearest friend, and who was Myrtle's lather. That
breach, the hope of healing which had been strong until this moment, must
now be rendered utterly irreparable. For if he denounced Featherstone,
there could be no doubt of what must follow. Whatever the feelings and
hesitations of the others, Gadsden would see to it that the man be dealt
with by mob-law. And if through Latimer's denunciation Featherstone
should lose his life as a punishment for activities in which Sir Andrew
himself had engaged him, it would be idle for Harry Latimer to hope that
his adoptive father would ever forgive him. Myrtle would then, indeed, be
lost to him irrevocably.

Yet denounce Featherstone he must.

There you have the two horns of the terrible dilemma upon which, as a
result of his success, Mr. Latimer now found himself. And it was a long
time before there dawned upon him the possibility of a middle course,
which, by removing Featherstone and thus putting a term to his espionage,
might yet spare his life.

A man of quick decisions and of rather sanguine temperament, he decided
to act at once upon the idea. Indeed, if it was to be acted upon at all
there was no time to lose. He rose at last, and rang for his valet. When
the man came, he bade him send a messenger to ask Mr. Izard to step round
to see him, and then return to assist him to dress.

Now at just about the time that Mr. Latimer was beginning to make his
toilet--which would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of noon--Captain
Mandeville was setting out from Meeting Street, with intent to ride to
Fairgrove, the imposing seat of Sir Andrew Carey on the Back River.

Seen on his tall black horse, in his scarlet gold-laced coat, white
buckskins and lacquered riding-boots, the captain was a figure calculated
to gladden the eyes of any maid that might happen to peep through one or
another of the green jalousies veiling the windows under which he passed.

Charles Town had been planned by Culpepper a hundred years ago, at a time
and in a place that admitted of generous spaces and regular lines such as
were not to be found in the old world. Meeting Street in the European
eyes of the governor's equerry was a pleasant avenue, fringed with elms,
and deriving a sense of width front the garden spaces between the houses
on either side. Some of these, and mainly the more recent ones, of
mellowing red brick, clothed in vine and honeysuckle, jasmine and glossy
cherokee, were half concealed amid the luxuriance of their gardens;
others, of wood, but very solidly built, mainly of the timber of the
black cypress, stood sideways to the thoroughfare, presenting to it no
more than a gabled end, whilst the long fronts with their wide deep
piazzas faced inwards upon the gardens, which were enclosed behind high
brick walls. The scent of late flowering bulbs, which early Dutch
settlers had procured from Holland, mingled with the heavier perfume of
jasmine and honeysuckle and the pungent fragrance which the sun was
drawing from the pines.

The captain turned off into Broad Street, and rode past the Church of St.
Michael with its lofty steeple, so reminiscent of the work of Wren and so
greatly resembling St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. lie crossed the open space
at the Corner presided over by the statue of Pitt, which had been
enthusiastically erected there five years ago to mark the province's
appreciation of the Great Commoner who had championed the cause of the
Colonies in the Stamp Act troubles.

And here the bustle of life and traffic was such that the captain found
it in the main impossible to proceed at more than a walking pace. There
were groups of seafaring men of all degrees from the ships in the
harbour, standing to gape upon the sights of the town. Now it was a party
of negro field servants in brightly-coloured cottons, shepherded by a
swarthy overseer, that claimed their attention; now it was a file of
three Catawba Indians, leather-crowned and mantled in gaudy blankets,
each leading a pack-horse laden with the merchandise against which they
had traded the pelts from their distant settlements beyond Camden. More
than once Captain Mandeville was compelled to draw rein altogether to
give passage to the lumbering mahogany coach of some wealthy planter, the
tall phaeton driven by a young colonial macaroni, with his liveried negro
groom sitting like a statue of I bronze behind; or the sedan chair slung
between its black porters bearing a lady of fashion on her shopping
excursions.

For of all the towns in North America, this was the one in which the
luxury and refinements of the Old World were combined in the highest
degree with the wealth and abundance of he New. And, as was natural,
their sybaritism governed their politics. There were, of course,
firebrands, republican extremists such as Christopher Gadsden and this
new convert to republicanism Mr. Harry Latimer, and there was an unruly
mob of mechanics and artisans and the like, who with little to stake were
ready enough for adventure; but in the main the wealthy oligarchy of
planters and merchants which had so long held undisputed sway in South
Carolina, whilst sympathizing with the grievances of the North and the
opposers of the oppressive royal rule, was restrained from overt action
by self-interest. The security of person and property which they now
enjoyed might be lost to them in an upheaval. And the same incubus of
passivity sat upon the spirit of the avowed tones. In their ranks, too,
there were extremists, like Sir Andrew Carey and the Fletchalls, who left
everything but a fanatical duty to the king out of their calculations.
But in the main they were as anxious as those on the other side to avoid
an open rupture.

Thus it was the destiny of the Carolinians to follow, since follow they
must, but never to lead, in this conflict with authority.

News of the skirmish at Lexington last April had rudely shaken them. But
things had settled down again. Congress had met to frame a petition to
the King, and the hope that all would yet be adjusted and that a
reconciliation would be effected was held as stoutly as men hold the
hopes of things they desperately desire.

Captain Mandeville's views on colonial matters were pessimistic, and it
also happened that he loved antitheses as well as any man with a sense of
irony. Therefore it was with mildly amused detachment that he returned
the salutes of some of these ubiquitous blue-coated officers of the
provincial militia--a body more or less constitutionally brought together
against the need for unconstitutional emergencies--who doffed their
black-cockaded hats to him as he rode by. He reflected that despite their
superficial friendliness, they regarded his scarlet coat much as a bull
might regard it, and that notwithstanding their friendly smiles of
greeting--for many of them were men with whom he gamed and hunted and
laid wagers on a main of cocks or a horse race--they might very possibly
be cutting his throat before the week was out.

To Mandeville, it was all in the day's work. He had come out to the
colonies in the service of his king, like the "poor devil of a younger
son" as he was wont, more affectedly than accurately, to describe
himself. He was, in reality, the younger son of a younger son. He had run
through the considerable fortune inherited from his mother--his father
having married a wealthy heiress, in accordance with the best traditions
of the younger sons of noble houses--and he was now in the position of
dependency upon the State peculiar to British cadets, with the possible
expectations that commonly delude them.

His uncle, the present Earl of Chalfont, had no issue, and Captain
Mandeville was next in the succession. But as his uncle, now in his
fifty-fifth year, was of a rudely vigorous constitution, and the
Mandevilles were a long-lived race, the captain was not disposed to build
upon expectations which might not be realized until his own youth was
spent. Therefore, in coming out to the colonies to, serve his king,
Captain Mandeville had it also in mind to serve himself in the manner not
unusual among his kind, the manner of which his own father had set him
the example, and the manner in which Lord William Campbell--also a
younger son--had served himself when he married Sally Izard and a dowry
of fifty thousand pounds. The colonies offered a fruitful hunting-ground,
and colonial heiresses afforded covetable prizes for younger sons who
knew how to make the best of family glamour.

Apart from this, however, Captain Mandeville came out persuaded that in
his own case the hunt need not be carried very far afield. Sir Andrew
Carey, that wealthy and influential South Carolina tory, descended on the
distaff side from that Mandeville who had been one of the original Lords
Proprietors, was a remote kinsman of the captain's, and so passionately
proud of his descent from so ancient and distinguished a stock as to be
disposed to regard the kinship as much closer than it actually was. And
Sir Andrew had a daughter, an only child. What, then, more natural than
that this widower, with no son of his own to succeed him, should perceive
in Mandeville the son-in-law of his dreams?

The only thing omitted from the captain's shrewd calculations was the
existence of Mr. Henry Fitzroy Latimer of Santee Broads and of the
Latimer Barony on the Saluda. And this omission might entirely have
wrecked those same calculations but for the dispensation of Providence by
which Latimer was guided into the paths of rebellion.

The outraged Sir Andrew let it be understood that he saw repeated between
himself and Latimer the fable of the woodman and the snake, and he swore
that he would play out the woodman's part.

When Captain Mandeville's eyes, which missed few things, observed
thereafter the disappearance from Myrtle's finger of a certain
brilliant-studded hoop of gold, he accounted the battle almost over. Nor
did he permit himself to be unduly concerned by the pallid listlessness
that descended upon Myrtle in those spring days.

If he curbed himself, using a masterly restraint at present, while her
grief endured, yet he envisaged the future confidently. He. knew his
world, and he knew humanity. He knew that there is no wound of the heart
which time cannot heal. It was for him to contain himself until he was
sure that the healing process should be well-advanced. The rest should
follow naturally and easily.

There was no coxcombry in his persuasion. That he was agreeable to Myrtle
she rendered evident. And in the quest for sympathy and affection which
is natural to those who have been hurt as she had been, it was inevitable
that her relations with her kinsman Mandeville should be strengthened in
their intimacy. Add to, this that he had now the assurance of Sir
Andrew's entire favour and support. Sir Andrew had done more than hint it
to him. There was an end to any thought of marriage between his child and
the renegade Latimer, this ungrateful scoundrel to whom his house was
closed, which the captain assumed--and not without justification--to mean
that the way to his own suit lay open. That suit he now cautiously
pursued, and it was in the pursuit of it that he was riding to
Fair-grove, bearing a choice item of news which the interview that
morning with Dick Williams had supplied him.

He turned up King Street, where the traffic was less brisk, and pushed on
at a better pace towards the Town Gate. On a sandy waste beyond the
unfinished fortification works, undertaken some twenty years before, but
subsequently abandoned, he saw a considerable party of militia at drill.
It was composed largely of young men of the working classes, the least
responsible, and therefore the most inflammable material in the province.
The sight of Mandeville's red coat provoked certain ribaldries, which
they shouted after him, but more or less in a spirit of good-humour.

Paying little heed to them, he rode amain along the old Indian trail
across the pine barrens, a desolate landscape of shallow dunes unrelieved
by any vegetation beyond the clumps of pine trees that reared themselves
black and fragrant in the sunshine. Anon as he drew nearer to the Back
River, that branch of the Cooper on which Fairgrove had been built by the
present Carey's grandfather, the road led across a swamp, at the end of
which at last the country assumed a more fertile aspect.

It would be something after two o'clock in the afternoon when Mandeville
brought his now foam-flecked horse to the tall, wrought-iron gates of
Fairgrove, and the broad avenue bordered with live oaks, nearly a mile
long, which clove the parklands about the stately home of Andrew Carey.

This house of Fairgrove was a noble four-square mansion of Queen-Anne
design, with very tall, white-sashed windows equipped with white-slatted
jalousies. It had been built fifty years or so ago, of brick, now
mellowed by age and weather, brought out as ballast by the ships from
England. Emerging from the avenue on to a wide semi-circular sweep of
gravel, you might have conceived yourself confronting an English country
house of Kent or Surrey. Wide lawns were spread on either hand, under the
shade of massive cedars, whilst a flight of terraces on the northern side
broke the harsh slope by which the land fell away sharply to the river.

A negro groom led away the captain's horse. Remus, the negro butler,
ushered him into the house, and into the long, cool dining-room, where
Sir Andrew, who had just come in from the plantation, was refreshing
himself with a morning punch. He was in riding-boots, and his gloves and
long silver-mounted switch lay on the table where he had flung them a
moment since. His daughter was ministering to him, but mechanically and
listlessly. She had that morning received Harry's letter from Savannah,
and so different was it from what she had hoped and expected that it left
her with a feeling that life was at an end.

Sir Andrew, a big bluff man, looking in his grey riding-frock and
buckskins like a typical English squire, heaved himself up to greet his
visitor.

"Robert, my boy, we're favoured. Remus, a punch for Captain Mandeville."

The words were naught. The cordiality of the welcome lay in the ringing
voice, the beaming countenance, the outstretched hand.

And Myrtle, slim, tall and ethereal in a hooped gown of lilac, a dark
curl coiling on her milk-white neck, gave him as he bowed to kiss her
finger-tips a greeting that was as frank and friendly as her listlessness
permitted, whereafter she sought to busy herself with Remus at the great
mahogany sideboard in the preparation of the captain's punch.

"Time hangs on your hands," Sir Andrew rallied him, "and it's plain the
governor and his council don't overwork you."

"They may be doing so before long, Sir Andrew. And, faith, the sooner the
better." He paused to receive the punch, which old Remus proffered on a
salver, and gracefully to thank Miss Carey for her part in its
preparation.

"Confusion to all rebels," he said lightly, as he raised the glass to his
lips.

"Amen to that! Amen!" boomed solemnly the voice of Sir Andrew, whilst
Myrtle looked on with a face that was white and drawn.

They sat down, the captain and his host facing each other across the
dark, glossy board on which glass and silver seemed to float, reflected
as in a pool, Myrtle on a window'-seat, perhaps instinctively placing her
back to the light that her troubled countenance might escape notice.

Sir Andrew filled himself a long pipe from a silver box, and Remus
attended him with a lighted taper.

"No use to offer you a pipe, I know," the baronet mumbled, the stem
between his teeth. And the fastidious Mandeville, who loathed the stench
of tobacco-smoke, smilingly agreed.

"You miss a deal, Bob. You do so. And this is fine leaf, of that
scoundrel Latimer's own growing." His face was momentarily darkened. He
fetched a sigh. The fellow learnt the trick of curing it in Virginia. But
he kept the secret to himself. A secretive dog in that ass in other
things. "You should try a pipe, man. It's a great soother." But the captain
merely smiled again, and shook his head. "And what's the news in Charles
Town? We're out of the world up here. You'd be at old Izard's ball last
night. I'd ha' been there myself, but Myrtle wouldn't go. Moping over the
black ingratitude of a damned scoundrel who isn't worth a thought."

"You must bring her to Mrs. Brewton's ball on thought Thursday."

"Ay, to be sure."

"I don't think--" Myrtle was beginning in hesitation, when the captain,
gently interrupted her.

"Nay, now, my dear Myrtle. It is a duty, no less. The ball is being given
in the governor's honour. It becomes an official function. In these sad
times Lord William requires the support of every loyal man and woman.
Indeed, Sir Andrew, he desires me to say that he deplores your absence
from Charles Town just now and that he would be the better for your
presence."

Sir Andrew swore roundly and emphatically that in that case he would
return to town at once, however much the stench of treason in it might
turn his stomach.

It was not, indeed, usual for him to be on his plantation at this time of
year, and he would certainly not have remained there since Lord William's
coming but for the circumstances of his last departure from Charles Town
and the oath he had then sworn that he would not return until the vile
place was purged of its rebellious spirit.

He had fled from it in a rage in the middle of last February, on the day
following that 17th, appointed by Provincial Congress to be a day of
fasting, humiliation and prayer before Almighty God, devoutly to petition
him to inspire the King with true wisdom to defend the people of North
America in their just title to freedom, and avert the calamities of civil
war.

To Sir Andrew it seemed impossible that anything more blasphemous than
this lay within the possibility of human utterance. But when he heard
tell that every place of in Charles Town was crowded with wicked fools
who went to offer up that seditious prayer, when with his own eyes be
beheld the members of the Provincial Congress going in solemn procession
to St. Philip's, with Lowndes the Speaker of the Commons House at their
head in his purple robes and full-bottomed wig, the silver mace borne in
state before him, Sir Andrew's indignation forbade him to remain in a
place upon which he hourly expected some such visitation as that which
overtook Sodom and Gomorrah.

He raged in impotent loyalty, and raged the more because there was little
else that he could do to signify his execration of the event. That
little, however, he performed. He made his protest, and it took the shape
of closing his residence in Tradd Street, and shaking the rebellious dust
of that place of treason from his loyal feet.

On his plantation he had since remained, and there he would have
continued but for this viceregal summons, which he pronounced it his
sacred duty unquestionably to obey.

"We'll be there by to-morrow, Bob, dead or alive, to swell the muster of
the king's friends." Dismissing the matter upon that, he craved for news.

He received from Mandeville, whose face was grave to the point of
sadness, an account of the morning's interview with Cheney and Dick
Williams, and the latter's accusation against Latimer of turpitude in his
dealings with less powerful neighbours.

Sir Andrew's brows were scowling. But he thrust out a doubting nether
lip. "That is not like Harry Latimer," he said slowly. And Myrtle rose
abruptly from her window-seat.

"It isn't true," she said with heat.

"I scarcely could believe it myself," Mandeville agreed smoothly. "Men
are not often dishonest without motive, and what motive could there be
for such petty pilferings on the part of the wealthy Mr. Latimer? And
yet..." He paused a moment, a man hesitating between thoughts. "And yet,
when a man practises the dishonesty of being false to his duty to his
king..." He left it there.

"Ay, ay," assented Sir Andrew on a deep growl.

"Oh, you are wrong. Wrong!" his daughter insisted. "There is all the
world between the two deeds. Whatever Harry may be, he is not a thief,
and no one will make me believe it."

Captain Mandeville deplored to observe that time had not yet begun to do
the work which he had been content to leave to it.

"No one could have made you believe him a traitor," her father answered
her. "No one could have made you believe him secretive and furtive--a
fellow that comes and goes by stealth like a thief in the night."

"Which reminds me," said Captain Mandeville, "that he is in Charles Town
at present."

Their startled glances questioned him.

"I had it from this same fellow Williams. He told me he had seen him this
morning."

"Then why in God's name don't you arrest him?"

"Don't, father!" Myrtle laid a restraining hand upon his shoulder.

"Pshaw, my girl The fellow's no longer anything to you." Captain
Mandeville wished he could share the opinion. Meanwhile he answered Sir
Andrew's fierce question.

"Lord William would have signed the warrant already, but that--" He
checked.

"Well But that what?"

"I persuaded him not to do so."

"You persuaded him?" Sir Andrew showed Ms amazement. "'Why?"

"For one thing, it would not be politic. We want to avoid strife and any
act that may lead to strife. Mr. Latimer is something of a hero with the
mob; and we do not wish to provoke the mob into acts that might call for
reprisals."

"It's what they need, by God!"

"Maybe. And yet it has its dangers. Lord William saw that. Also, Sir
Andrew, I had other reasons. This Mr. Latimer, after all, in spite of
what he has done, has thrust certain roots into your heart."

"I've torn them out," Sir Andrew protested vehemently.

"And then, there is Myrtle," the captain sighed.

"How good you are!" Myrtle rewarded him, her eyes shining moistily.

"Good!" growled the baronet. "Good, to neglect his clear duty!"

"I doubt if I should ever do my duty at the cost of hurting either of you,
however slightly. You have become so very dear to me in the months I have
been in this exile that I could never leave your feelings out of
consideration in anything I did."

And then, before either of them could find the right words in which to
answer that pledge of affection, Remus opened the door to make the
dramatic announcement:

"Massa Harry, Sir Andrew."

It had never occurred to the old butler that there could be any doubt of
admitting Master Harry, and so he had conducted him straight to the
dining-room where Sir Andrew sat.



CHAPTER V - THE REBEL


Mr. Harry Latimer, stepping briskly, his three-cornered hat and a heavy
riding crop tucked under his arm, and drawing off his gloves as he came,
advanced with a composure which Sir Andrew afterwards described as
impudent.

Remus closed the heavy mahogany door, and silence reigned thereafter for
some moments in that room.

Sir Andrew, Captain Mandeville and Miss Carey remained at gaze, three
petrified figures, the two men seated, the girl, her breathing quickened,
standing just behind her father's chair, her right hand resting upon the
summit of its tall back.

You conceive perhaps the various emotions conflicting in the mind of
each, and you certainly conceive that for the moment these emotions were
dominated by sheer amazement. Deep as it was in all three, it was deepest
in Captain Mandeville. He was not merely amazed. He was bewildered. For
the tall, slim young gentleman who had entered, and who was standing now
by the head of the table, was no stranger to him. He had seen and talked
with him somewhere before, and the captain raked his wits to discover
when and where that might have been. But only for a moment. Gradually the
eyes of his mind metamorphosed the figure which the eyes of his body were
devouring. The well-fitting, modish, long riding-coat of bottle-green
gave place to a shabby brown coatee; the fine delicate hand, that was
being withdrawn from its glove, became soiled and grimy; the rippling
bronze hair, so neatly queued in its moire ribbon, hung loose and unkempt
about that lean, pale face with its keen blue eyes and humorous mouth.

The captain's fist crashed down upon the mahogany, so that glass and
silver rattled; he half rose from his chair, momentarily moved out of his
self-control in a manner foreign to him even at t lines of greatest
provocation.

"Dick Williams!" he cried, and added: "By God!"

Mr. Latimer bowed to him, his smile ironical.

"Captain Mandeville, your humble obedient. I can understand your
feelings."

Mandeville made him no answer. His thoughts were racing over the ground
covered that morning by the interview between Dick Williams and the
governor. He sought to recall how much had been disclosed to this
audacious spy, who, thanks to the assistance of Cheney--whose
unaccountable treachery was now also made clear--had so completely
bubbled them.

Meanwhile Sir Andrew, too obsessed by his own feelings to give heed to
the unintelligible exchange of words between Mandeville and this
unwelcome visitor, was raging furiously.

"My God! Have you the, impudence to show your face here, now that the
mask is off it? Now that we know you for what you are?"

"You do not know me, sir, for anything of which I am ashamed."

"Because you're shameless," Sir Andrew choked, impatiently shaking off
the trembling hand that Myrtle set on his shoulder to restrain him.

Mr. Latimer looked at him wistfully. "Sir Andrew," he said very gently,
"must there be war between us because we do not see eye to eye on matters
of policy and justice? There is no man in all this world whom I love more
deeply than yourself--"

"You may spare me that," the baronet broke in. "When I find a more
ungrateful, treacherous scoundrel than you are, I may hate him more. But
I don't believe that such a man lives."

Latimer's pallor deepened. Shadows formed themselves under his brilliant
eyes.

"In what am I ungrateful?" he quietly asked.

"Must you be told? Could any father have done more for you than I have
done? For years, whilst you were a boy, whilst you were away in England
on your education, I husbanded your estates, watched over them to the
neglect of my own. Your father left you wealthy. But under my care your
wealth has been trebled until to-day you are the richest man in Carolina,
perhaps the richest man in America. And you squander the wealth I raised
for you in attempting to pull down everything that I hold good and
sacred, the very altars at which I worship."

"And if I could prove to you that those altars enshrine false gods?"

"False gods You abominable--"

"Sir Andrew!" Latimer held out a hand in appeal. "Give me leave at least
to justify myself."

"Justify yourself? What justification can there be for what you have
done, for what you are doing?"

He would have added more. But Myrtle came to Latimer's assistance.

"Father, it is or y just to hear him." Her plea sprang from a desire,
deep down in her heart, to hear him herself. She hoped to find in his
words something to mitigate the judgment she had passed upon him in a
letter which had failed so miserably of its true aim--to recall him from
his rebellious course.

Mandeville, inwardly alarmed at the memory of all that had been said that
morning in the governor's study, and quite undecided as to how to bear
himself now, so that he might reconcile and serve conflicting interests,
sat still and watchful, a player who waits until opportunity shall show
him what line of play to follow.

"Sir Andrew," Latimer was saying, "you who live sheltered here in a
province upon which the hand of the royal government rests lightly, can
have no more conception than I had until I went there four months ago of
what is happening in the North."

But Sir Andrew did not mean to listen to a political harangue.

"Can I not?" Contemptuous laughter brought the words out in a croak. "Can
I not? There's treason happening in the North. That's what's happening.
And that's what you've borne a hand in; plotting God knows what devilries
against your king."

"That," said Mr. Latimer, "is hardly true."

"D'ye think your seditious actions have not been reported to us?"

"Reported?" Latimer almost smiled as his keen eyes wandered to Captain
Mandeville. He bowed a little to the captain. "I become important, it
seems. I am honoured, sir, to be the subject of your reports."

"As equerry to his excellency the governor, certain duties devolve upon
me," Mandeville answered smoothly. "Perhaps, Mr. Latimer, no." are
overlooking that."

"Oh, no." There was a gleam of that sedate amusement so natural to
Latimer, and as irritating now to Captain Mandeville as it had been to
many another who imagined himself to be the object of Mr. Latimer's
covert mirth. "I gratified this morning my curiosity on the score of your
activities." The captain flushed despite himself. "But your reports--or,
at least, the inferences you have drawn from them--have not been quite
accurate. Inference, I believe, is not the strength of the official
mind."

He turned again to Sir Andrew who was containing himself with difficulty,
and who only half understood what was passing between Latimer and the
equerry. "I have been plotting, perhaps. But certainly nothing against
the king. By which I mean that I am not of those extremists who already
utter the word Independence. On the contrary, I am of those who are
labouring to preserve the peace in spite of every provocation to support
constitutionalism against all the endeavours to cast it aside for
coercive violence."

The baronet restrained himself to sneer.

"It was out of your concern for peace, I suppose, that you planned the
raid on the armoury last April?"

Latimer's eyes flashed upon Mandeville again.

"Your reports have been very full, Captain Mandeville." This time the
captain gave him back gibe for gibe.

"Inference, you see, Mr. Latimer, is not always the weakness of the
official mind."

But Latimer's counter whipped the weapon from his hand.

"That was not inference, captain. It was information. It is one of the
things I ascertained this morning; one of the things I went to ascertain.
For the rest"--and without giving the captain time to answer him, he
swung again to Sir Andrew--"we desired to avoid here what was done in
Boston: British subjects shot down by British troops. Si vis pacem, para
bellum. It's sound philosophy. Since England, or rather England's king,
acting through a too pliant ministry, chooses to treat this Britain
overseas as enemy country, what choice is left us? We prepare for war
that we may avert it; that we may prevail upon a ministry at home to
receive our petitions, consider our grievances, and redress our wrongs,
instead of brutally compelling us by force to submit ourselves to
injustice."

"My God! You're mad! That's it! Mad!"

Captain Mandeville interpolated gently: "Did not Boston bring down upon
itself this trouble by its insubordination?"

"Ay! Answer that!" Sir Andrew challenged.

"Insubordination?" Mr. Latimer shrugged a little. "To what should Boston
have been subordinated? The subjection of a free people to the executive
authority of government is no more than a compliance with the laws they
have themselves enacted."

"You are quoting Dr. Franklin, I suppose," said the captain with the
least suspicion of a sneer.

"I am quoting from one of the letters of Junius, Captain Mandeville, one
of the letters addressed to a king and a ministry who are so reckless as
to threaten the liberties of Englishmen in England as well as in the
colonies."

Sir Andrew's indignation blazed.

"Is that a thing to say of his gracious majesty?"

"That there should be occasion to say it is deplorable. But the occasion
itself is not to be denied."

"Not to be denied!" Sir Andrew almost barked. "I deny it for one, as I
deny every word of your trumped-up pretexts of rebellion! The damnable
gospel of these Sons of Liberty. Sons of Liberty!" He snorted. "Sons of
riff-raff!"

The tone stung Latimer to a momentary resentment.

"It was an Englishman, a member of the House of Commons, who gave us that
name at which you sneer, speaking in admiring terms of our stand for
liberty."

"I nothing doubt it. There are rebels in England, just as there are loyal
men in America."

"Yes, and as time goes on there may be more of the former and fewer of
the latter. For this, sir, I say again is no quarrel between England and
America. That independency by which the North American colonies may be
lost to Britain, desired at present by so few of us, may yet come to be
the only issue. If it should come to pass, it will be the achievement of
a besotted king who, although he glories in the name of Britain--"

But he got no further.

Sir Andrew on his feet, livid with passion, furiously interrupted him:
"You infamous traitor! My God! You d utter such words in my house, would
you? You heard, Robert? You have a duty, surely!"

Captain Mandeville, too, had risen, and was obviously ill at ease.

"Robert!" It was a cry from Myrtle. In her distress--for she well
understood her father's invitation to him--the ceremonious term of
'cousin' was omitted. Both Mandeville mid Latimer remarked it, intent
though they might be upon a graver issue, and both were thrilled, though
each after a different fashion.

"Pray have no fear, dear Myrtle," the captain reassured her. And lie
swung to Latimer who was watching him.

"Here, under Sir Andrew's roof, I cannot take heed of the words you have
used."

The tilt of Mr. Latimer's nose seemed to become more marked.

"If you imply regret, sir, of that circumstance, I shall be happy to
repeat my words in any place and time your convenience would prefer."

Again Myrtle distractedly intervened, yet never beginning to suspect that
she herself, rather than any political consideration, was disposing these
two in such ready hostility.

"Harry, are you mad? Robert, please, please Don't heed what he says."

"I do not," said Mandeville. He bowed a little to Latimer, his manner
entirely disarming. "I do not wish you to misapprehend me, sir. All I
offer is an explanation of conduct in one who wears his majesty's
uniform."

"It did not occur to me, sir, that you would offer more."

Sir Andrew turned upon him, his face now as purple as a mulberry.

"Leave my house, sir! At once! I had never thought to see you here again
but that you should come to offend my ears with your abominable doctrines
of rebellion--"

Latimer interrupted him. "That, sir, was not my intent. I came solely
that I might do you a service."

"I desire no service of you! Go! Or I will have you thrown out."

Myrtle stood behind Sir Andrew, white and distressed, passionately
impelled to intervene, to seek yet to make the peace between her father
and her lover--for that he was her lover still, her heart was telling
her--and yet not daring to attempt to curb a passion so sweeping as that
which now controlled the baronet.

"The matter that brought me," said Latimer, coolly fronting that wrath,
"concerns the life of Gabriel Featherstone."

His ear caught the sharp intake of breath from Sir Andrew, and he saw the
sudden movement of Captain Mandeville. But not even so much was necessary
to announce how deeply he had startled them. Their countenances
abundantly betrayed it. He paused a moment, looking squarely into the
baronet's glowering eyes. "You would do well to bid your factor get his
son out of Charles Town and out of the province before evening."

For the second time there was something akin to an explosion from that
normally very self-possessed Captain Mandeville.

Mr. Latimer smiled a little. "Captain Mandeville, you see, realizes the
occasion."

"What do you mean?" Sir Andrew controlled himself to demand. But Latimer
observed that he was trembling.

"I mean that if Gabriel Featherstone is not beyond the reach of the Sons
of Liberty by evening, he will very certainly be hanged, and probably
tarred-and-feathered first."

"Gabriel Featherstone?" The baronet's cheeks had grown actually pale.

"I see," said Latimer, "that you are acquainted with his activities, Sir
Andrew; with the particular form of service to the royal government in
which he had been employed by Captain Mandeville."

"By me, sir?" Mandeville demanded.

Latimer's ironic smile was momentarily turned upon him.

"Lord William Campbell," he said, "is hardly the most discreet of men. He
is rather too easily drawn. And that without the lure of personal gain
that dulled your own wits, captain. There are times when self-interest
becomes a bandage to the eyes of caution. That, I think, was your own
case this morning.

"You infernal spy!" said Mandeville with cold rage.

Latimer shrugged airily. "A thief to catch a thief."

"Will you tell me what it means?" demanded Sir Andrew. "What has this to
do with Featherstone?"

"I'll tell you, sir," cried Mandeville. But Latimer stayed him. He
dominated now, by the fear for Featherstone which he had inspired.

"I think it will come better from me, perhaps. Gabriel Featherstone is a
member of the General Committee of the Provincial Congress, and a member
also of more than one of its sub-committees. He has abused his position
to keep the King's Council informed of our secret measures, and he has
already woven a rope for the necks of several of us. The moment isn't
opportune for hanging us. But should it come, as the king's government
confidently believes it will, Featherstone will be brought forward as a
witness to swear away our lives. I gather that the royal council will be
content with hanging me, the ringleader, as a warning and an example.
It's a bugbear that does not greatly alarm me. Anyhow, I am prepared to
take the risk, sooner than give you occasion, Sir Andrew, to mourn a
valued servant, the son of one still more valued. But you can't expect
the others concerned to be equally complacent. To remove the risk, they
will remove Featherstone. And the manner of it will be as I have said."

Sir Andrew stared at him, his jaw fallen, the anger, which seethed
abundantly within him, momentarily held in leash by dismay. And then at
last Mandeville spoke.

"It's false," he said. "False! A silly trap to catch the name of the real
denouncer. Featherstone is not the man. It was not Featherstone who
supplied Lord William with his list."

"In that case it is odd that the list should be in Featherstone's
handwriting," Mr. Latimer mocked him. "You'll remember that I saw it,
Captain."

Mandeville remembered not only that he had seen it but that he had very
closely inspected it.

"When did you see it? How did you see it?" Sir Andrew demanded.

And it was Mandeville who answered him, and who, by his answer which
related the whole of that morning's interview at the governor's,
explained to him several obscurities in what Latimer had just said.

"So that you're no better than a dirty spy!" cried Sir Andrew in disgust
and fury. "A dirty spy! You and your friend Cheney."

"A spy, if you will. But the rest I disavow. Cheney's no friend of mine.'

"And you've denounced Gabriel to your fellow-rebels?" Sir Andrew asked
him.

Mr. Latimer shook his head. "If I had already done that, should I be here
to warn you to get him removed? The moment after I denounce him he will
certainly be apprehended, and then--" Mr. Latimer shrugged eloquently. "I
trust, Sir Andrew, that you will place this at least to my credit: that
out of my anxiety to spare you unnecessary pain--the pain of one who may
feel himself in part responsible for the dreadful fate that overtakes
another--I have been less than faithful to my duty."

Sir Andrew made him no answer. He looked heavily at Mandeville, as if for
guidance. Mandeville's face, now a mask of complete composure, dissembled
the activity of his mind. The dismay and anger at the prospect of losing
so very valuable a spy--for whether Featherstone escaped or were hanged,
he would be lost to Mandeville as a channel of information--was being
dissipated by the knowledge that Latimer had not yet denounced him. In
that case all might yet be well.

"And of course," he said acidly, "your regard for Sir Andrew will hardly
go so far as to cause you to refrain from denouncing Featherstone."

Latimer did not conceal his rather scornful amusement.

"Such guilelessness, captain! Oh, the official mind! But I make you a
present of the knowledge you seek. I shall go before the Committee at six
o'clock to-day with the information you were good enough to give me this
morning."

"You really think you will?" said Mandeville unpleasantly.

"I know I will. Which is why I must be taking, my leave. Meanwhile, Sir
Andrew, you are warned, and in good time to pass the warning on to
Featherstone."

Sir Andrew, standing stiff and scowling, made him no answer. Mr. Latimer
bowed gracefully, and turned to depart.

But he found that Mandeville had got between him and the door. The
captain spoke, his voice cold and level but full of menace.

"Sir Andrew, this man must not be allowed to leave."



CHAPTER VI - THE DECEPTION


Sir Andrew roused himself at that summons. He reached out a hand to arm
himself with the riding-whip that lay across the board.

Mr. Latimer, midway between the baronet and the equerry, although
arrested by the latter's words and clear purpose, did not appear to
suffer any distress.

"You think to detain me by force?" he asked, and smiled.

The captain found himself admiring the young man's composure. And he was
something of an arbiter in matters of deportment. He belonged to an age
in which artificiality, the suppression of emotion, the histrionic
affectation of nonchalance in all circumstances, was accepted as the
outward mark of the man of quality. In England, where between
Westminster and Oxford he had spent some six years, Mr. Latimer had
readily acquired this art of genteel conduct which, for the rest, sat
easily enough upon a spirit that was naturally calm, detached and
critical.

"You must see, Mr. Latimer, that in the circumstances we cannot possibly
suffer you to depart."

"Not only do I see it. I foresaw it. It was part of the risk I took."

"Lay hold of him, Robert," cried Sir Andrew. He sprang forward as he
spoke, and Captain Mandeville did the like from Latimer's other side.

To avoid them, Latimer backed swiftly to the sideboard, and at the same
time lugged from the pocket of his bottle-green riding coat a heavy,
ugly-looking pistol.

"Not so fast, gentlemen!" he begged them, displaying that intimidating
weapon.

It brought them up sharply in their advance, and Myrtle cried out at the
same moment.

"You didn't understand me, I think," said Latimer. "I told you that I
foresaw something of this kind. Praemonitus, praemunitis." And he wagged
the pistol. "It is the motto of my house. As Sir Andrew can tell you, I
come of a singularly prudent family, Captain Mandeville. And now that you
realize you are at a disadvantage, perhaps you will permit me to depart
without doing violence to the proprieties."

"My God, you graceless blackguard," Sir Andrew railed at him. "D'ye dare
threaten me? D'ye dare draw a pistol on me? On me?"

"Nay, Sir Andrew. It is you who threaten. I do no more than protect
myself. Self-preservation is the first law of Nature."

Thus his cursed irony, which he could not repress, dug wider than ever
the breach between himself and the man he loved, the man who because his
erstwhile affection for Harry was now turned to gall, would, he knew,
show him no mercy.

Sir Andrew measured him with eyes of unspeakable hate, the hate born of
anger that is baffled and mocked.

"Let the dog go, Robert," he growled.

Mandeville had no intention of doing anything of the kind. He would risk
being shot rather than lose the services of Featherstone. But because he
preferred--self-preservation being the first law of nature with him,
too--that Latimer should first empty his pistol into somebody else, he
made a pretence of acquiescence.

He bowed a little, shrugged, and stepped aside.

"You win the trick, Mr. Latimer," he said lightly. "But it is only the
first in the game."

"Observe though that I've trumped-the knave," Mr. Latimer smiled back at
him. He pocketed his pistol, but took the precaution of keeping his hand
on the butt. As if perceiving this, and as if ostentatiously to show him
that his way to the door was clear, Captain Mandeville turned aside and
crossed the room to the mantelpiece at the other end.

Latimer paused a moment looking at Sir Andrew, and his eyes clouded with
regret. He appeared on the point of speaking. Then, as if realizing that
here words must be wasted, he bowed again and walked to the door. Even as
his fingers closed upon its crystal knob, Captain Mandeville's seized the
bell-rope by which he had gone to stand. Once, twice, thrice he tore at
it, sounding in the servants' quarters a tocsin of alarm that must bring
every lackey in the place at the double to intercept Latimer before he
could leave the house.

But, out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Latimer caught the violent pumping
action of Mandeville's raised arm. He paused, his hand upon the knob.

"I ought to shoot you for that," he told the captain. "But it isn't
necessary." He locked the door, withdrew the key, and crossed the room
again, under their wondering eyes. "I shall have to follow the example of
King Charles, and leave by the window." He unfastened the long glass door
that gave egress to the lawn.

"It's an omen," Carey raged at him. "You go to the same fate."

"But in a better cause," said Latimer, as he pulled open the wing of the
door.

"I warn you, sir," Carey flung after him, as he was stepping out, "that if
any harm comes to Featherstone, I'll see you hanged for it. I will so, by
God I though it cost me life and fortune. You graceless, treacherous
hound!"

Mr. Latimer was gone. Mandeville sprang to the window, and stepped out,
to see him racing across the lawn to the gravelled drive, where his negro
groom was waiting with the horses. At the same moment came clattering
steps across the hall outside, alarmed beatings on the door and alarmed,
plaintive, liquid accents of the black servants calling to their master.

Sir Andrew bade them cease and begone with a roughness such as he rarely
employed towards those who served him. They departed chattering and
wondering. To increase their wonder Mr. Latimer from beyond the porch,
already mounted, was calling Remus. He tossed the abstracted key to the
old butler, then wheeled his horse about and rode off with his groom.

He was half way down the avenue before there surged out of the pain
seething in his mind under the mask of nonchalance he had worn, the
recollection of another matter with which he had hoped to deal whilst
here at Fairgrove. And it was not until he had reached the gates that he
conquered the anger that was driving him headlong away despite that
recollection.

It had been his hope to make a very different impression, to earn some
consideration in return for the service he went to do at some risk to
himself. And he had also hoped from this to be given an opportunity to
explain himself to Myrtle, to reason her into a gentler frame of mind,
and to persuade her that because he loved his country was no sufficient
reason why she should refuse to marry him.

It was. Mandeville's presence at Fairgrove which had made shipwreck of
his hopes, sweeping the interview into a course so different from all
that he desired.

He drew rein, undetermined. He could not depart thus, leaving the
situation between Myrtle and himself a hundredfold worse than before he
came.

He paused, considering. From the distance came a plaintive chant, the
singing of the negro slaves in the rice fields by the river, and the
sound inspired him. He would write a note to her, begging her to come to
him out here. A friendly slave--and he was well known to them
all--should be his messenger.

He flung down from his horse, gave his reins to the groom, and ordered
him to ride on for a half-mile or so, and there await him. Then he left
the avenue, and plunged away through the live oaks and the tangle of
vines in the direction of the chanting voices. But progress through the
undergrowth of that leafy wilderness became more difficult the farther he
penetrated. And at last he was forced to pause, and, in pausing,
reconsidered. Better for his purpose than a plantation slave would be one
of the house servants; and if he waited, some one of these would surely
pass along the avenue before very long. They were all his friends, and
any one of them would do his errand secretly.

So he retraced in part his steps until the flat stump of an oak that had
been felled offered him a seat at a point whence he could, himself
unseen, command a view of the avenue, dappled with sunshine and shadow.
He sat down, and from an inner pocket he produced a notebook and a
pencil, and hurriedly scrawled a brief but very earnest appeal to Myrtle.
He tore out the leaf, folded it, and settled down to wait until chance
should send him the messenger he needed.

And meanwhile up there at the house Sir Andrew was still storming, and
Mandeville and Myrtle between them were engaged in soothing him, a task
which brought them into a close alliance very pleasant and consoling to
the captain. He felt that he had not conducted himself very well that
morning. At first he had practised a praiseworthy restraint in the face
of many difficulties and temptations. He had held aloof from all
contention, refraining from the obvious quips and sneers at Mr. Latimer's
expense to which the young apostle of liberty rendered himself
vulnerable. A less subtle man would never have missed those opportunities
of displaying his own wit and consequence. But Mandeville knew too much
of human nature. He had perceived that under Myrtle's indignation with
Harry lay a real and deep, if momentarily numbed, affection for him. And
he knew that avowedly to range himself on the side of Latimer's enemies,
to harass and vex him with manifestations of hostility, might only serve
to arouse that affection of Myrtle's into activity and provoke her
indignation against himself.

Therefore, even at the cost of having his courage put in question,
Mandeville had clung to the role of the unwilling and pained witness of a
painful scene, until the circumstances had cruelly forced him to become
an actor. The bad impression he feared thereby to have created he was now
anxious to efface. And it was a relief to him to find Myrtle, in her
ready understanding of the necessities, unresentful of the part he had
played.

He was not the man to cry over spilled milk of however precious a
quality. Latimer had got away, and therefore the utility of Featherstone
as a spy was at an end. It still remained to save his life. But his life,
shorn of its usefulness to Mandeville, was not a matter of much interest
to the captain. He was infinitely more concerned to set himself right
with Myrtle by assuming the role of tolerant, broad-minded peacemaker.
When Sir Andrew, apoplectic with anger, protested that he should have
said this, and answered that, Mandeville's calm voice laden with
compassion for the object of the baronet's invective acted as a timely
sedative.

"Mr. Latimer, sir, is to be compassionated. A young man of such parts, of
such agreeable qualities, to have been led away into such error!" He
sighed his infinite regret.

And he had his reward, when presently he took his departure, furiously
urged by Carey to lose no time in getting to Charles Town and placing
Featherstone for safety aboard the Tamar. Myrtle came with him, not
merely to the steps. She would walk with him to the gates. So, Captain
Mandeville must go also to the gates on foot, leading his horse. And
because of the impulse to express the increase of friendliness, almost
the tenderness, which his selflessness and his alliance with her in that
troubled hour had inspired, she thrust a hand through his left arm as she
stepped along beside him. The captain was conscious of a slight
quickening of his pulses. But ever master of himself, he conceived that
here his attitude should be one of affectionate elder-brotherliness.

"My dear child, my heart bleeds for you." He sighed. "And I am angry with
myself. To desire so intensely to lift something of this burden from your
shoulders, and to be powerless! It exasperates me."

"But you have done so much already, Robert. You have been so good, so
gentle, so patient, so generous!" She leaned a little more heavily and
looked up into his face, almost fondly, so great and natural was the
kindliness he inspired in her.

"Generous? If only I could think so. My every impulse is to give, and
give--and, my dear, I am empty-handed."

"Oh, ft is like you to forget. Didn't you persuade Lord William not to
arrest Harry? Was that nothing?"

"Nothing at all. I would have saved him, yes. Not for himself, because I
did not even know him. But for you, because he...because he has, or had,
the inestimable blessing of your regard. I conceived that unless I did
so, you might suffer; and so, even at the cost of duty, I...Oh, but what
am I saying? For, after all, I have failed. I have betrayed a trust to no
purpose."

"I shall never forget what you have done. Never."

"Then I have not altogether failed. It is a sufficient reward for me."

"But there is Harry. What--oh what--are we to do?"

His face grew overcast. "What can one do? One cannot argue with a
passion. I had hoped that when he saw whither he was going, into what
danger he was thrusting himself, he would have paused. But I might have
known that if the thought of offending you could not act as a curb upon
his conduct, personal danger would hardly have counted. At least, that is
how it would be with me. And we are often misled in judging others by
ourselves. Oh, it is all most damnable. If I could have detained him now,
on the pretext of saving Featherstone, we could have put Mr. Latimer
under lock and key until these troubles are over, as over they soon will
be once the troops arrive."

"Was that your intention?"

"What else? What other way was there of saving him from his own rashness?
Perhaps...if you were to see him..."

"I? See him?" She looked up at her companion, her little face stern, her
eyes almost flashing. And Captain Mandeville, who had made the
suggestion by way of testing her, was now given a glimpse of the sturdy
spirit that governed this frail body. He could not guess that much of it
was begotten of resentment, because Harry had almost ignored her
presence throughout the interview. Later, when reviewing it more calmly,
she would see that the occasion had been denied him. But at present
there was only resentment. And this she expressed. "I do not think that I
want to see him ever again. It is finished. Finished. Did you think I
have no pride? What do you think of me, I wonder?" She halted him, and
was confronting him, almost imperious.

"Does it matter, what I think?" There was a gentle wistfulness in his
tone.

"Should I ask if it did not?"

They were, although they knew it not, in full view of Harry Latimer where
he sat on the oak-stump, observing them with frowning eyes. And
unfortunately they were out of earshot. So that, whilst he saw all, yet
he heard nothing.

And what he saw was Mandeville turn to her, and with the bridle over his
arm, take both her hands in his, looking down at her with a face that was
all tenderness. What he was left to guess were the captain's words:

"And I, I dare not answer you," the captain said in tones that were an
answer in themselves. "I dare not. And yet I am not a coward, although
God knows I feared you might have thought so once this morning."

"Thought so? I? Robert, I thought you wonderful in your patience. Only a
brave man could have borne himself as you did."

"My dear, you fill me with pride. And as for what I think of you..." He
paused, he raised the hands he held, and stooped to kiss them, first one
and then the other, and then because he felt a loosening of the grip of
those hands which had been firm in his own, because he grew conscious of
a shrinking on her part from that which she feared instinctively that he
was about to say, he checked himself upon the brink. No man knew better
than Mandeville the conquering power of patience. Indeed, in that
knowledge lay all his strength. His tone grew light; robbing his words of
all solemnity.

"Why, if I were to say that I think you adorable, you would laugh at me,
I know." And himself he smiled, looking into her face which had grown
very pale. "So, since you insist, I'll say you are the sweetest cousin
ever a man discovered in the colonies. And I'll add that in Robert
Mandeville you have a steadfast friend."

"A friend! A friend! Ah, yes!" Her grip of his hands tightened again,
before finally releasing them, the colour came racing back to her cheeks.
"I knew that I was not mistaken in you. How rarely can a woman find a
friend, a true friend to depend upon in her need. Lovers she may have if
she will. But a friend! Oh, God bless you, Robert!"

And as they moved on he, safe now in that elder-brotherly position to
which he had retreated, went so far as to put an arm about her shoulder,
hugging her momentarily.

"Count on me always, my dear Myrtle. In any trouble arising out of all
this, command my help. You promise?"

"Why, gladly," she answered, looking up at him and smiling.

And that was the last that Latimer's scowling eyes saw of them, the
soldier's scarlet sleeve with its gold-laced cuff about her shoulders,
her little face upturned to his.

Mr. Latimer realized that he had been too long away from Charles Town,
and he conceived that all the cynical utterances of mysogynists with
which he was acquainted fell lamentably short of truth. Slowly he tore up
the little note he had written. And when presently Myrtle returned alone,
Mr. Latimer resentfully neglected the opportunity afforded him. He waited
until she had passed, then went in quest of his horse and his groom, and
rode straight back to Charles Town.



CHAPTER VII - MANDEVILLE AS MACHIAVEL


Captain Mandeville got back to the gubernatorial residence that afternoon
to find Lord William deep in the sociabilities of a reception which her
ladyship was holding. The long drawing-room was a little crowded. There
was an abundance of tories present, such as the Roupells and the Wraggs,
and there were a few who, like Miles Brewton, her ladyship's
brother-in-law, were so conservative in the method of their opposition to
the royal government as to appear--at least in the eyes of whigs--to
stand somewhere between the two parties'; but the remainder, and they
made up the major part of the attendance, were members of families that
Sir Andrew Carey would have described as rebel.

The discerning and rather scornful dark eyes of Captain Mandeville beheld
here an epitome of the colony itself. Two parties secretly hostile, each
arming against the other, and yet each anxiously straining to preserve
the peace, since neither felt itself yet ripe for war, nor knew what war
might bring it; each prepared for battle as a last resource, yet each
intent not to precipitate battle, and each hoping that the ultimate need
for it might yet be averted.

The captain made his way towards his lordship, and found himself
presently confronting Lady William, a splendid, vigorous young woman
between fair and dark who stood almost as tall as her viceregal husband
and displayed an opulence of charms that compelled in the
classical-minded the thought of Hebe. And it was not only her figure and
movements that suggested vigour, but her countenance, too, which was
boldly handsome.

"You are late," she rallied the captain. "And you bring the usual excuse,
no doubt. Poor slave of duty!"

"Your ladyship's penetration spares my poor wit."

"Not penetration, sir. Compassion." She took him by the arm. "You are to
come and talk to Miss Middleton. She loves a red-coat so much that it
almost makes her loyal."

"Your ladyship must forgive me. I have to see Lord William at once."

He was grave; and, observing him sharply, there was a flash of
apprehension from Lady William's eyes. For all her high and at times
rather reckless courage, she dwelt in constant anxiety for the husband
she loved who had been elevated to this position of as much difficulty as
honour.

"Is it serious?" she asked.

"Not so much serious as urgent," he reassured her. "I have had a busy
day."

She recovered the caustic humour that was natural to her. "Nothing fills
me with so much anxiety as your activities, Robert."

He smiled his acknowledgments, and passed on to draw Lord William
presently from the ladies who had been engaging him. They were joined in
the small adjacent room by Captain Tasker, his lordship's other equerry
whom Mandeville had beckoned, and by Inns who had followed of his own
accord upon seeing them withdraw. Mandeville wasted no words.

"The fellow who waited upon your excellency this morning, calling himself
Dick Williams, was Harry Latimer."

It was necessary for him to repeat the statement in other terms before it
was understood.

"Good lack!" said his lordship, and proceeded to recall what had passed.
When he had recalled it, he added: "My God!" and stared blankly at
Mandeville.

Mandeville answered the stare with a nod. "I am afraid he got a good deal
of information out of us. He was sent to spy out the land, to pry into
your excellency's real feelings towards these provincials, and to
discover the channel through which certain secret information of the
transactions of the Provincial Congress was finding its way to you. I am
afraid he has succeeded in all three aims."

"Impossible There was Cheney," his lordship exclaimed. Very briefly,
Mandeville informed him of what had happened at Fairgrove. His lordship
groaned.

"You see with what a dangerous man you have to deal," said Mandeville.
"He is resourceful, daring and a passionate rebel, and his wealth gives
him extraordinary influence and extraordinary power."

"Yes, yes," snapped his lordship impatiently. "But Featherstone? Have you
warned him?"

"That is not important," said Mandeville coldly. "Featherstone is a
pricked bubble. He is of no further use to us since I was unable to
detain Latimer."

"But, my God, man! We must save him."

"I wonder," said Mandeville in such a tone that the three stared at him
in amazement.

"Didn't you say they'll hang him once Latimer has denounced him?"

"That or tar-and-feather him," Mandeville mentioned the alternative
casually. And in the same level, well-bred voice he added: "If any such
harm were to come to him, we should have a very clear case against
Latimer. I, myself, and probably Sir Andrew Carey, too, can bear witness
that it was brought about by Latimer's seditious agency."

"And you would sacrifice Featherstone to obtain that?" The young voice
was charged with horror.

Almost Mandeville looked surprise. "This is neither a case nor a time for
sentiment." His tone was dry. "Better men than Featherstone have been
sacrificed before now to policy. Myself, I am not very tender where a spy
is concerned. A short shrift is the stake on the board with him. And
consider what you stand to gain. You are afforded the means to rid the
State of a dangerous enemy."

There was a long moment's silence before his lordship found an answer.
His humane young soul was shocked.

"You're a cold-blooded Machiavel," he said at length, in accents of
wonder.

Mandeville shrugged. "Your excellency is the governor of a province that
is rotten with sedition, and you must take what means you can to stamp it
out. The ministry at home expects no less. Is the life of a poor creature
like Featherstone to prove an obstacle in so great a work?"

His lordship clenched his hands behind his back, and took a turn in the
room, a prey to very obvious agitation. Tasker and Innes looked on,
saying no word, both of them a little appalled by Mandeville's soulless
theories of statecraft. Mandeville watched his excellency almost in
contempt. Was this boyish emotional young nobleman the sort of man to
crush the hydra of rebellion? What hope, he wondered, was there for an
empire, Whose ministers gave such positions as these to younger sons all
unequipped to bear them?

But Lord William, though humane and emotional, was not by any means as
inept in statecraft as Mandeville supposed him. This his pronouncement
now showed.

"Humanely speaking, what you suggest, Mandeville, is horrible.
Politically it is mad. If we use Featherstone as a bait, how shall we
afterwards dare to take Latimer? Before what court in the province will
you bring him to trial? What court do you dream would convict him?"

"He could--indeed, he should--be sent to England for trial on such a
charge."

His excellency crashed fist into palm to express his exasperation.

"You would make use of an enactment which is one of the present colonial
grievances to deal with a man who is a hero in the eyes of the mob, and
for an offence for which the province will acclaim him? Is that your
statecraft? Don't you see that it would precipitate the very thing that
we are at all costs to avoid? That it would bring open rebellion about
our ears? That it would compel us to have recourse to violence on our
side, and so make an end of the last hope of conciliation between the
colonies and the empire?"

"That hope is chimerical," said Captain Mandeville, with assurance. "It
is the illusion that brings indecision, and the weakness of indecision
into our policy."

But now Lord William asserted himself. "A matter of opinion, Mandeville;
and not the opinion that I hold myself. However I may prepare for the
worst, I still hope for the best. And I hope with some confidence."

"But if--" Mandeville was beginning.

The governor held up his hand. "There is no more to be said."

Mandeville might dominate him upon all points but this; for upon this his
lordship was dominated by his colonial wife and her numerous relatives in
Charles Town, in all of whom the hope was confident--being firmly based
upon their intense desires--that conciliation must yet prevail.

"I will thank you," his excellency concluded, "to waste no time in
finding Featherstone. Let him join Kirkland aboard the Tamar.
Thornborough will see to him, and he will be safe there. At need we must
send him to England."

If mortified; Mandeville betrayed no sign of it. He bowed his
acknowledgment of the governor's commands.

"It shall be done at once," he said; as evenly as if there never had been
any question of another course.

And Mr. Innes, in relating the affair, offers upon it this comment: "His
excellency called him to his face a cold-blooded Machiavel because he
displays energy and determination, qualities in which Lord William is
sadly lacking. If Captain Mandeville were the governor of this province
there would be a speedy end to its mutinous spirit."

Mr. Innes little suspected that in this case the captain's determination
went so much farther than his energy that, failing to discover Gabriel
Featherstone at the house of the married sister with whom he dwelt--and
where of necessity he must inquire for him in view of the governor's
explicit order--Mandeville was careful to seek him nowhere else where
there was the faintest likelihood of his being found. Captain Mandeville
intended that the province should be governed according to his own ideas;
and when these ideas were in conflict with the governor's, it only
remained for him to force the governor's hand.

Meanwhile, Mr. Latimer, too, had returned to Charles Town, and at just
about the time that Mandeville was threading his way through the ranks of
Lady Williams' guests, the young rebel was striding into the dining-room
of his splendid mansion on East Bay.

It was a room of rather sombre dignity, panelled in dark oak; with
portraits of bygone Latimers sunk into the panelling. Like most of the
house, it was furnished mainly in walnut; imported fifty or sixty years
ago from Holland, and of the character that in England is associated with
the reign of William and Mary. From the wide overmantel the room was
surveyed by a saturnine gentleman in a ponderous periwig, between whom
and Harry Latimer a resemblance was to be traced. A still stronger
resemblance might be traced--and has been traced rather maliciously by
Lord Charles Montagu--between this portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller of
Charles Fitzroy Latimer, who was the founder of his house, and--in the
actual words of Lord Charles--"that merry prince who was charged to his
face by the Duke of Buckingham with being indeed the father of a good
many of his subjects."

On a cane day-bed under one of the tall windows lounged a large, fair
young man reading "The Vicar of Wakefield." He was the male counterpart
of Lady William Campbell; but his countenance lacked a good deal of the
force of hers, and his personality a good deal of her magnetism. Still,
he remained a young gentleman of very amiable exterior whom it was
impossible not to like/ That he was indolent and good-natured you
perceived at a glance. That the most serious business he knew in life
were horse-racing, cock-fighting and fox-hunting, you would have no
difficulty in believing at once. That he should be taking sufficient
interest in provincial politics to be whole-heartedly on the side of the
colonials was less obvious.

On Latimer's appearance, Mr. Thomas Izard tossed aside his book and
stifled a yawn.

"I was beginning to grow anxious for you," he said.

"Why, what's o'clock?" As he asked the question, Latimer sought the
answer to it from the tall walnut clock standing in the corner.
"Half-past five. Egad! I had no notion it was so late."

"The time will ha' been spent agreeably."

"Agreeably!" Latimer flung himself into a chair, to render a brief
account of it. "You see," he ended, "I didn't overrate the risk to my
liberty, although I hadn't reckoned on finding Captain Mandeville there."

Tom considered him with a gloomy eye. "I could ha' told you it would be
long odds. The gallant captain rides out there almost daily."

"Why didn't you?"

"You'd ha' seen the inference, and given me the lie, most like. And, let
me perish, I don't want to quarrel with you about any member of the
faithless sex, Harry."

His bitter allusion to womankind derived from the fact that his wife had
left him a year ago to run off with a young French nobleman who had
visited the colony. Considering that she was a termagant and a scold who
had given him two years of married torment, he should have been thankful.
Instead, the human mind being tortuous, he was resentful, and prayed for
the day when he might call out and kill the Frenchman who had really done
him the greatest service of his life.

I mention the otherwise irrelevant fact that you may realise that he was
about the unlikeliest counsellor Harry Latimer could have found just
then.

"Ye-es," he answered slowly, his eyes troubled. And then he brushed the
painful thing aside. His voice was almost casual. "Myrtle has discovered
that she can't marry a man who doesn't believe that King George can do no
wrong. And she has demonstrated to me her preference for a red-coat who
has the honour to serve his gracious majesty. It's logical, I suppose."

"Logical!" Mr. Izard sneered. "Who ever knew a woman to be logical? It's
calculating. That's what it is, Harry. And so, let me perish, not worth a
thought. I'm glad you take it so well. As I wrote to you, Mandeville may
be Earl of Chalfont some day, if his luck holds."

But to his surprise Harry turned on him in sudden fury. "What the devil
do you mean, Tom?"

"Good Gad! Isn't it what you mean?"

"D'ye suppose I'd suspect Myrtle of being mercenary? Of selling herself
for a title?"

"Never been known in the history of the world, has it?"
"Never with such women as Myrtle."

"It seems to me you've a lot to learn, Harry," said Mr. Izard, as one
speaking with the authority of experience. "Women are the most damned--"

"I'll thank you not to generalize. Mr. Thomas Izard, on Woman, isn't
edifying."

"No. By Gad! He isn't! The subject don't allow it. But he's instructive."

And then the entrance of old Julius put a timely term to an unprofitable
discussion. He brought a tray on which were glasses and a silver bowl
containing a delectable punch of rum and pineapple and lemons, also a
silver box of fine leaf and a couple of pipes.

Not until they were alone again did any word pass between the two
friends, and then the interrupted subject was not resumed. There was a
much more urgent matter.

"Since I require no deputy at the meeting, Tom, you may give me the
letter that I left with you."

"Gladly enough," said Tom, and fetched the package from his pocket.
"Egad, if you hadn't returned, and I had had to attend the meeting for
you, I shouldn't have been there long. I'd ha' had a party of Sons of
Liberty out at Fairgrove to fetch you away to-night."

"I was sure I could trust you for that," said Harry, smiling. "They
little knew what they would be invoking when they thought to detain me."

The walnut clock struck the hour of six. Mr. Latimer bounded to his feet.

"I must go," he said. "Six is the hour of the meeting. Stay to sup with
me. I'll not be very long. Smoke a pipe meanwhile."

He was almost at the door when Tom, called after him. "Look to yourself,
Harry. Don't go abroad unarmed. You'll be a marked man, stab me, after
what's happened."



CHAPTER VIII - DEVIL'S ADVOCATE


It was but a step from Latimer's house to that of Henry Laurens', where
the special and self-elected committee of investigation was already
assembled to receive now the report which. Latimer had promised.

They came to business without loss of time. Briefly and luckily, Mr.
Latimer gave his account of what had transpired that morning at the
governor's. Leaving, with true dramatic instinct, the more sensational
matter for the end, he began by relating all that had passed between
himself and Lord William, bearing upon Lord William's correspondence with
the back-country tories. And already here, the first note of discord was
sounded in that meeting.

"I formed the impression, gentlemen," he was saying at the end of his
plain narrative of what had passed, "that Lord William is in the peculiar
position of--"

He was unceremoniously interrupted by the elder Rutledge. Turning to
Laurens, who now presided, and speaking in the cold, unemotional voice
that was habitual with him "I submit, sir, that this is irrelevant. Mr.
Latimer's personal impressions are not evidence for our consideration."

It was the lawyer speaking, and those who were not lawyers were quick to
resent it. In particular was Gadsden of these.

"Hold your tongue, John Rutledge," he snapped. "What you think of what
Latimer thinks isn't evidence neither."

It raised a laugh against Rutledge which, outwardly at least, perturbed
him not at all. As it subsided, Colonel Laurens--he had held the rank of
lieutenant-colonel in Middleton's regiment during the war against the
Cherokees--expressed the opinion that Mr. Latimer should continue.

"If I were in a position to place before you an accurate and full report
of what words were used by me and what by Lord William, then there might
be some grounds for Mr. Rutledge's objection. But as I am in no case to
do that, and depending entirely upon my memory of what passed, the
objection is frivolous.'

"Frivolous?" Rutledge echoed the word, but coloured its utterance by no
expression. Yet somehow he conveyed the sense that he sneered.

"Frivolous, because in such a case impressions are as precious as
recollections, and possibly more accurate." There was a murmur of general
agreement, and Latimer continued.

What he said amounted to an assurance that Lord William honestly
desired--as was to be expected in a man of his colonial
attachments--reconciliation, and that he would labour earnestly to
prepare for the worst so as not to be taken unawares.

"But when all is said," Rutledge again interposed, "there remains the fact
that he is in active correspondence with the back-country settlers, and
that he is advising them to arm. Lord William; in fact, is running with
the hare and hunting with the hounds."

Colonel Laurens took him up on that, his voice calm and gentle, inviting
consideration.

"Are we not all doing that? Are we not indeed constrained to do it by the
necessities of the case? Can we say to what lengths this or any other
colony will be warranted by the voice of America in opposing the King's
officers, though such opposition should be necessary for the very
existence of the colony?"

The answer, as might be expected, came from Gadsden, harshly,
impatiently: "That which is necessary for the very existence of the colony
must of necessity be done. In such a case the consequences cannot
matter."

And Drayton added, epigrammatically summarizing Gadsden's pronouncement:
"The worst should not deter us from action, since the worst is already
assured us by inaction."

"That may be so," Laurens agreed regretfully. "But it is a matter to be
determined by the future. And we are here to deal with the situation as
it is at present."

The benign Mr. Pinckney rapped the table. "Sirs, we are digressing. The
matter is one for the Provincial Congress, when we lay before it the
result of Mr. Latimer's investigations. We have yet to hear Mr. Latimer
on the subject with which we are more immediately concerned: the leakage
of information that has been taking place." And he nodded to Latimer to
continue.

"In that matter," said Latimer, "my investigations were attended by
singular good fortune." And he told them of the list which the governor
had shown him. "That list was in a hand with which I happen to be
familiar. It was written by Gabriel Featherstone."

This created such a sensation as the disclosure of the identity of a
traitor must ever create in any society of conspirators. Nor were all the
exclamations hostile to the accused. Scoundrel though he was,
Featherstone had known how to insinuate himself by flattery and other
arts into the good graces o several leaders of the Colonial party, among
whom were the Rutledges and Colonel Laurens. These were disposed to
suspend judgment, and desired first to cross-examine the accuser. They
were, however, anticipated in utterance by Gadsden, who bounced up as Mr.
Latimer, his report concluded, resumed his seat.

"This calls for action," he announced violently. "Immediate action. An
example must be made. The blackguard must be arrested at once."

"Upon what grounds, sir?" Colonel Laurens asked him.

The question, especially coming from one who because of his moderation
had long been in conflict with the uncompromising Gadsden, infuriated the
republican.

"Grounds? My God! Hasn't Mr. Latimer given us grounds enough?"

"Yes, yes. But I mean upon what actual charge is he to be arrested? What
offence at law has he committed? My indignation against him is no less
than Mr. Gadsden's; but we must preserve the forms."

"To hell with the forms!" Gadsden roared. "The man's a traitor. For our
own preservation he must be weeded out. And there's more to it than that.
Haven't you heard? Haven't you understood from what Mr. Latimer has told
us that there's a rope about the neck of several of us, placed there by
this scoundrel? And you talk to me of forms! What forms did you observe
in the case of Cheney? What forms would you have observed in the case of
Kirkland, if you could have got him? And what had they done compared with
what this treacherous kite has done?"

Pinckney answered him: "Kirkland was a deserter from the militia. In that
there was at least a technical offence upon which we could proceed
against him. Featherstone, unfortunately for us, has done nothing which
under the constitution would warrant so much as our expelling him from
our midst, much less calling him to legal account."

"You'll sit and talk about constitution and legal forms until we are all
destroyed. You spend your days in consideration whilst the other side is
arming to crush us into submission."

Thus Gadsden began, and he was but gathering his forces for an oratorical
onslaught upon his associates' scruples, when John Rutledge's cold
incisive voice sliced into the outburst. Correct in all things and at all
times, he addressed himself scrupulously to the chair.

"This heat, sir, in a matter asking calm deliberation is to be
deprecated."

"Deliberate and deprecate and be damned," said Gadsden, and he sat down
in a huff.

Rutledge pursued his even way, unruffled. "There are one or two points
to be considered before we can regard Featherstone's guilt as
established. At present it depends upon the evidence of a single
witness; and his testimony again rests upon no better grounds than that
of his recognition of a man's handwriting! Now those of you who have
experience of courts are well aware that no evidence is more unreliable
than that which depends upon handwriting alone. Nothing is more
deceptive than the similarities or dissimilarities to be detected
between one hand and another."

Less perhaps his argument than the deliberate manner in which he
marshalled its points impressed his hearers. Therein lay the man's
formidable strength as an advocate. He was never turgid, and seldom
passionate. He convinced by the flattery of his calm, cold appeal to
reason and intellect--often to reason and intellect not present in his
audience. Even Gadsden a moment ago so impatient, now contained himself
to listen attentively.

"Mr. Latimer has told us," Rutledge pursued, "that he recognised the hand
of Featherstone when shown the list of names by the governor. I take it
that in reality," and his calm, full eyes turned slowly upon
Featherstone's accuser, "this is no more than an expression of opinion on
the part of Mr. Latimer. I take it that it cannot possibly be more."

Latimer looked at Laurens, and Laurens nodded to him.

"It is much more," he said, his voice now as quiet and even as
Rutledge's, and so invested with a note of finality. "It is a statement
not of opinion, but of fact. My opportunities for becoming as intimately
acquainted with the hand of Gabriel Featherstone as with my own are far
greater than Mr. Rutledge imagines." And he stated them at full and
convincing length.

"Are you answered?" shouted Gadsden to Rutledge.

The lawyer's reply to the taunt was so full of dignity that it
immediately placed Gadsden in the wrong and entirely vindicated himself.

"I am solely concerned that we should not do an injustice to one who has
laboured for many months as our colleague. Beyond that I have no interest
to serve. I regret that it should become necessary for me to state it."
There was no heat in his words, no shadow of resentment. "Even now, even
after this clear statement, which goes far to justify Mr. Latimer, and
with which he would have been well-advised to have begun, I should still
deplore any action until we have obtained by tests--independent
confirmation of his evidence."

"I have already applied a test and obtained independent confirmation,"
Mr. Latimer announced.

"You have?" Rutledge's dark, level brows were raised a little in a
surprise whose source was easily discerned. "May we know the nature of
it?"

Mr. Latimer realized, to his annoyance, that he was now constrained to go
into matters upon which he would naturally have preferred not to have
touched.

"But is it really necessary?" he said.

Rutledge answered him directly. "Surely you must see the necessity of
putting forward all your evidence to substantiate so grave a charge as
you are making?"

Latimer looked at him a moment. Then he turned to the president.

"I begin to wonder, sir, whether it is Featherstone or myself who is
accused. It certainly appears to me that I am made to stand here on my
defence."

There were cries of repudiation from Gadsden, Drayton and Moultrie, a
friendly smile from Laurens, and another from Pinckney. Only the two
Rutledges--the younger following the elder's lead--remained impassive.
They dealt with evidence, not with emotions.

"Before I continue, sir," Latimer resumed, "I invite you to place me upon
oath--"

"Mr. Latimer!" It was an exclamation of deprecation from the president.
"You are a man whose honour no one questions. Your word is enough for all
of us." And an assenting murmur ran round the table.

"Is it enough for the gentleman who constitutes himself the advocate of
the traitor?"

"That's it!" said Gadsden. "He's named you rightly, by God !"

But the imperturbable John Rutledge disdained altercation.

"It is quite sufficient, Mr. Latimer. You name me advocate for the
traitor. I accept the office without shame. In commonest justice, it is
necessary that the absent should be represented. I should do the same for
you, sir."

"The need is not likely to arise," said Latimer curtly. "But let me
proceed. The admission that the list was supplied by Featherstone came,
if not from the governor himself, at least from the governor's equerry,
Captain Mandeville, who procured Featherstone to act as his agent and
convey to him intelligence of our deliberations and acts. And I had
practically the same admission from Sir Andrew Carey, who was a party to
placing Featherstone in our ranks for purposes of betrayal."

"Sir Andrew Carey?" Laurens questioned. "How does he come into the affair
at all?"

"I had best be entirely frank, though you reproach me with indiscretion
in the end." And now Latimer told them of his visit to Fairgrove, and of
what had there transpired.

A silence followed the conclusion of his account, and after waiting a
moment for any question that might be put to him, Latimer resumed his
seat. It was only then that Rutledge spoke.

"In view of the energy employed by Mr. Latimer, I deplore to be compelled
to censure the lack of discretion by which it has been accompanied. It
was a grave error to permit the other side to become aware of the
discovery of Featherstone's treachery."

All eyes were turned upon him, and there was a heavy silence of
disapproval in which all waited for some further explanation of his
meaning. Since he made no shift to add anything, Moultrie took up the
cudgels on behalf of Harry Latimer.

"Ye're a cursed curmudgeon, John, whom there's no satisfying."

"I confess," said Mr. Latimer, "that the last thing I had expected was to
be reprimanded by any member of this meeting."

"The meeting, Mr. Latimer, is very far from reprimanding you," Colonel
Laurens assured him.

"Which means, sir," Rutledge calmly replied, "that the meeting reprimands
me. That is only because the meeting does not fully apprehend either the
rashness of Mr. Latimer's action, or the loss to ourselves which it
entails. Let me make these clear. In the first place, Mr. Latimer
exceeded his commission, which is in itself a reprehensible matter. He
was requested to visit the governor to sound his real feelings and to
endeavour, if possible, to discover by whom we are being betrayed. It was
his clear duty to do nothing further until he should have presented his
report to this meeting. And it was for this meeting to determine what
steps should be taken to obtain confirmation of his report."

Moultrie impatiently interrupted him: "What better steps could the
committee have devised than those which Mr. Latimer took?"

"That is not at all the point." Rutledge was patience itself.

"Neither is that an answer," Gadsden taunted him.

"But I have no difficulty in supplying one. There are various ways of
leading a spy into betraying himself. One of these--and it is the method
I should have recommended--is to supply him with false information of
intentions. If the opposite side is seen to act upon that information, it
is very clear whence it was derived. Such a method would have had all the
advantages of that adopted by Mr. Latimer, without any of its
disadvantages.

"What are these disadvantages?" Moultrie demanded.

Mr. Rutledge looked round the table with those calm eyes of his, eyebrows
raised to signify a faint surprise.

"Can it be possible that they are not as obvious to everyone here as they
are to me? When a body such as ours discovers a spy in its midst, one of
two courses is to be adopted. Either the spy is to be utilized as a means
for supplying the other side with false information calculated to lull
them into a sense of security and generally to mislead them as to
intentions which it is desirable to mask, or else the spy is to be
instantly suppressed. It is very probable that Mr. Latimer's
unwarrantable independent action has made either course impossible."

The faces about the board became grave. The hostility to Rutledge passed
out of them, as the force of his reasoning sank into the minds of all.
Latimer was conscious to his infinite vexation that a flush was slowly
creeping into his cheeks. It was scarcely necessary for Rutledge to
continue his elucidation.

But Rutledge was merciless.

"That we can no longer make use of the spy for our own purposes is
certain, since Mr. Latimer has announced the discovery of him to the
other side. That he will elude us, perhaps to work mischief against us on
another occasion, is, for the same reason, now probable."

Gadsden heaved himself. "Then, by God! I am going to lessen that
probability."

But Rutledge stayed him. "A moment, colonel! There has been impetuosity
enough already. For Heaven's sake let us now proceed with some calm and
forethought."

"And whilst you so proceed," cried Latimer, also rising, "you ensure this
fellow's escape, and so make certain that I shall deserve your censure on
both counts." Only the anger possessing him could have driven him to
attribute to Rutledge motives so unworthy and so alien to his character.
That imputation of dishonesty in one so rigidly honest lost him much of
the sympathy in which the assembly had still been holding him. But
Rutledge smiled again his inscrutable smile. Like Anthony, he carried his
anger as the flint bears fire.

"Mr. Latimer goes from rashness to rashness. Before action is taken
against Featherstone, it is necessary that this meeting should determine
what that course of action is to be."

"I have no doubt on the subject myself," Gadsden assured them.

Rutledge looked at him sternly. "The greater reason why you should wait."
And the others, whom this forceful man was gradually subduing to his
will, confirming him, Christopher Gadsden, though not without making
plain his sullen resentment of the delay, resumed his seat. Mr. Latimer,
in a resentment still deeper, was forced to follow his example.

"There is apparent rashness on yet another score, which Mr. Latimer might
be well advised to explain to this meeting."

"Haven't you done with me yet?" cried Latimer.

"Unfortunately--in the interests of the cause we all have at heart--I
have not."

"God give me patience!" said Mr. Latimer wearily, and sank back in his
chair.

Rutledge went inexorably on: "Mr. Latimer himself has told us of the
grave danger of detention at Fairgrove to which he was, exposed. It is
impossible that he should not have foreseen this risk."

"I didn't foresee that I should find Captain Mandeville there," Latimer
defended himself.

"So much was not necessary. Sir Andrew Carey is a resolute;
uncompromising man. And the risk existed. Mr. Latimer must have known
that it existed."

"Well! I took the risk," Mr. Latimer answered. And he added the sneer:
"What risks do you take?"

"None that I am not entitled to take," was the calm reply. "And you were
not entitled to take this. Had you been detained at Fairgrove, had you
disappeared, what then?"

"I should have been spared these impertinent questions."

"Not impertinent. What I require to know is in what case should we have
been. Deprived of your report, we should not have known the result of
your investigations, and Featherstone would have continued undisturbed to
spy upon us."

Mr. Latimer was very angry, and strive though he might he could not
entirely keep the fact from appearing. He got to his feet again in a
bound.

"Sir," he said to the president, "I do not know when I have been troubled
by such a legal windbag or felt the blast of such asinine conceit. Mr.
Rutledge sweeps from conclusion to conclusion with a rashness far beyond
anything with which he charges me. Let me say, sir, that I had provided
for the emergency which he supposes. I left behind me a written report of
what I had discovered from Lord William. Had I failed to return home by
six o'clock this evening that report would have been laid before this
meeting, and nothing would have been lost to it of my investigations."

The completeness of the answer and the degree of heat with which it was
delivered won them all to his side again. He perceived the reflection of
this on their faces, and swept on to follow up his advantage.

"Is Mr. Rutledge sufficiently answered? Does he yet confess that it is
himself and not I who want for prescience? I await the admission, and I
shall accept it as a sufficient apology."

"With whom did you leave that report?" Rutledge asked him, hardily in
view of the present temper of the meeting.

There was more than a murmur of disapproval. But it disturbed Rutledge no
more than a breeze disturbs the oak.

"It imports to know," he insisted.

"My God, man! What do you imply now? Do you cast a doubt upon my word?"
And white and wicked-looking, Latimer leaned across the table towards his
questioner.

But Rutledge remained cold, hard and clear as a diamond,

"I imply nothing. I ask a question.

"Answer him, for God's sake, Harry," said Moultrie impatiently.

And Harry answered: "I left it with my friend Tom Izard, who awaited at
my own house my return from Fairgrove. Is that enough, or shall I fetch
Tom Izard to confirm my word?"

"There is no need to bring Mr. Izard into this," said Rutledge. "We all
accept Mr. Latimer's word."

"I'm glad of that."

"But may I ask him why he should have preferred Mr. Izard to one of
ourselves?"

"Because I did not wish to waste time in seeking any of you. Mr. Izard is
my friend, and he was conveniently at hand. Apart from yourselves, he was
the only man who knew of my presence in Charles Town."

"Well, well, it is a trifle perhaps. But when men move as we are moving,
trifles must be weighed and all risk avoided."

"I don't know what the devil you mean, sir," Latimer answered him. "But I
gather that the avoiding of risks is your chief concern in life. You
should not expect all men to be made on the same cautious pattern. Some
of us have spirit; and can act better than we can talk, which is as well
or nothing would be done; for believe me, sir, nothing is accomplished
without taking risks."

"You may risk yourself all you please, Mr. Latimer. I have no doubt you
will do so abundantly. But you must not risk others with you, and you
must not risk a cause." Significantly he added: "Mr. Izard is the brother
of Lady William Campbell."

Latimer's eyes flashed. "He is a member of the Sons of Liberty."

"So was Featherstone."

"Mr. Rutledge, you go too far. I have said that Tom Izard is my friend."

"I heard you, sir. That, unfortunately, does not affect his other
relationship to which I have alluded. I am not suggesting that Mr. Izard
is disposed to treachery. I mentioned Featherstone merely to show that no
reliance can be placed upon the fact that he is a member of the Sons of
Liberty. But it is to be remembered that he is constantly seeing his
sister, Lady William; who is a very clever, enterprising woman; that he
is constantly at the governor's residence, and that he is a young man of
light and pleasure-loving habits not by any means remarkable for
discretion. That such a man should be acquainted in however slight a
degree with any of our secret measures--"

He got no further. "You may spare me more of this," Latimer interrupted
him. "I have allowed you to make havoc of my character, sir; but I'll be
damned if I listen to you while you defame my friend. At least not in
this place, where you shelter your impudence behind necessities of
State."

"Mr. Latimer! Mr. Latimer!" the president endeavoured to restrain him.
But he appealed in vain. Mr. Latimer had unleashed his anger, and he let
it run.

"If you have anything to say of Tom Izard, you may say it to me
elsewhere, where I can horsewhip you if you are wanting in respect to
him."

With the single exception of John Rutledge himself, every man present
came to his feet on that. Rutledge alone continued to sit wrapped ever in
that mantle of aloof disdain. Moultrie caught Latimer's shoulder to
restrain him. Angrily, Latimer shook off the grip.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I take my leave of you. Since .no word of thanks
is forthcoming, since insult is my only recompense, I'll leave you to
continue your deliberations without me. And while you and this windy
attorney sit here, weighing straws and splitting offensive hairs, I'll
act. Come, Gadsden, we know what's to do."

"By God, we do!" said the firebrand.

Drayton, too, ranged himself on their side. "I'm coming with you," he
announced.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Colonel Laurens called after them, as they made
for the door, which Latimer had already flung open.

"There's been talk enough," was all he got from Gadsden, who passed out.

Drayton shrugged in silence, and followed him.

Harry Latimer was going last, when Rutledge himself raised his voice to
detain him.

"Mr. Latimer, I warn you solemnly that the committee will require an
account of the action you now intend."

"I'll render it with the Sons of Liberty at my back," Latimer answered
him from the threshold.

"Mr. Latimer! Let me prevail upon you to return and listen to us."

"Go to the devil!" said Latimer. And he went out and closed the doors



CHAPTER IX - TAR AND FEATHERS


Outside, the evening breeze coming in from the sea with the flow of the
tide cooled Mr. Latimer's excessive heat, and brought him to consider one
or two things to which in the last few moments his anger had blinded him.

It was idle, he reflected, to go in quest of Featherstone at this hour.
By this time he must have profited by the warning which Mandeville would
have borne him; and it was as certain as anything can be in this
uncertain world that he was already safe from any vengeance that might be
loosed against him. It was not a matter that admitted of doubt. The
governor's anxiety to remove him into safety would spring from the same
source as Rutledge's desire to restrain Latimer and Gadsden from any
violent measures against the scoundrel. If the Sons of Liberty took
action, and dealt summarily with Featherstone, Lord William must feel
under the necessity of asserting himself and demanding justice. He would
have the clearest information that the person responsible for
Featherstone's fate, directly or indirectly, was Harry Latimer; and he
must choose between rendering himself and his rule ridiculous, and
punishing the offender. If for the sake of his own and his royal master's
dignity he took the latter course, he would probably precipitate in South
Carolina the very troubles which both parties were striving desperately
to avert. The American colonies were become highly combustible material,
and a conflagration anywhere must spread in a blaze of revolt across the
continent.

Latimer was under no delusion as to purpose for which Rutledge had
demanded that he and those who departed with him should remain. And it
was only his conviction that the thing Rutledge dreaded could no longer
happen, rather than his own personal resentment of the cavalier treatment
he had received at Rutledge's hands which had made him deaf to that
demand.

The manner of his departure from the meeting, however, seemed to have
committed him to joint action with Gadsden and Drayton, men who, as he
well knew, were totally indifferent in their downright republicanism
whether they precipitated a crisis or not.

He protested that Featherstone by now would have been conveyed to safety,
and that therefore anything they could do was a sheer waste of time.

"Perhaps so," said Gadsden. "We'll hope not. And anyway I have called an
assembly of my lads in the old Beef Market for this evening, against the
chance of my being able to give them the name of the spy. You must come,
Harry. You must tell them at first hand of your discovery."

Latimer shrank at first, protesting, from any such course; and but for
his conviction that Featherstone was out of reach, nothing would have
persuaded him to it. As it was, he ended by yielding to Gadsden's fiery
insistence. Within a half-hour he was mounted on a stall in the Beef
Market, addressing a crowd of young men, numbering perhaps a hundred, and
composed almost entirely of mechanics and artisans--the lads to whom
Christopher Gadsden had for months now been preaching the gospel of
freedom under Liberty Oak outside his own residence. To these Latimer
denounced Gabriel Featherstone for a spy, telling them of the infamous
traffic the man had held with the royalist government; and of the
jeopardy in which he had placed some twenty patriotic necks.

When Gadsden in a few brief, hot, inciting periods had confirmed Latimer,
those militant Sons of Liberty would wait for no more. With angry shouts
of "Death to the traitor! Death to Featherstone!" they surged out, and
away to do summary execution.

Up Broad Street and along King Street they swept in the direction of Fort
Carteret, in the neighbourhood of which dwelt the sister with whom
Featherstone was lodged. And as they went their numbers swelled, others
joining them, attracted by the angry excited clamour.

"Featherstone! Featherstone!" was the cry. "Come and feather the stone!
Come and tar-and-feather Featherstone! Tar-and-Featherstone!
Tar-and-Featherstone!"

None of the three men responsible for launching the mob had any further
part in the business. They were left behind in the now empty Beef Market.
Gadsden, had he obeyed his instincts, would have placed himself at the
head of his lads; and Latimer, too, would have thought it natural to lead
a crowd which he had roused to this pitch of fury. But Drayton's legal,
practical, mind restrained them both.

"Let the mischief run," he advised. "No need further to implicate
ourselves. We should be putting our necks under the knife without
profiting the others."

Latimer was faintly indignant. "I am not by nature overcautious," he
said.

Instead of resenting the retort, Drayton explained himself. "Legal action
cannot be taken against a mob. But it can be taken against an individual
who leads it. And legal action must not be provoked because of the
consequences that may follow out of it."

"He's right," said Gadsden, "although he reasons like John Rutledge."

"Who already has enough against you, Latimer," Drayton added.

Therefore, and because firmly convinced at heart that the mob must arrive
too late, to accomplish its bloodthirsty aims, Latimer went home,
accompanied most of the way by Gadsden; who was a near neighbour of his
own, residing also on the Bay.

He would have sat down to supper less complacently could he have
suspected the infernal subtlety of Mandeville. Because he did not,
because the happening was almost unaccountable in his eyes, he was
shocked and dismayed when, an hour or so later, Tom Izard came like a
whirlwind into the dining-room whilst he was still at table.

"What's the matter?" Latimer had greeted him, seeing his startled face
and agitated condition.

"Hell's the matter," Tom blazed out at him. "There's a mob of maniacs
bent on devilry in the streets."

"Pooh They'll do no harm. They'll seize an empty nest."

"Do no harm! Let me perish, it's the harm they've done already."

"They haven't got Featherstone?" cried Harry, his cheeks blenching.

"Got him, man? They've murdered him. They broke into his sister's house,
and they've nearly wrecked it by their violence. Featherstone was sitting
down to supper with her and his brother-in-law: There was no time to hide
him. They got him. They dragged him out, screaming like a terrified
woman. They tore the clothes from his back until they had him stark
naked. A revolting business. They tarred and feathered him there almost
under the eyes of his sister; then they dragged him, still, screaming,
through the streets to the Corner, and hanged him on the tree in front of
the tavern. My God! I can't get the sounds of his screeching out of my
ears."

Latimer sat there clutching the arms of his high-backed chair, staring
straight before him, stark horror on his white face.

"They say," Tom informed him, "that it was you and Gadsden who set the
mob on."

"Ay, ay!" It was an ejaculation of impatience, of exasperation, rather
than assent. "But how came the mob to get him? What has Mandeville been
doing? Didn't he warn him, or didn't the fool heed the warning?"

"Nay, how do I know? Featherstone may have got no more than he deserved.
But you should have kept your hand out of it, Harry. You'll have to look
to yourself after this."

"What's that?" Harry considered him sharply, horror giving place to a
sudden alertness. "Do you think?" he began.

"What?"

"Yes, by Heaven! That's it! That's it, Tom! This infernal Captain
Mandeville has deliberately kept silent and let his agent Featherstone
perish, so as to make a case against me; so that I may be brought to
account."

"Oh, you're mad!"

"Am I? What else is possible? Mandeville was in Charles Town two full
hours before I denounced Featherstone to the Sons of Liberty in the Beef
Market. In a quarter of that time Featherstone could have been placed
beyond our reach. Why was he not? Why? Answer me that."

"But, if that was your belief, why did you trouble to denounce him?"

"Why?" Latimer stared at him for a long moment, whilst he sought within
himself for an answer. "Oh, I was just led by the nose by my annoyance
with Rutledge. A silly gesture of defiance to him. And it was
unnecessary, because if I hadn't Gadsden would have set them on. But I
give you my word, Torn, I would never have done it, and had Gadsden done
it, I should myself have gone to warn Featherstone, if I could have
suspected the trap which Mandeville had baited for me." He paused a
moment, then added in a dull voice: "Carey will never forgive me this."

And now came Julius, to announce Rutledge, Moultrie, and Laurens.

Harry tossed aside his napkin, and rose to receive them. All three, even
Moultrie, who loved him, were stern and hostile.

Rutledge was the first to address him, and this abruptly,
uncompromisingly, his voice corrosively acid.

"So, sir, you have had your way in defiance and in despite of us all."

What was there that he could say that would be believed? He stood in
silence to receive whatever reprimand Rutledge chose to administer, and
he knew that Rutledge would not spare him. Outwardly he strove to
maintain an air of impassivity, which the delegate mistook for insolence.

"The mob, sir, is acclaiming you its hero," Rutledge continued.
"Therefore, you may be content, since that presumably is all that you
desired, all that you wrought for."

"There, at least, you are at fault," Latimer answered him firmly. "Each
of us carries in himself a standard by which to measure his neighbour.
Out of your own vanity, I must presume, sir, you find in vanity the
source of other men's actions."

"Excellent!" said Rutledge. "It is the very time for philosophic
reflections. I'll ignore that insult with the rest."

"I am sure you will," said Latimer, conscious though he was that at every
word he put himself further in the wrong.

Moultrie intervened. "You know what it means, Harry?"

"I know that I don't much care."

"But you must care," Laurens informed him gravely. "It is to make you
understand that we have come. You have no time to lose. Your arrest may
be ordered at any moment."

"My arrest?"

"What else?" Rutledge demanded. "You set a mob on to do a man to death,
and think that nothing is to happen as a consequence. You would not
listen to me this evening--"

"And I will not listen to you now," Latimer interrupted him. "It is your
fault largely that I am where I am."

"My fault!" Rutledge looked at his companions to invite their
consideration of this fantastic statement. "My fault? You are a little
wild in your accusations, sir."

"Mr. Rutledge, I do not choose to be more precise. This is my house, and
if you must taunt me into insulting you, I prefer that you do it in some
other place. Tom, will you be good enough to ring for Julius?"

"A moment, sir! A moment!" A faint colour was stirring in Rutledge's full
cheeks.

"Indeed, you must listen to us," Moultrie added. "Don't ring, Tom. You
are to realise, Harry, that we can't have you arrested."

"But who is to arrest me?

"If the governor orders it, we must submit. And if you are arrested you
will be tried; and if tried you will certainly be hanged."

"If the Sons of Liberty permit it," countered Harry. "You say they are
acclaiming me, and I said I was indifferent. I am not. I have changed my
mind. I place my trust in the people, and so may you."

"But don't you understand, Latimer," Laurens explained, "that this is
precisely what we desire to avoid--the explosion that must follow?"

"I am not at all concerned to avoid it. On the contrary, I shall welcome
it. I shall welcome arrest and trial. It will enable me to expose the
sly, deliberate villainy by which I have been driven into this corner."

The three looked at one another gravely. Then, in a firm tone of
finality, Moultrie expressed what was in the mind of all.

"Harry, you must leave Charles Town to-night. At once."

"I don't perceive the necessity."

"But you'll go, nevertheless," said Laurens.

"Not a step."

Rutledge took up the attack once more.

"Are you so stupid that you don't understand, or so wilful and headstrong
that you don't care? Are you concerned only to be acclaimed a hero by the
mob. A pinchbeck hero! If you haven't the wit to see what must follow,
then God help you! If you are arrested and brought to trial, there may be
consequences that will inflame a continent. From Georgia to
Massachusetts, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, the brand of war is
ready to the burning. Already it smoulders since that affair at
Lexington, the least breeze of public feeling will fan it into flame.
Persist in this mad defiance now and you may plunge your country into
civil war. Can you stand there and calmly envisage even that so that you
may pander to your monstrous vanity?"

"No, sir, I cannot." Mr. Latimer was white and fierce.

"You'll go?" cried Moultrie and Laurens together.

"I'll stay."

"But--"

"If it were indeed a question of pandering to my vanity as Mr. Rutledge
says, I should bow now to your wishes. But it is not. I am moved by very
different motives. To you, Mr. Rutledge, I will explain myself no
further: I am weary of your demands for explanations, weary of your
questionings and cross-questionings. That you should ask me to go is
enough in itself to determine me to stay. I do not recognise your
authority over me, or your right to subject me to the questions and the
veiled reproaches with which you have plagued me to-day. So I will beg
you to spare yourself and me any further harangues. But if you will stay,
Moultrie, I will open my mind to you, fully and completely. My mind and
my heart, for both are involved. And if Colonel Laurens cares to remain,
he is welcome to hear what I shall have to say."

Mr. Rutledge bowed with stiff and formal dignity. "Mr. Latimer, I will
bid you good night. Colonels Laurens and Moultrie have the tranquillity
of the province as much at heart as I have." He retired in good order.

Then, when he was gone, at last, Latimer unfolded heart and mind, as he
had promised, to the two who remained, and to Tom Izard also. He showed
them how he must now appear to Sir Andrew Carey, and how the trial, and
the trial alone by bringing all to light, might put him right in Sir
Andrew's eyes. It moved them strongly into sympathy with him.

"Damn Rutledge," swore Moultrie. "He has the manners of a curmudgeon. But
he's the soul of honesty, Harry, and the staunchest patriot in South
Carolina, and he has a mind."

"A mind, perhaps. But little heart. And a mind that is not supported by a
heart has never achieved greatness for any man."

"It's no matter for that now, Harry. The fact is that if you remain you
place not only yourself in danger, but the colony as well."

"It doesn't happen that I agree with you," said Latimer. "The governor
will never dare to move in the matter when he knows the part played in it
by his equerry."

"But if you should be wrong in your assumption?" Laurens asked him in
distress.

"If I am wrong, then the explanation is that, in neglecting to warn
Featherstone, Mandeville was acting under orders from Lord William. That
I cannot believe. But if it were true, Lord William should be more
reluctant than ever to proceed against me. It may be an attempt to scare
me away, to raise the very bugbear that you are brandishing. I don't
know. But I mean to ascertain, and therefore I remain in Charles Town:"

The end of it was that Moultrie and Laurens went off to report failure to
Rutledge, and to receive in their turn his remorseless reprimands for
their own lack of firmness. When they submitted to him the reasons which
Latimer had given them, and actually manifested sympathy with those
reasons, he was more contemptuous than ever, and wondered why he should
be doomed to work with a party of emotional sentimentalists.

Rutledge went to bed that night persuaded that the colonies stood upon
the threshold of civil war. Considering what was happening elsewhere in
America, the conviction did not demand much foresight.



CHAPTER X - THE MAIL-BAG


Betimes on the following morning, Latimer received a visit from William
Henry Drayton. With him came Tom Corbet, a member of the official Secret
Committee.

"Put a pistol in your pocket, and come with me, Harry," Drayton invited
him.

You conceive that Mr. Latimer required explanations. He was afforded
them.

A week ago a fairly full meeting of the Council of Safety, the executive
body appointed by Provincial Congress and invested with the fullest
powers, had been startled by Drayton's proposal that Lord William
Campbell should be taken into custody.

This drastic proposal had found support at the hands of only two of his
colleagues of the committee. The remainder, led by Rawlins Lowndes, the
Speaker of the Commons, were solidly against it. They considered
Drayton's assumptions based on insufficient evidence, and they would in
no case be parties to so provocative a step as he advocated.

The end of a protracted debate was that further evidence should be sought
of Lord William's real disposition. Latimer's subsequent visit to the
governor having added on this subject little or nothing to the
information gained in the back country by Drayton, there remained the
course secretly sanctioned by the Council of Safety, which was that the
governor's mails should henceforth be subjected to scrutiny. Thomas
Corbet, mainly because residing upon the Bay, and therefore likely to be
among the first to perceive the arrival of any packet from England, was
entrusted with the business. And this morning Corbet, espying a new
arrival among the British shipping, had gone in quest of Drayton to help
him in what was to do. It had been thought well to reinforce themselves
by including a third in the undertaking, and Drayton had proposed Harry
Latimer.

"One reason is that you were convenient to our hand, your house lying on
our way; the other that it is better to employ another man who, like
myself, is already liable to arrest for last night's business than
someone against whom there is as yet no charge."

"You mean that having taken one downward step, it cannot greatly matter if
I take another," Latimer laughed.

And whilst Latimer with Drayton and Corbet went forth upon that further
act of treason, Lord William Campbell, reduced almost to despair by last
night's event, was listening to Mandeville's insistent counsel that
action should be taken to avenge the murder of Featherstone.

Already last night, when first the news of that outrage had been conveyed
to the governor by the mob itself, which had paraded under his windows,
taunting him and defying him with threats to serve his other spies in the
same fashion, there had been an acrimonious scene between Lord William
and his masterful equerry.

Bitterly had Lord William upbraided Mandeville for a lack of diligence
which his lordship suspected to have been deliberate. Calm, correct and
dignified, Mandeville had defended himself with the assertion that he had
gone straight to Featherstone's lodging, that the fellow being absent, he
had sought him at the coffee house in St. Michael's Alley, which was
known to be a favourite resort of his. There he had learnt that
Featherstone had gone to Goose Creek, and he had ridden all the way
thither, with a view to preventing him from returning into the town. He
had missed him by minutes.

But this morning Lord William had received further details of
Featherstone's capture. He had learnt that the fellow had been taken in
his sister's house and dragged from her supper table, and this fresh
information, reawakening his suspicions, led him to reopen the matter.

"How came you to leave no word with Mrs. Grigg?"

Mandeville shrugged. "It would have been better had I done so, certainly.
But I saw no reason to alarm the woman unnecessarily. I was confident of
finding Featherstone myself."

Lord William looked at him with eyes in which suspicion still brooded;
and it brooded, too, in the mind of Mr. Innes, who was present at the
interview in the governor's pleasant study above the garden.

A bee sailed in through the open window on the warm air that was heavy
with the perfume of the magnolias, and for a moment the drone of its
flight was the only sound in the room. Then Mandeville, lounging easily
on the governor's day-bed, spoke again.

"What really asks your consideration is the action you are now to take."

"Action?" quoth Lord William.

"Action. You will not allow the deed to remain unpunished."
"One cannot punish a mob."

"No. But the mob's instigator is known. This man Latimer--"

Lord William interrupted him irritably.

"I told you yesterday what our position would be if this thing happened.
Nothing has occurred to change that. We cannot now take proceedings
without incurring the risk of a riot infinitely more disastrous than last
night's."

"Yet if you do nothing there is an end to your authority."

"My God, man! If only you had got Featherstone away!" He strode to the
window, and back again. He took a decision, and halted by the
writing-table. "Innes, please send a line to the Speaker of the Commons
asking him to be good enough to wait upon me." Innes bent to the task.
"At least I can save my face, as Governor Bull did when they raided the
armoury. The Commons shall appoint a committee to investigate the
outrage."

"That," said Mandeville, "is mere comedy."

"It's the alternative to tragedy, and that I am determined to avoid."

But an hour later came news which shook the firmness of the governor's
determination. It was brought by Stevens, who kept the post office. He
was white and trembling, be it from the scare he had recently undergone,
be it from natural indignation. He came to report that no sooner had the
mail-bag from the Swallow reached his office that morning than the place
had been invaded by three gentlemen of Charles Town who had demanded its
surrender. Peremptorily he had refused, whereupon one of them had clapped
a pistol to his head, and had held him motionless under the threat of
death, whilst the other two had appropriated the mail-bag and carried it
away. Only after their departure had their leader, as he was to be
supposed from his action, withdrawn the pistol and gone his ways again.

Governor, equerry and secretary listened appalled to this narrative.

Mandeville, whose wits were less easily distracted from essentials than
those of Lord William, and who permitted himself far less the luxury of
indulging his feelings, proceeded almost at once to a pertinent inquiry.

"Gentlemen?" he echoed. "You said gentlemen, Stevens?"

"I did so, your honour."

"That disposes of any idea of robbery. The thing acquires a political
significance. Who were these gentlemen, Stevens? It's clear you knew
them."

"Nay, captain. I name no names," cried the fellow in some excitement.
"I've no mind to go the way o' Featherstone."

"So?" said Mandeville, and drew a bow at a venture, and yet not quite at
a venture. "Latimer was one of them."

The assertion flung Stevens into terror. "I never said so. I never said
so." He appealed almost wildly to the governor. "Your excellency, I named
no names. You, sir," he turned to Innes. "I take you to witness, sir,
that I never said who done it."

Mandeville thought his panic said so. And at the same time he reviewed a
picture in his memory of Harry Latimer, at Fair-grove, drawing a heavy
pistol from the pocket of his bottle-green riding coat. So once more he
loosed a shaft on assumption.

"Was Mr. Latimer's pistol loaded, d'ye suppose?"

"To test it might ha' cost me my life..." Stevens had answered before he
was aware of how much he was really saying.

"And the other two? Who were they?" asked Lord William.

"Don't ask me, my lord. They were members of the Provincial Congress, and
it's before Congress or one of its committees the mails has gone."

They pressed him no further. Lord William indeed was too perturbed, too
dismayed by the fact itself, to pre-occupy himself with the details of
it; whilst Mandeville was so concerned with his discovery that Latimer
was the chief actor in the outrage that he cared little who might have
been the others.

"And what are you going to do now?" Mandeville calmly asked his lordship
after Stevens had been dismissed.

"What is there to be done?" His excellency was reduced to a despair which
he did not trouble to conceal.

"Nothing can be clearer than what should be done. But...I await your
excellency's commands." And he tapped his snuff-box.

The governor became peevish.

"Oh, damn your assumptions, Mandeville." His mind swung to what was no
more than a side-issue. "Anyhow, I doubt if the mails they have seized
contain any dispatches for myself. Mine came in by the Tamar, and there
could hardly be anything to add to them."

Mandeville took snuff, and considered.

"Let us hope it is so. But even if it is, it makes the crime of tampering
with his majesty's mails no less grave. It is a capital offence here as
in England. If you take no action, faith, you will lose the respect and
support of the few remaining loyal souls in the colony. You may as well
pack and quit, for you will have ceased completely to govern."

"And if I arrest Latimer--which is what you are really advising--the same
will happen, and something more. I shall cease to govern, because I shall
be flung out; and I shall leave civil war behind me."

"If Latimer continues free to pursue his rebel activities, civil war is
assured. That is the other horn of your dilemma. You should perceive by
now with what manner of man you have to deal. A desperate, reckless
fellow, a revolutionist, the most dangerous man in the province. And
every day he continues at Liberty he becomes more dangerous, for every
day he establishes himself more firmly in the favour of the people. The
thing to be done with him is clear, and there should be no delays about
it. Put him aboard one of the English ships, and send him home to be
dealt with."

The governor stood considering a moment.

"If it was impossible yesterday," he said slowly, "it is, by what you
have said yourself, more impossible still to-day."

"And will be more impossible still to-morrow," Mandeville countered,
"when the need for it will be infinitely more acute. Hesitation to grasp
this nettle has brought your excellency into your present difficulty.
These scoundrels trade upon your scruples. They are cowards that abuse
your generosity. You have been meek and conciliatory with them ever since
you arrived. Show them the strong hand for once; show them that you are
not to be scared by the bugbear of civil war which they dangle before you
to cow you into inaction. That fear of yours is the foundation upon which
they build. Strike it from under them at one blow, and you'll find them
tumbling in dismay. The time for half-measures, for compromising and
temporizing, has gone."

He infected the governor at last with something of his own firmness. For
firm Mandeville undoubtedly was and above intimidation.

"Yes," his lordship reluctantly agreed. "You are right, Mandeville. This
man is too dangerous to be left at large in Charles Town. If I am to be
trampled under the hooves of the mob, I may as well be trampled for
getting rid of him as because he commands the mob to do it. At least I
shall have done my duty by the State. Innes, if you will prepare a
warrant for the arrest of Harry Latimer, and have it ready for me after
breakfast, I will sign it. Mandeville will formulate the charge for you."

Mandeville permitted himself a smile. "I congratulate your excellency on
the decision."

Lord William's young eyes considered him gloomily. "I hope there is
occasion for it," he said, with a sigh. "God knows!" And he went at last
to breakfast, a meal which he always took alone with Lady William in her
ladyship's dainty little boudoir on the ground floor immediately
underneath the study.

He was preoccupied and uncommunicative throughout the meal. His mind, as
her ladyship perceived, was far from easy, a fact which she naturally
attributed to the terrible affair of last night.

She waited patiently for him to unburden himself, too wise to attempt to
force his confidence. But when breakfast had come to an end, and still he
sat wrapped in his gloomy abstraction, she abandoned the ways of pure
wisdom, and gave the reins to her concern.

Her questions drew from him the tale of the raid on the mails and of the
warrant he was to sign in consequence of that and other things. It
shocked her profoundly. Harry Latimer had been her friend--as he had been
the friend of all her brothers and sisters and particularly of Tom--from
childhood. Myrtle Carey, too, was her friend. And although she knew,
being in Myrtle's confidence, that there was at present a cloud between
the lovers, she also believed their affection strong enough to dissipate
that cloud in the end.

"Is it...is it wise, Will?" she asked.

"I hope it is," he answered wearily.

"Ah! You don't know?"

"I know only that it is necessary. It is impossible that my authority
should continue to be flouted and that Latimer should be left free to
pursue what amounts to a career of crime."

"That sounds like Captain Mandeville," she said. "Has he persuaded you?"

Lord William had not the courage to admit it. In his soul he was ashamed
of the weakness which permitted his equerry to dominate him so
completely. His answer was an equivocation. "He tried to persuade me
yesterday, and I refused to listen to him. To-day, after Featherstone's
terrible end and this outrage on the mails, I no longer need persuading."

"Have You counted the cost?" she asked him gravely.

"I have counted the cost of not doing it."

"Do you think there is any court in Carolina would convict Harry Latimer
at present?"

His answer relieved her fears. "No. I do not."

"Then why make yourself ridiculous by arresting him?"

"He is not to be tried in Carolina. He shall go to England as by law
prescribed for offenders in his class."

The announcement changed her gravity to panic.

"Merciful God!" she ejaculated. "Will, you can't do it!"

"Either that, or I must throw up the governorship and sail for England
myself. Charles Town cannot hold Mr. Harry Latimer and myself at the same
time. That has now been clearly demonstrated."

She was still staring at him in utter dismay, when her brother-in-law,
Miles Brewton, was announced, and she welcomed his advent, persuaded that
here was a very valuable ally.

A handsome modish man of middle age, Brewton was sincerely attached to
Lord William Campbell, notwithstanding the fact that he himself belonged
to the patriotic party. Mare than once already had he steered the
governor over shoals and evil passages, and Lord William had been glad to
lean upon him, knowing he was probably as conservative and constitutional
as any man on his side. Because of this and because of his genuine
affection for Lord William, Mr. Brewton spared no effort to maintain the
popularity of his brother-in-law, and it was under his auspices and at
his house that the ball in honour of the governor was being organized for
to-morrow night.

Her ladyship had at first imagined that this might be the occasion of
this matutinal visit. But he soon made it clear that he was concerned
with very different matters, and that he desired to be private with Lord
William. And when presently they sauntered forth together into the
garden, her discreet ladyship made no attempt to join them.

She was not destined to be long alone with her thoughts, for presently
she had another visitor in the person of her brother Tom, who brought
into the little room with him some of the careless boisterous high
spirits with which his large person normally abounded.

He had resolved to spy out the land, and ascertain how far Harry might be
justified of his estimate of Mandeville's deliberate endeavours to enmesh
him. He approached the subject with the subtlety of a calf.

"What's this I'm told, Sally, of Harry Latimer's being blamed for what
happened to Featherstone?"

She looked up from the couch on which she was seated, with the window
immediately behind her.

"Where did you hear it?"

"Where?" Master Tom was nonplussed. He took refuge in the truth. "Why,
from Harry himself."

"And how does he know?"

Tom stood over her, large and benign. "I came here to ask questions,
not to be questioned," said he. And asked: "Is it true?"

"I'm afraid it is, Tom." She was suddenly inspired. "The best service you
can render Harry is to go to him at once, and tell him to leave Charles
Town without a moment's delay. Will is signing a warrant for his arrest,
both because of the Featherstone business and because of his share in
the raid on the post-office this morning. Hurry to him, Tom."

But Tom showed no disposition whatever to hurry. Instead he sat down
beside her and smiled phlegmatically upon the sister whom his conduct
was alarming.

"Not until I've seen Will," he said.

"What can you have to say to Will?"

"For one thing I can tell him to make out a warrant for my arrest at the
same time. For I was with Harry at the Beef Market last night. All
Charles Town knows I was there. And, between ourselves, I was also
concerned in the raid on the post-office this morning."

"Are you mad, Tom? Oh, how could you? Have you no thought for me?" Her
handsome opulent figure appeared visibly to swell with indignation. "How
could you place me in this cruel position!"

"It isn't you that's in a cruel position. It's Will. He'll have to
arrest his brother-in-law or change his mind about arresting Latimer."

Mr. Tom Izard you see was, after all, not entirely without subtlety.



CHAPTER XI - STALEMATE


Amongst them they shattered at least in part the governor's resolve. For
Miles Brewton's visit, too, was concerned with last night's business and
the possible action Lord William might feel himself compelled to take in
consequence. He came to impose caution upon his brother-in-law. Lord
William an amiable weather-vane to turn obligingly with any wind that
blew, was already wobbling undecidedly when he rejoined his wife to be
faced by Tom Izard's ultimatum, and to be reminded unpleasantly that
Tom's name was also on that list of rebels who had raided the armoury
last April.

The distraction of his mind was suddenly pierced by a recollection of
something that Mandeville had said: "Show them the strong hand...that you
are not to be scared by the bugbear of civil war. That fear of yours is
the foundation upon which they build."

If Mandeville were right, and of this Mandeville had persuaded him, then
the threat of action should be as effective as action itself in ridding
him of this pestilent Harry Latimer. If only this were achieved one way
or another, his difficulties would be largely at an end for the present.
Upon that he now took his resolve, and he announced it to them with some
firmness.

"The warrant cannot be withdrawn. I shall sign it to-day. I have no
choice. The Governor of South Carolina with evidence before him of acts
of robbery and high treason all in one dare not refuse to take action.
But the action shall be delayed. I will suspend the execution of the
warrant for twenty-four...for forty-eight hours. And I shall formally
communicate this to Mr. Latimer to-day. Provided that he will leave South
Carolina within the time I give him, I shall be content."

"An act of banishment," said Brewton, pursing his lips.

"It is the utmost clemency I dare show. More, indeed, than I have any
right to show. If you are his friend, Tom, and mine; you will persuade
him to take advantage of it."

The more Lord William considered this solution of the riddle, which had
come to him with the suddenness of inspiration, the better he liked it.
It assumed in his eyes the proportions of a diplomatic masterpiece. At a
stroke, he saved his face, rid the country of a mischief-maker, and gave
provocation to none. He was uplifted out of his despondency, exalted in
fact when he retraced his steps to his study, and sent for Mandeville.
When the equerry came, he found Lord William humming the refrain of a
song.

"The warrant is signed," said his lordship airily. "But it is not to be
executed until Friday morning--forty-eight hours hence. You are to
intimate the same to Mr. Latimer at once."

Mandeville thought him mad, and very nearly said so. His lordship
explained himself, and Mandeville changed his mind. Almost he admired the
nimbleness with which Lord William had dodged both horns of his dilemma,
and since he could desire for himself nothing more than the removal of
Mr. Latimer, it did not very much matter whether that removal were
effected in this way or another.

Content, therefore, Captain Mandeville sallied forth, and want on foot
down Broad Street and then northward along the wide Bay Street with its
bastions and courtine lines above the broad expanse of the waters of the
Cooper River, here merging into the ocean. At anchor a mile away, beyond
most of the lesser shipping in the bay, he discovered the black and white
hull of the sloop Tamar, and reflected that with half a dozen such
warships riding there it would be an easy matter to quell the mutinous
spirit of these colonial upstarts. Past the crowded busy wharves he went,
past the foot of Queen Street and on into the quieter region beyond the
Custom House, where at last he came to the stately mansion of Mr. Harry
Latimer.

Julius in his sky-blue livery laced with silver ushered the captain into
the library, that he might admire there, whilst waiting, the evidences of
the culture with which the Latimers surrounded themselves.

And he was kept wasting some little time. It is possible that this was
deliberate on the part of Mr. Latimer. When at last the young master of
the house made his appearance, he came clad in a coat of apricot velvet
above black satin smalls and black silk stockings. The lace at his throat
and wrists was finest Mechlin, a diamond of price flashed in his
solitaire, and buckles of French paste adorned the red-heeled shoes that
ha& certainly come all the way from Paris.

Whilst Julius held the door for him, he bowed gracefully from the
threshold to his visitor.

"I am honoured, Captain Mandeville."

"Your humble obedient, sir." The captain made a leg in his turn. "I am
sent by his excellency the governor."

Mr. Latimer advanced. Julius closed the door, and the two were alone
together.

"A chair, sir?"

Captain Mandeville sat down. "I will come straight to business, Mr.
Latimer. You have been guilty, if you will forgive the liberty of the
criticism, of a grave imprudence."

"Of many, sir, I do assure you." Mr. Latimer was airy.

"I allude to, your address last night to the mob in the Beef Market, as a
result of which a man has been done to death."

"You are sure, Captain Mandeville, that it was as a result of that?"

"Of what else, then?"

"I have a suspicion that it is of your own deliberate neglect, sir, to
take advantage of the warning you had at Fairgrove. It was not I who
acted as Featherstone's justiciary, but you who acted as his murderer."

"Sir!" the captain was on his feet.

Blue eyes smiled serenely into dark eyes. Mr. Latimer appeared to be
mildly amused.

"Do you deny it? To me?"

The captain commanded himself. "I am not concerned to deny or admit. It
is not I who am in danger of being put upon my trial."

"But that may follow," said Mr. Latimer.

Almost the captain was taken aback. "How? What do you mean?"

"Oh, but does it matter very much? I am perhaps detaining you. And you
will have, I take it, some communication to make to me?"

"Yes," said Mandeville. "I think it may be best if we keep to that. There
is a warrant signed for your arrest, Mr. Latimer. If that warrant is
executed, you realize what must happen to you?"

"If it is executed?" Mr. Latimer stared at him. "It is usual to execute
warrants, is it not?"

The captain did not choose to deliver a direct answer. "In this case Lord
William has been persuaded to deal leniently with you, and to spare you
the full rigour of the law, provided that you will submit to the
condition he imposes."

"That will depend upon the condition."

"His excellency will be satisfied if you will accept a sentence of
banishment from South Carolina. He gives you forty-eight hours--a
generous measure of time--in which to quit Charles Town. But he desires
you to understand quite clearly that if you are still here by ten o'clock
on Friday morning the warrant will be executed and the law will take its
course."

Mr. Latimer took a turn in the long room, considering his reply, but not
his course of action. That required no consideration.

"Would it be impertinent, Captain Mandeville, or indiscreet to inquire by
whom his excellency has been persuaded to so much clemency?

"Chiefly, I believe, by Lady William."

"Ah!" Mr. Latimer considered him very searchingly. For a moment I almost
suspected it might have been yourself."

"Myself?" Mandeville stared hard in his turn. On my soul, Mr. Latimer,
you think too well of me."

"I was not thinking well of you at all when I thought that. Has it
occurred to you, Captain Mandeville, that if I am brought to trial upon
this charge, I shall urge in my own defence that I gave full and timely
warning--to you and to Sir Andrew Carey--of what would happen to
Featherstone if he were not removed from Charles Town?"

"What then, sir?" asked the captain, with the least hint of challenge.

"You will be required to admit it, and so will Sir Andrew Carey, and at
need even Miss Carey, who was also present." Mandeville's eyelids
flickered. Latimer watching him did not fail to observe that single flaw
in the man's iron self-control. "You will all three be upon oath, and it
is not to be supposed that all three of you will commit perjury."

"Where is the need? Such a statement will but further incriminate you."

"No, sir. It will incriminate you, and of a singularly heinous and
atrocious deed. Why did you not take steps to save Featherstone Why did
you not even warn him? That you did not is clear from the manner in which
he was taken--peacefully at supper with his sister and her family. You
will be required to answer that question, and all the other questions,
all the abominable implications, arising out of it." Mr. Latimer uttered
a short laugh. "You deliberately sacrificed Featherstone, your spy, your
own man, that you might weave a rope for my neck." He came a step nearer,
and smiled a little grimly into the soldier's set face. "Are you quite
sure, Captain Mandeville, that you have not woven one for your own? Do
you doubt that when your conduct is made clear yours will be the fate of
Featherstone himself? That there will be tar and feathers for you, as
there were for him? Can you really doubt it?"

Mandeville fell back a step. He had changed colour at last, and his eyes
looked darker than ever in the pallor of his face.

"Your questions are impertinent, Mr. Latimer." He changed his tone to one
of utter formality. "I have had the honour to deliver the message with
which I am charged by his excellency. I shall be happy to bear him your
answer."

"You have it, Captain Mandeville. Tell him that he need not hold his hand
until Friday morning. That I have no intention of obeying his decree of
banishment, and that here in Charles Town I remain, for the pleasure of
seeing you taken in your own dirty springe."

"Mr. Latimer!" Mandeville's self-control gave out. "By God! You shall
meet me for this."

"It is what I am suggesting." Mr. Latimer smiled sardonically. "I shall
certainly meet you. In the courthouse. But nowhere else, Captain
Mandeville." And he pulled the bell rope.

Mandeville looked at him a moment, dark fury in his eyes. Then he turned,
and strode to the door. On the threshold he halted again. Only the truth
and his apprehension of the truth could have moved him to such a pitch of
anger. He was caught; and he knew it. Latimer had proved too astute. He
had discerned the vulnerable Achilles' heel, of which Mandeville himself
had been unconscious. And so the captain now thanked Heaven from his
heart that Lord William should not have listened to him when he had urged
the immediate arrest of Latimer. That arrest he was now as anxious to
avoid as Lord William himself. At all costs Latimer must be driven off,
scared away. Therefore at the door, he played his last card.

"Mr. Latimer, it is only fair to warn you that you build on sand. The
consummation you imagine might follow if you were to be tried here in
Charles Town. But if you are arrested you will be taken to England for
trial as the law requires in the case of men charged with such an offence
as yours."

For an instant that gave Latimer pause. But only for an instant, until
his mind had surveyed the thing.

"Captain Mandeville, I do not believe that Lord William would perpetrate
any such rashness. The law you invoke is one of the grievances that have
caused the disturbances in these colonies. If you dared in the present
state of things to attempt to enforce it you would provoke an explosion
that would shatter you all to pieces. You say this to scare me. But even
if it were as you say, I should apprehend as little as I do from trial
here. There is justice in England. The English are just, and they are
none too sympathetic with a government that is endeavouring to curtail
the liberties of Englishmen overseas. Whatever might happen to me, be
sure that you would fare none too well at the hands of an English court,
Captain Mandeville. And that, I think, is all I have to Say to you."



CHAPTER XII - REVELATION


Towards noon of that same Wednesday, a vast lumbering mahogany coach,
with a coat-of-arms on the panel, and two liveried negroes maintaining
themselves on the platform behind by their grip of a couple of broad
straps, made its way down the comparatively narrow Tradd Street and drew
up at the door of Sir Andrew Carey's town house. The coach contained Sir
Andrew and his daughter. It was followed by a second one, almost as
large, but of leather stretched over a wooden frame, and of more
antiquated design. This contained Remus the butler, Abraham the valet,
Miss Carey's mauma, Dido and a prodigious quantity of luggage.

Thus, more or less in state, Sir Andrew re-entered Charles Town, coming
as we know, to lend by his loyal presence support to the King's
representative in these seditious times.

Within a half-hour of his arrival, almost before the holland covers had
been taken from the furniture, he was waited on by Captain Mandeville.

The equerry came spurred by panic. He realized that he had over-reached
himself. Lord William had definitely committed himself to a threat, and
retreat was impossible. Wherefore, upon quitting Latimer, Mandeville, had
gone straight to Colonel Laurens with whom he had found John Rutledge.

Knowing their temperate views, their ardent desire for conciliation,
their horror of anything that might precipitate a crisis destructive of
all hope, he sought them in some confidence. He left them in despair.

Rutledge had summed up the brief discussion.

"We honour Lord William for his forbearance, and for this
forty-eight-hours' grace. It is far more than we have any right to expect
from him, and we are deeply sensible of the motives which inspire him.
Inspired by the same desire to maintain peace, we will use with Mr.
Latimer what influence we have. But neither Colonel Laurens nor myself
can be deluded by any hope of success. What you suggest that we should do
we have already done. Already last night, before there was any question
of a warrant, we urged Mr. Latimer to depart at once. He was obdurate and
obstinate in his resolve to remain."

Laurens who had received Latimer's reasons at first hand was even more
chilling to Captain Mandeville.

"He is rooted in the persuasion that Lord William will not dare to
proceed against him."

"That he is wrong there you should now be able to demonstrate," said
Mandeville. "His lordship has signed the warrant, and he must perform as
he threatens, or his authority is at an end and he renders himself
ridiculous."

"We shall not omit to employ that argument. But for myself I have little
hope that it will move Mr. Latimer." He sighed, and shook his great head.
"I wish I could think otherwise."

So Captain Mandeville took his leave, already persuaded that from this
quarter, despite obvious goodwill, nothing was to be expected. Gloomily
he took his way to Tradd Street, to ascertain if Sir Andrew had yet
reached town. If Carey failed him he would have to study his position
carefully. He might force a personal quarrel upon Latimer, and chance the
issue. But he could not chance the effect of it upon Myrtle. If he were
to be so fortunate as to kill Latimer in a duel he would, he knew--and
the knowledge intensified the bitterness of his feelings--set up between
himself and Myrtle a barrier which perhaps no subsequent patience could
ever overcome.

That Sir Andrew would fail him seemed foreshadowed by the baronet's
greeting.

"So that damned scoundrel had his way with poor Featherstone in spite of
all that you could do! I'll never, never forgive him."

The words were simple enough. But the emphasis with which he uttered them
supplied anything they may have lacked to express the full tale of his
indignation and bitterness.

Mandeville was gently remonstrant. "Sir Andrew, I understand your
feelings. But it is necessary to be just"

"That is what I intend to be. Just! And I'll see justice done on him for
this. His black ingratitude, his loathsome treachery shall be brought
home to him."

"And yet you must not forget that he came to Fairgrove yesterday to warn
you, so that Featherstone might be removed in time--"

"Did he?" Sir Andrew interrupted him. "Have you forgotten that we have
his own admission that he came to spy, to obtain from us a confirmation
of his suspicions. God in Heaven! The blackguard has made us parties in
his deed of murder."

"No, no, Sir Andrew." The captain heard the door open behind him. But he
went on without heeding it. "I am as much to blame as any man for what
has happened. It was two full hours after my return to Charles Town
before the mob moved to take Featherstone. If only I had not blundered,
Featherstone could easily have been saved, as I honestly believe that
Latimer intended. In judging him, Sir Andrew, you must lose sight of
nothing that may tell in his favour."

He turned to face Myrtle, who had entered the room. She came forward now,
a flush of excitement on her cheeks, her eyes bright.

"I am glad to hear you say that, Robert," she approved him, as he stooped
to kiss her fingers. "It is what I, myself, have been telling father. But
he is blinded by his anger and his grief."

"Blinded, madam!" the baronet retorted hotly. "I am seeing clearly for
the first time in my life, I think. And I am perceiving what manner of
black-hearted villain I took to be as a son to me."

"Sir Andrew, listen to me a moment," Mandeville begged. "Sit down, and
listen quietly." And calmly he proceeded to expound the situation. "The
warrant is signed, and unless he is gone from Charles Town by Friday
morning it will be executed."

But there Sir Andrew interrupted him. "Why not until Friday? Why not at
once? Why is this traitor and murderer to be given the chance to escape?"

"Lord William has been so persuaded."

"Who has persuaded him? Who?" And as Mandeville did not immediately
answer him, he stared hard at the captain. "You did, Robert. You did. But
will you tell me why?"

The captain sighed. "There were two excellent reasons. The first is your
own affection for him--"

"I have told you it is dead. And I'll prove it at need. I am ready to
give evidence that will help to hang him."

"To hang him!" cried Myrtle, and the flush of excitement perished from
her cheeks.

Both men looked at her. But it was Mandeville who answered: "That is what
will happen, Myrtle, if he remains here to await arrest. Be will be sent
to England for trial, and it Is not to be imagined that any mercy will be
shown him."

"He should have the mercy he showed Featherstone. More than that is shown
him already in this quixotic delay--"

"Sir Andrew," Mandeville cut in, "are you quite sure that you do not
deceive yourself? Are you quite sure that underneath your present
indignation, the old love you bore him is nut alive and vigorous, and
that his death will presently prove to you a deep and bitter grief? You
are the one man who might be able to save him. When I have told you that,
can you be sure that hereafter you will be troubled by no remorse for
having left him to his doom?"

"I shall be troubled by remorse if he escapes," was the fierce answer. "I
am not the man to blow hot and cold, Robert. I know my mind."

"There is yet another point of view to be considered," said the captain.
And, compelled to it, he now expounded the terrible consequences, the
almost certain danger of open rebellion, that must attend the arrest of
Latimer. It moved Sir Andrew no more than the other reason.

"Let it come," he said. "A little blood-letting is what is needed to make
this colony healthy."

"But it will be the wrong blood," the captain argued.

"Surely, man, the governor isn't powerless? There is a garrison at Fort
Johnson."

"Less than a hundred men. If he were to bring them up, that would be the
signal for the provincial militia to fall in on the other side. And then
what would happen?"

"That which sooner or later must happen. Myself, I care not how soon. I
want the air clearing of these poisonous mists. The royal government has
been too gentle, too timorous. Let it assert itself at last. There are
enough loyal gentlemen in Charles Town to make a stand against this
seditious rabble."

But the captain shook his head. "I don't share your optimism, Sir Andrew.
Until the troops arrive we dare not provoke a conflict."

Sir Andrew heaved himself up in a frenzy of impatience. "But what in any
case could I do?" he asked.

"Urge Mr. Latimer to avail himself of the Governor's clemency."

"I?" Sir Andrew placed his hands upon his breast, and arched his eyebrows
in amazement. "I urge him? My God; you don't know what you're asking, or
else you don't know me. I'll urge him to hang himself."

"Oh father, father!" Myrtle put an arm about his neck.

"Think what Harry has been to you. Think what he might be again, if you
tried gentleness--"

Gentleness? With a damned rebel? With a murderer?"

"Don't call him that, father. It isn't true. And in your heart you know
it isn't."

"Didn't he set the mob on last night to murder Gabriel?"

"Was that like Harry? He must have been convinced that Mr. Featherstone
had been warned by Robert and had got away. He would never have done it
else."

"He would never have done it in such a case, you mean. What purpose could
there be in sending a mob to raid an empty nest?

"I don't know. But I am sure that Harry will be able to explain."

"It is possible," Mandeville suggested, "indeed probable, that he simply
obeyed the orders of his committee."

"But why, if he thought the man had gone?"

"Because he dared not tell them that. He dared not admit that he had been
guilty of this breach of faith to those who sent him to Lord William. So
he played out that comedy little thinking how it would turn to tragedy."

"That's it! That's it!" cried Myrtle, and her eyes thanked her cousin.
"What else would have been possible where Harry is concerned? You know
that he is generous, warm-hearted, impulsive. This would have been the
act of a wicked man, and Harry isn't wicked, father. You know that."

"Do I?" he laughed his contempt of her plea. Then he shook her off, and
went striding away across the room, as if to relieve his feelings by
action. "By God! It's droll to have you two here pleading to me for Harry
Latimer. And, by God! you waste your pains. Not a finger will I lift to
save him from the rope he has earned himself! But my two hands are ready
to help to hang him. If my evidence is wanted on what passed yesterday at
Fairgrove, it is at the governor's disposal."

"Sir Andrew!" Mandeville appealed to him.

"Not another word on that subject, Robert. If you have nothing else to
say to me, I'll beg you to excuse me. My steward is waiting for his
orders."

And he stamped out of the room in dudgeon.

Mandeville looked at Miss Carey with eyes that were full of regret.

"And so my last hope fails," he said, which was the literal truth.

She came to him and placed her two hands upon his arm.

"It was noble of you to try. Just as it was noble of you to persuade Lord
William to give Harry these two days' grace. I shall never forget it,
Robert. Never!"

"You mean that you'll remember my failure," said he, with a queer smile.

No, Robert. Your generosity. Oh, but is there nothing we can do?"

"Nothing, I fear, in view of Mr. Latimer's own obstinacy. I have done all
I could. Perhaps it would have been better had I not gone myself, in the
first instance. Mr. Latimer does not trust me."

"Doesn't trust you? You?"

Mandeville shrugged. He was the big-hearted, tolerant fellow who forgives
all, because he understands all. "What cause has he to trust me? In his
place I should do the same."

When presently he took his leave, he left her more profoundly impressed
than ever with his nobility and sterling worth. But he did not leave her
considering those virtues of his.

One single fact bulked so largely in her mind that it permitted her to
see nothing else at the same time. She was terrified, and out of that
terror came presently a better understanding of herself than she had
lately possessed. It had been necessary that the shadow of the gallows
should fall upon her lover to make her fully realize that he was her
lover still, her man, and that all the rest war vanity. What mattered his
political opinions? What did it matter if he outraged the political
religion in which she had been reared? What were politics to her, what
was the king to her, by comparison with him? Something of the kind had
stirred in .her yesterday, when she had seen him abused and beset. But
that had been a flash, a glimpse; no more. This was a flood of
revelation. He was in danger of his life; in danger of ignominious death.
The very thought almost stopped her breathing. He was her man, and if he
died, if they killed him, hanged him, what would be left for her, what
would become of her? She was answered by the memory of a line out of a
forgotten play, a memory that arose impishly, mockingly, fiendishly. She
would lead apes in hell.

She thought of the letters she had written to him when he was away, and
how she had sent him back their betrothal ring. She saw it now as an act
of vanity, stupid, silly, detestable. What did she know of these
questions that were agitating the country so violently? Harry was not
alone in his ways of thought. There were men of honour and position in
the province--such men as Colonel Laurens and Arthur Middleton, Mr. Izard,
who was Lord William's own father-in-law, and a score of others whom once
her father had esteemed as friends, and whom now he no longer admitted to
his house, because their ways of thought were not his own.

Thus love and fear so wrought upon her jointly in that hour that for the
first time in her life a doubt of her father's opinions entered her mind.
It is thus, abruptly and in moments of crisis that conversions and
apostasies take place.

And so it came about that in the early hours of that same afternoon, a
sedan chair carried by two negro bearers in Sir Andrew Carey's liveries
passed along the wharves, and swung through the gates of Mr. Latimer's
residence, to set down Miss Carey before the young rebel's door.

It was an outrage upon the proprieties. But proprieties had come to
matter as little as political convictions.

Julius, a little confused by her appearance, conducted her across the
wide hall, straight to the library where Mr. Latimer was brooding. For
Colonel Laurens and John Rutledge had but lately left him after a
protracted and rather stormy scene at the end of which the young man had
remained as defiant as at the beginning.

He leapt up in amazement as she entered, and in amazement stared at her
across the room.

"Harry!" She held out her hands to him, pleadingly, almost piteously.

He advanced to her.

"Myrtle!" There was only wonder in his voice, and his next question was
to explain the source of it. "You are alone?"

She nodded, then loosened and threw back her calash.

"But is this discreet?" he asked. He was about to add "especially since
we are no longer even betrothed." But he left that thought unuttered.

"Is it a time for discretion? Harry, what are you going to do?"

So that was it. He might have guessed it, he told himself. Here was
another of Captain Mandeville's emissaries--for Laurens had admitted
himself to be almost that--and he was to go through another scene perhaps
more painful than the last.

"I won't affect to misunderstand you," he said gravely. "I am going to
do nothing."

"But, Harry! You can't know--"

"I know all, and I am prepared for everything." And then he added: "Has
Captain Mandeville sent you to persuade me to leave Charles Town, in case
Colonel Laurens should have failed?"

"He has not."

"You surprise me. But no doubt he told you of my position, and hoped that
you would come to reason with me."

"He told me--yes--father and me. But he was very far from suggesting that
I should come to you. What do you mean, Harry?"

His manner began to intrigue her. It was so aloof, so different from all
that she had expected.

"You have, of course, become...attached to this kinsman from England who
has descended upon Charles Town during my absence?"

"Robert has been very good, very kind. I...we are very fond of him."

He smiled, not quite pleasantly. "I have been afforded occasion to
observe that for myself," he said.

She liked neither the smile nor the tone. "And he has been a very good
friend to you, Harry," she asserted.

"To me?" He expressed amazement in his stare and finally in a laugh. "Oh!
My dear friend Mandeville, how I have misjudged you I should have known
it was friendship for me sent him carrying tales to your father of my
association with the Sons of Liberty."

"Harry How can you? It's not worthy of you. He carried no tales. He told
father, so that father might reason with you, might rescue you before it
was too late, before you got into the position of danger in which you now
are."

And in which your Captain Mandeville has been careful to place me."

"You don't know what you're saying."

"Don't I? Listen to me a moment. It is as well that you should know this
man. Captain Mandeville desired to accomplish two things: the first was
to drive me out of your father's house; the second, to drive me out of
Charles Town. I embarrass the gallant captain by my presence. But I am
also so accommodating as to afford him the means of disposing of me. His
first wish was easily fulfilled. You saw it done."

"Harry!" She was angrily reproachful. "This is infamous!"

"I quite agree with you. But wait until I have made all clear. To drive
me out of Charles Town is not quite so easy. It asks more ingenuity. I am
so unfortunate as to supply the opportunity, and to make quite sure of
me, Captain Mandeville does not hesitate to leave a wretched creature of
his own to be done to death." To dissipate her indignant disbelief, he
advanced his arguments. But it was without avail.

"You are not mad enough, wicked enough, to say that of Captain
Mandeville?"

"It sounds fantastic, I confess. But not when you have weighed the
circumstances."

"See how your malice blinds you!" she cried. "It was Captain Mandeville
who prevailed upon Lord William to stay the execution of the warrant for
your arrest."

"He will say so to you, of course."

"Do you doubt his word! Perhaps you won't believe me when I tell you that
he came to plead for you with my father? To urge my father to persuade
you to leave Charles Town before the expiry of the respite he has
obtained for you."

"That I can well believe, since I have shown him how unpleasant may be
the consequences for himself if I am brought to trial. I find the
situation interesting, and I don't mean to miss the remainder of the
entertainment by running away." And then, abruptly he changed his tone,
as a man tosses aside an instrument whose use is at an end. "But I am
glad you came, Myrtle; glad to think that in spite of all that has
happened, you still have some feeling, some concern for me."

That disarmed the anger kindled in her by his sneers at Mandeville. She
came up to him, and set her hands on his shoulders, looking up into his
face. "Harry! Harry, you mustn't remain. You mustn't You must go, Harry.
You must leave Charles Town."

He looked at her, and as he looked there came into his face that
expression of sedate amusement, which at times could be so irritating.

"And leave a clear field to your new lover? Believe me, there is not the
need. I am not one to prove importunate." She recoiled as if he had
struck her.

"My new lover?" she echoed.

"This dear Robert, this gallant gentleman who serves his king so nobly,
who was no doubt the first to show you that you could not possibly marry
so wicked and abandoned a fellow as a rebel. This dear Robert who may one
day make you my lady. Oh, why not be frank and open with me, Myrtle?"

"Frank and open!" She was wild now with anger. It whipped the colour to
her cheeks and lent a dangerous sparkle to her eyes. "How dare you...You
insult me! How dare you suggest that I have ever been anything else!"

"Have you not? Oh, Myrtle! Myrtle t Why make pretence with me?"

"Pretence?" Her voice shrilled up. "I came to tell you--" She checked.
"No matter what I came to tell you. Thank God I didn't. You have shown me
what you are worth."

"But not quite all I know; not quite all that justifies me."

That brought her up, even as she was turning to depart. She looked at him
over her shoulder, scorn and anger stamped upon her little face.

"Listen a moment, and judge for yourself, if I am still to be deceived.
Yesterday when I came to Fairgrove, and after I had made my escape, I
waited among the trees by the avenue for the chance of a word with you.
In my wretchedness, in my dejection, I would have given all I had to have
made matters whole between you and me. Perhaps if nothing else would have
moved you--God knows--such was my need of you that I might have thrown my
very principles to the winds, and been false to my beliefs. I wanted to
beg you to take back the letters that you wrote me, to forget all that,
and to accept again my ring."

She was facing him once more; the scorn had passed slowly from her face,
and wonder was breaking on it. He paused now, and, breathlessly
delivered, her question filled the pause:

"Why didn't you?"

"Do you ask?" His voice, his eyes, were wistful. "Do you remember
nothing--in that avenue, yesterday? Whilst I waited there you came by in
company with Mandeville, his arm about your shoulders, your face
alight--"

"Harry!" There was indignant protest in the cry. She took a step towards
him, to check him. But he went on:

"Then I understood indeed what had happened in my absence, why your
letters had been so mercilessly uncompromising, how you must have
welcomed the pretext I gave you for writing them."

"Harry! Oh Harry! To think that of me! Of me!" He looked at her, and
almost smiled.

"You'll tell me that my eyes deceived me--"

"No, no. But that was...nothing. Nothing!"

"Nothing! A man walks with you in a half-embrace, and it is nothing."

"But he's my cousin," she cried desperately, and thereby provoked only
his scorn.

"Your cousin? Some thirty times removed at least; and two months ago you
were not even aware of his existence. Yet on the strength of his kinship
he drops from the clouds into the family lap. He is taken to your
bosom--literally."

She controlled herself by an effort. She was white to the lips. She was
very angry with him, and yet through all her anger beat the understanding
that he sinned against her in thought because he loved her and was
insensately jealous. Therefore she must have patience with him. At all
costs she must disabuse his mind.

"Harry, will you listen to me?" she asked, and her voice was quiet,
though her bosom raced. He bowed, still with a tinge of irony.

"I came here, Harry, to persuade you to go away. I came because...because
I, too, wanted to say to you the things you wanted to say to me when you
waited among the trees at Fairgrove. As ready to-day to make sacrifice to
you of my beliefs, as you say that you were ready to sacrifice them to me
yesterday."

"Myrtle!" His heart almost stood still. One half of his mind believed;
the other laughed in scorn.

"Now do you believe that...that what you saw was...not what you thought
it? I, too, was miserable and dejected. I had been unhappy ever since I
had sent you back your ring. And your awful scene with father almost
drove me mad. Robert was kind. He is kind, Harry, whatever you may say or
think. He comforted me, and I stood so much in need of comforting, I felt
so lonely and desolate that if Remus had put an arm round me in
friendship I should have been glad of it. Harry, that is the truth. All
of it. You do believe me!"

He took her in his arms.

"My dear! My dear!" He kissed the brown head that lay against his
shoulder, and her tears flowed, to relieve a surcharged heart.

"You believe, Harry?" she said again.

"I believe you, dear," he answered her, and lied, for he was still
struggling to believe. He wanted to believe, wanted desperately to
believe. Because he was aware of this want he was the more distrustful,
and ever at the back of his mind was that cursed picture--the scarlet,
gold-laced arm about the lilac shoulders, the woman's face upturned to
the man's bowed head.

She looked up. "Harry, my dear! I have suffered so!" The stains of tears
on that white face melted him completely. He bent down to kiss her,
drawing her closer still. She sighed in his arms. She smiled at him,
half-shyly, full tenderly. The vision of herself and Mandeville in the
dappled sunshine of the avenue was at last extinguished.

"And now, Harry," her tone was coaxing, "you'll go away. You'll go away
at once."

Through his brain crackled the laughter of the imp of jealousy. Back
surged that cursed vision, and with it came a memory of words spoken once
by Tom Izard in an excess of bitterness. "Women! The truth isn't in them.
They'll wheedle and coax and lie to gain their ends, until I believe they
deceive themselves as well as their victims."

He loosed his hold of her abruptly, and stepped back.

"So we come back to that!" He was sneering. "When we find the straight
road closed, faith, there is always a way round. I might have guessed
your aims."

"Harry!" She was affronted, wounded. "Harry! Do you...can you still
doubt me? After what I've said?"

"No," he said, and it was like a blow. "I don't doubt you at all."

They stood considering each other in silence after that, whilst you might
have counted ten, both faces bloodless. Then, still without speaking, she
turned and made for the door, mechanically pulling her calash over her
head as she went.

He sprang ahead of her. "Myrtle!"

"The door, if you please," she said.

He opened it, and let her go. Julius was waiting in the hall. He closed
the door after her, and stood a moment leaning against it.

Then, slowly, with bowed head, he crossed the room, and flung himself
into a chair. He took his chin in his palms and stared before him like a
sightless man, seeking relief in thought, but finding in thought only
sharper and ever sharper torture.



CHAPTER XIII - DEA EX MACHINA


"I really believe," wrote Lady William Campbell in her diary, "that but
for me, my poor Myrtle would have ended by marrying Robert Mandeville,
than which I could desire my worst enemy no sadder end." And since I am
quoting her ladyship, I may as well add this view of Mandeville, which
immediately follows. "Mandeville is a monotheist, worshipping one only
god, and that god is Mandeville. He requires not so much a wife as a
priestess."

It is impossible in reading these diaries to escape the irresistible
attraction of her ladyship's personality. You perceive her in these even
lines of small well-formed characters, far more vividly than in the
portrait which Copley painted of her a few months after her marriage. On
his canvas you behold this boldly handsome woman, between fair and dark,
with the generous mouth, the self-assured glance and the majestic
carriage; and you gather something of her physical and mental force. But
it is only the diaries that afford a complete revelation of her vigorous,
uncompromising nature, the strength she could bring to her friendships
and her enmities, her audacities of thought and action, her humour and
her charm.

As she speaks to us with such complete self-revelation across the gap of
a century and a half I feel that she is a woman I should like to have
known, and yet by whom I am sure that I should have been overawed.

Without her intervention in the affairs of Myrtle Carey it is indeed
probable that Myrtle's story would never have been worth the telling, and
a beneficent deity it must have been that inspired Myrtle--in her craving
for sympathy and comfort--to seek her ladyship's assistance.

It was done upon the impulse of the moment. The anger in which she had
quitted Harry had by now been whelmed again In sorrow and in anxieties on
his behalf. To excuse him there was ever the reflection that his harsh
intransigence was the result of jealousy, that sour fruit that grows upon
the tree of love. But in a measure as she excused him, her own trouble
grew, and the need for relief, for sympathy, for help and practical
guidance grew with it. In other circumstances she would have sought her
father, although tenderness was not a natural quality with him. But in
her present difficulties her father was the last person whose aid was to
be invoked. And then as her chair, on its way up Tradd Street, was being
borne past the corner of Meeting Street, she bethought her of her old
friend Sally Izard. The very thought of Sally warmed her, and would have
done so even had Sally not been the viceregal, and therefore
all-commanding, person that she was.

She gave fresh orders to her chairmen, and obediently they swung to the
left into Meeting Street, to set her down at Lady William's door.

The news she brought of Harry's obstinate refusal to leave Charles Town
placed Lady William fully as much in need of Myrtle as Myrtle was in need
of her ladyship.

The alarm evinced by Lady William and her brother, who happened to be
still with her, was more than Myrtle could understand until Tom had made
it abundantly clear.

Both announced that they would see Harry at once. There was a world of
promise in her ladyship's tone, a world of self-reproach in Tom's for
having so long delayed that duty.

"It will be useless," Myrtle told them with conviction. "Useless! Harry
is persuaded that the whole thing is a plot of Captain Mandeville's to
get rid of him."

"And I believe the same, myself," said Tom, regarding Myrtle with eyes of
chill reproof.

Her ladyship, already on her way to the bell-rope, to ring for her
carriage, checked and turned to stare from one to the other of them.

She remembered suddenly that if, from what she knew of it, the situation
had not actually been engineered by Captain Mandeville, at least he had
neglected to do the one thing that might have averted it.

"Why should you say that?" She addressed the question to her brother.

"Because in Harry's place I should have every reason to think the same,"
said Tom, and turned away.

Her ladyship understood. She came back to stand over the settle on which
Myrtle was sitting. "What reason has Harry for thinking this?" she asked.
"If I am to help you, Myrtle, you must tell me."

And Myrtle told her. At the end, reviewing Harry's hardness; Myrtle's
indignation rose again. She was expressing it when her ladyship checked
her.

"Why, what else is the poor man to think, Myrtle. He has your letters
giving him his dismissal because you don't agree with his political
views. He is distressed. But he doesn't despair because he knows, if he
knows anything, that political obstacles are no great matter where there
is love. There's no lack of tales like Romeo and Juliet to prove it, my
dear. So he comes back to reason with you, and with his own eyes sees you
in the arms of Captain Mandeville."

"Sally!" Myrtle turned upon her, flushing scarlet. "Not in his arms. I
have told you the truth."

"That you were only half in his arms? But jealousy always magnifies a
lover's vision, and in the eyes of Mr. Latimer you will have appeared
entirely in the arms of the gallant captain. What is the poor man to
think? Exactly what he told you. That in his absence your affections had
changed, and that you had seized upon his political convictions as a
pretext for breaking with him.'

"Sally!" And Myrtle was seized with sudden horror. "You don't believe
that, too?"

"Not I. But, then, I'm a woman. Man, my dear is a logical animal. He
reasons from evidence. And that's the source of all human error. Harry's
reasoning is faultless. It's his intuitions that are deplorable."

"But Sally, what am I to do? He will not move. He will remain in defiance
of the warrant. And if he remains...She shuddered, and uttered a little
moan, a picture of the gallows arising in her mind.

"I know, I know, dear." Myrtle was drawn to her ladyship's splendid
bosom. "We must devise some way."

Her ladyship's mind worked briskly spurred by a necessity which touched
herself--through her husband and her brother. At all costs Latimer must
be sent packing, or a situation of peril would arise, a conflagration
which must consume those she loved best.

"Can you think of nothing, Tom," she asked her brother. "You see how
necessary it is that he should go--how necessary it is not only for
himself, but for all of us? Could you persuade him, do you think?"

"I?" Tom was moved to sarcasm, and out of his sarcasm pointed the way.
"Yes, if he'd believe from me what he won't believe from Myrtle herself."

That fired the train. "You think he would go if he could be convinced of
your love, Myrtle? If he could be convinced that he has no grounds for
jealousy?"

Myrtle considered. "I think he might," she said slowly. Then, conviction
growing with reflection: "I am sure he would," she exclaimed. "Jealousy is
the only thing that keeps him."

"Then he must be convinced. You must give him proofs."

"But what proofs have I to give? How can I prove such a thing, if my word
does not suffice?"

Her ladyship rose. She was in some agitation, struggling really with
despair. "Proofs! Proofs!" she cried. "Oh these male fools that must be
demanding evidence of what should be obvious. Tom, you're a man and you
should know. What would a man consider final proof of a woman's love,
short of her dying for him?"

"Sink me, how do I know?" growled Tom, and again it was his sarcasm that
fanned the expiring match. "Marriage is sometimes accepted as a proof of
affection."

"Marriage!" Her ladyship stared at him across the room, a sudden light in
her eyes. He had said it. Out of his fatuity he had solved it. "Myrtle!"
she came rustling back to the settle, and sank down beside the girl.
Again her arm went round her, and she looked closely into her face.

"Myrtle, you love--you really love--Harry Latimer?" Of course I love
him."

"And you wish to marry him?"

"Some day, of course."

"No, not some day, Myrtle. That may be too late. Today. To-morrow at the
latest."

Myrtle was startled, almost terrified. She was beginning to advance
reasons why this could not be, reasons of maidenliness and moonshine,
which her ladyship peremptorily swept aside no sooner did she begin to
grasp their import.

"Don't you see that it is the only way--the only proof you can give him,
and so the only thing that will save his life, and God knows how many
other lives as well? It's marriage or hanging for Harry Latimer. And it's
for you to decide which."

She left her to think it over, and swept away to an open bureau set in
the bay of a French window. She sat down and rapidly scrawled a note to
Latimer begging him to give himself the trouble of waiting upon her
ladyship immediately. "I have news for you." she wrote, "of the most
urgent moment. If you do not come, and at once, you may have cause to
regret it all your life."

She folded and sealed the note, and rose. Then she pulled the bell-rope.
A woman of quick decisions and prompt action. "Well?" she demanded of
Myrtle. "Have you decided?" Myrtle's distress was almost pitiful.

"But, Sally, my dear, there are other things to consider. There's
father's consent to be obtained--"

"You can obtain your father's consent afterwards, when it's too late for
him to refuse it." She handed the note to the servant who entered. "Let
the messenger take that at once to Mr. Latimer's on the Bay."

The man departed, and her ladyship, elated, triumphant, a little flushed,
took up an attitude in the middle of the room. "There, my dear!"

"Oh, but I am terrified," cried Myrtle, rising in her agitation.

"If it's the prospect of marrying terrifies you," said Tom, lounging
forward from the background, you may spare yourself, Myrtle. It just
can't take place."

"What?" his sister demanded.

"Oh, it's like you to carry things with a high hand, Sally. You never see
an obstacle until you fall over it. You've forgot the law. This isn't
England. Myrtle's not of age, and can't marry without her father's
consent. There's not a parson in the colony would tie the knot; and if he
did, it wouldn't hold."

That staggered her ladyship. And it almost looked as if it staggered
Myrtle, too, instead of affording her relief from the terror she had last
expressed. She sat down again, limp and helpless.

"Oh!" was all she said. But she couldn't have packed more dismay into a
volume.

"We must obtain Sir Andrew's consent, then," declared her undaunted
ladyship.

But Tom was so unfeeling as to laugh outright. "Blister me, Sally, it'd
be easier to get the law altered."

And Myrtle confirmed him by a brief statement of the extent of the breach
between Harry and her father.

This was checkmate, as even her ladyship was forced to admit. She sat
down heavily, and for half an hour or more they talked round and round
the subject, as trapped creatures go round and round an enclosure seeking
a way out. And the only noteworthy feature of that barren conversation
was the fact that Myrtle, who whilst no difficulties presented themselves
had known only terror at the prospect of immediate marriage, was now as
eager as either of the other two to discover a way into that estate.

And then Mr. Latimer arrived, more promptly even than they could have
hoped, now that they had no real proposal to lay before him. He came into
the room, expecting to find her ladyship alone. He checked and stared at
sight of her two companions. Then he bowed gravely.

Lady William went forward to receive him, and drove straight to the heart
of the matter.

"Harry," she said, "you have been very cruel to this poor child."

"Madam," said he, "I have been under the impression that this poor child
has been very cruel to me."

"That's because you have no eyes."

"On the contrary, ma'am, I have; and my sight's uncommon good."

"In your body, yes--in your great stupid obstinate head, Harry. But it's
eyes in your soul I mean."

"Must we go into this?" said Harry, with elaborate calm. "If I had
known----"

"You wouldn't have come. That's why I didn't tell you. But you'll
probably go down on your knees to-night, and thank God that you did
come."

You conceive what were now the arguments employed by her ladyship in the
quality of Myrtle's advocate, and with what effect and overbearing force
she pleaded Myrtle's case.

At least it startled him out of the sternness in which he had wrapped
himself. He looked at Myrtle in amazement, and in something, too, of
fear.

"You mean--" he breathed, almost timidly, and could get no further.

"That since you demand proofs of her love for you Myrtle is prepared to
afford you the only final proof a woman can give a man. In defiance of
her father, at the cost if need be of breaking with him, she is prepared
to marry you out of hand. That is the sacrifice to which this poor lamb
offers herself so as to persuade you of her loyalty and devotion, and so
as to save your life."

"Myrtle!" He advanced towards her, a great tenderness in his voice and
his eyes. "Myrtle, my dear, is this really true?"

"Ay, humble yourself," her ladyship lashed him. "It will he good for your
soul."

Myrtle rose to meet him, and took the hands he held out. "Yes, Harry. I
swear that I would marry you at once, if it were possible."

"If it were possible?" he echoed, suddenly chilled again, already
suspecting a trap.

"Ah!" put in Tom. "It isn't possible. That's the rub. But Myrtle meant
it. Blister me, she did, Harry. The note was dispatched to you before we
saw the obstacle."

Oh, there was an obstacle! Still holding Myrtle's hands but holding them
mechanically, Harry looked round at the others, and thought he understood
the trick. Myrtle was anxious to save his life, she had still sufficient
affection for him for that, as indeed she had already proved. Having
failed she had come to Lady William with her distress. And Lady William
in her anxiety to rescue her husband from a very difficult position had
conceived this very clever way of allaying his jealousy so as to remove
the one insuperable obstacle to his departure. And she had fooled Tom
into being a party to the deception. He was moved to contempt. Yet he
commanded himself.

"But what is the obstacle?" he asked.

It was Tom who explained.

"The law of the colony. Myrtle isn't of age. Her father's consent will be
necessary, and in the present state of your relations with Sir Andrew--"

He got no further. Her ladyship interrupted him, crying out on an
inspiration:

"But the law of the colonies doesn't run in England." Harry's irony was
not to be repressed.

"Your ladyship is proposing that we should go to England to be married?"

"Exactly!" She betrayed a faint excitement.

"Oh, rot me, Sally!" her brother protested.

"You need go no farther than the bay," she explained. "There's a British
man-of-war at anchor there. There's a chaplain aboard the Tamar, and
aboard the Tamar you will be in England under the shelter of the English
law."

"By God!" said Tom, and it expressed their general amazement.

Harry stared at her ladyship a moment. So, she was sincere after all! He
had done her an injustice. Then he turned to Myrtle, and Myrtle's eyes
were veiled, from his own by fluttering eyelids.

"You are willing, Myrtle?" He asked her softly, and even as he asked, he
was drawing her towards him, his furiously suspicious jealousy laid to
rest at last before this culminating proof that he was preferred to
Mandeville.

"If--if you want me, Harry," she answered, "and if it can be done as
Sally says."

"You may leave the doing to me," said Sally. "I'll settle everything,
even to the wedding-breakfast which shall Ube served aboard. And now,
Tom, I think they'll contrive vary well without us." And she swept her
brother out of the room.



CHAPTER XIV - THE SOLUTION


In the Council Chamber of the State House, sat Lord William Campbell and
such members of his majesty's Council as still possessed the courage and
the inclination to function. They were assembled to receive the Speaker
of the Commons, whom his excellency had summoned, and who was punctual in
his response.

Rawlins Lowndes, a man of fifty, who looked the planter that he was in
private life, and yet conveyed also in his person some sense of the
dignity and austerity acquired in the course of his activities first as
Provost Marshal of the province and then as Speaker of the House, came
accompanied by two members of the Assembly, the portly, genial Henry
Laurens and the cold, aloof John Rutledge.

They stood to listen to the Governor's complaint of last night's riot,
his censure of those responsible for keeping the peace in Charles Town,
and his inquiry as to what measures it was proposed to take to punish the
offenders and to ensure against the repetition of an outrage in which a
loyal and faithful subject of his majesty's had been barbarously and
inhumanly done to death, and the king himself affronted and insulted in
the person of his representative, the Governor of South Carolina.

Rawlins Lowndes replied with calm that a committee should be appointed,
and the matter investigated. At the same time he confessed the
powerlessness of the Commons Assembly to avoid such outbreaks in times of
popular excitement. He pointed out to his lordship that violent conduct
by mobs was not peculiar to the colonies; that the same at that present
time were to be seen with even greater frequency and violence in London
itself; that it was the characteristic of Englishmen, whether at home in
the heart of the empire or in one of its distant colonies to resent and
rise against oppression and unjust rule.

"The fact, sir," he concluded, "that we reside at a distance of three
thousand miles from the royal palace and the seat of government does not
alter our natures any more than it modifies our rights."

This was to diverge into a political side-track, and it was with
reluctance that the governor yielded to the compulsion to follow.

"Of what particular injustice do you complain, sir?"

"I allude, my lord, to the unjust policy of which this unfortunate man
who lost his life was the tool and servant. He was known to be
ministering to the unhappy design of the royal government to endeavour to
quell the American troubles by coercion of arms, instead of seeking to
quiet them by the laws of reason and justice."

Thus Lowndes contrived to make of the case of Featherstone a vehicle for
a re-statement of the colonial cause to the royal representative.

"It was known," the Speaker continued, "that this man, acting as a spy of
the royal government, had imperilled the lives of men who were honestly
working to preserve the peace of the colony, and thereby the integrity of
the British Empire. When that is understood, can you wonder that in their
indignation the people should have risen in vengeance as they did last
night?"

Lord William sighed wearily and dejectedly. "If I understand you aright,
sir, you are conveying to me that no redress is to be expected. Is that
your notion of how to conciliate the royal government? You come to me
with empty phrases of loyalty on your lips and treason in your hearts. I
am growing accustomed to it. I am also growing accustomed to your
accusations against the government I represent of a conduct which is
peculiarly your own. You speak of quieting the present troubles by reason
and justice. Compare in this very business we are considering your own
attitude with mine. The ringleader, the inciter of this mob is known to
me, as he is known to you. I should be within my rights, indeed, it is my
solemn duty, to arrest and punish him out of hand. Yet for the sake of
peace, to propitiate the colony, to avoid any explosion of feeling which
would justify my government in that recourse to arms with which you
reproach it, I have held my hand.

"I have contented myself with asking Mr. Latimer to withdraw from the
province, and I have accorded him forty-eight hours in which to do so.
How does he meet my generosity? Captain Mandeville, here, informs me that
he is utterly defiant. He asserts that he will remain to force my hand,
to compel me to arrest him, confident that such an action will destroy
the peace which I am so concerned to preserve. Would he do this, would he
dare to do this, unless he had the support of authority behind him?"

"My lord, you wrong us there," Lowndes answered him warmly. "Mr. Rutledge
and Colonel Laurens here can both testify to that."

And upon his invitation, Rutledge stood forward, to state correctly and
coldly that with Colonel Laurens he had used every endeavour of
persuasion and of threat to induce Mr. Latimer to depart.

"You threatened him?" the governor questioned. "With what did you threaten
him?"

"I told him clearly, my lord, that if he were arrested as a consequence
of his obstinacy, the whole of such influence as I possess in this colony
would be exerted against him and in vindication of your lordship's
authority."

Some of the gloom was dispelled from his lordship's countenance. "Do you
really assure me of that, sir?"

"As solemnly as I assured him," replied Rutledge without emotion: "If
your excellency desires me I will undertake, myself, his prosecution.
Judge from this, my lord, whether we are lukewarm in the cause of peace,
whether we, too, are not prepared for almost any sacrifice to reach a
settlement without being compelled to take up arms in defence of the
common and unalienable rights peculiar to Englishmen."

Not until they had departed upon his lordship's friendly dismissal, and
with them were gone, too, the members of the council, did the governor
give full expression to his satisfaction. His audience was made up of
Captain Mandeville and a Major Sykes, the commander of the small garrison
at Fort Johnson on James Island, at the harbour's mouth, an officer
lately appointed to the council to fill one of the many gaps appearing in
it.

Major Sykes, a loosely-built, red-complexioned Irishman with a freckled
bony face and freckled hairy hands, cordially congratulated his
excellency on this happy issue. His manners, like his morals, were those
of a led-captain, and indeed the position which he held was one fit only
for a needy military adventurer.

"Sure now there's an end to your lordship's perplexities about this
blackguard," he laughed. He was free with as laughter, and boisterous.

His lordship pensively smiled as he lolled back in the great chair of
state, set at the end of that big bare room with its rudely-carved
wainscoting. Mandeville alone, sitting on his lordship's right, at the
top of the long council table, remained glum and preoccupied. The
solution of the governor's perplexities was but the resumption of his
own. For conscious of his vulnerability t lie very last thing he desired
was that Latimer should be brought o trial in Charles Town. The exposure
with which Latimer had threatened him would certainly ruin him with
Carey, and might even cost him his life as well at the hands of an
infuriated people.

"I wish I could share your lordship's optimism," he ventured presently.

"What now?" quoth his lordship, checked in the indulgence of his
satisfaction.

"Can you trust these men?"

"Trust them? Why should they be dishonest with me?"

"I mean, can you trust their judgment? Rutledge may use his influence, as
he says. But what will his influence be worth once he attempts to oppose
the stream of popular feeling?" He shook his head. "Politicians, my
lord, preserve their influence by following where they seem to lead. And
Rutledge is a politician. Also he is vain, and his vanity deceives him.
He attributes to the power of his own oratory the popularity he enjoys.
His oratory succeeds because it tells his audiences the things they want
to hear. The moment he tells something different, there's an end to his
influence and his leadership. The people are like that in every land, and
in every age. Pin your faith to Rutledge now, and you'll find him become
a man of straw, to be scattered by the burst of popular indignation he'll
provoke."

And Sykes approved him: "By God! Mandeville, it's right ye are, every
word of you. Sure, don't I know it. And doesn't your lordship?"

Upon reflection, his lordship thought he did, despite his youth and
inexperience. He stared from one to the other of them, his complacency
shaken.

"Amongst the English races," Mandeville resumed: "it is ever the people
who rule. They tolerate none but complacent masters who obediently
perform their sovereign will. And amongst none of the English races is
that trait more marked than among these independent colonials, as witness
the things that are happening now. If we had the troops here it would be
another story. But as we haven't, I make so bold as to say that I agree
with Latimer in the confidence he reposes in popular feeling."

"Why here's a change. Mandeville!" cried his dismayed lordship. "First it
was you who counselled proceedings against Latimer, and I who held back."

"Latimer's obstinate refusal to budge, his determination to remain and
force the issue have opened my eyes. Would he do that if he were not very
sure of where he stands."

"Then what am I to do? What? In heaven's name!" Mandeville shrugged.

"I don't presume to advise," he said. "The situation bristles with
thorns. But I think that in your lordship's place, I should get rid of
Latimer with the least inconvenience to myself."

The governor caught his breath, whilst from under white eyelashes the
blue eyes of Major Sykes looked almost apprehensively at Mandeville.

"What are your suggesting?" gasped his lordship.

Mandeville rose, and leaned forward across the table. "I should have him
quietly seized to-morrow night, and put aboard the Tamar for immediate
conveyance to England to stand his trial there."

Sykes laughed in his noisy fashion. "Begad, I thought you were proposing
to have his throat cut!"

"Faith, so did I," added the governor in obvious relief. Again Mandeville
shrugged; contemptuously this time.

"But where shall I stand when it is known? Lord William asked him.

"It won't be known for months--not until news of it is brought out from
England; and by then much may have happened."

"It'll be known the moment he disappears!"

"Not if it is done with proper care. Latimer will simply vanish, and the
natural assumption will be that in the end he has preferred not to await
arrest. That is why I suggest to-morrow night. That he should have gone
secretly can be explained by reluctance to admit himself unequal to
maintaining his bombast. Some may suspect us. But what is suspicion?"

"You are forgetting my terms to him. I gave him forty-eight hours grace;
until Friday morning."

"Those terms he has rejected. He has announced his firm determination of
remaining in Charles Town. What obligation of honour, is there, then, to
await the expiry of the forty-eight hours?"

The governor sank together in his chair, and brooded awhile.

"It would be an easy way out of the trouble," he said slowly, musingly.
"But--" He broke off suddenly, and sat up again. "No. It is impossible,
The first question asked me--and where there are suspicions, there must
be questions--would lay the whole thing bare. If I ordered this, how
could I afterwards deny knowledge of it?"

Mandeville did not immediately reply. He stroked his chin thoughtfully.
Then, at last, he fetched a sigh.

"Ay! You've put your finger on the real difficulty." He paused before
adding: "We'll say no more about it."

His lordship grumbled ineffectively, and rose to return home. Outside
under the pillared portico of the State House, Mandeville, having seen
the governor depart, linked arms with Sykes.

"If you're for the wharves, I'll walk with you, major."

And arm-in-arm the two red-coated officers took their way down Broad
Street, and came out on to the bay. At Motte's Wharf a wherry was drawn
up manned by a dozen blacks in bright-coloured cottons, waiting to convey
the major back to the fort. As he put out his hand in leave-taking,
Mandeville, broached at last the matter in his mind.

"You have understood what is to be done, major?"

The Irishman's blank stare was a question in itself. Mandeville answered
it.

"His excellency is to be saved in spite of himself." Sykes caught his
meaning; but no more than that. "How is it possible at all?" he asked.

"Didn't you understand him? If I ordered this, how could I afterwards
deny knowledge of it?" That was his question. Isn't the answer plain? He
hasn't ordered it, and therefore he can deny all knowledge of it when he
comes to be questioned."

"Oddsblud!" spluttered Sykes. "Was that his meaning, now?"

"You surely never doubted it! And he meant it for you, major. You've the
only lads we could use for this, down at the fort. Bring half-a-dozen of
them up to town to-morrow night, and net your bird."

Sykes stood a moment, considering.

"And if we should be mistaken, alter all? If the governor never meant it?
Ye see it's impossible to ask him."

"You may leave the responsibility to me, Sykes."

 Again Sykes considered. Then he shrugged and laughed.

"If you put it like that now, faith I'll certainly oblige."

And then another doubt occurred to him. "But without an order from the
governor, how will Thornborough receive him aboard the Tame?"

"He won't. And you needn't put him aboard the Tamar. The Lass of Hale
should sail for Bristol with the evening tide to-morrow. I'll send a word
to her captain to wait until the following morning. She'll serve our
purpose. He'll go home in irons aboard her."

"Ay, she's convenient to the fort," Sykes agreed.

"And if the fellow should give you trouble," Mandeville instinctively
lowered his voice, "don't be tender of him. An accident would be no great
matter. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be the best solution after all."

It was not a suggestion upon which Mandeville would have ventured had he
been less assured of the utter unscrupulousness of the man to whom he
offered it.

Sykes closed an eye in token of intelligence; then he asked some further
questions concerned wish the means to be employed, to all of which the
equerry smoothly supplied him with ready answers. Satisfied at last,
Sykes stepped into the waiting wherry, and was pulled away across the
sunlit water.

At supper that night, Mandeville found the governor entirely recovered
from the gloom in which last he had left him at the State House. The
reason for this was presently disclosed.

"Mandeville, our riddle's solved. I have Mr. Latimer's assurance that he
will be gone from Charles Town within the time appointed."

And so taken aback was Mandeville that he uttered his thought aloud: "Now
why the devil couldn't the fool have said so sooner!"

It raised a laugh, for there was something almost comical in the dismay
of that usually imperturbable countenance.

"It remained for her ladyship to persuade him," the governor answered,
beaming upon Lady William. "What witchery she employed I can't guess nor
will she tell me."

"Lady William's witchery is not of the kind that drives men away," said
Captain Mandeville.

"La!" said her ladyship. "Here's unusual gallantry!

"Gallantry, madam!" Mandeville affected grief at being so misunderstood.
"I employed no gallantry. I but pointed to a mystery."

"And mysterious we'll leave it," she answered lightly. Adding
nevertheless a jest whose meaning was clear only to herself. "I'll not
have Captain Mandeville gnashing his teeth before he must."

But as a matter of fact, he was gnashing them already over the
unnecessary measures he had taken, measures which must now be cancelled,
So that Latimer went, the manner of his going was no great matter. If on
the whole the captain would have preferred it to have been as he had
concerted with Major Sykes, yet, on the other hand, Latimer's departure
of his own free will would spare Mandeville the necessity of subsequent
difficult explanations. Therefore, he was content.



CHAPTER XV - THE NUPTIALS


Everything concerned with Myrtle's marriage fell out precisely as her
ladyship promised and subsequently planned, which was the way of things
of which her ladyship had the planning.

To quiet Myrtle's grievous misgivings on the score of her father, her
ladyship undertook that after the departure of the bridal couple she
would, herself, not merely inform Sir Andrew of what had been done, but
compel him to see reason and obtain his pardon for the runagates.

"And never doubt that I shall," said Lady William with convincing
emphasis. "What men can't alter they soon condone."

Thus, out of her own splendid confidence, she allayed at last Myrtle's
lingering fears and only abiding regrets.

So much accomplished, her ladyship unfolded the further details of her
plan for getting the couple safely away. The Brewton's ball that same
Thursday night, being of an almost official character. Lady William's
viceregal position demanded that she should go attended by two ladies of
honour. From the position of one of these she would depose her cousin
Jane in favour of Myrtle. As a result, Myrtle would be expected to attend
her throughout, and to facilitate this Lady William would arrange with
Sir Andrew that Myrtle be allowed to spend the night at the governor's
residence. Thus the bridal couple would be ensured a clear and unhampered
start whilst all Charles Town was still entirely unsuspicious. For the
rest, the real arrangement was that Harry Latimer should be at hand with
a travelling carriage, and that as soon as Myrtle could conveniently
leave the ball without being missed, she should join him, and they should
immediately start for his plantation at Santee Broads, a drive of fifty
miles, which would consume the whole of the night. Thence, after resting,
they were to push on to a distant estate of Mr. Latimer's in the hills
above Salisbury, where for the present they were to abide. There in the
cotton fields of North Carolina, t heir honeymoon might peacefully be
spent without fear of pursuit from any save Sir Andrew, who would in any
case be powerless to untie the knot which the law of England was so
securely to tic aboard the Tamar.

And so, soon after breakfast on Thursday morning Myrtle departed from
Tradd Street, on the pretext that her ladyship had bidden her come early.
There would be a deal to do in preparation for the ball she casually
announced in explanation.

"Not a doubt," said her father. And when he beheld the dimensions of the
clothes-box that was being borne after her he raised eyes and hands to
heaven. "Lord! The vanity of woman!"

But Myrtle was already down the steps and into her sedan chair, lest he
should detect the tears that had suddenly come to fill her eyes at the
thought that she was definitely leaving her father's home, and leaving it
under cover of a deceit.

It needed all Lady William's stout cheeriness and confidence to dispel
the black clouds that were gathering about Myrtle's soul when presently
she came into her ladyship's radiant presence. Nor was she given much
time for further brooding. Within a half-hour of reaching the governor's
residence, she was taking boat at the Exchange Wharf with her ladyship, a
boat manned by four British tars and commanded by a pert boy-officer.

Out in the bay, as they drew near the Tamar, with her black-and-white
hull, the snowy sails furled along her yards and the gleam of brass from
her deck, they were joined by another boat, rowed by blacks in
Linsey-woolsey jackets, and carrying Harry Latimer and Tom Izard.

In the waist of the warship they found a guard of honour drawn up, whilst
Captain Thornborough, the handsome sunburnt officer in command of the
sloop, came forward to receive them.

All was ready as her ladyship had predisposed. But to satisfy the pretext
on which they came there was first a tour of inspection of the ship. When
this was over, the captain invited the guests to a glass of Madeira in
his cabin before leaving. He contrived unostentatiously to include in the
invitation the chaplain who had, somehow, got in the way at the last
moment.

In the cabin no time was wasted. No sooner had the steward retired after
pouring for them, than with naval dispatch, Captain Thornborough made
them come to business. The chaplain was brisk, and confined himself to
the essentials of the ceremony. Within a few minutes all was accomplished
and the captain of the Tarim? was raising his glass to toast Mrs. Henry
Latimer.

"I'd fire a salute in your honour, ma'am, but it would occasion questions
we may not be prepared to answer."

In the vessel's waist, where they had met scarcely an hour ago, husband
and wife parted again for the present, and Myrtle and Lady William went
down the steps to the waiting cock-boat.

Myrtle bore now on her finger the ring that had belonged to Harry's
mother, the very ring that once, and not so long ago, she had returned to
him. In her heart she bore perhaps the oddest conflict of emotions that
has ever been a bride's. There was happiness in the thought that Harry
now belonged to her, and that nothing could ever again come between them;
there was happiness, too, in the reflection that thus she had conquered
Harry's obstinacy and jealous doubts and prevailed upon him to save his
life by leaving Charles Town. But there were regrets at the manner of her
marriage, and infinitely more poignant regrets at the thought of what her
father must suffer in his affection and his pride when he learnt of these
hole-and-corner nuptials between herself and a man against whom he bore a
prejudice that was amounting almost to hatred.

There were tears blurring her vision as she looked back over the waves on
which the sunlight was dancing to that other boat at the foot of the
ship's ladder into which her husband and his friend were stepping. And
the boy-officer chatting briskly with Lady William gave her ladyship no
opportunity to offer Myrtle any of the comfort of which she perceived the
poor child to stand in need.

They reached at last the Exchange Wharf, and whilst a sailor held the
boat firmly alongside by means of a boathook, the gallant stripling of an
officer, standing on the wet slippery steps, handed the ladies ashore, to
bring them face to face with Captain Mandeville.

Delayed until then by official duties, the captain was on his way to Fort
Johnson to inform Major Sykes that his services that night would no
longer be required. He was looking about for a wherry to convey him at
the very moment that the cock-boat from the Tamar containing her ladyship
and Myrtle drew alongside the wharf.

Lady William, conscious as she was of being engaged upon a deed of
secrecy, paused to stare at him, suspecting an excess of coincidence in
his presence. Nor did his air of surprise, allay her suspicions, as it
should have done, for Captain Mandeville was not the man to show surprise
when he actually felt it.

He doffed his black three-cornered hat and bowed.

"I did not know your ladyship addicted to water-jaunts."

Myrtle, esteeming him, persuaded of his sincere and selfless friendship,
and detesting fraud beyond what was absolutely necessary to her safety
and Harry's, would there and then have riven him the real reason for her
journeyings by water, had not her ladyship forestalled her.

"I am not," she told the equerry. "But Captain Thorn-borough offered to
show his ship to Myrtle, and the child had never been aboard a
man-of-war. But we detain you, captain," she added, bethinking her of the
second boat that followed, and preferring that he should not stay to meet
its occupants.

"No, no," he answered. "I am not pressed. I am only going to Fort
Johnson. I was looking for a boat. I trust you found the man-of-war all
that you expected it, Myrtle?

"Why, yes," she said, and lowered her lids under his sharp gaze lest he
should perceive the signs of tears about her eyes.

"But we have no enthusiasm," he faintly rallied her, smiling.

Her ladyship promptly rescued her.

"Come, Myrtle. The man will keep us talking here all day."
"Nay, a moment, of your, mercy. This may be my only chance before the
ball to-night."

"Your chance of what?"

"To ensure myself the dance I covet. The first minuet; Myrtle, if you
will honour me so far?

"But, of course, Robert." And impulsively she held out her hand.

He took it, and bareheaded as he had remained, bowed low over it. For an
instant, as he did so, his eyes dilated; but his bowed head screened this
from both the ladies. And then her ladyship whirled Myrtle away without
further ceremony.

He stood watching them until they were lost in the bustling crowd about
the New Exchange. Then, slowly resuming his hat, a deep line of thought
between his fine brows, he turned his attention once more to that other
craft which had already caught his eye.

He signalled to a wherry to stand by, but made no move to enter it until
the boat he watched was alongside, and out of it sprang Latimer and Tom
Izard. They exchanged bows formally, and without words, despite the fact
that the equerry was--or had been--on easy terms with her ladyship's
brother. Then Captain Mandeville stepped into the boat he had summoned;
and sat down in the stern-sheets.

"Push off," he curtly bade the negroes.

The four men bent to their oars, and the boat shot away from the wharf.

"Where does yo' honour want fer to go?" the nearest negro asked him.

Captain Mandeville considered a long moment. Then he stretched out a hand
to grasp the tiller.

"To the sloop Tamar," he answered.

When he reached her decks, her captain was below, but he came instantly
upon being informed that the governor's equerry had come aboard.

"Ah, Mandeville! Good-day to you," he greeted him.

Mandeville gave him a short good-day in return. "I want a word with you
in private, Thornborough."

The sailor looked at him, mildly surprised by his tone. "Come aft to my
cabin," he invited, and led the way. Mandeville sat down upon a locker
with his back to the square windows that opened upon the stern gallery.
On the table before him he observed a book, a decanter at a low ebb, and
six glasses, in two of which a little wine remained. He could account
for five of the glasses and assumed the sixth to have been for some
other officer of the Tamar.

Thornborough, standing straight and tall in his blue uniform with white
facings, looked at him questioningly across the table.

"Well?" he asked. "What brings you?"

"Mr. Harry Latimer has been aboard your ship this morning."

He had deliberately placed himself so that the light was on
Thornborough's face, and his own in shadow. Watching the sailor now, he
fancied that his eyes shifted a little to avoid his own. Also there was a
perceptible pause before Thornborough answered him.

"That is so. What then?"

"What do you know of him?"

"I? What should I know? He is a wealthy colonial gentleman. But you
should know more about him, yourself."

"I do. That is why I am questioning you. What was he doing aboard your
ship?"

Thornborough stiffened. "Sink me, Mandeville! What's the reason for this
catechism?"

"This fellow Latimer is a rebel, a dangerous spreader of sedition, and a
daring spy. That is my reason. That is why I ask you what he came to do
aboard your ship."

Thornborough laughed. "It had nothing to do with spying. Of that I can
assure you. What should he have spied here that could profit him?"

"You are not forgetting that you have Kirkland on board?" Mandeville
asked him.

"All Charles Town knows that. What should Mr. Latimer discover by spying
on Kirkland?"

"Possibly he came to ascertain whether he is still here. But if you were
to tell me on what pretext he did come, I might be able to obtain a
glimpse of his real reason."

It happened, however, that Thornborough's instructions from Lady William
were quite explicit; and in nothing that Mandeville had said could he see
any reason for departing from them.

"Mandeville, you're hunting a mare's nest. Mr. Latimer came aboard with
Lady William Campbell and one or two others so as to view a British
man-of-war. To suppose that he could discover here anything of possible
advantage to his party or of detriment to ours is ridiculous."

"You may find that you take too much for granted, Thorn-borough."
Mandeville spoke mysteriously. As he spoke he rose, and proceeded to
relate to the sailor how Latimer had visited the governor only yesterday
in disguise and pumped him dry on more than one subject. "If I had not
subsequently discovered this, and ascertained the extent of the
information he drew from us, I might have remained as unsuspecting as
yourself."

Whilst speaking, he had idly picked up the book from the table, to make
the surprising discovery that it was a book of Common Prayer. A book-mark
of embroidered silk hung from its pages, and the book opened naturally in
Mandeville's hands at the Marriage Service, which was the place marked.
Idly he continued to turn its leaves. He even looked at the name on the
fly-leaf, which was "Robert Faversham." It was odd to find such a volume
on the captain's table. He set it down again, and assuming at last that
Thornborough really had nothing to tell him beyond the fact which he had
desired to ascertain--namely that Latimer actually had been on board the
ship in Myrtle's company--he took his leave.

With a final admonition to Thornborough to be careful of whom he admitted
to his sloop, the equerry went down the entrance ladder to his waiting
boat, with intent to resume his voyage to the Fort. But within a dozen
cables' length of the Tamar he abruptly changed his mind.

"Put about," he ordered, and added curtly: "Back to Charles Town."

He was obeyed without question, and the clumsy boat swung round to pull
against the tide, which was beginning to ebb.

Ahead of them, drenched in brilliant sunshine, and looking dazzlingly
white, the low-lying town appeared to float like another Venice upon the
sea, the water front dominated by the classical pile of the Custom House
with its ionic pillars and imposing entablature, whilst above the red
roofs towered the spires of St. Philip's and St. Michael's, the latter so
lofty that it served as a landmark for ships far out at sea.

Captain Mandeville, however, beheld nothing but a slender, woman's hand,
with white tapering fingers protruding from mittens of white silk, and
round one of these fingers a circlet of gold, gleaming through the
strained silken meshes.

That in some mysterious way Myrtle and Harry had become reconciled was
clear from their joint presence aboard the Tamar, whilst the discovery of
that restored ring betrayed the fact that the reconciliation had gone the
extent of renewing their betrothal.

That was reason enough to restrain him from going to Fort Johnson to bid
Sykes hold his hand. At all costs, and whatever the consequence with
which the governor might afterwards visit him, Mandeville must allow the
plan laid with Sykes to be carried out. He was in a difficult position.
But he must deal with one difficulty at a time, and in dealing first with
Harry Latimer he dealt with the more imminent danger to himself and all
his hopes.

He sat there, elbow on knee and chin in hand, absorbed in thought,
piecing together little tenuous scraps of evidence, and plagued to
irritation the while by the obstinate association in his mind of the ring
he had seen on her finger and the book he had found on Captain
Thornborough's table. Those things and that visit of theirs to the sloop
that morning forced a dreadful suspicion on his mind, a suspicion too
dreadful to be entertained. He rejected it, as wildly fantastic; and yet
the thought of the ring and the book persisted until he was landing on
the wharf at Charles Town. Finally he shook it off. "What can it matter,
after all?" he asked himself. "Sykes will make it all of no account
to-night. I rid the State of a dangerous enemy and myself of a dangerous
rival at one stroke. And I shall be treading a minuet whilst it is done."



CHAPTER XVI - THE CHAPLAIN OF THE "TAMAR"


That ball at the State House, given by Miles Brewton in honour of the new
Governor of South Carolina, was of a piece with, indeed almost an epitome
of, the ironic situation presented in those June days in Charles Town. If
the spirit of tragedy gloomed upon the gay scene, the spirit of comedy
was cheek by jowl with it, agrin.

Here, above smouldering passions and festering hates born of man's
eternal misunderstandings and intolerance, and presently to find vent in
war, was maintained an unruffled surface, reflecting only the amenities
and courtesies of peace.

Actually the place chosen for the fête was itself the very nidus of the
growing conflict. Above stairs were the chambers in which the
representatives of the two contending parties met in conference; the room
in which the Commons assembly; constituting itself into a Provincial
Congress, debated measures for meeting the despotic oppression of the
Mother Country; and the room in which the governor and his council met
for little purpose nowadays but to study how to subdue this transatlantic
Jeshurun which, having waxed fat and, lusty under the maternal aegis of
the British Empire, was now kicking rebelliously against its parent.

To-night one of those chambers was to concern itself with no strife of
greater acerbity than the amicable contests proper to the green-clad card
tables laid out for those who did not dance; the other was converted into
a place of refreshment--a buffet ranged against one of the walls from end
to end of the long room, laden with boned turkeys, game pies, jellied
terrapins; gigantic sweetmeats in which sculptor appeared to have
collaborated with confectioner, and a dozen other delicacies. And a troop
of dusky servants paraded here, white teeth flashing in ebony faces that
grinned already in anticipation of the feast's aftermath that should be
their own. They were assembled to minister alike to loyalist and rebel,
who as indifferently would presently take a punch or eat a quail in each
other's company, exchanging quips as readily to-night, as to-morrow or
the next day they might be exchanging pistol-shots.

Surveying the scene later that evening with Lady William, Captain
Mandeville offered upon it an ironic comment which her ladyship thought
it worth while to preserve for us in that diary of hers:

"There is this advantage in breeding, that until the moment when
necessity bids men fight like beasts they may make things pleasant by
conducting themselves like gentlemen."

The great hall below stairs was as gay as flowers and bunting and
candle-laden chandeliers and girandoles could render it. At one end a
gallery had been raised for the musicians, at the other a shallow dais,
which was carpeted and furnished with gilded chairs for the governor and
his suite.

Over the waxed and gleaming floor a throng as brilliant and fashionable
as any that in a similar gathering the old world could show moved with
well-bred and appropriate languor, with bows and curtsies, with slow
waving of fans and nodding plumes set above powdered head-dresses, with
flash of quizzing glasses and glitter of jewels.

It was a scene that would have amazed some of the gentlemen at home in
Westminster who legislated condescendingly for these colonials under the
impression that they were rude farmers at best and half-savages at worst.

And the irony which this function presented in general was still more
keenly apparent in its particulars. There was Moultrie, square and sturdy
in the blue coat with scarlet facings of the South Carolina militia,
which was worn by perhaps a dozen others present. He was in easy talk
with Captain Thorn-borough and a group of officers in the blue and white
of the Royal Navy who had come ashore to attend this function; and with
him, very gay and voluble, was the young republican Thomas Lynch. There
was John Rutledge, handsome and impassive as ever, very elegant in an
elaborately clubbed white tie-wig and a suit of violet taffetas with
gold-laced buttonholes, deep in talk with the scarlet-coated, foppish
Captain Davenant, who was Major Sykes' second-in-command at Fort Johnson.
The Major, himself, for some reason unaccountable to Davenant, was not
present. Miss Polly Roupell, the famous beauty, the toast of the Charles
Town bucks and a white flame of loyalty, was gay and challenging to the
equally gay and brilliant rebel William Henry Drayton; that other
notorious and daring rebel, Captain MacDonald, in the blue and scarlet of
the militia, was entertaining and clearly amusing the two daughters of
the house of Cunningham, that most tory of all the back-country families;
the youngest Fletchall, of that other ardent tory house, very spruce in
pink and silver, spread his charms to dazzle the pretty rebel Miss
Middleton, whilst the gaunt, stern-faced John Stuart, the King's Indian
agent, himself looking like an Indian, was doing homage to the still
beautiful Mrs. Henry Laurens.

Had not nature rendered prominent as a frog's the eyes of George
III.--which looked down upon the assembly from the portrait by Sir Joshua
Reynolds hung for the occasion above the dais set apart for his majesty's
representative--well might they now have bulged to see rebel and loyalist
rubbing shoulders there in such open amity.

But if the eyes of King George, being merely painted upon canvas, were
incapable of emotion, those of Sir Andrew Carey were not. He kept himself
aloof and apart with the elder Fletchall under the lintel of one of the
French windows, which stood open to the garden and the cool evening air.

To a man of his narrow, uncompromising, almost fanatical outlook there
was much here that was utterly incomprehensible and some things that
enraged him. One of these was the sight of those militia uniforms--to him
the very livery of treason--at a ball given in honour of his gracious
majesty's representative. Another was that gentlemen of his majesty's
navy should be passing the time of day with that detestable fellow Lynch,
to whose ultimate hanging Sir Andrew looked forward confidently and
pleasurably. And then these frivolous young women, whose minds went no
deeper than a matter of powder and patches and the set of a French gown,
chopping shallow wit with avowed rebels was to him a spectacle shocking
and deplorable.

He was expressing himself to Fletchall in some such terms, and vowing
that he would rather see his daughter dead than so lost to a sense of
what became her, when above the rolling hum of talk and laughter and to
subdue it, the orchestra suddenly crashed forth.

The solemn strains of "God Save the King" announced the arrival of the
governor. Instantly there was a shuffling of feet, and the gay confused
throng ranged itself into some semblance of order, leaving a clear space
by the entrance, and a clear way to the dais. Sir Andrew observed but did
not permit himself to be deceived by the circumstance that the rebel
militia officers present came to attention as readily as any, and stood
so, is homage to the king, throughout the anthem.

On the closing bars of the music Lord William made his appearance, a
handsome figure in ivory satin, a blaze of orders on his breast, his face
looking almost boyish below his powdered head. Beside him stood her
ladyship, radiant in cloth of gold over white brocade, an incarnation of
regality such as--by one of life's abounding ironise--is rarely achieved
by those of regal birth.

There was a sound as of wind in trees; a slither of feet and a rustle of
silks, as, with billowing hoops, the ladies sank down to curtsey and each
man bowed low over outward thrusting leg.

Then, to welcome their excellencies, Miles Brewton advanced with his
comely wife, who had been Polly Izard and was her ladyship's sister. And
here again was ubiquitously intruding irony. For Miles Brewton, the
promoter of this ball in honour of King George's representative, the
friend of Lord William and the brother-in-law of her ladyship was,
himself, an open adherent of the colonial party and a member of the
Provincial Congress.

His words of welcome were brief and graceful. They were expressed on
behalf of "his majesty's faithful and loving subjects of Charles Town,
here assembled," a description which provoked an audible snort of
contempt from Sir Andrew Carey.

Lord William's reply was almost equally brief and fully as gracious. He
thanked them on his own and Lady William's behalf, and took this
opportunity of declaring feelingly that Charles Town might count upon him
to labour earnestly to promote the real happiness and prosperity of the
province he was sent to govern.

Thereafter, with nods and smiles of greeting as they passed up the room,
the viceregal pair moved to the dais, followed by his excellency's
equerries, Captains Mandeville and Tasker, and her ladyship's ladies of
honour, Miss Carey and Miss Ravenell.

The band struck up an invitation, and the gentlemen sought their partners
for the minuet. Lord William led forth, as his duty was, his
sister-in-law and nominal hostess, and her ladyship followed on the arm
of Mr. Brewton, whilst the equerries paired off with the ladies of
honour.

As they took their places on the polished floor, Captain Mandeville
considered his partner with eyes of undisguised admiration.

"I do not think I ever saw you look more beautiful," he murmured. "How
well your gown becomes you!"

It was true enough, and Myrtle knew it. Over a hooped petticoat of palest
lavender, she wore a sacque of richly-flowered brocade. Her slim bust was
set off by some old lace and jewels that had been her mother's, and at
the last moment Lady William had thrust a blood-red rose into Myrtle's
powdered, hair, just below her ear.

"This is your wedding-dance, my dear," her ladyship had reminded her,
between tenderness and raillery. "And you must look your best."

Her best she certainly looked. There was colour in her cheeks that were
normally so pale, and an unusual sparkle in her eyes, of so deep a blue
that they seemed black in some lights and violet in others. Something of
the excitement stirring in her lent her an unwonted radiance.

Aware of this, she found Captain Mandeville's compliment proper enough
yet she turned it off lightly. "Beauty we are told dwells in the eye of
the beholder."

And Mandeville, impulsive for once, answered too quickly: "When I am he,
then are you beautiful indeed."

She caught the throb of passion which escaped in his voice before he
could control it. It chilled and startled her. Fortunately the figure of
the dance, which was beginning, claimed their attention, and there was no
occasion for words again until the end was reached, and each cavalier was
bowing, hand on heart to his curtseying lady.

Nor was there occasion even then. For as the last note of the fiddles was
being lost in the babble of loosened talk, Tom Izard, gorgeous as a
peacock, upon whose colours he appeared to have modelled his own, came
surging up to them to claim the next dance from Myrtle. Other gallants
crowded after him, and as her ladyship sailed into the group to give Miss
Carey the support of her countenance in this siege, Mandeville slipped
away and went sauntering round the room indifferent to the raking fire of
the dowagers' spy-glasses which a man of his figure and bearing could
never escape.

Near the door of the smaller ante-room, in which, also, card-tables had
been set out, without however having as yet found tenants, the captain
was confronted by Sir Andrew, who had just separated from Lieutenant
Gascoyne of the Tamar. Sir Andrew was obviously perturbed. Never the man
to conceal emotion, his handsome countenance now plainly reflected
feelings that could not be pleasant.

"D'ye know what I'm told, Robert?" he hailed his kinsman, and at once
supplied the answer to his own question. "That Myrtle was with Harry
Latimer aboard the British sloop this morning." His tone conveyed that he
desired the announcement to be regarded as monstrous.

The manner of Mandeville's reply hardly fulfilled this desire. "They were
in her ladyship's party."

"You knew?" Sir Andrew seemed amazed at this. "And you didn't tell me?"

"Why disturb you with it? Perhaps it was no great matter, after all."

"No great matter If her ladyship has no more respect for her husband than
to be seen abroad in the company of a notorious rebel, I mean that my
daughter shall have more respect for herself and for me. It is known that
I've forbid my house to Latimer. For Myrtle to be seen with him after
that is to make herself and me ridiculous. Besides, hasn't she protested
that she would never speak to him again. Is she playing a double game,
Robert? Ye don't think that, do ye?"

"I am sure Myrtle is incapable of anything of the kind. You may be sure
that she is quite single in her purpose."

In what purpose?

Captain Mandeville took refuge in philosophic vagueness. "Who can fathom
woman?"

"Oh, damn your affectations!" Sir Andrew was undoubtedly irritable. "I
want to understand this thing."

Mandeville reflected that so did he. But for him there was at least the
measure of consolation that the inopportune Mr. Latimer would trouble
them no more.

He stood there in inconclusive talk with Sir Andrew, until the fiddles
under the direction of Monsieur Paul, the French dancing-master who kept
an academy in Queen Street, sounded a preliminary chord to summon the
dancers to the floor. The chatter became a little less noisy and the
movement of that throng of gaily-dressed men and women assumed a more
definite character as the couples moved hither and thither to take up
their stations.

A plump rather cherubic young gentleman in unrelieved clerical black,
wearing a parson's bands and a white tie-wig, sauntered up to them. He
was alone, he was obviously amiable, and he was to prove garrulous.
Without ceremony he joined the captain and the baronet, and burst into an
encomium of the fête, of Lord William, of Lady William, of Miles Brewton
and Miles Brewton's charming wife, and finally of colonial life in
general.

Mandeville thought him wearisome and scarce troubled to conceal the
thought. But Sir Andrew, who honoured the clergy, was at pains to be
pleasant in return. It had barely transpired that the gentleman was the
Rev. Mr. Faversham, the chaplain of the Tamar, and Sir Andrew was about
to ask him certain obvious questions, when Tom Izard came by with Myrtle
on his arm. She saw them, and smiled a smile that was mainly for her
father and Mandeville, but which the parson, knowing nothing of the
relationship between his companions and the lady, took entirely for
himself. He bowed low. As he came up again, his face wreathed in a
gratified smile, he turned to the other two.

"A delicious child!" he purred.

"To whom do you allude, sir?" the baronet asked him.

"To...ah..." The parson--unconscious instrument of Fate--made search for
a name in his memory. The name he found in his haste was the name to
which that very morning he had helped her.

"To Mrs. Latimer."

"Mrs. Latimer!" Sir Andrew's heavy brows were drawn together. Mandeville
drew an audible breath. The ring and the book! He called himself a fool
for having rejected the only possible inference from their conjunction.
It should not have required the addition of the parson. But Sir Andrew,
bewildered, was still questioning Mr. Faversham.

"Mrs. Latimer? Which here is Mrs. Latimer?"

The parson did not quite like the tone of the question. It recalled him
to his senses, and made him perceive the indiscretion he had committed.

"Per--perhaps I was mistook," he faltered. "Perhaps that was not the
name."

"Oh, yes," said Mandeville at his elbow. And his voice was quiet, though
his face was white. "That was the name. You have made no mistake. You
married them this morning aboard the sloop."

The parson stared at him in sheer relief. "It is known, then," he said.
"Bless me! I was fearful I had said too much."

He felt his arm caught in a grip that made him wince with pain. For Sir
Andrew was a man of great physical vigour, and at the moment he was using
it rather recklessly.

"Come in here, sir," he said in a voice thick as a drunkard's, and he all
but dragged the unfortunate parson across the threshold of the untenanted
little ante-room. Mandeville, following, took the precaution to close the
door. In any situation he could be trusted not to overlook essentials.

Leaning against one of the card-tables the cherubic Mr. Faversham looked
up in terror at the big handsome man towering threateningly above him,
and heard in terror the deep voice that commanded him to explain clearly
and without equivocation whom he had married and when.

"Sir...sir...I...I protest against the tone you take with me. You have
not the right to...to--"

The baronet interrupted him, in a voice of thunder.

"Have I not, sir? I am Sir Andrew Carey. I am the father of Miss Carey,
the lady of whom you spoke, I think. And you spoke of her as Mrs.
Latimer. Now, sir, be short and clear with me. I'll have no
prevarications..."

"Sir Andrew!" the little fellow was indignant. "It is not my habit to
prevaricate. I'll beg you to respect my cloth."

"Will you answer me?" roared Sir Andrew.

Mr. Faversham stiffened. "No, sir, I will not. I dislike your manners,
sir. I dislike them excessively. They are the manners of a boor...of
a...a planter. Which is, I take it, what you are. I'll trouble you not to
detain me." Thus, in the dignity, which Sir Andrew's rudeness justified
him in assuming, Mr. Faversham now thought to take secure refuge. But
never in all his life was he nearer having his neck broken than at that
moment.

Sir Andrew, white with passion, and trembling, gripped the parson's arm
once more, and literally shook the little gentleman.

"Sir, you trifle with me. You do not leave this room until you have
answered me."

Mandeville came to the rescue. He was miraculously calm. "Is this
insistence necessary, Sir Andrew? Can his reverence add anything to what
already he has admitted? He has practically confessed that he married
Myrtle to Harry Latimer this morning; and if I had not been dull of wit I
should have known it without his confession. I had evidence enough, God
knows."

Sir Andrew looked at the parson, wild-eyed, still maintaining that
crushing grip. He was breathing heavily.

"Is this true?" he asked. "In one word, sir; is it true?"

And then the door was opened, and Myrtle stood on the threshold. She had
seen her father's violent action in dragging the chaplain into the
ante-room, and she had seen Mandeville thereafter close the door. It had
required no more than that to tell her what had happened, and at the
earliest moment she had disengaged herself from the dance, and with Tom
Izard at her heels had come to intervene in a scene which so closely
concerned herself.

She was pale, but quite calm and very straight. Her loyal, candid nature
actually welcomed this occasion to make an end of the deceit she was
practising.

"Father, what is it you require to know?" she came forward. Tom followed
her, and closed the door again. If there was to be a scene, and he was
quite sure that a scene there was to be, they could well dispense with
witnesses.

Sir Andrew loosed the parson and turned on her, his great face purple,
his eyes terrible.

"I have been all but told that you were married this morning to...to
Harry Latimer. I...I can't believe it. I won't."

"It is quite true."

"True!" He stared at her for a long moment, his mouth open. "It is true!"
Then he sat down heavily, and with his hand motioned away the parson who
stood before him, whose very presence began to offend him.

Captain Mandeville tapped Mr. Faversham's shoulder, and beckoned him
towards the door. Glad enough to escape from all this mischief which he
was overwhelmed to think that he had made, Mr. Faversham obeyed the
signal.

"I am sorry, Miss...Mrs. Latimer," he faltered as he passed her. "I have
been monstrous indiscreet."

"It is no matter for that, sir," she answered him and contrived to smile
reassuringly.

"You may make amends by discretion now," the captain told him. "Do not
mention a word of what has passed to anyone, not even to Lady William.
Thus you will make it easier for us to...to repair the harm."

"Sir, you may depend upon me."

"Sir, I am much obliged. Your humble obedient." Mandeville bowed, and
opened the door to allow the chaplain to escape.

Myrtle advanced another step towards her father, whereupon he stirred,
and turned to look at her again with eyes that were now blood injected.

"You treacherous, hypocritical wretch," he growled at her in a voice that
was dull with pain and rage. You infamous jade! To hoodwink us thus! To
cozen us with lies! To tell us that you had broken with this scoundrel
Latimer, and all the while to be planning this dastardy?"

"That is not true, father. I have not been a hypocrite. When I told you
that I had broken with Harry, I told you the truth."

"The truth! Do you still dare to stand there and lie to me after what you
have done? Do you--"

"Sir Andrew!" Mandeville checked him, a hand upon his shoulder. "You are
not being just. Things are not always what they seem."

"You'll tell me this marriage only seems a marriage! Don't be a fool,
Robert. We have a fact here, not mere words. A damnable, scoundrelly
fact." And he brought his great fist down upon the card-table. "Facts are
not to be explained away by falsehood. They speak for themselves."

"Father, will you hear me?" she spoke intrepidly; pale it is true she
was, but she showed no other sign of fear.

"What is there to hear from you? Can anything you may say alter this
detestable fact? You are married. Married to Harry Latimer, an ingrate, a
rebel, a murderer, a man who has only just stopped short of threatening
my life. And you are my daughter! My God!" His hands raised a moment as
if in appeal to heaven were lowered to his knees, and his chin sank into
the lace of his bulging cravat.

She told him everything. Her self-deception in thinking that her love for
Harry was dead. Her discovery of the fact when his life was menaced. Her
attempt to combat his obstinate refusal to save himself.

"I discovered from him then that his reasons were concerned with me, and
with my conduct towards him. To remove those reasons, so that he might
depart while it was time, I gave him the only proof of my loyalty and
devotion."

He turned violently to stare at her again.

"Your loyalty and devotion? Your loyalty and devotion to a rebel, a
traitor? And what of your loyalty and devotion to your king? What of
that?"

It seemed to him in his bigotry and fanaticism that he presented a
crushing argument, an unanswerable question. But she answered it, a
little wan smile at the corners of her mouth.

"What is the king to me, after all? An idea. Little more than a word.
Harry is a reality. He is the man I have loved from childhood. What are
political opinions to me compared with the danger to his life? How do I
know that he is wrong, that you are right?"

"How do you know?" he asked her, and repeated it with rising vehemence of
incredulity. "How do you know?" The blasphemy of the question appalled
him.

How, indeed? He is not the only rebel in America."

"No, by God!" said Tom from the background. But no one heeded him, for
Myrtle was continuing:

"Here in Charles Town all that is best and ablest is already ranged in
opposition to the royal government. Are they all wrong? Are the few who
think as you do so right that Harry is to be thrust out accurst because
he has placed what he conceives to be his duty to his country above
personal interest. That is what he has done. And when a man does that, it
follows at least that his convictions are sincere. You protest your duty
and your loyalty. But what have you done to assist the cause that you
hold up to me as a religion? Harry has given ships, poured out his money
and risked his life to serve the faith he holds, the faith which you
account contemptible. Have you spent a single shilling to support the
tottering cause which you account so sacred?"

"Stop!" he commanded her, in a strangled voice.

But she went relentlessly on. "A choice, a bitter cruel choice was thrust
upon me yesterday. I did not know what to think, what to believe, until
it came to me that the test of the worth of your opinions, yours and
Harry's, lay in weighing what each of you had done for those opinions.
After that, father, there remained with me only regret for the grief I
might cause you by the step I was to take. Apart from that I had no
single doubt, no single misgiving arising out of Harry's political views."

Carey was helpless, mentally battered in advance by the heavy guns of her
arguments. Where he had thought to play the judge, the stern
Rhadamanthus, it seemed that he was become the accused. He looked at
Mandeville, whose mask-like face betrayed no emotion whatever.

"My God! He's bewitched her!"

Mandeville made him no answer. His dark, penetrating eyes shifted to
Myrtle, who shook her head as she smiled again that almost pathetic
smile.

"Harry has scarcely spoken to me about these things. What I have told you
are no more than my own thoughts."

"And now, madam, you'd best hear mine," her father answered grimly. "I
don't know how you planned this thing, or how far you were helped by your
rebel friend Sally Izard and her brother there, who may tell her what I
say. But I thank God for the merciful dispensation by which it has been
made known to me in time."

"In time? In time for what?" she asked him.

"In time to enable me to take my measures." He stood up, calmer now that
he clearly saw his way to checkmate the guilty pair and nullify their
act. "There's one thing you've forgot, the marriage laws of the colony.
You are not yet of age, Myrtle, and you cannot make a valid marriage
without my consent." He smiled maliciously. Almost it was a leer, "You'd
forgot that."

And then, even before she answered, Mandeville understood why a British
sloop should have been chosen for the marriage.

"No, father," she answered quietly. "We did not forget it. But the law of
the colonies does not run on board an English ship. By the law of England
my marriage is quite valid, and no power on earth can cancel it. The deck
of the Tamar is England at law."

Sir Andrew stiffened as understanding sank into his seething mind. For a
moment he babbled furious incoherencies. Then he became intelligible
again.

"It was that treacherous slut Sally Izard who contrived this. You'd never
have thought of it for yourself. That damned she-cat!"

Tom stepped forward. "Control yourself, Sir Andrew. You are speaking of
my sister."

"You--" In his fury words failed the baronet. Then Mandeville, ever calm,
intervened.

"You are speaking also of the governor's lady, Sir Andrew. If you are
overheard--"

"Damme! I mean to be overheard. I mean to tell her to her face what I
think of her, and Lord William may call me out for it. What's he,
himself, but a doll on wires, a silly puppet .n the hands of his rebel
wife. A king's representative! By God! They shall hear the truth--"

"Sir Andrew! Sir Andrew! Calm, for God's sake!" Mandeville implored him,
with something imperative and dominating in his voice. Pressing upon Sir
Andrew's shoulders, he almost forced him down into the chair again.

"Leave me with him, please," Myrtle begged him.

But that was the last thing Mandeville desired just then.

"Not now, Myrtle. Not now," he answered quietly. "Indeed, you would be
much better advised to leave him to me." He stepped close to her, and
sank his voice. "I think I can quiet him--make him see reason. Go now,
and trust to me." He pressed her hand and was conscious of a responsive
pressure on his own.

She needed a friend, just such a strong calm friend as this. He drew her
towards the door, and beckoned Tom Izard to escort her.

"Trust me," he said again, as she was passing out. "I'll make your peace
with him. All will be well, Myrtle."

Trusting him she went, with Tom who did not trust him at all, but held
his peace.

Alone with the baronet, Mandeville grew brisk.

"Now, Sir Andrew, the harm is done; and repining over what is
accomplished never yet helped any man."

"I am in need of platitudes," Sir Andrew sneered. "They help a deal."

"What's to remember is that a thing done may be undone."

Now here was talk of quite a different kind. The baronet looked up
sharply. Mandeville continued, his voice soft and low:

"Wives, Sir Andrew, can be widowed. And if Myrtle were widowed now, at
this stage, scarcely wed as she is, the harm would be slight, indeed."

"If...ay--if." Sir Andrew was staring at him. He stared long and hard,
and it seemed to him that although Mandeville's lips remained tight, his
dark, unfathomable eyes were smiling. Gradually it was borne in upon him
that Mandeville was offering a practical suggestion.

"What do you mean?" he asked at last, in a hushed voice.

Mandeville answered very slowly, a man measuring out words one at a time.
"It is possible, Sir Andrew, that Myrtle is a widow already." He paused to
sigh. "Poor Myrtle!"

Sir Andrew was trembling. "Will you be plain, man?"

"If she is not a widow already, undoubtedly her widowhood will follow
soon; and it is certain that she will never set eyes on Latimer again."

He paused, and again he sighed, and made a little gesture of regret and
helplessness. He would have preferred by much not to have been
constrained to give Sir Andrew this news. But he saw no help for it if a
terrible scene were to be avoided. For that Sir Andrew would, unless
pacified, do as he threatened by Lady William, Mandeville could not
doubt. Upon that must follow explanations which Mandeville had no desire
to provoke. Therefore he took this the only means of quieting the
baronet's fury.

"In view of Latimer's refusal to quit the province, Lord William has no
choice but to proceed to extremes against him. But since to do so openly
here in Charles Town might provoke a riot and bring about dreadful
consequences to the royal government which is not yet in case to assert
its authority, Lord William has decided to have Latimer secretly arrested
to-night and put on board a vessel to be taken to England for trial."

If any doubts had remained with Mandeville that Sir Andrew's affection
for his adopted son had perished utterly they would have been definitely
shattered now by the expression of savage satisfaction on the baronet's
face.

"Yes, yes? And--?" Sir Andrew asked him clutching his arm.

"By this time the thing should be already done. If he gives no
trouble...he will live to be tried and hanged in England." Mandeville's
tone was tinged with infinite regret. "In obtaining him a respite in
which to quit Charles Town, I had done all that man could to save
him...It was impossible that Lord William would further have heeded me if
I had attempted to plead with him against dealing with Latimer in this
fashion. Yet--for Myrtle's sake and even for your own--I have regretted
it until this moment."

"There was no occasion," growled Sir Andrew.

"So I now perceive. Indeed, I am glad that he is put away in this
fashion."

"It's a dispensation of Providence," said the baronet solemnly.

"Ay. Fate is not always quite so opportune. But you perceive, Sir Andrew,
that there is no need for further trouble or excitation on your part. No
need to embroil yourself by upbraiding Lady William."

"Oh! As to that..." Sir Andrew rose. "I make no promises. It is time,
high time, someone spoke out. This woman in the position of a queen is a
scandal in all loyal eyes. Her action to-day--"

"Sir Andrew, wait! Consider!" Mandeville laid a hand upon his shoulder,
and looked squarely, gravely into his face. "You cannot make war on a
woman without hurt to your dignity. But, further, you cannot bring her
ladyship to task without publishing this...this adventure of Myrtle's. Do
you wish to make it known that your daughter so far forgot her duty as to
marry this notorious rebel? It is to put a blight upon her and upon
yourself."

It was a shrewd plea, and of immediate effect.

"You're right. But then--?"

"In view of what is happening to Latimer, this marriage will be as if it
had never been, and no one need ever know of it. The few concerned in it
are pledged to secrecy, and in a few days the only two men on the Tamar
who are aware of what was done there this morning may have left these
waters never to return. Why, then, injure Myrtle by a publication
of...of--"

"Of this piece of infamy, you would say. Why, Robert, you are right, and
I thank you for the warning. I'll hold my tongue."



CHAPTER XVII - GROCRAT'S WHARF


In the dining-room of his house an the bay--the only room that was not
already muffled and swaddled against the imminent evacuation--sat Harry
Latimer alone at supper, waited upon by Hannibal, a stalwart and devoted
young mulatto in his service. Julius, his butler, together with Johnson,
his valet, had already set out for Santee Broads to see the house made
ready to receive the bridal couple. With them they had taken Myrtle's
mauma, Dido, who had earlier accompanied her mistress to Lady William
Campbell's.

Mr. Latimer's travelling carriage stood ready in the coach-house, the
luggage packed, and at eleven o'clock punctually, as he had ordered, the
horses would be harnessed and they would set out to go post themselves by
St. Michael's, opposite the State House, there to await Myrtle.

As he was finishing his lonely supper, which is to say towards nine
o'clock, Colonel Gadsden was announced. Gadsden had a ship that was
sailing for England with the morning tide. He was on his way to her with
letters, one of which from Henry Laurens was addressed to John Wilkes,
that famous champion of the liberties of Englishmen wherever found.

"It's a forlorn hope," lie confessed. "But Wilkes has a way of compelling
petitions to be received, and he has already proved himself more than
once the friend of America."

That, however, was more or less by the way. The real object of Gadsden's
visit was to place the service of his ship at his friend's disposal
should Latimer have letters for England.

Mr. Latimer had not, but he was nevertheless grateful for the neighbourly
offer, and he pressed the colonel to join him in a glass of port.

Colonel Gadsden took the chair that Hannibal proffered at his master's
bidding.

"But I must not stay a moment. There's a wherry waiting for me at the
wharf."

Hannibal poured for him a glass of the red amber wine, brought out in
Latimer's own ships, which traded to Portugal the rice of his plantations
on the Santee. The colonel held it up appreciatively to the candle-light,
then sipped and commended it.

"You're not at Miles Brewton's ball?" Latimer asked him.

"Not I, faith. What should I do at a ball in honour of King George? For
it's little less than that. The tories'll be there in full force. Here's
perdition to them!" And he drank, whilst Latimer laughed at the vehemence
of his toast. "And so you're leaving us, after all?" The colonel sighed.
"Perhaps you're wise. But, egad I it needed some such Roman gesture as
you threatened to put an end to this stagnation, to this eternal
temporizing of both sides."

Let us hope that we may yet temporize into a peaceful settlement."

"A stale delusion," Gadsden condemned it. "And a delusion that holds us
spellbound whilst opportunity is slipping by. This letter of Laurens' to
John Wilkes!" He shrugged contemptuously. "It expresses the hope of
Laurens and some hundreds like him. They're lukewarm, which means neither
hot nor cold. A detestable condition, fit for weaklings. Laurens loves
his country, and he's loyal to our brother colonists in the North who
have suffered. But he's loyal, too, to his own interests, like so many
other of these wealthy planters. And he does not yet see how his own
interests will best be served."

"You can't charge me with that," said Latimer.

"I know, lad. I know. Here's to our next meeting!" He finished his wine
and got up.

"When will that be?" wondered Latimer.

"Sooner than you think, perhaps. For if the drums beat, Moultrie tells me
you've promised to serve under him, and they may beat very soon now." He
held out his hand. "Goodbye, Harry. Good luck!"

But Latimer, who had also risen, went with him to the door, and after the
colonel's departure stood a moment under the stars that were appearing in
the darkening sky. Slowly he retraced his steps to the dining-room, and
sat down to wait. An hour or so later, after he had read the week's
Gazette, and as he was considering seeking a book in the library, for it
was yet a full hour before the time appointed to set out, Hannibal
brought him a note that a messenger had just left.

He broke the seal, and unfolded the sheet. Hastily scrawled upon it in
pencil were the lines: "Please come to me at the earliest moment. I have
news of utmost urgency for you. Very important." And under this the
signature, big and bold, "Henry Laurens."

He stood considering. "You say the messenger has gone?"
"Yessah," replied Hannibal.

Latimer thought it was odd that in such urgency as the note suggested
Laurens should not have come at once instead of sending for him. But
perhaps there was someone else concerned. Someone who might be with
Laurens. Anyway, he had better go.

"Get me my hat, Hannibal."

Hannibal went out, and Mr. Latimer set down his pipe and followed him. In
the hall the slave proffered him not only his hat, but his gloves and
sward as well. He took the hat and was waving the rest away when he
remembered a warning Moultrie had yesterday given him not to go abroad
unarmed. So, changing his mind, he took the small sword, and hooked it
into the carriages which he was wearing under his silver-laced black
coat.

"Order the carriage to follow me to Mr. Laurens', and to await me there.
I shall not be returning. Come with it, and bring me what I may require.
Tell Fanshaw I have gone."

Fanshaw was Mr. Latimer's factor, who, with his wife, would remain in
charge of the Charles Town residence during Mr. Latimer's absence.

Outside the gates, he turned to the right and went briskly along the Bay
towards the Governor's Bridge. As he crossed the latter the advance of
the making tide was gurgling up the creek which it served to span. There
was not a soul abroad, and the only sounds seemed to be from the water,
where odd voices were to be heard calling to one another and where lights
dancing in the gloom indicated the positions of the ships at their
moorings.

Mr. Latimer passed Craven's bastion without meeting anyone, and he was
just abreast of Wragg's Alley when abruptly from out of that narrow
unlighted lane stepped a man, who hailed him by name.

"Mr. Latimer!"

Before he could reflect upon the oddness of his being recognized in the
dark across the width of the street by a man who was no more than a black
outline in his own eyes he had halted and answered.

"Yes. Who is that?"

At once he realized his indiscretion, and something else besides. Behind
him quickly-advancing steps became suddenly audible, and he guessed
immediately that he had been followed. At the same moment, almost as if
his clear reply to the stranger's hail had been a signal, four or five
men came charging out of the blackness of Wragg's Alley and across the
Bay Street straight towards him.

Mr. Latimer did not wait. He was off along the courtine lines running
like a stag. He was agile, strong and swift of foot, and he had the
supreme advantage of being lightly shod. Away he sped, his feet scarce
touching the ground, racing for Laurens' house, which was the first in
the direction he was going and not above two hundred yards away. Behind
him the blundering gallop of his heavy-footed pursuers was receding as
was the cursing Irish voice that was urging them on, and Harry Latimer
laughed as he ran, accounting the race already ever, although he had not
yet covered more than half the distance.

He was abreast of the dark and deserted custom-house with the next
bastion on his left when suddenly the laughter perished in him. Two men
who seemed to rise out of the ground, so sudden was their apparition,
stood immediately ahead, and before he could check or swerve he was
carried by his own headlong impetus straight into their waiting arms.

"Got him!" shouted one of his captors, but found breath for no more, for
the captive writhing in their arms was not proving easy to hold. They
swayed half way across the street in their struggles, and then, just as
they imagined they were subduing him, he thrust violently and viciously
upwards with his right knee into the body of one of them, and sent the
fellow reeling back and doubled up with pain. Thus released on the right
side, he swung round in the grip of his other assailant and broke the
skin of his knuckles in a blow between the fellow's eyes that stretched
him on the ground.

He was free of them. But the others were upon him in a bunch, and it was
too late to resume his flight. At bay, then, he swung his shoulders to
the wall of the custom house, to protect his back, whipped out his sword,
and pinked the thigh of the foremost of those who beset him.

With a howl of pain the man fell back. His swiftly-dealt wound and the
lithe blade gleaming lividly in the gloom gave his companions pause. But
there was another coming up, who had followed more at leisure, and yet
was not so easily intimidated.

"What's this, ye blackguards?" quoth that Irish voice. "How many more of
ye does it need to take a man?"

"He's armed, major," said one of them.

"Armed is he. Stand away there, ye good-for-nothing omadhauns."

There was the slither of a sword leaving its scabbard, a bulky figure
advanced, and the next moment Latimer's blade was engaged by an energetic
swordsman.

It was almost instinctive fighting, in which the eyes availed but little.
But some little they did avail, and the advantage was heavily with
Latimer, for such light as existed being behind his opponent, Latimer, by
crouching, could make out enough to guide him, whilst himself against the
background of the wall he must have been almost invisible.

For a moment he had feared that a pistol might end the matter. But since
this had not yet happened he was now assured that they meant to do the
business silently. He took heart at the reflection, and fought on, scarce
daring for a moment to lose the feel of the opposing blade.

And as he fought he wondered who might be his assailants. The others had
addressed his present antagonist as "Major," and the man's speech for
all its brogue was of a quality that confirmed the title. Moreover,
Latimer could make out the gleam of the gold-laced cuff and the
buttonholes and white of the man small clothes.

Was this something that was being done by order of Lord William? It
seemed inconceivable. And yet if it were not, how came a British officer
engaged in it? They were questions that flitted in one second through
Latimer's mind, to be dismissed in the next. The first thing to be done
was to settle this major's account. The investigation of his identity and
the rest could wait. To this first business Latimer addressed himself so
aptly that it was done within a very few seconds of engaging.

Realizing his disadvantage in the matter of light, the major was in haste
to be done. After a half-dozen groping passes in which the other's blade
clung tenaciously to his own, following it round insistently, the major
broke away with a violent forcing disengage, feinted high, and lunged. In
the nick of time Latimer side-stepped, instinctively presenting his point
to receive his antagonist. And receive him he did. The point of the
major's unresisted weapon struck the wall. The sword bent double, under
the weight of his following impetus, and snapped off short, whilst
impaled through the stomach on the antagonist blade the same impetus
carried him forward until his body brought up against Latimer's hilt, and
his face, a white mask in which the open mouth and eyes made three black
holes, was within a foot of Latimer's.

Latimer was conscious, first of surprise, and then of nausea. Yielding to
the latter, he thrust that body away from him so violently and
impetuously that he loosed his grasp of the sword. Carrying it with him,
still impaling him, the major toppled over backwards and lay there on the
kidney stones writhing and faintly moaning.

Appalled and almost physically sick, Latimer leaned a moment against the
wall. Then, as the voices of the men excited and objurgatory broke out
about him, he roused himself to a sense of his increased peril, now that
he was disarmed. He bounded forward to resume his flight, but one of the
ruffians who had come up with him, thrust out a leg to trip him, and he
pitched forward at full length. Instantly there was a knee in the small
of his back with the weight of a whole body resting upon it, and two
pairs of hands were busy about him. Whilst he was thus pinned down, his
arms were wrenched behind him, and his wrists tied with a thong of
leather.

Desperately he raised his head, and loosed one lusty shout for help. The
next moment a muffler was wrapped about his mouth and nose so tightly
that he could scarcely breathe. The two who had charge of him next tied
his ankles fast together, then rolled him over on to his back, and left
him lying there whilst they went aside to the others who were kneeling
about their fallen leader.

One of the men whom Latimer had hurt was by now recovered, and had also
joined that group, the other, on his feet again, was leaning still sick
and faint against the custom-house wall.

If they had rendered Latimer helpless and dumb, at least they had not
rendered him deaf, and their rough voices reached him where he lay.

"Is the major much hurt?" asked one of those who had been lately with
Latimer.

"Hurt?" growled another voice, "Hell! It's killed he is. He's got it in
the guts." Oaths followed, vicious and obscene.

All talked together explosively, until one who seemed to assume authority
called them to some sort of order.

"Damn you, we can't stay here to be caught. Pick him up, and carry him to
the boat, and let's fetch that blasted tyke along as well."

Two of them came back to Latimer, and lifted him. Two others were doing
the like by the major. The one in authority crossed the street to the
side of the bastion. There he halted, at fault.

"Which way?" he asked.

"Straight on to the wharf where we landed, of course."
"Are ye sure the boat's waiting there?"

"Where else, Tim?"

"Hell!" swore Tim. "How do I know what orders the major gave the boatman?
The boat, maybe, was to have come up for us."

They stood debating for some Moments. It became clear that the major's
insensibility left them in a quandary.

"God damn my soul!" cried one. "Even if we find the boat we don't know
where to take him."

"He was to ha' been put aboard a ship for England," said Tim.

"Ay. But what ship. There's a mort o' ships to choose from yonder."

"Oh, heave him into the sea, and have done with it, damn him!" growled
another.

"Wait, wait!" Tim admonished them. "It might be awkward afterwards,
seeing what's happened to the major, and us with him. Who's to say we
didn't murder him ourselves? Cap'n Davenant'll be asking questions when
we gets back to the fort. Here, I have it I we'll take the blackguard to
the fort, and let the cap'n settle it. Come on." And he began to move
away down the street.

"But where's the boat, you fool?" one of them shouted after him.

"We'll go back to the wharf where we landed. And keep a sharp look-out
the whiles over the water."

So they trudged on, bearing their two burdens, and without meeting a soul
on the way, past Laurens' residence and on for a hundred yards or so
until they came to Grockat's Wharf, around the piles of which the waves
of the making tide were being whipped by a quickening breeze. They turned
on to this, glad to be off the street at last. The leader went first,
then the two who carried Latimer, followed by the others bearing the
major.

"There she is!" cried Tim. "You see I was right."

Dimly at the far end of the wharf they could make out the lines of a
wherry standing alongside, and the figures of one or two of the rowers
were silhouetted in the light of a lantern glowing from the boat's
bottom. On the breeze came a murmur of voices.

They hurried on towards the boat. In the stern sheets a man was standing;
speaking to the crew. He paused as the newcomers advanced. And then the
two of them that were handling Latimer, swung him forward to the man in
the wherry.

"Here y'are damn you!" shouted one of them in exasperation. "Lend a
hand!"

Three or four of those in the boat instinctively rose from their oars to
receive the body that was almost being hurled at them. They caught it,
and lowered it between thwarts.

"Fetch her up," Tim ordered at the same time. "The major's hurt. Let's set
him down in the stern. Come on, there!"

The man who was standing in the stern sheets stooped and picked up the
lantern.

"Now who the devil may you be?" he asked, and swung the light aloft to
cast it upon their countenances.

What he saw was no great matter. What they saw by the light of that
raised lantern was a gold-laced coat--a blue coat with scarlet facings
and golden shoulder knots, the uniform of a colonel of the army of
Provincial Congress. And above the stiff high collar they beheld a grim,
grey hawk face that was entirely strange to them.

"Hell and the devil! said the wooden-headed Tim, realizing the blunder
they had made in the dark. And incontinently he turned and fled as fast
as his legs could carry him up the wharf. After him, as if Satan were
behind them, went his fellows, leaving the major's weltering body where
they had dropped it in their sudden panic.

"What the devil...?" the man in uniform was beginning, when he cropped
the question, and bawled an order instead: "Up, and after them!"

In a moment his six negroes were out of the boat. But another shout from
their master arrested them. He had lowered the lantern to the face of the
man who lay almost at his feet. In a moment, he had removed the muffler
from the captive's face.

"Latimer!" he cried.

And Latimer, lying there helpless, laughed up at him out of a countenance
that was ghastly.

"It's lucky for me you had letters for England to-night, Colonel Gadsden,"
he said.



CHAPTER XVIII - THE PISTOL-SHOT


"And this," said Latimer between scorn and amusement, "is how King
George's representative keeps faith. On my soul, it's worthy of King
George himself."

He and Gadsden were kneeling on the wharf beside the prostrate and
inanimate body of Major Sykes, fully revealed to them in the light of the
colonel's lantern.

"If Hannibal hadn't thrust a sword into my hand at the last moment, I
suppose I should be on my way to England now." He got up. "I'm afraid the
poor wretch is sped."

"Don't plague yourself about him," said Gadsden. "My men'll see to him.
What of yourself? You were best away, I think."

"Yes, but not until I've seen the governor. I owe him an explanation of
how I killed a British officer, and perhaps he will offer me one of how
this British officer came to meddle with me, when I had his lordship's
word for it that no action would be taken until to-morrow morning."

"Ay," said Gadsden. "Ye're right. Ye don't want to be pursued for
murder."

They set out. But they went on foot no farther than Mr. Laurens' house,
outside which Latimer's travelling carriage was now waiting with Hannibal
in attendance. They climbed into it as eleven o'clock was chiming from
St. Philip's, and drove straight to the State House.

Latimer would have gone at once into the ball-room in his quest for the
governor. But in the hall, untenanted at the moment save by a half-dozen
negro lackeys, who stared round-eyed at his dishevelled appearance,
Gadsden stayed him.

"Look at yourself, man. D'ye think ye're a sight for the ladies?"

And only then did Latimer seem to become conscious of his condition.
Stained almost from head to foot in mud and blood, his head unkempt, one
of his stockings torn, and a rent in the back of his brave coat of black
corded silk with silver lace and purple linings, he was a terrifying
spectacle.

He remained, therefore, in the hall, whilst Gadsden went to find the
Governor. A dance was in progress, and his excellency was engaged in it.
So, of necessity, Gadsden must wait, whilst Latimer paced the hall.

But not for long was he alone. Down the stairs presently from the buffet
above came Colonel Moultrie with Mrs. Brewton, and then Lady William with
young Drayton, and following almost immediately Myrtle herself on the arm
of Tom Izard. Behind these there were two or three other couples, and all
of them stood at gaze, appalled and terrified by Mr. Latimer's
appearance.

Myrtle ran to him in terror, Lady William and Tom Izard following
closely.

"What's happened? Harry! Why are you like this?" You conceive the
bombardment of startled questions he was constrained to stand.

"It's nothing. A trifling accident."

"You're not hurt, Harry?" Myrtle cried.

He reassured her, and whilst doing so he perceived that her sudden
advent, which at first had vexed him, was indeed most opportune. He drew
her aside a little, and lowered his voice, so that his words were for her
alone.

"My carriage is at the door, Myrtle. Hannibal is there. This is your
opportunity. Slip into it, and wait for me. I'll join you in a moment, as
soon as I have had a word with Lord William."

Momentary excitement and concern turned her pale. She had not seen her
father since their interview in the little ante-room. Indeed, he had
appeared to avoid her. But Mandeville had assured her that all was well;
that he had pacified Sir Andrew, and that she need fear no violent
outburst. And she had thanked Mandeville from a heart that was full of
gratitude for his concern and kindliness.

She nodded now to Harry, her eyes considering him with tender
wistfulness. She would take her opportunity, she assured him, of slipping
out unobserved. He should find her in the carriage when he came, and then
he must tell her what had happened, who had attacked him.

The opportunity was not long delayed. Presently the music ceased, and a
moment or two later Gadsden appeared at the door of the main ante-room,
beckoning Latimer forward. He went, the others following. Myrtle lagged
behind with Lady William until all had passed in, then Lady William
hugged her an instant.

"Bless you, child Be happy!"

She kissed her, and Myrtle was gone speeding out and down the steps, to
the carriage into which Hannibal, grinning widely in welcome, assisted
her.

And meanwhile, Lord William was advancing to meet Mr. Latimer, and his
eyes opened wide with astonishment as he surveyed the gentleman's
disordered appearance.

"Mr. Latimer, what is this?"

"The result of what appears, but which I cannot believe to be, a breach
of faith on the part of your excellency. An attempt was made to-night to
seize me and put me on board a ship for England."

There was a burst of indignation from Moultrie and Drayton who stood
behind him, and a general murmur from others who were flowing into the
ante-room and halting there at gaze. Amongst them, indeed in the foremost
ranks, were Sir Andrew Carey with Stuart, the Indian Agent, and Anthony
Fletchall, the back-country tory leader. Immediately behind Carey, and
sharing his disgusted astonishment but manifesting it less freely was
Mandeville. Others from the ballroom were pressing forward behind them,
and it was with difficulty that a posse of lackeys in gorgeous liveries
bearing trays of Sillery were able to circulate and draw attention to the
refreshment which they offered.

Lord William fell back a step in sheer amazement at Latimer's words. Then
he collected himself.

"I am relieved, sir, that you do not impute to any orders of mine an
attack, whose object I imagine you are assuming."

"I am not assuming it, Lord William. Colonel Gadsden has seen enough to
be able to bear me out in part. The intention was as I have said, I
overheard it among the men who took me, and they were led by a British
officer."

"That I cannot believe." The governor's face flushed scarlet. Sternly he
voiced a sudden suspicion: "Mr. Latimer, is this an attempt to stir up
feeling?"

But Latimer unceremoniously interrupted him.

"Your excellency, the body of that British officer will bear witness to
what I say. It is lying now on Grockat's Wharf."

"Ay," said Gadsden. "I've seen it, and seen the men who carried it."

"You...killed him?"

"I had that misfortune. In my own defence."

There was hubbub now among the tories and among several officers of the
Tamar who were present. But his lordship quelled it, raising his hand.

"Who was this officer? Do you know?"

Gadsden answered him: "Major Sykes from Fort Johnson. I had better tell
your lordship what I witnessed of this affair." And he related how the
men had brought Latimer bound and gagged, and had dropped him into the
wrong boat. "But for that mistake, your excellency," Gadsden ended with a
certain grim aggressiveness, whose significance there was no mistaking,
"it is unlikely that Mr. Latimer would ever have been heard of again."

The high colour remained in his lordship's face, but its expression grew
troubled; almost he had a guilty look, for the mention of the officer's
identity brought back to his mind the thing that had yesterday been
suggested in Sykes' presence.

Into Carey's ear Mandeville whispered at that moment. "For his own sake
he must disclaim all knowledge of it."

And even as he spoke, the governor turned to seek him among the gaping
crowd.

"Captain Mandeville!"

Mandeville stepped forward, graceful and unperturbed.

"Do you know anything of this?" the governor demanded.

"I?" quoth Mandeville. "No more than your excellency." But he was not to
escape so easily.

"That's an equivocal answer, Captain Mandeville," said Moultrie sharply.

A hand fell on the colonel's sleeve. He turned, and there beside him
stern and impassive stood John Rutledge with obvious intent to restrain
him from adding fuel to this already ample blaze. But Moultrie, indignant
and concerned for his friend, for once shook off the arm of the lawyer
with impatience.

And meanwhile Mandeville had drawn himself up, and was looking down his
nose at the colonial officer.

"Colonel Moultrie, I have not the habit of equivocation."

"I know nothing of your habits, and care less," the colonel answered him.
"But I know an equivocation when I hear it."

Lord William intervened. The atmosphere was becoming dangerously charged.
"The equivocation will be removed, I think, if I assert to you on my
honour, Mr. Latimer, that it was by no orders of mine that this thing
happened, and that I know nothing whatever of how it came about.

"Will your excellency go so far as to reprobate it?" Latimer asked him as
courteously as such a question could be asked.

"Sincerely," was the prompt and emphatic reply. "And I shall not rest
until I have discovered what is behind it."

Mr. Latimer bowed. "I thank your excellency. I have reported the event,
and rendered the immediate account of it which my departure from Charles
Town makes necessary. If your excellency has no further questions for me,
perhaps you will give me leave to withdraw."

"Assuredly, Mr. Latimer." And his excellency slightly inclined his head.

Mr. Latimer bowed a second time, and turned to depart. But departure was
not quite so easy. There were friends behind him waiting to congratulate
him on his escape, and there was Rutledge with a sharp reprimand.

"You see, sir, the perils into which your rashness is plunging not only
yourself but all of us."

Latimer smiled. He was very weary, and suddenly conscious of his
weariness now that the excitement sustaining him had passed.

"I hope that my departure will restore to Charles Town the peace of
which, with the possible exception of King George, I appear to be the
only disturber."

He passed on to be detained by others, and there was Moultrie assuring
him that he would soon be back. "When you hear my drums there'll be a
place for you, Harry. And don't bear Rutledge any ill-will. He's a
curmudgeon. But honest."

Meanwhile behind him, at the other end of the ante-room, where the crowd
had melted a little, so that the lackeys with the Sillery were now
circulating more freely, the governor was finding himself beset by a knot
of hostile tories led by Carey.

"Does your excellency really mean," the baronet was asking truculently,
"that a British officer may be murdered in the streets and his murderer
allowed to go his ways?" He was livid with anger and with something more
than anger.

Lord William's manner was gravely, sadly tolerant. "The evidence is
against you, Sir Andrew. No British officer has been murdered. Mr.
Latimer killed a British officer in self-defence. You heard the account
of it from Colonel Gadsden."

"Your lordship accepts the word of open and acknowledged rebels
against--"

"Sir Andrew, I think you are presuming," his lordship interrupted him.

"It is your excellency who compels it."

"I would, sir, I could as easily compel you to remember your manners."
And his lordship turned his shoulder upon the baronet, to take a glass of
Sillery from the tray a servant was proffering. Then deliberately he
addressed himself to Laurens who was standing near.

Sir Andrew fell back a step, clenching his hands. He looked a mute appeal
at Mandeville. Mandeville imperceptibly raised his eyebrows, and as
imperceptibly shrugged. Sir Andrew understood that he must depend upon
himself alone. Latimer was more than half-way across the room already on
his journey to the door. Towards that same door the baronet now
circuitously but quickly made his way. A servant approached him with a
tray of wine. He was beginning to wave the man away when suddenly he
checked the gesture. Inspiration gleamed in his full eyes. He took up a
glass, and Mr. Latimer turning at that moment came face to face with him.
For a moment Mr. Latimer stood, returning the baronet's intent regard.
Then he bowed to him, and would have passed on. But Sir Andrew's words
arrested him.

"You are leaving us, Mr. Latimer?" the voice was smooth, and yet there
was a note in it that stirred Moultrie and brought him in quick strides
to the side of his friend.

"I am just going, Sir Andrew."

"But surely you will stay to drink first a loyal toast?" And Sir Andrew
waved towards him the servant with the tray of glasses.

Latimer scented mischief, and for an instant hesitated, looking at Carey
as if to fathom his purpose. Then, deeming that here unquestioning
submission was the shortest and safest course, he took up a glass.

"A loyal toast?" he questioned. He added with a lightness he was very far
from feeling: "With all my heart, or any other toast." And he quoted: "I
warrant 'twill prove an excuse for the glass."

There was the slightest pause, in which Sir Andrew seemed yet again to be
measuring the young man with his eyes. Then slowly, solemnly, almost
pompously, he raised his glass. Lord William, across the room, upon which
a silence had unaccountably fallen, stood very straight and stiff,
considering the baronet. To him this seemed the prelude of some
indefinable impertinence. Moultrie took a glass of Sillery from the tray
that was thrust before him. The others, already supplied, stood waiting a
little curiously for the toast.

"Gentlemen," said Sir Andrew, with the least suspicion of pompousness:
"The King! God Save the King!"

Proposed at such a time and in such a place--with so many present who
were actively engaged in opposing those measures for the subjugation of
the colonies which emanated from the king himself--this was not so much a
toast as a challenge. But all were concerned to keep the peace. And so,
loyal and rebel alike, murmured in chorus: "The King!" and drank with
Sir Andrew.

Under cover of that murmur, Moultrie had whispered imperatively to
Latimer: "Drink!"

But even without that injunction it is unlikely that Latimer would have
rendered himself conspicuous by refusing the toast. He had undergone
enough that night to desire above everything the avoidance of further
trouble. And so, after the least pause, in which he was questioning
himself on the subject of Sir Andrew's purpose, he too, muttered "The
King!" and drained his glass.

Sir Andrew lowered his own, still half full of wine, and looked at Mr.
Latimer with narrowing eyes.

"You had no compunction, Mr. Latimer, in honouring that toast?"

Mr. Latimer smiled, for all that by now the scent of danger was breast
high with him. "None," he said lightly. "God Save the King, by all means.
He stands in need of saving."

"From his enemies, you mean?"

"No, sir; from his friends."

It was a plain enough allusion to that party known as "the king's
friends" through whom King George ruled the Empire in violation of the
established system of placing the government in the hands of the majority
party in Parliament. And it is to be doubted if it was resented by anyone
present, not excluding Lord William. It was sufficient, however, and more
than sufficient for Sir Andrew's purpose.

"That," he said, "is a treasonable speech." And on the words, he flung the
remaining contents of his glass full in the face of Mr. Latimer.

"Sir Andrew!" It was Lord William who spoke, advancing, and almost
thrusting himself between the two. His voice was charged with reproachful
indignation, and of reproachful indignation were the murmurs that arose
from every member of that company.

Some thoughtfully hustled the few ladies into the ballroom, and closed
the door. Lady William, however, declining to be hustled, remained there
with Miss Ravenell beside her.

Moultrie set a hand upon Latimer's shoulder to restrain him, to urge him
at all costs to refrain from being entangled in a quarrel. It was hardly
necessary. White and trembling, yet Mr. Latimer preserved his
self-command. He drew a fine handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his
dripping cheek.

"You won't wipe that off with a handkerchief, my friend," Sir Andrew
goaded him, rather coarsely.

He looked at Sir Andrew. Then half turned to the others present, and made
them an inclusive bow.

"I take my leave," he said, and moved to depart, Moultrie making shift to
go with him. But Sir Andrew resolutely, fiercely, barred his way.

No, by God!"

"Sir Andrew!" Again it was Lord William who intervened, stepping up to
Carey as he did so. Are you out of your senses, sir? Deliberately you
provoked Mr. Latimer, and in the face of that provocation, Mr. Latimer
perhaps spoke foolishly--affording you the pretext you were seeking. But
you shall push this matter no further. You shall respect his forbearance
as we all do."

"Forbearance!" Sir Andrew laughed unpleasantly. "Here's a new name for
cowardice. And do you make yourself a shield for cowards, Lord William,
as well as for rebels and murderers!"

"Sir Andrew, you forget, I think, to whom you speak." Very dignified and
stern the young governor towered there beside him. But the tory fanatic
and outraged father in one, flung off the last rag of restraint.

"Your lordship places me under that necessity. I did not invite your
intervention in my quarrel. Nor do I think did Mr. Latimer, though I've
no doubt the cur will welcome it."

"Sir Andrew, you push things too far," cried Latimer, and there was no
lack of voices to approve him.

"Please, please, Mr. Latimer." His excellency raised a hand to restrain
him, then turned again to the wrathful baronet. "Sir Andrew, Mr. Latimer
has an engagement of honour with me, an engagement to be gone from
Charles Town before morning. From that engagement I cannot, for reasons
of high policy, release him, so that in no case would it be possible for
Mr. Latimer to remain to meet any...other engagement to-morrow."

"There is not the need to wait until to-morrow," Carey answered. "If Mr.
Latimer possesses the courage which he is so reluctant to display, let
him meet me here and now."

Burning with shame and anger, Latimer turned to the faithful friend
beside him.

"Moultrie, this is intolerable! He places me under the absolute necessity
of proving my courage."

"He does not, Mr. Latimer," his lordship answered him. "None present
doubts your courage, rest assured."

"He'll be glad enough to rest in that assurance," mocked Sir Andrew. "But
there again your lordship exceeds authority. I doubt his courage, for
one."

The governor looked at him a moment, sternly.

"Sir Andrew, you compel me to exercise my jurisdiction. In the king's
name I forbid you to meet Mr. Latimer."

Sir Andrew met the command with a burst of laughter, loud and offensively
derisive.

"In the King's name! In the King's name! That's choice, damme! In the
King's name you forbid me to punish an insult to the King's majesty! I
wonder what the King would think of his vicegerent in South Carolina."
Then controlling his insolent mirth, he added, almost formally: "I must
remind your excellency that you are a guest like myself, and that your
warrant does not run here."

"You refuse to recognize my authority?" Lord William's head was haughtily
thrown back, his face slightly flushed.

Sir Andrew bowed ironically. "With the utmost respect, my lord, when that
authority is exercised to shelter a rebel and a coward, I have no choice
but to disregard it."

Angry voices broke from almost every pair of lips. But the old tory
confronted them defiantly, scornfully, sure of his ground, upon which he
was unassailable.

The flush deepened in Lord William's cheeks.

"I have not the power to order your arrest, Sir Andrew. You have given as
yet no cause for that. But I warn you, sir, that if this quarrel, so
wantonly provoked by you, goes forward, you shall feel to the utmost the
weight of the law. Pray do not interrupt me. Since you have put upon me
this affront, it is impossible for me to remain. Gentlemen," and he bowed
to the company present, "I regretfully take my leave of you. Captain
Mandeville will present my apologies to the assembly. A slight
indisposition on the part of her ladyship has compelled us both to
withdraw rather earlier than we had hoped." He turned to her ladyship
proffering his arm. "My dear."

He was so dignified, so much the royal personage in that moment, that
those whom he addressed realized fully that he withdrew to avoid
embroiling himself in a vulgar dispute derogatory to his office;
therefore no attempt was made to persuade him from a course announced
with such utter finality. Even Lady William felt herself powerless to
intervene despite every impulse to do so.

All but Sir Andrew, who remained erect in his defiance, bowed low in
response, and remained bowed until, with Lady William on his arm and
followed by Captain Tasker and Miss Ravenell, Lord William had passed out
into the hall beyond. Then the men who were left behind, and they
numbered close upon a score, loosed their anger upon Sir Andrew. But he
remained disdainfully indifferent. They might make themselves as hoarse
as they pleased with invective and insult so long as he had his way with
Mr. Latimer.

When this was realized, those present resigned themselves to being
spectators of a settlement now inevitable. But when it came to finding a
friend to act for Sir Andrew there was only one man present who would
undertake the office. This was Anthony Fletchall, and although as stout a
tory as Carey himself, he undertook this office only after considerable
pressure. There had been a little flash of anger from Carey when
Mandeville had refused. But Mandeville had brushed this smooth.

"As your kinsman, Sir Andrew, it is almost my duty to stand by you. But
as Lord William's equerry, it is my duty to hold aloof. I am in an
impossible position."

Nevertheless it was Mandeville who dispatched the staring and startled
lackey for a certain mahogany case in the keeping of Mrs. Pratt, the
custodian of the State House.

When the case, which contained a brace of duelling pistols, was produced
it was taken by Mr. Fletchall to Colonel Moultrie. The latter was
standing beside Latimer who, in the background to which he had retired,
had flung himself into a chair, where he sat, elbows on knees in an
attitude of complete dejection. After what already he had endured that
night, to be compelled to meet his father-in-law, and one who had stood
to him in the past in the relationship almost of a father, was something
altogether intolerable. He sat there sunk in misery, resolved that in
spite of everything, and whatever might be thought of him, he would yet
avoid this meeting. He was roused by the voice of Moultrie raised in
sharp expostulation.

"But what is this, sir?" the colonel was exclaiming. "Pistols! We have not
asked for pistols."

Latimer looked up, and spoke. "We have not asked for anything at all. We
do not meet Sir Andrew Carey." He rose. "Mr. Fletchall, if you will be
good enough to ask Sir Andrew to step across to me, I shall hope to prove
to him that we cannot meet.

"In the present position that would scarcely be regular," ventured Mr.
Fletchall.

"I care nothing for that. Something very much graver is involved."

Fletchall bowed and went his errand, and Sir Andrew came in answer to the
request, and stood in assumed calm before him.

"Sir Andrew," said Mr. Latimer, for all to hear, "a meeting between us is
impossible. You had better know the truth. Myrtle and I were married this
morning."

He had thought to fling a bombshell and he had expected outbursts, rage,
incredulity; anything indeed but the answer he received:

"That, sir, is but an added reason; I do not desire a rebel for a
son-in-law, and even more," he raised his voice, "I do not desire a
coward for one."

Latimer looked at him with eyes of despair. The stream of destiny was too
strong for him. It was idle to continue to swim against it.

"Please conclude the arrangements, Moultrie. Let us get it over."

Sir Andrew withdrew again, and Moultrie renewed the discussion.

"But pistols--indoors! It is unheard of. It is monstrous, unthinkable. We
demand swords."

One of his reasons for this insistence was that if swords were used he
was sure that Latimer could contrive to take no harm himself and to do no
great hurt to Sir Andrew. But Mr. Fletchall had his instructions, and he
clung to them obstinately.

"You are not in the right to demand. The choice of weapons is with us. We
are the challenged side."

"I heard no challenge--" Moultrie was retorting, and then Latimer cut in.

"Oh, have done, William. Let us get it over."

"But they demand pistols!" Moultrie was reduced almost to frenzy.

"Then let them have pistols. What the devil does it matter?"

"Matter? Why there's the question of distance." And he swung to
Fletchall. "What distance do you propose?" he asked, expecting to
checkmate the other side.

Mr. Fletchall, a short, stoutish man of forty with a phlegmatic
countenance, was not even embarrassed. He measured the room with a calm
eye.

"Considering the space, we suggest ten paces."

Moultrie laughed angrily. "Pistols at ten paces! D'ye hear that, Harry?
At ten paces!"

"Across a handkerchief if they like," snapped Mr. Latimer. "But it's
murder."

"Faith, have you only just discovered it?"

The music in the ballroom had been resumed by musicians in complete
ignorance that anything untoward was taking place.

And then someone, whose nerves were being fretted, cried out that it
should be stopped, and someone else would have departed to obey the
demand, when Rutledge got in the way.

"By no means," he said. "The ladies must not be further alarmed. They will
be alarmed as it is, soon enough." And he suggested, indeed, that if the
affair was to go on, the parties had better remove themselves elsewhere.

But Carey would not hear of it. He cared nothing, he announced, for the
feelings of any rebel, man or woman, and none but a rebel could do other
than rejoice in the punishment of a rebel. Here, where Mr. Latimer had
offended, let Mr. Latimer expiate.

The end of it was that Rutledge turned the key in the door leading to the
ballroom whilst the pistols were being loaded at a console by Fletchall
and Moultrie acting jointly.

At the end of what seemed an age to Mr. Latimer, Colonel Moultrie
beckoned him forward to the middle of the room, whither Fletchall was
also conducting his principal.

"We propose, gentlemen," said Fletchall, "to place you back to back. You
will advance five paces, in a measure as they are counted towards the
corner which each of you is facing." He turned. Thornborough, tall and
elegant in his naval blue and white, stood immediately behind him.
"Captain Thornborough, perhaps you will oblige by counting."

The sailor drew back a little, and a look of repugnance crossed his
sunburnt aquiline face.

"I should prefer..." He was beginning. Then he shrugged. "Oh, as well I
as another."

When the men were in position, back to back, their swords surrendered
formally to their seconds, Captain Thornborough stepped forward.

"Gentlemen, as Mr. Fletchall has said, you will pace your distance in a
measure as I count. On the count of five you will take your last pace,
turn, and fire."

And whilst Colonel Moultrie advanced with the loaded pistols, giving Mr.
Latimer the first choice as was his right, Captain Thornborough
admonished the onlookers.

"Let me beg of you, gentlemen, to stand back, well out of the line of
sight, and to guard against the slightest movement that might serve to
draw the eye of either principal." He waited until all those present,
including the seconds, were ranged far enough back to satisfy him. "Now,
gentlemen, if you are ready..." He paused a moment, taking a couple of
backward paces, and began the count: "One--two--three--four--five."

On the word, and at the end of the diagonal line in which they had paced
away each from the other, the men swung round, face to face across the
room. But only one of them, and that one was Carey, raised his arm. He
raised it, slowly, deliberately, covering his opponent, who stood tense
and straight to receive a fire which he was making no shift whatever to
return. And then in the very moment that Sir Andrew drew the trigger, the
door leading to the hall, which they had neglected to secure, was flung
open with a crash, and Myrtle, in cloak and wimple, stood white and
scared on the threshold.

In the same instant Sir Andrew's pistol spoke. But the interruption at
the critical moment, whilst too late to arrest the shot, yet served to
draw his eye and disturb his cold-blooded deliberate aim. His pistol
jerked up by the fraction of an inch at the last moment delivered its
bullet into the long mirror above the console at Latimer's back, and
shivered the glass from top to bottom.

In two strides Captain Thornborough was at Myrtle's side. Rendered
immovable by horror, she stood there, staring. But just as she made no
attempt to advance further, neither did she yield to the captain's
half-hearted endeavours to induce her to withdraw.

It was a situation more painful probably than any man present had ever
borne part in before or would ever bear part in again.

And then the voice of Fletchall was sternly raised, and sounded oddly
loud in the sudden silence which no one had until this moment perceived.
For in the ballroom the music had ceased abruptly on the firing of the
shot and was succeeded there by a momentary stillness of question and
alarm.

"Mr. Latimer, we are waiting for your fire."

"You need wait no longer," said Mr. Latimer, whose pistol hand had
remained hanging inert beside him throughout. "I do not intend to fire."

There was an outcry of protest from the men present, mingling with the
din of voices swelling up now in the ballroom. Someone was beating on the
door. But none present heeded that.

Mr. Latimer addressed himself to the sailor who in some sense had acted
as master of the ceremonies.

"Captain Thornborough, Sir Andrew's aim was disturbed by the opening of
the door."

"The circumstance is unfortunate. But inasmuch as neither of you were
parties to it, it does not affect your position. You must take your
shot."

"I must take it?"

And it was Fletchall who answered him, the trembling of his voice
betraying his nervous tension.

"You have no alternative. To have retained it so long...damme! it isn't
decent."

"I suppose that I am within my rights, my strict rights, in retaining my
fire as long as I please?"

There was a pause before any dared pronounce a decision that really
demanded consideration by a court of honour. Then, since no one else
attempted to reply, Captain Thornborough took it upon himself to give
judgment.

"Within your strict rights, no doubt, Mr. Latimer. But, as Mr. Fletchall
has said, it is hardly decent. There are times when to stand upon our
strict rights--"

Peremptorily Mr. Latimer interrupted him. He was smiling, his head thrown
back, completely master of himself again, now that he was master of the
situation. And Myrtle watching him, leaned her tortured spirit
confidently upon his own, and felt her terrors lessening.

"I am concerned only with my strictest rights, gentlemen. Decency has had
no part in this affair. Upon my strictest rights I intend to stand. Since
I must take my shot, I will take it--"

He paused deliberately, smiled again and even inclined his head a little.
"...some other day."

There was an echoing chorus of amazement dominated by Sir Andrew's voice:

"Some other day!"

"At my convenience," added Mr. Latimer emphatically, and deliberately he
stepped forward, abandoning the position to which he had paced, and
proffering the unfired pistol to Colonel Moultrie. It is a debt between
Sir Andrew Carey and myself. A debt which I reserve the right to claim or
not, like any other, debt."

"You damned scoundrel!" thundered Sir Andrew, as a beginning to a torrent
of invective, and reversing his pistol so as to convert it into a club he
would have hurled himself upon Latimer but that Christopher Gadsden and
three or four others restrained him by main force.

Someone had unlocked the door of the ballroom, conceivably to prevent its
being broken down, and now on the threshold surged a crowd of gallants
and ladies, arrested there by the spectacle of that burly man writhing in
the arms of his captors and still uttering furious vituperation.

Mr. Latimer, accompanied by Moultrie, crossed to the door where Myrtle
stood. "My dear!" he said to comfort her, and laid a hand upon her arm.

Anthony Fletchall called after him:

"Mr. Latimer, what you do is monstrous ill done. You cannot in honour
leave Sir Andrew under the obligation to stand your fire whenever you
shall Choose to deliver it. If you intended to be generous--"

"I could have fired in the air," Latimer interrupted him. "I know that,
sir. And I do not need, nor will I accept, instruction in matters of
honour. But I'll explain myself, since almost you make it necessary. As
you must all have seen, I had no intention of firing upon Sir Andrew. But
if I had fired with deliberate intent to miss him, I should have cleared
the score, and Sir Andrew would have been at liberty to begin ail over
again, either demanding another exchange of shots or forcing a fresh
quarrel upon me. I have proved my courage once by standing to receive his
fire. But I have no intention or wish to continue to be a target for him.
So I retain my shot, and thus in honour I bind his hands from any further
attempts upon my life."

They regarded him now with silent understanding, and with something of
respect. Fletchall inclined his head a little. "I beg your pardon, Mr.
Latimer."

Mr. Latimer was not heeding him. Myrtle had clutched his arm, and was
looking up into his face.

"Was that what he did?" she asked. "He forced a quarrel on you, Harry?
And he fired to kill you? You?"

"My dear, what does it matter?"

"Matter?" she echoed, and she looked at her father. Her eyes were the
cold eyes of a judge. "Why did you do this?" she demanded. "Why?"

He shook off those who held him, and they let him go. He advanced a pace
or two, and stopped there, eyeing them both, his face white and
distorted, his powerful body trembling with the awful rage that possessed
him, the rage of the despot whose authority has been flouted and whose
vengeance has been baffled. For baffled he knew himself, bound fast in
the bonds of his own honour by an ingenuity that seemed to him nothing
short of fiendish. And now his daughter, this jade who had been false to
him, as he conceived it, who had played the hypocrite, disregarded his
parental rights, and married the man who was become his enemy, dared to
stand boldly before his face and question him.

"You false wretch," he reviled her before them all. "I did it to make a
widow of you, to save you from the shame of this secret marriage..."

"To make a widow of me! Is that your love?" There was loathing and horror
in her voice. Suddenly he seemed monstrous to her in his bigoted
intemperate hate.

"Love?" he answered her, and laughed unpleasantly. "Go! Go! Out of my
sight, both of you. I have done with you, Myrtle. I disown you utterly.
Not a penny of mine, not a perch of land shall come to you from me living
or dead. All I pray is that I may never see either of you again."

Her bridegroom put an arm about her. "Come, my dear," he urged her. He
bowed silently to the company, and with the single exception of Sir
Andrew Carey every man present bowed low in response.

Mr. Latimer drew his wife into the hall, scattering a knot of negro
servants who had collected about the door to listen. But the voice of his
father-in-law still pursued him:

"You may escape me. But you cannot escape God. His vengeance will search
out those who break the second commandment." And then someone mercifully
closed the door.

Harry Latimer led Myrtle out and down the steps to the waiting carriage,
the carriage which she had quitted in almost instinctive anxiety when he
delayed so unaccountably in following her.

Thus, and in such a state of feeling as you can conceive those two set
out upon their bridal journey.




PART II



CHAPTER I - MARRIAGE


This is, as you will long since have realized, no history of the
Revolution in South Carolina, but simply an account of certain fateful
transactions in the life of Mr. Harry Fitzroy Latimer. If I am now to
touch upon historical matters which may be considered to lie outside of
that gentleman's story, these are introduced to supply the necessary and,
I hope, elucidatory hyphen connecting the first act of this personal
drama, upon which the curtain was rung down on the night of Brewton's
ball in June of 1775, with the second and final act upon which it is to
be rung up again in May of the year 1779, at the time of Prevost's Raid.

Mr. Latimer's absence from Charles Town did not extend beyond three
months. Far sooner than any could have imagined on the night of his
departure did the drums of war beat a rally to all patriots. Long before
he had reached his plantation of Santee Broads, indeed within a few hours
of his setting out to journey thither, came express riders into Charles
Town with the dreadful news that war was no longer an ultimate
possibility but already an accomplished fact.

In the North a great battle had been fought on the heights above Boston
between the insurgent colonial forces and the troops which the British
Government had lately been pouring into Massachussets under Howe, Clinton
and Burgoyne. And by this battle the colonies were definitely committed
to that civil war which until the eleventh hour, even after the skirmish
at Lexington, they had still looked to avert. The die was cast. All hope
that the dispute might be settled by advocacy and argument was at an end.
Only the arbitrament of arms remained.

The heralding throughout America of this fateful decision sent across the
continent a wave of enthusiasm which few patriotic people have not known
in the hour of war's declaration. They were committed. Come now what
might, they knew where they stood, and what remained to do. Where men
perceive this clearly the rest matters little by comparison. So they
girded themselves for battle, but still in the main with no thought of
independence as the object of their strife. Like their ancestors Pym and
Hampden they were making a stand not against sovereignty, but against the
abuse of sovereign rights.

The Continental Congress had met at Philadelphia, and conscious of what
was coming some weeks before the event itself carried conviction to the
remoter provinces, it voted to raise an army of twenty thousand men. Two
days before Bunker's Hill was fought Congress unanimously elected to the
position of commander-in-chief "Mr. Washington, the Potomac planter," as
he was contemptuously designated by tories and British alike, but who, in
spite of their ill-informed and misplaced scorn, was destined to become
one of the great figures of all time.

In Charles Town there was a feverish activity of preparation, the
reflection of which you will find in the collection of letters and
general orders published by William Moultrie and designated his Memoirs.
There was also an enthusiastic confidence which might have run less high
could the Carolinians have suspected that the conflict upon which they
were entering was to drag on with varying fortunes for seven years. There
were skirmishes with parties of back-country loyalists, now frankly
stimulated by Lord William. But the only immediate fruit of this was that
in September the governor, in imminent danger of apprehension,
accompanied by Mr. Innes and Captain Mandeville, took the Seal of the
Province and went aboard the Tamar for safety.

Thus, furtively and ingloriously, closed the era of royal rule in South
Carolina.

In view of the news which had so closely followed him, Harry Latimer had
not considered it either necessary or expedient to go farther than Santee
Broads. As long as Lord William was in Charles Town and nominally
governing there, Latimer understood that his return would be a breach of
faith, a violation of the parole given implicitly if not explicitly. With
his lordship's departure, however, Latimer considered the parole
extinguished, and he returned to offer his sword to Moultrie, who
procured him a lieutenant's commission in the Second Regiment under his
command. Soon he found himself promoted captain and attached to
Moultrie's own person as an extra aide-de-camp during those early summer
days of the following year when the fort on Sullivan's Island was
feverishly building to defend the harbour.

Latimer brought Myrtle back with him, and they took up their residence at
his mansion on the Bay. Thence, three times in the course of as many
months, did he write to Sir Andrew Carey, who had now retired to
Fairgrove, there to sulk over the black conduct of the country in which
he had the dishonour to be born. Two of these letters remained
unanswered. The third came back unopened, whereupon it was perceived that
there was no hope just yet of healing the breach between themselves and
that fanatical royalist.

But for this, there would have been no cloud to trouble the happiness of
those two during that autumn and winter of 1775. As it was, Myrtle's
conscience remained unquiet. Her affection for Harry was being
relentlessly undermined by regrets at her estrangement from her father,
by doubts of the rectitude of her own conduct. Hence a not unnatural
reaction to the deeply implanted monarchist principles from which she had
seceded in the time of panic and excitement produced by Harry's personal
danger. With the aversion of that danger, so too had her spirit averted
from the new faith which for a little while she had tolerated if not
actually embraced.

There were times when she was disposed to regard herself as a victim, a
sacrificial offering to procure Harry's immunity from the consequences of
the evil course of rebellion upon which he had embarked. And where she
might ungrudgingly have sacrificed her life, she grudged here the
sacrifice of her soul which seemed entailed. For upon her soul she had
taken the burden of the sin against the second commandment. Hitherto the
constant hope, encouraged confidently by Harry and also in letters from
Lady William, of a reconciliation with her father had thrust that parting
denunciation of her father's into the background of her mind. But now
that back in Charles Town, and in a Charles Town distracted by the
preparations for war, this hope was proved at last idle, her father's
words rang almost daily in her ears to bring her to something akin to
remorse for the unfilial conduct of which she had been guilty.

It requires little imagination to perceive the inevitable fruit of this.
Her manner towards Harry changed perceptibly. It became charged with
irritability, and there were moments when because of the load upon her
soul and mind she reproached him with a hundred matters that were but so
many vents for her surcharged feelings.

She found herself detesting his military preoccupations in a cause whose
unrighteousness had been inculcated into her heart by her parent, and she
found herself expressing that detestation and uttering loyal sentiments
which more than suggested that she desired the ultimate destruction of
the colonials in the struggle to which they were committed.

There were scenes between them, in which, each carried away by momentary
resentment of the other's lack of sympathy and understanding, said things
that but served to widen the breach that was gradually but surely
separating them.

"Why did you marry me?" cried Harry one day on a note of sheer
desperation.

"I wish I hadn't," she answered him in her petulance. "I would give ten
years of my life to undo that."

"You would give my life, you mean. For that is what was at stake. I wish
you had thought of it in time. I wish you had known yourself better."

"Known myself better?"

"Why did you delude me with a tale of affection, which every day our life
now proves had no real existence? Was it worth while to induce me to save
myself only to be daily tormented through my love for you."

"Your love! Would you speak to me as you do if you loved me?"

"If I did not love! should not speak to you at all. I should let you go
your ways, I should make no such desperate struggles to rescue my
happiness from the wreck you threaten to make of it." And then in his
exasperation he ran on: "Is it fair to blame me if things have gone other
than you wished? It was your own fault. You chose your course. I made no
attempt to persuade you. I left you free to follow your own bent. Why
were you false to it? And why, having been false to it, do you now visit
me with the blame?"

"What do you mean--my bent?"

"The path of loyalty on which your feet were set. You would have kept the
affection of your father; you would have married your exquisite kinsman,
Robert Mandeville; and some day you would have been my lady."

Swelling resentment looked at him furiously out of her lovely eyes. "Why
must you sneer at Robert! He is a better man than you."

Stung by that in his turn he added words he was to regret as soon as
uttered:

"You cannot more deeply deplore than I do that you did not marry him."

On that she left him to the conviction that he was brutal; and he was
more than ever exasperated with her that she should make him so.

Of course there were passionate reconciliations. Momentary glimpses of
the tragic reality beyond the control of either, of which these scenes
were no more than the artificial manifestations. But the pendulum would
not halt in its swinging between mutual love and mutual resentment; and
the sad truth must be recorded that affection was gradually being worn
away by the exacerbation of these misunderstandings.

In the early spring matters improved a little. Partly, this was due to
the fact that military necessity drew Latimer away from home. The
comparative idleness of the winter, when the news from the North was
uncertain and depressing, had kept him moping a deal about the house.
Thus husband and wife had been thrown together far more than was
desirable in the existing state of feeling. But towards the end of
February, as a consequence of certain intelligence that in New York the
British were preparing an expedition against Charles Town, Colonel
Moultrie was ordered down to Sullivan's Island to take command, and Harry
Latimer went with him.

They were building there a fort large enough to contain a thousand men;
and as this was looked upon as the key of the harbour, the news received
set them feverishly to work with all the mechanics they could enroll and
an army of negro labourers brought down from the country so as to
complete the work in time to receive the British fleet.

There were as a consequence long absences from home for Harry; and since
one result of these was a reduction of the friction between himself and
his wife, he welcomed them. It happened, too, that Myrtle's condition
urged him to subdue any irritation, and turn the other cheek whenever he
found her disposed to scold. He did so the more readily and cheerfully
since he now discovered a physical explanation for her impatiences.

For some two months before their child was born, their relations--thanks
largely to his exemplary forbearance--had so far improved that Harry
began to take a less despondent view of the future, and to trust entirely
to Time to dull her pain at the estrangement from her father. With the
birth of his son, it almost seemed to him that this time no longer lay in
the future, but was arrived already.

There was between them in those days, in the hours stolen from duty, when
he came to feast his eyes upon the swaddled bundle in the arms of the
ever-faithful mauma Dido such a tenderness as had not prevailed even when
first their troth had been plighted. They were lovers again, drawn close
by this precious link, and the world to them lay in each other and the
child. And because of this each was now yielding and generous to the
other, each solicitous to fulfil the other's wishes.

One day in May, when the boy was a month old, and the mother in
convalescence, she broached the matter of a name for him.

She was reclining on a daybed out of doors, set in the shade of the
magnolias, watching with shining eyes the child gurgling idiotically in
the arms of the black mauma. Harry, in the blue coat and white smalls of
the Continental Army, leaned on the head of her couch contemplating her
with eyes of entire devotion, and discerning as only lovers can a touch
almost of holiness in her beauty. He observed the straight nose with its
sensitive nostrils, the firm yet generous and tender mouth, and the deep
mysterious eyes to which motherhood now brought a new and shining glory.
His fingers Were toying abstractedly with the long brown ringlet resting
on that white slender neck, when she looked up at him with a smile that
in itself would have sufficed to make life glorious.

"We must christen the little heathen, Harry," she reminded him.

"Why so we must. What is he to be called?"

Now Harry knew his mind quite well. Since Charles Fitzroy Latimer had
come to found their house in South Carolina, the first-born of the
Latimers had ever been given one or the other of two only names--Charles
and Harry--and they had borne these names alternately. It was a tradition
he desired to see maintained; and in his mind he already thought of his
son as Charles Latimer. But because of the complete amity prevailing now
between himself and Myrtle, the more cherish-able because of the storms
they had traversed, his wishes were not to be expressed until she should
make known her own.

"I had thought..." she began, and broke off, hesitating. "Nay. But have
you no wishes in the matter? He is your son, Harry."

"Not more than he is yours. Therefore I'll wish whatever you may wish."

"It's very sweet in you." She caught the hand that was engaged upon her
ringlet, and pressed it, holding it thereafter. "I had thought..." Again
she paused, and looked at him, almost in apprehension. "If you do not
like it Harry, you'll say so; and we'll think of it no more. But I feel
that if I called him Andrew, the name would remain as a proof to my
father that in spite of all that has happened I am still dutiful to him."
She looked away again as she spoke, and then added: "But if you think
other, Harry--"

"How should I?" Her submission to him would alone have melted any
opposition even if he had been disposed to offer it. But he was not. He
saw, and sympathetically understood her motives. Besides, he felt that he
would have yielded to her even had she asked that the child be named
Robert.

And so he swallowed lightly his regrets at this breach of a tradition of
his house; was glad indeed to offer it up as a loving sacrifice to her
desires.

Andrew the boy was christened, and the christening took place at St.
Michael's on the following Sunday, Colonel Moultrie being the rebel
god-father provided by Harry, and Polly Roupel the royalist god-mother of
Myrtle's choosing.

In the peace and good understanding into which they were now come Harry
and his wife continued until the first of June, when Captain Latimer, who
was on leave at home, received an imperative command to return to duty in
the more or less completed fort on Sullivan's Island.

A British squadron had appeared off Dewees Island, and it was clear that
the attack for which they had been preparing throughout some weeks was at
last about to be delivered.

When Harry bore the news to Myrtle she was filled with sudden terror for
him and for the babe who might so soon be deprived of his father.

"Oh, Harry! Why, why have you espoused this dreadful quarrel?"

It shocked him a little. It was so different from all that in such an
emergency he would have expected from Myrtle. He had known her from
infancy, and had learnt to regard her spirit as of purest temper. She was
not the weak, emotional, selfish woman to bring added pain to such a
parting as this, or ever to allow considerations of herself to be thrust
between her man and that man's duty.

Thus he had judged her, and thus indeed she was. What he was slow to
perceive was that her resentment arose from the nature of the duty that
was taking him away. Had he been riding off to fight the battles of that
monarchist faith in which she had been reared, she would have hidden her
grief in a mask of courage that she might strengthen and enhearten him;
she would have blessed him at parting and prayed tot him until his
return. But he went to do battle on the wrong side, against ideals she
could not cease from holding. Hence that disheartening almost petulant
wail.

"My dear," he said, gently. "It is a sacred duty."

"A duty!" She looked at him, and her eyes were hardening. "Did I save
your life by marrying you, to have you fling it away like this, in battle
against the right?"

His face turned white. "Was that," he asked slowly "the only reason why
you married me?"

Mutinous in her fierce resentment she stood, her shoulder turned to him,
looking through the window of the dining-room where he had sought her,
and giving him no answer.

He took it from her silence. His lip quivered a moment. A threat which
was also a promise trembled for utterance. But he did not utter it. He
would not have her afterwards troubled by remorse. He had done her a
great wrong. He should have seen it at the time. How purblind he had been
not to have understood her sacrifice, the sacrifice with which since he
had actually taunted her.

He approached her. But still she did not turn. He took the hand that lay
limply at her side, and raised it to his lips.

"Goodbye, Myrtle!" he said quietly, and let the hand tall again.

Still in her perversity she did not turn. There was a knot in her throat,
and she would not have him see the tears that filled her eyes.

He moved away towards the door. There he paused a moment.

"I have left everything in order," he said quietly. "All is provided for.
If anything should happen, all that I have will be yours. Yours and
Andrew's."

"Harry!" It was the cry of a breaking heart. Suddenly she had spun round
and was coming towards him; sobbing. He stood there, and she flung her
arms about his neck, set her wet cheek against his. "Harry, my dear, my
dear! Forgive me. I love you, Harry. I'm terrified at the thought of
losing you. It is the thought of you and of the boy makes me what I am.
Why don't you beat me, Harry? It's what I deserve."

And so she ran on in a tale of repentance and self-abasement that was new
in his experience of her, but which failed now to move him, because he
did not believe it sincere. She was only repeating that which had
happened when he, was in danger of arrest by the royal government. It was
pity for him and fear for his life had moved her then. This she had now
frankly acknowledged. And it was the same emotion that possessed her now.
But not again could she delude him, even though she might delude herself.

Tender and considerate with her he was. To quiet her, he professed belief
in what she said, but his professions rang false and hollow in her acute
and straining ears.

And so in the end he left her.



CHAPTER II - FORT SULLIVAN


The Executive of the General Assembly, which had by now replaced the old
Provincial Congress, was in the hands of a legislative and privy council.
John Rutledge had been elected president and invested with all the powers
of governor.

Despite a temperamental antipathy, which he believed mutual, and some
lingering remains of that rancour provoked by Rutledge's hard
unsentimental criticisms of his conduct in the Featherstone affair, Harry
Latimer could not withhold his admiration of the sagacity, energy and
strength with which the new president went to work to establish and
maintain order, to levy troops and to advance the fortification of the
town materially and morally against all emergencies.

In those first days of June there arrived in Charles Town that English
soldier of fortune, Major-General Charles Lee, sent by Washington to
command the troops engaged in the defence of the Southern sea-board. He
was a man of great experience and skill, who had spent his life
campaigning wherever campaigns were being conducted; and Moultrie tells
us that his presence in Charles Town was equivalent to a reinforcement of
a thousand men. But his manners, Moultrie adds, were rough and harsh.

The unfinished state in which he found the great fort of palmetto logs
seems to have fretted him considerably. His correspondence with Moultrie
in these days bears abundant witness to that, and we have a glimpse of
the irritation caused him by the calm unexcited manner in which the
stout-hearted Moultrie continued the works as if he still had months in
which to complete them. Two things Lee was frenziedly demanding: the
completion of the fort, and the building of a bridge to secure the
retreat to the mainland of the force on Sullivan's Island.

If Moultrie was leisurely in the matter of the former, he was entirely
negligent on the subject of the latter. He had not, he said, come there
to retreat, and there was no need to be wasting time, energy and material
in providing the means for it,

Lee's great experience of war had taught him to leave nothing to chance.
Moreover, in this instance, he was fully persuaded that the fort could
not be held--particularly in its unfinished state--against the powerful
fleet under Sir Peter Parker standing off the bar. He reckoned without
two factors: the calm cool courage of its defender and the peculiar
resisting quality of palmetto wood, experience of which was not included
in all his campaignings, extensive and varied though they had been.

Action by the fleet was delayed until the end of June, in order that with
it might be combined the operation of a land force under Sir Henry
Clinton. This had been put ashore on Long Island with the same object of
reducing the fort, which was the key to the harbour. To this end Clinton
erected a battery which should cover the transport and fording of troops
across the narrow fleck of shallow water dividing the two islands. But to
defend the passage there was a battery on the east end of Sullivan's
Island commanded by Colonel Thomson with a picked body of riflemen.

The defence of Fort Sullivan is one of the great epics of the war, and
few of its battles were of more far-reaching effect than this, coming as
it did in a time of some uncertainty in the affairs of the Americans.

At half-past ten o'clock on the morning of June 28th Sir Peter Parker, on
board the flagship Bristol, gave the signal for action, and the fleet of
ten vessels carrying two hundred and eighty-four guns, advanced to anchor
before the fort, confidently to undertake the work of pounding it into
dust.

At eleven o'clock that night, nine shattered ships dropped down to Five
Fathom Hole, out of range, leaving the tenth--the frigate
Actaeon--crippled and aground to westward of the fort, there to be
destroyed by fire next morning.

Throughout the action Moultrie's supplies of powder had been inadequate.
Hence the need not only for economy of fire, but for greater marksmanship,
so that as few shots as possible should be wasted. And whilst the careful
steady fire from the fort battered the ships and made frightful carnage
on their decks, the British shot sank more or less harmlessly into the
soft spongy palmetto or fell into the large moat in the middle of the
fort where the fuses were extinguished before the shells could explode.
It is said that of over fifty shot thrown by the Thunder-Bomb alone into
the fort not a single one exploded,

But if these did not there were others that did, and although the
casualties of the garrison were surprisingly small, yet throughout that
terrible day of overpowering heat, the Carolinians in Fort Sullivan may
well have deemed themselves in hell. Toiling there, naked to the waist
for the most part, under a pall of acrid smoke that hung low and heavy
upon them and at times went near to choking them, and amid an incessant
roar of guns with shells bursting overhead, they fought on desperately
and indomitably against a force they knew greatly superior to their own.
And amongst them, ever where the need was greatest, hobbling hither and
thither--for he was sorely harassed by gout at the time--was Moultrie in
his blue coat and three-cornered hat, his rugged face calm, smoking his
pipe as composedly as if he had been at his own fireside.

Only once did he and his officers, who in this matter emulated their
leader, lay aside their pipes; and that was out of respect for General
Lee, when in the course of action he came down to see how things were
with them, and to realize for himself that it was possible that with all
his great experience of war he had been wrong in his assumption that the
place could not be held.

The thing he chiefly dreaded had by then been averted. He had perceived
that the fort's alarming weakness lay the unfinished western side--the
side that faced the main. Thence it might easily be enfiladed by any ship
that ran past and took up a position in the channel. This vulnerable
point had not been overlooked by Sir Peter Parker, and comparatively
early in the battle he had ordered forward the Sphynx, the Actaeon and
the Syren to attack it. But here fortune helped the garrison that was so
stoutly helping itself. In the haste of their advance the three ships
fouled one another's rigging, became entangled and drifted thus on to the
shoal known as the Middle Ground. Before they could clear themselves the
guns of the fort had been concentrated upon them, and poured into them a
fire as destructive as it was accurate. The Sphynx and the Syren
eventually got off in a mangled condition, one of them trailing her
broken bowsprit. The Actaeon remained to be destroyed at leisure.

And all this while, Myrtle in an apprehension which was increased to
anguish when she remembered the manner of her parting with Harry, lay on
the roof of the house on the Bay endeavouring thence by the aid of a
telescope to follow the action that was being fought ten miles away,
whilst the windows below rattled and the very world seemed to shake with
the incessant thunder of the British guns and the slow deliberate replies
from the fort.

Once she saw that flag--the first American flag displayed in the South; a
blue flag with a white crescent in the dexter corner--was gone from the
fort. And her dismay in that moment made her realize, as once before she
had realized, the true feelings that underlay the crust of vain prejudice
upon her soul. There followed a pause of dreadful uncertainty as to
whether this meant surrender--the pause during which the heroic Sergeant
Jasper leapt down from one of the embrasures in the face of a withering
fire to rescue the flag which had been carried away by a chance shot.
Attaching it to a spunge staff he hoisted it once more upon the ramparts,
and when she saw it fluttering there again a faint cheer broke from her
trembling lips and was taken up by the negro servants who shared her
eyrie and some of her anxiety for the garrison among which was the master
they all loved.

There she remained until after darkness had fallen, a darkness still rent
and stabbed by the flashes from the guns, and until a terrific
thunderstorm broke overhead and the artillery of heaven came to mingle
with the artillery of man.

Then at last, unable to follow the combat with her eyes, and already
drenched by the downpour which descended almost without warning, she
allowed the slaves to lead her down from the roof, and went within to
spend a sleepless night of anguish.

In the morning the news of victory filled Charles Town with joy and
thanksgiving. It was a victory less complete than it might have been if
Moultrie had not been starved of powder. With adequate ammunition, every
ship of the British fleet would have been sunk or forced to surrender.
But it was complete enough. The battered and defeated vessels were beaten
off, and Charles Town was safe for the present.

Whole-heartedly Myrtle shared the general joy and thanksgiving. She knew
herself now, she thought, beyond possibility of ever again being mistaken
in her feelings. She had been through an experience of anguish which had
sharpened the sight of her soul so that she had come to see her own fault
in the discords that had poisoned her married life. It should never,
never be so again, she vowed, if only Harry were now safely restored to
her. That was the abiding anxiety. Was he safe?

But amid the general rejoicing how could she doubt it? It was known that
the casualties had been few in the fort, only some ten killed and twice
that number of wounded. Surely Heaven would not be so cruel as to include
her husband among these.

She went actively about the house during that endless morning,
stimulating all into preparations for welcoming Harry home, confident
that he would come to her soon in the course of the day.

And come to her he did somewhere about noon, inanimate upon a stretcher
borne by two of his men. The click of the garden gate and the sound of
steps on the gravel brought her swift-footed eager to the porch, to swoon
there under the shock of what she beheld, believing that it was a dead
body those men bore.

When, restored to her senses, she was told that he still lived though
sorely wounded, she would have gone to him at once. But they restrained
her--old Julius, Mauma Dido and Dr. Parker, the latter having flown
instantly to Harry's side in response to the news borne him by Hannibal
of his master's homecoming.

The doctor, elderly and benevolent, and an old friend of Harry's, very
gently broke to her the news that although her husband's life was not to
be despaired of, yet it hung by the most tenuous of threads, and that
only the utmost care and vigilance could avoid the severing of this. He
had been shot through the body in two places. One of these was a slight
wound; but the other was grave, and Dr. Parker had only just extracted
the bullet. He was easier now; but it would be better if she did not see
him yet.

"But who is to tend and nurse him?" she inquired.

"We must provide for that."

"Who better than myself?"

"But you have not the strength, my dear," he demurred. "The very sight of
him wounded has so affected you that--"

She interrupted him. "That shall not happen again," she promised firmly,
and rose commanding her still trembling limbs. Although very white, she
was so calm and so resolved that presently Dr. Parker gave way and
permitted her at once to take up her duties by Harry's side.

He was delirious and fever-tossed, so that there was no danger of any
excitement to him from her presence. She received the doctor's
instructions attentively, displaying now the calm of an intrepid
combatant preparing for battle. And. save for one concession to her
emotions, when she knelt by his bedside and offered up a prayer that he
might be spared to her, she did not again depart from that stern role.

Down in her heart there was an instinctive knowledge that she, herself,
was in part responsible for his condition, even before Moultrie came, as
he did later that day, to leave her by the admissions she drew from him
no doubt upon that score.

It was like the kindly easy-going soldier to find time amid the many
preoccupations of the moment to seek her, all battle-stained as he was,
to offer comfort and obtain news of Harry's condition.

"It is precarious," she answered him. "But Dr. Parker assures me that he
is to be saved by care and vigilance, and these I can provide. Be sure
that Harry shall get well again."

He marvelled at her calm confidence; marvelled, admired and was
reassured. Here was the spirit in which the battle of Fort Sullivan had
been won by his gallant lads, the spirit which conquers all material
things.

He spoke of the fight of yesterday and of Harry's conduct in it, conduct
of a valour amounting to recklessness.

"If I had not known him for a man with every inducement to live, with
everything to make life dear for him, I might almost have suspected him
of courting death. Twice I had to order him down from the parapet, where
he was needlessly exposing himself in his zeal to stimulate the men. And
when the flag was carried away a second time by a shot from the Bristol,
before I could stop him, he had done what Jasper did on the first
occasion of that happening. He was over the parapet and out on the sand
under fire to rescue and bring back our standard. He was standing on the
ramparts waving it to the men when he was shot. I caught him in my arms,
and desperately wounded as he was, at the moment I really think my chief
emotion was anger with him that he should so recklessly have exposed
himself."

When presently he left her, and she went back to Harry's bedside, where
her place had been filled in her absence by Mauma Dido, she took back
with her the burning memory of Moultrie's words.

"If I had not known him for a man with every inducement to live, with
everything to make life dear for him..."

And the truth, she told herself, was that through her he was become a man
with every inducement to die. Deliberately he had sought death, that he
might deliver her from a bond which had been forged by charity instead of
love. For this was the lie she had led him to believe this was the lie
which, for a time, she had almost believed herself. Because he imagined
that bond grown odious to her--and she had given him all cause so to
imagine it--he had sought to snap it, that he might set her free.

How like him was that; how like the high-spirited selfless Harry she had
always known. Impetuous and impulsive always, but always upon impulses to
serve others. It was the service of others had made him a patriot, where
a self-seeker of his wealth and prosperity under the royal government
would have striven to avoid all change. Whether his political views were
right or wrong, noble and altruistic they certainly were. For that she
must honour him, and for that, too, since she was his wife, she must make
his faith her own.

Never again, if it should please God in His infinite mercy to spare him,
would she give him occasion to doubt her, or to suppose that anything but
love had brought about that precipitate marriage of theirs. And if he
should not be spared, why then she would spend the wealth she would
inherit, to the last penny, in forwarding the cause he had espoused.

In such a spirit did she address herself to wrestle with the Angel of
Death.



CHAPTER III - SEVERANCE


Harry Latimer did not die. For a fortnight, during the torrid heat of
that July, he lay a prey to a fever that ebbed and flowed almost with the
regularity of the tides, finally to sink down and leave him on the shores
of convalescence.

Perhaps the greatest factor in his recovery was the will to live, aroused
in him when he found that he owed the maintenance of his life during that
season of greatest peril to the passionate, tireless and devoted battle
which his wife had fought for him. Her tenderness and her solicitude
during those first hours of consciousness, when she was herself worn to
exhaustion, but sustained by her will and her determination to hold him
back from death, convinced him as nothing else could have convinced him
that she cherished him and desired him to live.

And presently as he grew stronger, in the days when at last under the
insistence of Dr. Parker she submitted to dividing with others her care
of him, so that she, herself, might snatch some sorely-needed rest, there
followed between them explanations that made an end at last to all
possibility of further misunderstandings.

"If you had died, Harry," she told him, "life for me would have been at
an end."

And with the proofs of her self-sacrificing devotion before him he
believed her whole-heartedly now. He was thankful to have survived, and
looked back with horror of himself and his own stupidity for having
permitted a jealous doubt so to have wrought upon him as to send him in
deliberate quest of death.

Meanwhile the tide of war was beaten back from Charles Town, and a sense
of peace and security quickly restored to it, whilst elsewhere the
American mind was inflamed with new ardour and the British mind cooled by
dismay at the almost incredible disaster to Sir Peter Parker's fleet. But
to avenge it another great fleet was already on its way to America,
bringing additional forces amounting to some twenty-five thousand British
troops and seventeen thousand German mercenaries engaged for the purpose
by treaty with several German princes.

Since thus it had been rendered more than ever apparent that England
would abandon none of her claims and accept nothing but the total
dependency and servitude of the colonies, a violent change of feeling had
taken place. The republicans who preached American Independence, hitherto
a repressed minority, had raised their heads in force, and conversion to
their doctrines ran like a wave across the thirteen provinces. So that
when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered his resolution in Congress
that "The United Colonies are and ought to be an Independent state" it
was possible, although only by a bare majority, to adopt it. And so it
happened that the thanks of the Continental Congress to the brave
defenders of Charles Town, dispatched to them on the 20th of July, were
from the United States of America to the State of South Carolina. The
Republic had come into existence, and Moultrie's guns of Fort Sullivan
had fired a salute that went far to establish the independent government
whose declaration was read a very few days later in Congress by Mr.
Thomas Jefferson.

In Charles Town the declaration of Independence was not read until the
first Monday in August. By then, Harry Latimer, whilst still reduced in
strength, was so far recovered from his wounds as to have himself carried
in a sedan chair to Liberty Tree, the spot whence Gadsden in the old days
had preached sedition to the people. It was thronged now by men and
women, young and old, and thither came the military, marching with drums
beating and flags flying. Hushed, they all stood in the sweltering heat,
to hear the Reverend William Percy solemnly read the declaration, whilst
his black boy held an umbrella over him with one hand and fanned him with
the other.

The declaration was received With acclamations natural enough in the
excitement of the moment. But not all present acclaimed it. Many even of
those who had been most resolute in combating King George's rigorous
methods of coercion were silent and uneasy, conscious of the heritage
they were renouncing, driven to it by the intransigence of those who
ruled the parent country.

Henry Laurens, who stood near Harry's chair, was observed by Myrtle to be
in tears, and the usually expressionless face of John Rutledge appeared
for once to reflect spiritual pain.

As they returned home from that function, it seemed to Myrtle that
between the colonies and the mother-country was enacted something akin to
that which had happened between her father and herself.



CHAPTER IV - GOVERNOR RUTLEDGE


There followed now for South Carolina a period of peace and almost
unequalled prosperity, what time the war with varying fortune was raging
in the North.

The victory of Fort Moultrie--as Fort Sullivan had been re-named by the
legislative in honour of its gallant defender--had earned the province
this season of respite.

As one of the few open ports of America, Charles Town became the gateway
into the colonies for all supplies. The bay, for the next two years and
longer, was crowded with the shipping of neutral countries; the wharves
hummed with activity; trade flourished.

Winter came and went before Harry Latimer was restored to his former
vigour. To Myrtle these were perhaps the happiest days that she had
known. She and Harry had come through storm into calm, and she had learnt
that her world was made up of her husband and their boy, and that events
happening outside that world should and could make no impression upon it.

If in the background of her mind there was ever the thought of her
father, it was no longer attended by that sense of unfilial conduct on
which her happiness had almost suffered shipwreck. She began to absorb
something of the atmosphere in which she lived; and views held at first
out of a sense of wifely duty deliberately imposed upon herself to make
amends, came in the end to be held out of pure conviction. Her father
became in her eyes a moral reflection of the king whom he worshipped; and
just as the intransigence of the latter was to blame for the rupture
between the parent country and its colonial offspring, so was the
intransigence of the former to blame for the breach between himself and
his child.

They were as children, all three of them, during the spring and summer of
'77. Harry had been promoted to the rank of major for his gallantry
during the defence of Fort Sullivan, although Moultrie himself had
privately expressed to him the opinion that he deserved to be shot for
it. During his convalescence John Rutledge had come to visit him, to
congratulate him upon his promotion and to honour him for the deed that
had earned it.

"Sir," he had said in his stiff, formal way, "if once I blamed you for
impulsiveness, I come to make you amends. If it is a fault, you have
shown me that it can also be a virtue."

And presently, by the time that little Andrew was beginning to stand.
upon his own feet, Harry became immersed in affairs, which if not
directly the affairs of war were at least very closely concerned with
them. The whole of his considerable merchant fleet was row employed in
the service of his country. Some of the ships were fitted out as
privateers, others went upon voyages to the West Indies, to France and to
Spain for war material and supplies, and in the lack of military
engagements during that time he was able to devote the whole of his
energies to the supervision of all the details connected with these
shipping matters. Hence it resulted that South Carolina was better
equipped in arms and munitions than any state in the Union.

And meanwhile in the North the fortunes of war fluctuated in amazing
waves. At first the high hopes fired by the Carolinian victory over Sir
Peter Parker steadily waned until that dreadful moment at the end of '76,
when all seemed lost beyond the chance of redemption. Washington beaten
back and back had at last retreated across the Delaware, his army reduced
by casualties, sickness and desertions to a mere three thousand men, and
the river being now the only barrier between the British and
Philadelphia. The British, strong and well-equipped, sat down
complacently to await the freezing of the river so that they might cross
and make an end of that remnant of an army should it not meanwhile have
completely melted away in panic. Cornwallis and his troops were already
embarking in New York to return home. The war, from the British as from
the American point of view, was at an end.

But it was not at an end from Washington's.

Suddenly the country was startled out of its gloom and despondency by the
bold stroke of the American Commander-in-Chief in re-crossing the Delaware
on that Christmas night and descending like a thunderbolt upon the
advanced post of the enemy.

Hopes soared once more; spirits that had been drooping were again
uplifted; men of the militia whose time was expiring no longer thought of
leaving the colours as they had been preparing to do, and recruits flowed
in again to strengthen the American arm. And back from New York and his
ships came the startled Cornwallis who had already counted the chickens
that were never to be hatched; back to New Jersey to increase the British
forces that were to deal with an enemy which yesterday had seemed not
merely exhausted but annihilated.

Thus the war may be said to have recommenced. It dragged wearily on
through '77 with the same varying ebb and flow as before, fortune in the
main favouring the British arms, and American hopes gradually sinking,
until suddenly from the very nadir they were lifted in mid-October to the
zenith.

Burgoyne and the whole of the British North Army, surrounded at Saratoga
by the Americans under General Gates, his supplies cut off and without
hope of relief from Clinton, was compelled to the humiliation of complete
surrender.

Such was the shock of the news in England that at last King George was
constrained to put aside the obstinacy which had brought the empire this
humiliation and to which he had sacrificed her finest colony. Under the
pressure of outraged public opinion, which unable to endure more was
manifesting a dangerous temper, Lord North was compelled to come forward
with two conciliatory bills. By these the king not only conceded now
everything that had been the occasion of the controversy and over which
already so much good red blood had been shed; he offered far more than
America had ever asked. But he offered it too late. Congress would not
treat with King George until he withdrew from America his armies and his
fleets. Almost at the same time Franklin in Paris brought France not only
to recognize the Independence of America but into a treaty of alliance
defensive and offensive.

Thus Great Britain in the hour of dismay, found herself faced not only by
her own recalcitrant offspring but by her hereditary foe as well. To this
pass had the headstrong stupidity of a single man of foreign blood
brought the great empire over which in his arrogance and vanity he must
rule as well as reign.

It was evident to the ministry at home that the war in the North, which
twice had been all but won, was now definitely lost. All was to be begun
again, and it was now determined as a last resort to attempt the conquest
from the South.

General Prevost in Florida was to be reinforced with troops from New
York, so that he might open the new campaign with the conquest of
Georgia; a comparatively easy matter this, for Georgia was indifferently
disposed to war. So the last phase of England's struggle to retain her
colonies opened in the autumn of 1778 with the invasion of Georgia by two
expeditions of British troops supplemented by tory refugees from Georgia
itself and South Carolina. And it opened disastrously for the American
arms. The forces under General Robert Howe suffered a terrible rout, and
Savannah was captured by the British.

After that Prevost had an easy task of completing the conquest of
Georgia. So much accomplished, he made his dispositions to penetrate into
South Carolina.

Rumours of this were already alarming Charles Town when Major-General
Benjamin Lincoln arrived there early in December, dispatched by Congress
to take command of the southern department, and immediately preparations
began under his orders to march the troops to the relief of Georgia.

Lincoln had been with Gates in the operations that had resulted in the
surrender of Burgoyne, and some of the glamour of this the most glorious
feat of American arms hung about him and lent him a prestige in the eyes
of the Carolinians such as his own military merits were far from
deserving. He was brave and patriotic, but he was without real experience
of war and totally lacking in imagination which is able so often to fill
the place of experience.

Harry Latimer, now acting as Brigadier-General Moultrie's chief aide and
largely entrusted with all administrative matters, for which his conduct
of affairs in the past year had shown him so admirably qualified, ate his
Christmas dinner with his family and his brigadier in the big house in
Broad Street that was now used not only as Moultrie's headquarters but
also as his own and Harry's residence.

The reason for this claims a word of explanation, for in following the
fortunes of the American arms we have momentarily neglected Latimer's own
personal history.

Almost a year ago--in January of '78--during Latimer's absence on an
expedition against the Scovellites in the back country, there had
occurred in Charles Town the great conflagration, supposed to have been
the work of tory incendiaries--for the place was honeycombed with
traitors--which wrought such terrible havoc to property. Latimer's
beautiful house, with all the choice furniture, plate and books, in which
it was possible to trace his family's colonial history, had been burnt to
the ground.

Moultrie had come to the rescue of Myrtle, who found herself homeless as
a consequence, and he had offered her the hospitality of his house for
herself and her immediate personal servants, Julius, Hannibal and Dido.
As his own wife was away in Virginia at the time, the arrangement had
proved mutually so convenient that when eventually Harry had returned to
Charles Town it had not only been permitted to continue, but had passed
almost imperceptibly into a permanent arrangement. It suited the General
to have the surveillance of Myrtle over the domestic side of his
establishment no less than to have his chief aide, which Major Latimer
became at about that time, immediately under his hand.

On the day after Christmas, the first and second regiments, some twelve
hundred strong, were ordered to march to Purysburg, and on the 27th they
set out, accompanied and reinforced by five hundred Continental troops.
Purysburg was reached on January 3rd and the army sat down within sound
of the British drums across the river, to watch the enemy, and challenge
his crossing should he attempt it, whilst awaiting the reinforcements
that should render them at need strong enough, themselves, to pay the
first visit.

But for Howe's mismanagement of affairs and the rout he had sustained by
his ill-judged action, the colonials would have been in sufficient
strength to deal with Prevost without further waiting, and by seizing
Savannah before he could fortify it, drive him to his ships. As it was
not only did the reinforcements awaited by Moultrie not arrive, but
desertions began to reduce the forces already existing. This was the
almost constant and inevitable result of the Fabian policy the American
leaders were so commonly forced to adopt. The men of the militia did not
lack spirit, but the absence of training and discipline rendered them
insubordinate; unless quickly brought to action, camp-life wearied and
fretted them and they became homesick. After that, since the public law
by which they were governed could impose upon them no more than a small
pecuniary fine for the greatest military crime, there was nothing to
deter them from desertion.

At first things went well for the Americans at Purysburg. An expedition
sent by Prevost to take post on Port Royal Island was sought out by
Moultrie and defeated with great loss. This initial victory, coming
almost immediately upon the heels of the arrival, on the last day of
January, of General John Ashe with a body of twelve hundred North
Carolinians, brought optimism and confidence.

In the middle of February came the victory over Colonel Boyd with his
strong body of Carolinian and Georgian tories who were on their way to
join the British forces at Augusta higher up the river. With
characteristic intolerance and bigotry--just such a spirit as that which
actuated Sir Andrew Carey--Boyd's green-coats had swept like a flail over
the country, ravaging, burning and devastating as they went, until
suddenly they were intercepted by the Carolinian force under Colonel
Pickens, which cut them to pieces.

But by the time of these happenings, Harry Latimer was back in Charles
Town with Moultrie, summoned thither by Lincoln to confer with Rutledge
upon the state of affairs regarding the militia and to urge the necessity
for reinforcements if a decisive action against Prevost were to be
attempted.

John Rutledge was now invested by the new legislature with powers which
transcended mere civil matters and gave him in military affairs an
authority whose limits were scarcely defined. His re-election to the
office of governor was comparatively recent. He had resigned a year ago,
upon perceiving that it was the aim to render permanent the emancipation
from Great Britain implied in the Declaration of Independence, which at
first in common with many others he had been disposed to regard as a
temporary measure. For a year Rawlins Lowndes had held the office; but
with the shifting of the war to the southern provinces he had begged to
be permitted to resign in favour of someone with greater knowledge of
military matters, and Rutledge, whose scruples had meanwhile passed and
whose mind had grown accustomed to the ideas that were henceforth to
prevail in America, had accepted a position urgently thrust upon him by
all those who rightly valued his great capacity for affairs, his energy,
patriotism and uncompromising honesty.

Of the fact that his eyes missed nothing, Moultrie was to have a rather
painful instance on the occasion of their second interview, held in
Rutledge's house in Broad Street.

The governor had disclosed the measures taken and the further measures
contemplated so as to raise additional troops; and he had announced his
intention of going, himself, to Orangeburg to form a camp for three
thousand men, though he said nothing as yet of how these men were to be
employed.

It is possible that already at this date Rutledge had conceived the great
strategic plan by which he counted upon drawing Prevost's army to such an
annihilation as had overtaken Burgoyne's, that at a stroke he might bring
the war to an end. He guarded his secret so jealously that even to-day it
is only by carefully weighing all that was written in the military
correspondence and general orders of the time, and by scanning every word
in them, that in glimpses, between the lines, the attentive student may
perceive the inspiration and deliberate aim of all that was done. Since
success was to depend upon misleading the enemy so that he might be
subsequently surprised, secrecy was of the very first importance. And
such secrecy did Rutledge observe that not even one so trustworthy and
personally dear to him as Moultrie was permitted the least hint of his
project, nor at the date of which I write did even Lincoln know what was
so closely guarded in the governor's mind.

But since presently one at least must share the secret, and since from
inevitable actions of his own in Charles Town acute observers might draw
inferences sufficiently near the truth to wreck his schemes, Rutledge was
growing uneasy in the knowledge that the place still swarmed with
traitors and with tories whose rancour had been increased by the
appropriation of their wealth for the common weal. He was suspicious of
all who were not avowedly and energetically on his own side, and he was;
like all men who guard a secret fearfully, disposed to start at shadows.

It was of this that he now afforded more than a glimpse.

"There is another matter on which I wish to speak to you," he said at
that second meeting. He spoke quietly, and yet in so odd a tone that
Moultrie took the pipe from between his lips, and looked sharply across
the writing table before which he was seated opposite to the governor.

He observed, perhaps for the first time, that Rutledge's face was rather
grey and drawn from unremitting mental and physical toil; his features
had lost some of their soft roundness, and the fullness under the chin
was perceptibly diminished.

"Are you sure that you are wise in permitting Mrs. Latimer to continue
under your roof, in a house which is practically serving as your
headquarters here?"

The General's stare became one of stupefaction. "What on earth can be the
objection?" For the moment he almost wondered whether, considering the
absence of his own wife, his moral character was being assailed.

"The objection there must always be to having a person of doubtful
loyalty about headquarters. There are always in such places scraps of
information to be picked up."

"My God!" ejaculated Moultrie, and such was his indignation that his
manner of addressing the governor became formal. "Is your excellency
insinuating that Mrs. Latimer is a spy?"

"If I thought so, I should not insinuate it. I should state it. No,
William. I mean neither more nor less than my words convey. I think they
are quite plain."

"Plain? Ay, damme, they're plain. What isn't plain is why you should
utter them at all. Ye must have some reason. Or is it just panic?"

"I am not given to panic."

"But...but..." Moultrie was between amazement and exasperation. "Myrtle
is the wife of my chief aide, a man as loyal and trustworthy as myself,
as every action of his life goes to prove."

"I am not questioning Major Latimer's loyalty. But neither am I
forgetting that his wife is also the daughter of Andrew Carey, the
bitterest and most rancorous tory in Carolina."

Moultrie laughed, and resumed his pipe. He thought he understood.

"Here's a mare's nest," said he between puffs. "Your memory's failing,
John. Mrs. Latimer is completely estranged from her father. It is
notorious that he bears her as deep a rancour as he bears Harry Latimer
himself."

"Then why," asked Rutledge, "does she visit him?"

"Visit him?" Again the pipe came from between Moultrie's lips, and having
parted them to ask that question they remained apart a moment. He screwed
up his rugged features as he added on a deeper note of incredulity: "At
Fairgrove?"

Rutledge shook his head slowly. "Not at Fairgrove. Here in Charles Town
at his house in Tradd Street. Fairgrove is in our hands. Military
necessity obliged us to take possession of it at the end of December.
Carey denounced the action in terms which under martial law would almost
have warranted our hanging him. Whether it was from the rage he indulged,
or from other causes, the gout from which he was suffering mounted to his
vitals, and for a fortnight he lay at the point of death." Rutledge
sighed. "He would probably have saved us a deal of trouble had he died.
But you may have observed, William, that troublesome persons are commonly
of an extraordinary and tenacious vitality.

"He recovered, and for the past month he has steeped himself in affairs,
which he conducts through his factor, old Featherstone--another friend of
ours. His ships trade hither and thither, exporting the produce of his
farther plantations and other produce acquired by purchase. What they
will unport in return remains yet to be seen. Whether this commercial
activity is being pursued in quest of oblivion of his surroundings or as
a mask upon some other design of his, I am not prepared to say. But I
have him under observation, William. His only visitors apart from persons
known to be avowed tories are a few traders from the back country and
even farther afield--all of them natural objects of suspicion to me. And
now his daughter--" He broke off, and sighed again, his rather owlish
eyes, solemn and steady in their glance, levelled upon Moultrie. "If she
were not residing in your house it would not give me a moment's thought."

Moultrie got up, so suddenly that a twinge of gout made him sit down
again. "Nor need it give you a moment's thought as it is." He was
contemptuously emphatic, and he rose again, more successfully this time.
"If she visits her father, it means that they're reconciled at last, and
for her sake, poor child, I'm mighty glad it is so. It isn't comfortable
for a girl to have a father's curse hanging over her, whatever the father
may be. As for the rest..." He made a broad contemptuous gesture of
dismissal. "Moonshine! But I'll go into it. I'll question her." Abruptly,
as if to change the, subject he added: "Anything else?"

"Yes. Since you are going to question her, ask her if she can tell you
anything about a man named Neild--Jonathan Neild."

"Who is he?"

"One of her father's visitors. He's been in Charles Town twice in the
last month: once while Carey was ill, and once again since; three days
ago, in fact. He calls himself a Virginian and a Quaker, and he looks
like a backwoodsman. I should like to know more of Mr. Neild."

"But, surely, men are not suffered to come and go here as they please?"

"Oh, no. Mr. Neild's papers have been examined. They are quite in order.
He bears a pass from Washington, himself."

"And his business here?

"To sell tobacco from his plantations."

"Why in Charles Town?"

"Not in Charles Town. To Sir Andrew Carey for export. He claims to have
traded for years with Sir Andrew, and that he has more cause than ever to
do so now that Charles Town is one of the few ports open to trade."

"Faith, he seems to give a clear account of himself."

"He does, and yet...I distrust him. It's instinctive, I suppose. Non
amote, Sabidi...You understand! So if you are questioning Mrs. Latimer,
ask her to tell you what she knows about him."

"I will. But it's improbable she knows more than you do." He got up.

"I'll be going." He steppes to the door, leaning heavily upon his cane to
ease his gouty foot. There he paused and looked back at Rutledge.
"Feeling as you do about Carey, why don't you relieve your mind by taking
him into custody? You've enough on your mind these days without such
petty worries as this."

Again, and very slowly Rutledge shook his head. "Not so easy as it
sounds. The tories in Charles Town give me trouble enough as it is. I
don't want to precipitate an outbreak. I don't want civil war in the town
as well as in the province."

Moultrie found it humorous. "Gadsmylife!" he gurgled. "It seems the fate
of governors of Charles Town never to be able to do what they should do
to keep the peace lest they break it. It's a quaint paradox, John,"

"Too quaint to be amusing," said Rutledge, who was not easily amused,



CHAPTER V - JONATHAN NEILD


If Rutledge's mistrust of Sir Andrew Carey's quaker visitor was as
intuitive as he represented--and neither our faith in Rutledge's veracity
nor our knowledge of what subsequently came to pass justify any other
assumption--it is a proof that the governor's intuitions were keen
indeed.

The precise manner of Sir Andrew Carey's reconciliation with Myrtle may
be briefly told. When he lay ill, immediately after his enforced return
to Charles Town, Doctor Parker, who was summoned to attend him, almost
despaired of his life. Because of this, and knowing how affairs stood
between the baronet and his daughter, the good doctor, who was the friend
of both, went to her at once with news of his condition. He urged her,
for the sake of her own future peace of mind, to put all rancour behind
her now, and to render her father the loving care that might yet save his
life, or, at worst, might soothe his end.

She required no urging. Her only doubt was whether her father would
receive her. Upon this the physician reassured her. Her father was in no
condition to refuse. And so, with the connivance of old Remus, who wept
for joy at beholding her once more in his master's house, she installed
herself at her unconscious father's bedside, to nurse him with a devotion
akin to that which she had shown Harry some three years ago. For four
days and three nights almost without intermission she remained at the
post of duty until he was restored once more to consciousness and the
crisis was overpast.

Then she had withdrawn, and she had left it to Doctor Parker and Remus to
tell him what she had done, and to plead with him to receive her.

"But for her tender care of you, Sir Andrew," the doctor told him, "my
physic could have accomplished nothing. She has saved your life."

"So, so," said that relentless old man on a note of mockery. "But who
bade her do it?"

"I did," said Doctor Parker.

"You did? You did? Really, really! Hum! A damned liberty on your part,
Parker."

"I desired to save your life, Sir Andrew. Perhaps you'll consider that
was a damned liberty, too."

"Tchah! tchah!" Inarticulately the baronet expressed his irritability.
His temper was so soured in those days that he was regarded by all the
world as a perverse, intractable old man whom it was a thankless task to
serve. "What you did was your business, and you shall be paid for it. But
what Mrs. Latimer may have done upon your invitation, as you tell me, was
an infernal impertinence in you."

The doctor kept his temper. "Your daughter, sir

"Damnation, man," Sir Andrew interrupted him with a fury extraordinary in
one so weak, "don't you know that I have no daughter? Don't I speak
English, or don't you understand the language? Which is it? There! You
mean Mrs. Latimer, I suppose. Well I do not desire the acquaintance of
Mrs. Latimer. That she should have thrust herself upon me when I was in
no condition to have her turned out was an impertinence in her and an
impertinence in you. I have nothing more to say about it."

There was a savage finality in the words, and not to excite him further,
the doctor withdrew and came in sorrow to beg Myrtle to have patience.

"I shall prevail with him yet," he assured her with a confidence he was
not dolt enough to feel before such unchristian obstinacy as Sir
Andrew's. "But I must wait until he is stronger. To-morrow or the next
day perhaps."

She withdrew, to return upon the morrow.. But both on that day and on the
next the doctor put her off with the same tale of failure and the same
hope for the future, and meanwhile she learnt that her father was gaining
strength so rapidly that he actually insisted upon transacting business
with a back-country trader who had come to visit him.

It happened, however, that when she came on the third day she was met by
Parker with so joyous an expression on his face that it required no words
to convey his news of the miracle that had been wrought. Her father
consented to see her.

She found Sir Andrew sitting up in bed, propped by pillows; and she
observed at once the change that less than four years had wrought in him.
He had lost much of his earlier fleshiness and his illness now had
reduced him further, so that his face looked almost gaunt, its heavy bone
structures starkly defined. There was no gladness in the pale blue eyes
that were turned upon her, and the lips were twisted into a vinegary
smile suggestive rather of cruelty than forgiveness.

She went down on her knees beside his bed.

"Father! Dear father!"

He spoke quietly, yet with the faintest bitterness. "Parker tells me that
you have saved my life. Well, well! Odd that you should be at pains to
save a life which you robbed of everything that made it estimable.
But...I forgive you, Myrtle! I expected too much perhaps. I rated you
higher than your worth."

"Father!" It was all that she could say. But her hand reached out for his,
and when she had found it he allowed it to lie in hers.

That he should not more graciously express the forgiveness he professed
to extend did not at all surprise her. She knew his hard unyielding
nature, and was thankful at the moment to have his forgiveness on any
terms. There was so much she desired to say. Above all she wanted to tell
him about Andrew, the grandson she had named after him. But his manner
raised barriers to any tenderness, to any intimacy.

He asked questions. First he inquired more or less formally after her
health and desired news of Mauma Dido. Next he spoke a little of the
plantation which had been wrested from him, of the slaves who had been
appropriated by the rebel government for its seditious labours, and of
other matters as far removed from the things that should lie between
father and daughter. Almost he conveyed the impression that he was making
conversation. Nor did even this continue long. Presently he professed
himself tired, but desired her to come soon again.

She was almost glad to escape, and she went home wondering whether the
old severance was not really preferable to this bitterly cruel
make-believe reconciliation. For that was how she viewed it.

On the morrow, however, she found him much better disposed, just as he
was clearly much better in health. He was up when she arrived, wrapped in
a bedgown and occupying an easy chair. He had a smile of greeting for
her, and his conversation to-day actually led the way to the very things
of which yesterday she had desired to talk.

He wanted to know about the boy, and listened to her with a faint smile
about his lips to the eloquence of her maternal pride. When he learnt
that her son had been named Andrew, his smile broadened; and too readily
she attributed this to tenderness. His next words disillusioned her.

"You thought by that to move me to make him my heir, eh?" And the fierce
old eyes stabbed at her from under his beetling brows.

It was as if he had struck her with a whip. "Father!" she cried, and when
his little crackle of laughter had spluttered out, she gave him a fuller
answer:

"It is unworthy of you to imagine such calculation in me. Harry's wealth
is far beyond our needs."

"It may not always be so," he warned her. "When this war is over, when
these rebels have been whipped into submission, there will be a heavy
reckoning for those who have borne arms against their king. But I am glad
you are not counting upon inheritance from me. For I have disposed
otherwise. It is as well that you should know. All that I may die
possessed of goes to your Cousin Robert. That is an act of commonest
justice. It at once rewards merit and punishes unfilial conduct."

Pain robbed her of all answer. The money was nothing. But to be
disinherited by a parent is to be outcast.

"Well?" he asked her after a pause. "Have you nothing to say?"

"Nothing, father." She held herself bravely in control. "If that is your
wish, I am content. And if you will consider the disinheritance as the
end of our punishment I am more than content."

"So, so," he muttered. "There, there I said it only to test you; to test
the sincerity of your desire to be reconciled. I am glad you stand the
test so well, Myrtle. Very glad." He turned to give her a smile, but she
saw quite clearly through his poor attempt to deceive her. There was a
false ring in his words. He was as a man who, realizing that his feelings
have betrayed him into saying too much, seeks to retract. She imagined,
being herself charitable, that he did so out of regret for having
unnecessarily wounded her.

Then, to her increasing amazement, he actually desired news of Harry: how
and where was he, and what particular activities engaged him. She
answered his questions shortly, giving him no more details than were
necessary, because of her feeling that her replies could not possibly do
other than nourish his bitterness.

When he had drawn from her that Harry was with Lincoln's army guarding
the crossings of the Savannah he laughed aloud. "And these ragamuffins
think they hold Prevost in check, do they?" he scoffed. "Ridiculous What
are their numbers?"

"I am not sure," she answered. "But I believe at least five thousand."

"Five thousand!" It was an ejaculation of mockery, which brought a flush
to her cheeks since it seemed to include Harry himself. To combat his
contempt, to inculcate in him respect for the side her husband served,
she made haste to assure him that Lincoln's army was soon to be
reinforced. "They are enlisting militia in North Carolina and elsewhere
to go to their support," she assured him.

"Bah A rabble. D'ye think such fellows can stand against trained
soldiers--a pack of out-at-elbow ruffians ill-armed and probably without
sufficient ammunition."

He seemed to wait for an answer. But she had none to offer, not knowing,
indeed, what might be the truth of the matter. Her silence urged him to
question her more directly.

"What artillery have they? For, after all, it is artillery that counts.
What guns have they, that they should hope to hold the British? Tell me
that?" It was an argumentative challenge, and had she possessed the
information she would have advanced it to prove him wrong in the
contemptuous conviction he suggested. As it was, her ignorance compelled
her to confess that she did not know.

He turned peevish. "You don't know. You don't know!" Bah! And you want to
argue with me; you pretend to tell me that Lincoln's riff-raff can stop a
British army! Bah!"

"It was just such riff-raft stopped Burgoyne," she answered; stung by his
mockery, and flung him by that reminder into such a passion that she
bitterly upbraided herself for her momentary loss of temper.

But he simmered down again, and was gentle with her in the end, bidding
her to come soon again to see him, even suffering her to kiss him at
parting.

As she was descending the stairs, a man advanced along the hall, going
towards the dining-room. His back was turned to her and he stepped
quickly with a brisk martial step and the upright carriage of a tall
well-knit figure, so familiar that she paused a moment in sheer
amazement. The next moment she was speeding down the stairs, and after
him. And as she ran instinctively she called to him:

"Robert! Cousin Robert!"

He checked and turned as she came breathlessly up with him. She shrank
back in fresh amazement. The man's hair, long and black, hung like the
ears of a spaniel about a face that was tanned almost to the colour of an
Indian's. His countenance was of an odd and singular blankness. He wore
an expression of perpetual surprise, resulting from a total lack of
eyebrows. The lower part of his face, his mouth and chin, were lost in a
dense black beard, whose incongruous and unusual growth gave him the air
described by Rutledge--for this was that same Neild--as that of a
backwoodsman. He was dressed in a suit of plain brown homespun of an
old-fashioned cut, such as was affected by Quakers. Quakerish, too, was
the round black hat he carried, the plain white linen bands at his throat
and the steel buckles on his black, square-toed shoes.

He spoke, and his voice was nasal and harsh.

"Madam, my name is Jonathan, not Robert. Jonathan Neild."

She stared into the dark brown eyes that were stolidly regarding her out
of that swarthy face. She was confused. She laughed a little. How could
her fancy so have tricked her?

"Your pardon, sir. I see I was mistook."

He bowed in silence, and turned again to resume his way. But no sooner
was his back towards her than the illusion returned. Rooted where she
stood, she watched him pass into the dining-room; she saw him still even
after he had passed out of her sight, saw the swing of those square
shoulders, the elastic step and an indefinable character in his movements
that were unquestionably Robert Mandeville's.

On a sudden irresistible conviction she went after him.

About to take his seat at table, with Remus standing by his chair, he
raised his eyes in mild enquiry when she plunged into the room. Again she
checked. It was fantastic. This man was not Robert Mandeville. He was
nothing like Robert Mandevile. And then the eyes of her memory beheld
his back once more, the set of his shoulders, the characteristic walk.

"Leave us, Remus," she said shortly.

The negro's plain hesitation and his sudden nervousness were so much
confirmation. He showed the whites of his eyes as he turned to the
stranger, waiting obviously for commands from him.

"Do as thou art bid," said the harsh, nasal voice, and Remus in obvious
uneasiness effaced himself,

When they were alone she came forward until there was only the table
between them. She fought down her agitation, and strove to speak calmly.

"Robert, what does this mean?"

"I have told thee, madam, my name is Jonathan."

"There's not the need to repeat the lie," she answered him. "I know you.
What you have done to yourself I can't guess. But that you are Robert
Mandeville, I know--as surely as I know that I am Myrtle Latimer."

He revealed strong white teeth behind that black tangle of beard, as
gently he smiled and shook his head.

"Thy fancy plays some trick upon thee, madam. I tell thee again, I am
Jonathan Neild. A planter and a merchant, and here to trade with Sir
Andrew Carey."

"Ah! To trade in what?"

It was as if she presented a pistol, and the sneer that argues knowledge
startled him a little. But this was barely perceptible in his manner.

"In tobacco, madam. I am a tobacco-planter from Virginia."

"From Virginia? With that accent?"

"I was not born in Virginia, madam."

"And that's the first true word you've spoken. I know well enough where
you were born. And I know well enough what your trade is with my father."
A flush of indignation was mounting to her cheeks. "I know now why he
pretended so much interest in Harry, why he probed me with questions of
the intentions of Lincoln's army, its numbers and equipment. You're here
as a spy, Captain Mandeville. That is the trade you drive."

"Madam, thy insults touch me not, since 'tis clear they are intended for
another whom you persist in supposing me to be."

She stamped her foot in exasperation.

"Very well, then. You shall be afforded the opportunity of satisfying
Governor Rutledge of your identity."

The threat to her amazement discomposed him not at all. He spread his
hands and spoke in a tone of mild protest.

"Madam, I have done so already. A stranger may not come and go quite
freely in a land that is given over to the godlessness of war. Your
governor has challenged me already and my papers have been laid before
him. I assure thee, madam, they have satisfied him."

She leaned forward. "That may be. But are they proof against the scrutiny
that must follow when I tell the governor that I know you for Robert
Mandeville?"

"I trust so, madam. Thou wilt commit an idle foolishness."

"And if I bid them shave off your beard, and wash your face?"

There was silence for a long moment during which his dark eyes pondered
her. They found her hard and resolute. Suddenly he shrugged and laughed,
and it was almost as if he tossed aside a cloak.

"I surrender, Myrtle," he announced in his natural voice. "Your eyes are
too sharp. Better surrender to you than to Governor Rutledge."

He had fatuously imagined that she but pressed him so as to force him to
disclose himself, and thus satisfy her that her acumen had not been at
fault. But there was no easing of her hardness.

"The one must follow upon the other," she informed him coldly.

"What!" It was a cry of sheer horror. "You would betray me? Me, Myrtle?"

"Isn't betrayal the purpose for which you are here?"

"No," he answered her with convincing emphasis. "It is not."

"What else, then?"

"What else?" He was almost indignant. "Can't you imagine it, considering
your father's state? I had word of his condition, and I came at once out
of solicitude for him, to do what I could. My solicitude was the sharper
because I knew that he had no other kin at hand to stand by him, perhaps
in his extremity. That is my offence, Myrtle."

If he thought to melt her with that story he was wrong. "You had word of
my father's condition, you say. That is an admission that you had been in
communication with him."

"Why not? We are kin, after all. What is there unnatural in our
communicating?"

Remembering her father's announcement that he had made Mandeville his
heir, she imagined that she held the explanation of his presence. But
there was something else here that she did not understand.

"When did you learn my father's condition?

"A month ago."

"Where were you at the time?"

"With Prevost at Savannah. I am serving with him now. I was with Clinton,
but I exchanged when Prevost's army was ordered South."

She shook her head and smiled a little scornfully. "And you would pretend
to me that you grew that beard in a month?"

"Nay, in less than a month, for it must have taken you at least a week to
get here."

"No. I don't pretend that."

"Then how do you reconcile it with the story you have told me?"

He looked at her between vexation and wonder. "You are too shrewd for
me," he said.

"Shrewd enough to know where my duty lies, and so are you, Captain
Mandeville."

If he was alarmed, he did not betray it.

"Your duty to whom? There is a duty to your father, to your family, and
even perhaps a little to myself, Myrtle." He spoke quietly, almost
humbly.

"And the duty to my husband? For you will remember that I am the wife of
Major Latimer of the Continental Army."

His dark eyes grew wistful.

"If you feel it inevitably your duty to denounce me, I will give you the
last proof of my regard by submitting. \ But it is to punish me a little
heavily for the affection for your father which has brought me here into
the lion's den. I knew that I was risking my life when I came. But I
hardly thought that yours, Myrtle, would be the hands to destroy me."

That softened her. It brought back memories of the past, of all that she
owed to Mandeville, of all, indeed, that Harry owed to him, although
Harry, blinded by prejudice, would not admit the debt, and the subject
had been a fruitful source of disagreement in the unhappy early days of
their married life. For she had never abandoned the persuasion that
Mandeville--out of concern for herself--had repeatedly shielded Harry,
and that it was to Mandeville's influence with Lord William that Harry
owed the respite which had enabled him to leave Charles Town after the
Featherstone affair.

"What am I to do?" she asked, and clenched her hands. "If I could be
assured that you have not come here to spy...But I can't be. My reason
tells me that you have, and if I don't denounce you I become your
accomplice."

"If you do, you are my executioner." Gently he smiled. "Poor Myrtle! The
choice is difficult, I know. At least, I hope it is. I hope you would not
lightly sacrifice the life of a man who is ready enough himself to
sacrifice it in your service." And then he changed his tone to one of
argument, as if all his purpose were disinterestedly to help her in the
parlous choice with which she was confronted. Listen, Myrtle. You say
that I am here to spy. But to spy out what? What can I learn here that we
do not already know? What information that I may bear back to Prevost can
affect that which is inevitably to happen?"

"What is to happen?" she asked him breathlessly.

He made a little gesture of pity for a blindness that could not perceive
what he had to tell.

"At Savannah Prevost is in sufficient strength now to drive through to
Charles Town when he pleases. What is there to withstand him? A handful
of steady continentals and a rabble of undisciplined militia led by an
incompetent commander. Yet to make quite sure, Prevost awaits
reinforcements. In a month perhaps, in two months at most, he will move.
And then it will be a march. Nothing more. Within two months the British
Southern Army will be in Charles Town. Be quite sure of that. For there
is nothing to dispute our passage. Can anything that I might have gleaned
here--assuming that I am indeed the spy you insist upon thinking
me--alter or avert that fact? Answer the question for yourself, Myrtle.
Ask yourself what advantage to your husband's side can result from
handing me over to be shot or hanged. And ask yourself at the same time,
if it might not be well in the hour when Prevost arrives that you should
have in his immediate following a friend as devoted and loyal as myself.
I have saved your husband aforetime, Myrtle, although you may little have
guessed quite all that I was sacrificing when I did so."

"Sacrificing? What do you mean? What...sacrifice?"

He pondered a moment, then took the plunge. It could do no harm, and it
might serve his desperate turn. His knowledge of humanity assured him
that the woman did not live who could listen unmoved to an avowal of
love.

"I mean, Myrtle, that you were, and still are, dearer to me than anything
in all this world. In those old happy days here in Charles Town when
first I knew you, when I was so often in your company at Fairgrove, the
world became for Robert Mandeville a very different place from anything
that it had ever been before or that it could ever be again. Yet I who
would have given my life for you, loved you so devotedly, so selflessly,
that I gladly gave life to another man so that he might rob me of you.
That was because--"

"Don't, Robert!"

It was like a cry of pain, and instantly obedient he ceased. The glow
passed from his face as if he had put on a mask. Impassive once more, his
head slightly bowed, he stood before her.

"Robert, I never knew...I never dreamed..."

"And I have done wrong to tell you now. I was carried away by an impulse
I should have resisted. God knows I have resisted it often enough in the
past. Forgive me."

"Oh, what am I to do? What am Ito do?" She was white to the lips in her
emotion and distress. She crushed fist into palm, and wrung her hands in
an agony of doubt and indecision.

"Do?" he said. "Why that, at least, is simple. Repay the debt that lies
between me and Harry Latimer. Give me the same respite that I gave him.
Leave to depart. He had forty-eight hours through my intervention.
Twenty-four will suffice for me. If I am not gone by to-morrow, then
denounce me to your governor. Am I asking too much. If so--"

"No, no, Robert." She faltered and paused, looking at him in distraction.
"If...if I do this...if I let you go now, and say no word to
anyone...will you, on your side, pledge me your word that you will not
return to Charles Town or attempt to hold communication with my father
while the war lasts? Will you do that?"

"Not to return, yes. I pledge you my word freely and sincerely. But as to
holding communication with your father..."

"You must promise that, too. You must. It is the least, the very least,
upon which I can concede so much."

He bowed his head. "Very well. I promise it. I will leave to-night."

This, you will remember, had happened a month ago, whilst Harry Latimer
was with Moultrie at Purysburg.



CHAPTER VI - PREVOST'S ADVANCE


Moultrie went home from his interview with Rutledge through a street that
was seething with an activity very different from that of which it had
been the scene in the old days. And it wore a different aspect in itself.
The devastating fire of two years ago, which had devoured the houses at
its foot, left a wide gap through which there was a clear view of the bay
and its shipping.

Soldiers thronged the thoroughfare: raw recruits from the country on
their way out to the racecourse to be drilled, trailing a brass field
piece after them; men from the battery on Hadrell's Point, men up in town
from Fort Moultrie, which was now garrisoned by Marion's force; rangers,
infantrymen, artillerymen and engineers; a few continentals with the
formidable, competent air of veteran soldiers, and a preponderance of
militia, than whom no men could have looked less military.

And woven into this warlike pattern were the ordinary townsfolk: a few
fine ladies, escorted by officers, and women of the humbler class
escorting the rank and file, with here and there an elderly prosperous
planter, too old or too loyal in principles to don a uniform and take the
field.

Some wore anxious faces. But in the main the crowd was gay and
light-hearted. The clouds of war were as yet remote. The invader's only
attempt to set foot on Carolinian soil had been whipped back by Moultrie,
and whilst it was already known to be Prevost's intention to march on
Charles Town, yet it was also known that General Lincoln was in
sufficient force at Purysburg to hold him. Moultrie's confident assurance
that the British would have to ask leave to cross the Savannah had been
communicated to the people, and was unquestioningly accepted by them.

It was the dinner hour when the General reached home, and he found Myrtle
and Harry awaiting him to go to the table.

Not until dinner was at an end, and the decanters, which Moultrie eyed
fondly but from which his gout debarred him, were on the board, did he
broach the matter, fatuous though he deemed it, that was agitating
Rutledge.

"Myrtle, my dear, I hear that you are at last reconciled with your
father."

She faced him, with a frank, open smile.

"Yes. I have just been telling Harry," and she looked fondly up at her
slim straight husband standing immediately behind her chair. "And it has
made me so happy, General. It has brought me a peace that has been absent
from my heart for years. For although latterly custom was dulling the
ache, still the ache was ever there, underneath all."

"I am glad, child, and so will you be, Harry."

"Indeed, I am. Nothing since our marriage has made me happier than this
knowledge."

"But Sir Andrew has not yet made his peace with you?"

Myrtle did not give him time to answer.

"That will come, General. I am sure it will come. Down in his heart my
father has always loved Harry, and it is my hope that presently, perhaps
when this dreadful war is over, he will take him back into his
affection."

Moultrie mumbled amiabilities, and dragged up a footstool to ease his
foot that was particularly troublesome to-day. Then, rather ashamed of
himself, and feeling singularly mean, but true to his promise to
Rutledge, he set himself further to question her, a cloak of interest
upon his prying intentions.

"Tell me how it came about, my dear: did you take your courage in both
hands and go to him; or did he bend his stiff old neck at last, and send
for you?"

With the same candour as before, she gave him the story of how the event
had been brought about by Doctor Parker.

"I see," said Moultrie, when she had done. "Well, well I am glad it
should end so." He helped himself to leaf from the box Harry pushed
towards him. Whilst filling his pipe, he went probing on with a skill in
masking his approach which filled him at once with self-admiration and
disgust. "Odd how the habits of a lifetime cling! No sooner has the old
man recovered strength enough than his thoughts and such energy as he
commands must be turning to trade again."

"Yes," she agreed. "And it has been a rare medicine to him. The
occupation has restored him wonderfully."

"It must ha' done to enable him to be transacting business in person as I
am told he is doing," Moultrie lighted his pipe from the kindled taper.
Casually he asked: "Have you met many of his trader friends on your
visits to him?"

"I have seen a few of them," she replied as casually.

"There's a Quaker who comes to sell him tobacco. A fellow from Virginia,
I am told. Have you ever met him there?"

Was it mere chance that her eyes fell away from his own at that moment?
And was it merely his fancy that the movement of her slight bosom became
perceptible an instant later? Was there really a pause, or did it merely
seem so to his ears that were straining so keenly for the answer? Those
questions he asked himself with the instantaneousness of thought before
She made reply in a calm voice.

"I may have done. I have met one or two. What was his name?"

"His name?" He searched his memory. "Neild, I believe."

"Neild?" she repeated slowly, and after a pause she answered slowly, like
one who is not very certain: "Yes. I believe I did meet a man of that
name." She admitted it reluctantly, fearing dangers in complete denial.
Abruptly she added the question: "Why do you ask?"

He laughed good-humouredly. "They grow good tobacco in Virginia, and good
tobacco is becoming very scarce these days. If this fellow should happen
to be about and have any fine leaf to sell, I should be glad to know it.
But you don't particularly remember him?"

She shook her head slowly, making pretence the while to be thinking.
"No," she said at last. "Not...particularly."

"You never spoke to him?"

"I may have done. I think I did once, meeting him casually. But I cannot
be sure."

"Ah well. It is no great matter." And Moultrie dismissed the subject and
turned to speak of other things.

He did not think that she had prevaricated; chiefly because his
easy-going nature--that one fault in a soldier which General Lee had
deplored in him--preferred not to think so.

Myrtle was left uneasy, not so much lest the identity of Neild should be
suspected, but because of the deceit which she herself had practised not
only upon Moultrie, but upon her husband. More than once during those few
days that Harry was in Charles Town she had sought an opportunity of
telling him. But the fact that she had yielded to her hesitation and had
not told him immediately on his return, made it impossible to tell him
now. The very delay seemed to increase the tale there was to tell,
burdening it with explanations which in themselves are always
incriminating.

She had been foolish, to allow herself to be repelled by the thought of
his own senseless jealousy of Mandeville, which he had more than once
betrayed. That jealousy of his, were she to tell him now, would be more
than ever fired by her silence on the subject since his coming. She was
committed to a course, and to that course she had better keep. After all,
what harm could follow now? Mandeville had pledged himself never to
return to Charles Town whilst the war continued, Therefore what harm
could her silence do? Or what good could be accomplished by her speaking?

And so when Harry departed once more from Charles Town a few days later
in Moultrie's company it was still without any knowledge of his wife's
interview with Mandeville at her father's.

They got back to the camp at Purysburg in a downpour of rain on February
26th, to receive the details of the rout of Boyd's forces and to find
General Lincoln so encouraged by this success as to have determined upon
more extensive operations against the British. He had detached two
thousand men under General Ashe and sent them up the river to Augusta
with orders to cut off a strong English force posted there under Colonel
Campbell.

Campbell, however, did not choose to wait. Upon perceiving the massing of
troops opposite to him and fearing a crossing below to cut him off from
the main army at Savannah, he broke up his camp and marched briskly
south, along the right bank of the river.

Ashe crossed in pursuit on the 25th, the day before Moultrie's return to
Purysburg, and reached Brier Creek two days later. Here, just above the
creek's junction with the Savannah, he took station, and thence on March
2nd he reported himself safe, being in a strong position and the enemy
apparently afraid of him.

It must be assumed that he based his opinion of the enemy's fear of him
upon the fact that no enemy showed himself before his lines. The reason,
however, was very different from all that General Ashe supposed. At the
very moment that he was sending off that complacent report, Prevost was
making a wide detour to come round and take him in the rear, an event
which happened on the morrow.

Scarcely indeed had his report reached the General at Purysburg, than on
the heels of it came Colonel Eaton, who had swum the river with his
horse, galloping into camp with the .terrible news that Ashe was cut off
and completely routed.

Never indeed was any army more utterly surprised, panic-stricken and
broken than that army on Brier Creek. Appalled by the sudden and totally
unexpected appearance of the British, the militia men had flung away
their weapons almost without firing a shot, and had fled through swamp
and flood, many of them perishing by water in their haste to escape from
fire.

The effect upon the Carolinian army, which had thus at one blow lost
nearly a third of its effectives, was a dejection easy to conceive.
Fortunately recruits were coming in which raised their numbers once more,
until by the end of the month they were almost at their original
strength.

At the beginning of April, Lincoln was absent, summoned to Orangeburg by
Governor Rutledge, there to confer with him upon the plan of campaign to
be pursued. He returned, and word ran through the camp that they would
very shortly be taking the field against Prevost. There was an activity
of preparation and a feverish drilling of the new recruits that were sent
hurriedly down to them. But before anything happened Lincoln was again
summoned to Orangeburg by the governor, and this time he took Moultrie
with him, who in his turn went accompanied by Latimer.

Here in Orangeburg they found a considerable camp where some three
thousand men were in training under Rutledge's own eye.

Lincoln had given Moultrie to understand that the governor had conceived
a coup which if successful should certainly end the war in the south, and
might end it altogether. But he was not permitted to disclose any
details. His own respect for Moultrie's opinion made him anxious that
Moultrie should now be taken into Rutledge's confidence, so that he might
contribute perhaps something to the plan out of his own military
experience and acumen.

But a disappointment awaited Moultrie, the more keenly felt perhaps
because of his relations of intimate personal friendship with Rutledge.
He was admitted to certain of the conferences, but not to any of the
vital ones. And when at last he departed again with Lincoln, to return to
camp, he knew as little of what was afoot as when he had last left it.

One item of interest, however, he had gleaned from one of the few
conferences which he did attend. Prevost had put forward a proposal for
the neutrality of Georgia for the remainder of the war. Rutledge informed
them of it, and that was one of the few occasions on which Moultrie heard
him laugh.

"It is too absurd and ridiculous to require a moment's consideration,"
the governor had pronounced. "Indeed, it scarce merits an answer. But an
answer I shall send, to inform General Prevost of just that."

Once back in Purysburg, Lincoln made his dispositions as swiftly as it
lay within his sluggish capacity to do anything. He was a stout
slow-moving man, himself, slow of thought and slow of speech, and
therefore slow in all things.

But at last by April 23rd he was ready, and, leaving Moultrie with a
thousand men to watch Prevost, he marched away bag and baggage, horse,
foot and artillery. He went north along the river, still swollen by the
heavy rains but now settling under finer weather. His avowed design was
to re-enter Georgia at Augusta, as Ashe had done, and to march down the
southern bank upon Savannah.

From the orders he received Moultrie inferred that Lincoln was persuaded
Prevost would not wait for him. Should Prevost attempt to cross, Moultrie
was to delay him as long as possible, falling back when he must, but
disputing every foot of the road to Charles Town should the British
reveal the design of marching upon it. Meanwhile an express was
dispatched to Rutledge at Orangeburg, to inform him that action was
begun, so that he might remove himself to Charles Town with the new
forces he had raised.

As Lincoln had supposed, so things fell out. No sooner did Prevost obtain
intelligence that the main body of Lincoln's army had moved off than he
crossed the Savannah in farce, and drove Moultrie back.

Above, Lincoln waited before crossing to Augusta until he had learnt that
Prevost was on the left bank. Then over he went with his army, apparently
to march upon the capital of Georgia, which Was no longer defended. The
explanation he gave out, so freely that intelligence of it reached
Prevost, was that he regarded the British crossing as a feint to draw him
out of Georgia. But that he was not so to be drawn, and that he meant to
occupy Savannah.

Prevost will no doubt have laughed at the old sluggard and the notion of
strategy which his pronouncement seemed to express. Well content to leave
Lincoln's army in Georgia and out of account for all military purposes,
he thrust forward as rapidly as Moultrie would permit him, to possess
himself of the capital of South Carolina.

But at Pocotaligo certain doubts assailed him. Was Lincoln really as
stupid as he represented himself, or was there here some subtlety at work
which at present he did not perceive? That doubt kept him inert there for
three days, until in the end the intelligences he received on every hand
compelled him to dismiss it, The truth might seem too good to be true;
but true it was. Lincoln, to possess himself of an empty nest, had
removed the only barrier that might have retarded of even resisted the
British. It was for the British to take full advantage; and press on.



CHAPTER VII - RUTLEDGE'S NERVES


Prevost now drove forward with an army that was between seven and eight
thousand strong. But his progress being ever disputed by the retreating
force under Moultrie a fortnight was occupied in covering the eighty
miles of ground that lie between the Savannah and the Ashley. Having
crossed the Savannah on April 25th, Prevost reached the south bank of the
Ashley on Sunday, May 9th, and encamped there facing the peninsula
between the two rivers on the point of which stands Charles Town.

Moultrie having fallen back across the Ashley some hours ahead had
brought the weary remnant of his force--a bare six hundred to which
rearguard actions had reduced his original thousand--safely into a town
that was humming like a beehive with the activity of preparation, and
quaking a little too in apprehension of the shock that now impended.

Rutledge had arrived the day before with his men from Orangeburg, and a
small supplement of force had been added by the arrival of Count Pulaski,
a gallant Pole urged by his sympathy with the cause of freedom to bear
arms in defence of American Independence. He brought with him a hundred
and sixty men of his legion.

Although the invader had the advantage of a force nearly twice as
numerous as that of the defenders, yet the men of Charles Town were far
from being without hope of bolding their own.

Wonders had been wrought in the last nine days in the matter of
fortifying the place, considering that when on May 1st; Major Latimer,
sent forward by Moultrie for the purpose, had arrived in the town, he had
found it utterly unprepared for an attack by land. The ferries of the
Ashley were not then fortified and some weak defences were the only
barrier across the Neck.

Latimer had gone to work at once, with the stout co-operation of
Lieutenant-Governor Bee and the Senate, and having aroused the civil and
military authorities to a sense of the danger, all those capable of
labouring were at once impressed into service. An accomplished engineer,
the Chevalier de Cambray, another of those distinguished foreign soldiers
in the service of America, took charge of the works, and under his
direction white men and black toiled day and night to throw up
entrenchments. All houses in the northern suburb were burned down, and
thanks to the retarding actions fought by Moultrie, before the red-coats
appeared on the banks of the Ashley a strong line of fortifications had
risen across the Neck, with abatis on which cannon were emplaced.

This in itself was encouraging to the inhabitants, and when presently the
stout-hearted and capable Moultrie, whose epic defence of Sullivan's
Island was not forgotten, rode in with his battered but cheerful troops,
Charles Town's heart was lifted up by hope. The grimly-smiling, confident
countenance of the easy-going General was in itself a moral tonic to all
who beheld it.

Rutledge, now haggard and worn, the fullness under his chin entirely
vanished, his elegant coat sagging a little about his body, which was
shrunken by exertion, sleeplessness and anxiety, displayed an unusual
nervousness. It was deplored by some of those who perceived it, and who
could not know that it was the nervousness of the man who has laid a
heavy stake upon the board and who awaits the turn of wheel or card,
dreading the issue, however heavy may be the odds in his own favour. As
the next day came and went eventlessly his nervousness increased, and on
the evening of that Monday he betrayed it in a rather singular and in him
entirely unusual display of irritability, as shall presently be told.

He was to sup that night with Moultrie and the Latimers. But both he and
Moultrie were late in arriving. Myrtle and Harry in the dining room,
where the table was laid and all prepared, awaited them. They were
sitting together on the wide window seat, Harry with his arm about
Myrtle's waist, her head on his shoulder and her eyes on Andrew, now a
well-grown chubby lad of three who was astride his father's left knee,
and at the moment deeply engrossed in unravelling one of the strands
which he had detached from Harry's shoulder-knot.

These dear ones were Latimer's one deep pre-occupation in those days. But
for their presence he would cheerfully have envisaged the coming assault.
He had done his best to persuade Myrtle to withdraw from Charles Town.
But Myrtle had manifested a positive dread of leaving him at such a time,
and a horror of availing herself of either of the alternatives he
proposed. She had represented that they would be infinitely safer in the
town itself. Even should it fall to Prevost, the British did not make war
on women and children, and they had little personally to fear. The worst
dangers were those of bombardment. But if she were to put to sea in an
attempt to gain the West Indies, one of his proposals for her and Andrew,
she would have to face the peril of falling into the hands of some of the
ships moving along the coast; whilst if she adopted his other proposal
and went up-country to the Santee, she would know no peace from fear of
the tory bands that still roved about the land, whose notorious
ruthlessness and vindictive cruelty would keep her in a constant state of
anxiety and dread. To this would be added anxiety and dread on the score
of Harry himself who would be distant from her.

Thus in the end, however reluctantly, yet perceiving the justice of what
she urged, he had yielded.

She had paid her father a visit that afternoon, and she had found him in
a more fatherly mood than any he had yet displayed.

"It is his faith in the British arms," she was telling Harry, "He is so
confident that Prevost will prevail, and that it can be only a question
of days before Charles Town surrenders, that he is softened by
exultation."

"There will be a reaction if Prevost does not prevail--as, pray God, he
will not."

In that case father's mood will not matter very much. But if Charles Town
should capitulate, I think that father will stand our friend. In fact, he
has as good as promised it. "There's nothing for you to fear, Myrtle," he
told me. "My loyalty is well-known, and I shall be there to welcome
General Prevost when he enters. I shall have some influence with him;
enough to make you safe.'"

"And to hang me," thought Harry, smiling to himself.

As if she had read his thought and were answering it, she said:

"I think such a consummation would so uplift him that he might be
disposed at last to make his peace with you, Harry, and extend his
protection over you as well. So that, whatever happens, there should be
some gain for us."

"My dear!" He was a little aghast. "Much as I should welcome
reconciliation with your father, you cannot think that I should welcome
it at such a price."

And then Julius came in, ushering Lieutenant Shubrick, a war-stained but
cheerful young gentleman on duty in the lines. With him came a large fair
man who was bespattered with mud from his riding-boots to the collar of
his full-skirted biscuit-coloured coat.

With an exclamation of surprise and pleasure, Harry set down the boy and
rose. Myrtle rose with him.

"Tom!" she cried, and held out both her hands to the newcomer, who was
grinning broadly as he advanced towards them.

Disregarding Andrew, who furiously embraced one of his legs, and more
furiously still demanded his attention with shrill passionate shouts of
"Daddy Harry! Daddy Harry!" Latimer too held out a hand to Tom Izard, who
thus unexpectedly made his appearance after an absence of three years and
more, during which he had been campaigning with the Northern armies.

Tom shook hands with each of them, almost expressionless save for his
laughter. Then laughing still he turned to the officer who had
accompanied him, and whose erstwhile official sternness had now given
place to a smile.

"Well, sir? Are you satisfied that I am known here? Tell him my name,
Harry, like a good fellow, so that he may get back to his duty without
wasting further time mine."

"But why? What's the matter?"

"I'm under arrest. That's all. You keep a devilish sharp lookout here.
Having no papers I was very properly stopped at the outposts, and brought
here under guard."

The lieutenant explained, holding himself stiffly at attention.

"Governor's orders, sir. Issued this afternoon. All attempting to pass
the lines either coming or going to be detained and brought to
headquarters. This gentleman describes himself as Captain Izard of the
Continental Army. But..."

"That's right, Shubrick," Latimer interrupted. "Captain Izard is known to
me. A friend of mine. I'll answer for him, Shubrick. You may go."

The officer bowed and went out, Julius following. Before the door closed
again they heard his sharp order to the guard outside, and the tramp of
departing feet.

Andrew had ceased his clamour for Daddy Harry's attention, and was now
entirely engrossed in the big stranger. With eyes as blue as cornflowers
and as round as saucers he pondered Captain Izard, who meanwhile had
scarcely perceived him.

"What is it?" he was asking. "Is the governor nervous?"

"He has cause to be," Harry replied. "The place is full of traitors, and
with our strength considerably below what it should be and what Prevost
should have every reason for supposing it, naturally Rutledge takes no
risks of information leaking out. He suspects, perhaps with reason, that
there's been enough of it already. But tell us of yourself, Tom. Where
are you from?"

Middlebrook, with secret dispatches for your omnipotent governor.
Gadslife! Rutledge has risen in the world since last we parted."

"He deserves it. A strong man."

"Oh, he's strong, and unpleasant, too, which is the way of most strong
men. And who's this?" He bent over Andrew, who had drawn quite close to
him, and the youngster himself replied stoutly:

"And'ew Fitz'oy Latimer."

"Lord!" said Tom, and picked him up so abruptly as to scare him, which set
him kicking and howling for "Daddy Harry!"

"Another strong man," protested Tom at the end of the struggle, setting
down the youngster. Myrtle removed him to the care of Mauma Dido, and
peace was restored.

Julius fetched the captain a glass of grog, and meanwhile the captain
sprawled in a chair, his long legs stretched before him, and talked. He
had nothing to add to their knowledge of American affairs, but a deal to
tell them of Washington, whom he almost deified, descanting upon his
fortitude, his genius, his patience and his indomitable strength.

He was still talking when the door opened, and the late-corners, Rutledge
and Moultrie came in. Both were weary, and the riding-clothes of the
governor were as dusty as the faded uniform of the general, but whereas
Rutledge's face had an anxious care-worn look the broad rugged
countenance of Moultrie was cheerful as ever.

Myrtle would have rung at once for Julius to serve supper, but she was
checked by Torn Izard, who rose and bowed to the new arrivals.

Rutledge was still considering him with a cold questioning eye, when
Moultrie impulsively came forward holding out his hand and uttering a
welcome. Then the governor's voice came sharp and harsh.

"Why are you not in uniform, Captain Izard?"

"Because I am here on a secret mission. I bring you a dispatch from the
Commander-in-Chief. I had the honour to be chosen for the service."

Rutledge's irritation was not appeased. Rather did it increase.

"What papers do you carry?"

"None, sir. Travelling as a civilian it was best that I should not."

"And you got through the lines, without papers and in those clothes?" It
was almost an explosion of wrath.

Tom laughed freely and shook his head. "Let me perish I did not, sir. I
was arrested at the outposts, and brought here under guard."

"I see! Hum! That's better."

Moultrie raised his brows, and looked at Rutledge. "What else should you
have supposed?" he asked.

"What I am justified in supposing," snapped the governor. He was far from
mollified, as was to have been expected. "You bring a dispatch," he
resumed. "Where was the need to send a dispatch at such a time? If it had
fallen into British hands..." He shrugged ill-humouredly.

Tom drew himself up, and spoke with chill dignity, unceremoniously
interrupting.

"There could at no time have been any danger of that, your excellency. I
had my orders."

"Yes, yes." Rutledge seemed to sneer. Possibly his old mistrust of Izard,
on the score of his connection with Lord William Campbell, was an added
irritant, although all reason for such mistrust had long since been
removed. "The dispatch?" And he held out his hand.

Captain Izard turned down one of the gauntlet-like cuffs of his coat,
cuffs that were normally stiffened with buckram, and proffered his arm to
the governor. "If your excellency will slice through the stiffening, the
letter will pass straight from my hands to yours, as I undertook that it
should."

Rutledge stared a moment. Then some of the gloom passing from his face,
he took a knife from the table, and did as he was invited. The letter was
found to replace half the buckram which had been sliced away.

"You think the British would not have found it? Well, well, perhaps not.
A British general wouldn't. I am sure of that. But I'd be less confident
in the case of an officer of humbler rank."

He stalked away to the window with the letter, which was bound in silk
and very lightly sealed. He spread and read it, standing there aloof, his
face expressionless. Then he asked for a taper which Latimer supplied
him, and in the flame of it he consumed the sheet utterly, dropping the
ashes on the hearth.

Izard was amazed that he should thus destroy a communication presumably
of military import without so much as showing it to the military
commander of the place who was there in the same room. But he kept the
thought to himself.

They sat down to supper. Throughout the meal, Rutledge was wrapped in
thought, and his moodiness sat like a thundercloud upon the company, and
even stilled the normal garrulity of Tom Izard.

When the governor rose at last to take his departure, which was soon
after the meal had been brought to an end, he desired a word apart with
Moultrie and Latimer before leaving.

Moultrie would have ushered him into the office which he had established
on the ground floor front for the dispatch of military business. But
Rutledge stayed him.

"No, no," he said curtly. "I desire only a word with Major Latimer--a
word of advice." And he turned gravely to confront Harry. He lowered his
voice. "You would do well, sir, for the present, while this situation
lasts, to discourage Mrs. Latimer's visits to her father."

The Major stiffened, whilst even Moultrie made an ejaculation of
impatience. Then Latimer controlled himself to ask quite steadily:

"Will your excellency tell me plainly what you mean?".

"I have told you, sir. If you want more you'll find it in the reflection
that your father-in-law's sympathies are notoriously what they are, and
that his house is a meeting-place for all manner of men whom I mistrust."

Moultrie intervened. "Since you are apprehensive in that quarter--"

"I am not apprehensive," Rutledge's denial was so testy as to make it
quite clear that he was what he said he wasn't.

"Well, then, since you feel as you do, why don't you take a straight,
simple course, and have Carey locked up until our present troubles are
over?"

Rutledge's brooding eyes pondered him almost scornfully.

"Simple courses are for simple men. And I am not simple, William, as I
mean to show. Abruptly he turned again to Latimer, who was frowning and
breathing rather hard Once before, Major Latimer, you and I disagreed on
the subject of a channel through which information was leaking to the
opposite side. Your obstinacy, then, prevailed against my calmer and
riper judgment. If that should happen again now, it will be very,
unfortunate for everybody, but most unfortunate for you."

"And now I think you threaten me, sir," said Harry, his bristles rising
further.

"Tchah Tchah! threaten!" Rutledge's contempt was withering. "This is not
a time for airs and graces."

"Certainly not for graces. Your excellency makes that plain."

"I'll make something else plain, so that hereafter there may be nothing
to excuse you. You shall not be able to say that I have withheld light
from your mind. I told you four years ago, when Featherstone was
sacrificed to your vainglory, that, there is a better use for spies than
to hang them or tar-and-feather them. They are ready channels through
which false information may be conveyed to an enemy to his undoing. That
is why I do not arrest Carey. He may prove just such a channel should I
require it. If I do, God help him. He shall serve my purposes and betray
his own active treachery at one and the same time. You understand? But in
the meantime I must see that no grain of useful information should reach
him. That is why I admonish you where your wife is concerned."

"I would have your excellency understand that I resent the admonition."

"Resent it all you please. But observe it."

"And that," Latimer continued coldly, "when our present engagements are
over, and your excellency is of less moment to the State, I shall have
the honour to ask for satisfaction."

Rutledge looked at him a moment in silence with an eye of dull contempt.
"Sir," he answered, and now he was more like his normal emotionless self,
"we may leave the future until it comes. My affair is with the present.
In the present I am the servant of the State, and I have no thought or
purpose that does not concern the State. If you think otherwise, why,
sir, you are a fool, and there's an end on't."

Latimer hung his head in shame under that just rebuke. But Moultrie went
to the rescue.

"We all know that, John; Harry knows it as well as I do. But, damme, it
is possible to serve the State without insult to its citizens."

Rutledge gave him his hard cold eyes a moment. "Et tu, Brute!" he said.
Then laughed shortly, turned on his heel, and stalked out of the house.



CHAPTER VIII - THE SPY


Early on the following morning, the vanguard of Prevost's army, composed
of some companies of Scots Highlanders and Hessians, and numbering
somewhere about eight hundred, crossed the Ashley, and advanced upon the
town, under the command of Colonel Prevost, the general's brother. The
general himself remained for the present in camp on the south bank of the
river with the main army and the heavy baggage.

Within the lines Count Pulaski, who had ridden over from Hadrell's Point,
paraded his legion, and having wrung consent from the governor, rode out
in a gallantly chivalrous but futile sortie from which he was speedily
whipped back with shattered forces. The British pursued him to within a
mile of the lines. There the Charles Town artillery which covered his
retreat checked the advancing enemy, who halted and sat down out of range
but well within the view of the defenders manning the trenches.

In the town behind them there was excitement and anxiety, but no panic,
for the people had Moultrie's assurance that he was in sufficient
strength to hold the place, and that the British should not enter.

It was a faith not shared by all. That afternoon a gaunt, keen-eyed man,
whose faded uniform bore the epaulettes and badges of a colonel, came
riding along the lines up to the abatis by the Town Gate. Here were
assembled Moultrie and a group of officers including Latimer, in
consultation with the governor.

Rutledge looked round at the man's approach. It was Colonel Senf, the
State's engineer.

"Well?" Rutledge asked him. "What do you report?" The colonel shook his
head. "We are very weak," he answered. "Here on our left the lines are
not above four feet thick, and the parapets are still far from
completed."

"But work hasn't ceased?" quote Rutledge on a rising inflexion.

"No. You can see them toiling yonder." And he pointed to a distant group
of labourers actively weilding spade and mattock. "But the attack may
come at any moment, and in what case are we to withstand it?"

It was Moultrie who span round, leaning heavily upon his cane, to answer
him briskly.

"In better case than we were in Fort Sullivan. That was pronounced a
slaughter-pen by General Lee--a soldier of great experience. It proved a
slaughter-pen, indeed: for those who attacked it. We don't depend upon a
few feet of earth, colonel. We've better than that to show these
gentlemen when they ask our leave to enter the town." He turned again,
pointing with his cane. "I think they suspect it. For you observe they
are in no haste to taste our hospitality."

There was some laughing comment from the group, in which, however,
Rutledge did not join. Aloof, glum of countenance, he stood, chin in hand,
looking out towards the distant movement of men and the cloud of dust
hanging above and about them in the sunlight.

"That is because they are not yet in sufficient force," he answered. He
sighed. "If only it lay in our power to delay the crossing of the main
army for twenty-four hours!" Almost as if thinking aloud, though Heaven
knows that was far from being a habit with him: "Twenty-four hours!" he
repeated.

But Moultrie belittled the importance of the time. "Pooh! We are as ready
for them now as we shall be to-morrow."

"Are we?" Rutledge turned slowly to look at him. "I pray they may continue
to think so. That they do think so now is plain. For if they had definite
knowledge of our numbers they would not be delaying the attack."

Without waiting for a reply he stepped down from the abatis, and walked
to his horse, which was being held for him by a groom. Moultrie and
Latimer followed. At the moment of mounting, Rutledge turned again.

"Above all," he said, "see that a sharp look-out is kept along the lines,
and that no one is allowed to pass out upon any pretext." The vehemence
of his insistence was remarkable.

"But, of course," Moultrie answered. "It is being done. Also I have
posted sentries along the water front."

"And let no military movement be undertaken without first consulting me,"
was Rutledge's last order as he rode away.

Moultrie was left frowning over that. He smiled crookedly as presently he
looked at Harry.

"There's a despot for you."

Harry did not smile back. He was warmed by indignation. "Sometimes I ask
myself who is the commander here."

"Sh!" Moultrie checked him. "Let be. He is acting upon some secret plan
of his own."

"A secret from the general commanding!" exclaimed Latimer, and laughed.
"I marvel you endure it."

"That is because I trust him, absolutely. He is patriotic, stout-hearted,
and stout-headed. I am not sure that, myself, I possess all those
qualities in the same degree. It's only fools, Harry, who don't know
their limitations."

They mounted and rode back into town together, down Broad Street, through
the wide gateway, at which sentries were posted, into the garden space
about Moultrie's residence. The place wore now an aspect conforming more
than ever with its temporary character of general headquarters. There was
a guard before the door, and a couple of orderlies were on duty in the
hall. In addition to the room which served as Moultrie's office, the
library had been more or less cleared of superfluous furniture and was
now also devoted to the business of war.

As a consequence, and excepting the dining-room, which had been left at
their disposal, Myrtle and the boy were now confined to the upper part of
the house.

Harry would have gone in quest of them at once. But in the hall they
found in addition to the orderlies, two militia-men with a prisoner who
had been brought in a few minutes before their arrival.

"We took him, sir, between the old Magazine and Lover's Walk. He was
making his way towards the lines, and taking great care not to be seen."

Moultrie looked the fellow over with that keen small eye of his. He was a
shabby, weedy young man in the garb of an artisan, and fright had reduced
his countenance to the colour of clay.

Now Moultrie had not been out of his clothes for thirty hours, and with
the prospect of another night in the lines, he was intent upon snatching
what rest he could while opportunity served. It was a duty not only to
himself, but to the State. So he left the fellow to Latimer, and went off
upstairs.

With a sigh of weariness and of disgust at the task before him, Latimer
turned to the door of the ante-chamber which now did duty as a
guard-room.

"Fetch him along," he bade the guards.

They followed with their prisoner across the guard-room, where at that
moment Lieutenant Middleton was explaining to a disgruntled ship-master
the temporary harbour regulations with which he was desired to conform.
Thence they passed into the quiet of the inner office. It was a spacious,
bare room, well lighted by two windows in one of the walls, and by two
glass doors in another, opening upon the garden, where all now was
sunshine and fragrance.

Major Latimer crossed to the large, square table of plain oak, set
sideways to one of these glass doors, which was closed and bolted. The
table was equipped with writing-materials, and littered with papers,
whilst a fragment of lead served to pin down a large map which trailed
like a table-cover over one of the corners.

The major flung his hat on the table, pulled the wooden armchair half
round, and sat down so that his elbow was on the board. The men brought
their captive to a halt immediately before him.

"Have you searched him?" he began.

One of the guards stepped forward, and placed various objects on the
table. They included a kerchief, a knife, a tinder-box, a purse and a
pistol.

Latimer picked up the purse. Out of it on to the table he emptied eleven
English guineas, in themselves almost enough to condemn so shabby a rogue
as this.

"Gold, eh?" said Latimer. "What's your name, my man?"

The pallid lips parted, and the fellow's voice came in a croak of
apprehension.

"Jeremiah Quinn, your honour. I swear to heaven I have--"



"Yes, yes. But wait. Just answer my questions. What is your trade?"

"I'm a carpenter, sir."

"Where do you usually work?"

"Here in Charles Town, your honour. I've a shop in Middle Lane."

"How long have you been here?"

"All my life, sir. I were born in Charles Town, as plenty folk can swear
to your honour. My brother was gard'ner to Colonel Gadsden, and--"

"Not so fast. One thing at a time. What was taking you to the lines?"

The answer was delayed by a tap on the door, followed by the entrance of
Lieutenant Middleton.

"His excellency the governor is here, sir," he announced, and before the
announcement was quite uttered, Rutledge had unceremoniously brushed past
him into the room.

Latimer rose. The lieutenant disappeared, closing the door. Rutledge's
harassed eyes conned the spy an instant malevolently.

"I was told of this arrest," he informed Latimer without looking at him.
"But you are examining him. Please continue."

He dragged a chair over to the glass door, a little beyond-Latimer, and
sat down with his back to the light.

The major also sat down again, marvelling that at such a time a man in
the position of the governor should be concerned with the examination of
a wretched spy.

He resumed his questions.

"I was asking you what was taking you to the lines."

The prisoner moistened his dry lips. His terror appeared to increase now
under the cold eye in the governor's pale inscrutable face that was so
unwinkingly fixed upon him.

"I...was seeking to get out o' the town."

"So much we perceive. But with what intent? Why did you want to leave the
town?"

"For fear o' the British, of what they'll do to us when they come in.
They're terrible cruel."

"So that fear of the British was leading you straight towards their
camp?"

"I weren't going to their camp. I swear before God I weren't. I wanted to
get out into the country, where a man may lie hid until this fightin' be
o'er."

"I see. You represent yourself as just a coward. Are you married?"

"No, sir. Widower. No children. I'm all alone with nobody to care for me.
So what for should I stay to be murdered?"

"Where did you get this gold--this English gold?"

"They're my savings, your honour; my savings from better days. All I have
in the world. 'Tweren't natural I should leave it behind. 'Twas all I was
taking with me."

"That's to be ascertained," said Latimer, and turned again to the objects
on the table.

He picked up the handkerchief, and held it up to the light, scanning it
closely, and running his fingers along the hem. Satisfied that it was
entirely innocent, he turned his attention to the knife.

Watching him the prisoner's face grew leaden, his eyes almost glazed. He
looked like swooning when a sudden question from Rutledge roused him.

"Whom do you know in Tradd Street?"

The question startled not only Quinn, but Latimer as well. Yet neither of
them betrayed it. Latimer continued apparently engrossed in his task, but
his ears were intent upon the reply.

Nobody, your honour."

"You don't know a Quaker named Neild?"

Latimer was relieved. Considering that Carey dwelt in Tradd Street, he
had expected a very different question. The prisoner hesitated a moment.

"Neild, your honour?" he echoed. He was playing for time to collect his
wits and consider his answer. Yet in the very endeavour blundered upon
that answer: "Will it be Master Johathan Neild?"

"I see that you do know him. He's lodged in Tradd Street, isn't he?" The
prisoner nodded. "Then why say you know nobody in Tradd Street?" And
without giving him time to answer, he passed to the next question: "What
is your business with him?

"He engaged me, your honour, to make some boxes for him, for shipping his
tobacco. I'm a carpenter, your honour, as I've told the major."

"When did he so engage you?"

"Two days ago. Day before yesterday."

"Did you take him the boxes when you went to see him to-day?"

"No, your honour. I went to tell him I shouldn't be able to make them, as
I was leaving Charles Town."

"Why did you tell him something it was against your interests to make
known? Something that must have procured your detention here?"

The prisoner was startled. Grimy fingers fumbled nervously at a grimy
neckcloth, for a moment. I...I didn't think of it."

"What did Neild answer you?

"Nothin' much, sir. Said as he were sorry. That he must find another
carpenter."

"He didn't say he would lay information of your intentions to leave a
town from which none is permitted to depart at present?"

"No. He said nothin' more'n I've told your honour."

The governor turned to Latimer. "If you've followed my questions, and
this man's answers, I think you'll see we've every reason to detain him."

"I had already seen that, your excellency," Latimer answered, He had
finished with all the other objects from Quinn's pockets and was now
examining the last of them, the pistol. He lifted the cock and opened the
pan. There was no priming. "Whilst you were putting a pistol in your
pocket against emergencies, why didn't you take the trouble to load it?"
he asked.

Quinn's lips parted, but it was some seconds before he replied. A sort of
paralysis seemed suddenly to have overtaken him. At last his answer came:

"I...I...had no powder."

Latimer looked at him, and slowly nodded, as if satisfied with the
answer. Then he dismounted the pistol's ramrod, and thrust it into the
barrel. It went home. The barrel was empty. Watching him with terrified
eyes, Quinn saw him turn the ramrod in such a manner that the end of it
must scrape against the inner side of the barrel. Suddenly Latimer looked
at the prisoner, pausing in his probing. Then he removed the ramrod,
pulled open the table's drawer, searched there a moment and found a
probe, long and slender as a knitting-needle.

Rutledge came to stand over him whilst he was at work with this. A musket
crashed to the ground, and there was a sharp movement of feet from the
group of guards and prisoner. Turning, startled by the noise, Latimer and
Rutledge beheld Quinn's body sagging loosely as an empty sack in the arms
of the soldiers. He had fainted.

"Poor devil!" said Latimer, who guessed readily enough the panic which
had laid him low.

"Come, come," rasped Rutledge impatiently. For the major had interrupted
his work.

As the soldiers eased that inert body to the ground, Latimer's probe
brought a cylinder of fine paper from the inside of the barrel. He spread
the little sheet on the table. Rutledge leaned heavily upon his shoulder
as he lowered his head to read it with him. But the message was in
cipher.

"No matter," Rutledge grumbled. "It's enough. Give it to me. I'll have it
deciphered presently."

This was of course irregular. But the despotic Rutledge, invested as he
was with more than sovereign powers, was fast becoming a law unto
himself. Latimer surrendered the document, and the governor pocketed it.

He turned to the guards. "Take him away," he curtly ordered. "Let him be
closely confined under guard until we take order about him."

He paced the room, hands folded behind him, until it was done and for
some moments afterwards. Latimer, worn and weary, and even a little
stricken at the thought of the fate awaiting that wretched spy whom his
own wits had tracked to his death, sat waiting for the governor to
depart.

Rutledge came presently to halt before the table. "That was shrewd of
you, Major Latimer," he said without warmth, and Latimer well knew to
what he alluded. "But don't imagine that we have caught the real British
agent."

"I don't," said Latimer. "There remains here the writer of that letter."

Rutledge nodded. "That is the man we want. You don't suspect his
identity, I suppose?"

Latimer looked at him without answering. For the second time in the
half-hour he imagined that he was to hear his father-in-law's name. But
again he was mistaken.

"Neild," said Rutledge. "This Quaker, this tobacco-planter. That is the
man I suspect."

Again, as when first the name had been mentioned, Latimer sought to
remember where he had last heard it. Suddenly he succeeded. Rutledge
meanwhile was continuing:

"He has suddenly appeared here again, three days ago; the day before the
British reached the Ashley. It's vastly coincident. And the very fact
that he lodges with Carey, on the pretence of trading with him, is in
itself suspicious."

Shall I order his arrest, sir?"

"Hum!" Rutledge considered, stroking his long chin, which from its loss
of fullness seemed to have grown longer. "If he is what I suspect him to
be, you'll not find him as easy to unmask as that poor wretch who was
here just now."

"Don't you think, sir, that if this Neild had anything to hide, he would
choose some other lodging than Carey's? That is to draw suspicion and
attention at once, considering what is known of Sir Andrew's sentiments.
Surely, sir, no spy would wish to do that."

"A shrewd bold man might count upon our arguing just as you are arguing.
Would draw suspicion flagrantly upon himself that thereby he might disarm
it. But it would need a bold man; a very bold man. And to trap such a man
one should proceed with cunning. So you had better not yet order his
arrest."

"I could have him watched."

"Yes. Wait." He paced away again, and back to the table once more: "The
thing would be to examine him so that he does not suspect that he is
being examined. But how are we to accomplish that?

"He's a tobacco-planter, you say?"

Rutledge nodded. Latimer considered still a moment. "I might send for him
on the pretext of desiring to buy tobacco."

"You might. And he would know exactly what you meant. You've other things
to think of at the moment; and he knows it as well as we do."

"Once here, I might disarm his suspicions."

"How? The word was nothing, the tone everything in its implied contempt.

"I should have to depend on my wit for that," said Latimer, piqued by the
other's question. "If you bid me do it! Will see what I can accomplish."

"It's that, or nothing, I suppose," said Rutledge. "Very well."

He stalked away to the door, his head bent in thought, and went out. A
moment later, he was back again.

"Major Latimer, whether you unmask him or not, after you have examined
him you'd better have him detained."

"Even if I am satisfied that there is nothing against him?"

"In any case. I'll take no risks of having messages sent to Prevost just
at present. No risks at all,"



CHAPTER IX - THE LIE CONFIRMED


An orderly left a message at Tradd Street a couple of hours later,
desiring that Mr. Jonathan Neild should give himself the trouble of
calling upon Major Latimer at General Moultrie's headquarters. Mr. Neild,
the orderly was informed by Sir Andrew's butler, was not then at home.
But upon his return the message should promptly be delivered.

His return must have taken place soon thereafter for in less than an hour
you behold Mr. Neild stepping into the hall of Moultrie's house on Broad
Street, and announcing in a nasal whine, but with all the calm of an
untroubled mind, that he was there by the major's invitation.

Lieutenant Middleton, who had received his instructions, put him in the
library to wait, and stationed a guard unobtrusively in the garden under
the library windows. This may seem supererogative precaution. Considering
that the man had come of his own free will, it was hardly to be imagined
that he would now attempt to run away. But the lieutenant understood that
no risks were to be taken, and that the bird being safely caged, however
willingly, it would be as well to make quite sure that the door of the
cage was shut.

That done young Middleton went upstairs to inform Latimer. But he was
confronted by Myrtle, who checked him just as he was about to rap upon
her husband's door.

"What is it, Mr. Middleton? Is it very urgent?"

She asked the question anxiously, yet on a muffled note. Clearly she
desired not to disturb the sleepers. Influ