Cardigan

"Where is my companion?" I asked, red as a poppy under his grins.

"Below, sir," replied the lad, hesitating.

"Drunk?" I demanded, angrily.

"Tolerable," said the lad.

With that I seized my nosegay, set my small French hat on my head, and went down the side stairway to the street.

Mount, swaggering on the tap-room porch, spied me and rubbed his startled eyes. But I seized him by the painted cape of his fox-trimmed hunting-shirt, and jerked him to and fro savagely.

"Idiot! Tippler! Pottle-pot!" I cried, in a rage. "I'm to be married – d'ye hear? Married! Married! Get me a parson! Take my nosegay! So! Now walk behind me as if you knew what decent folk are accustomed to do at a sudden wedding!"

"How can I get you a parson if I'm to march here behind you, bearing this nosegay?" he remonstrated, sidling away towards the tavern again.

"You stay where you are!" I said; then I called a servant and bade him find a parson to go instantly to the house of Thomas Foxcroft in Queen Street, and there await my coming.

Mount, almost sobered, through sheer astonishment, regarded me wildly.

"Jack, old friend," I said, in a burst of happiness, "I've found her, and she will be my wife by noon! Give me joy, Jack! – and mind that nosegay, idiot! Hold it aloft, else the streamers will trail in the dust! Now, then! Follow me! Gingerly, idiot, gingerly!"

And away I marched, scarce knowing what I did in my excitement, but turning now and again to see that Mount followed, bearing the nosegay with proper care.

"If you are to be wedded at noon," he said, timidly, as we were hurrying through Cambridge Street, "what are we going to do until then – walk the streets like this? Lord, what a fool I feel!"

I stopped short. It was quite true that I was not expected at Mr. Foxcroft's before noon, and it was now but ten o'clock or a little after.

"I can't sit still in that tavern," I said. "Let us walk, Jack. Two hours are quickly past. Come, step beside me – and mind those ribbons! Jack! I am mad with happiness!"

"Then let us drink to it," suggested Mount, but I jerked him to my side, and scarcely knowing what to do or where to go, started on, with the vague idea of circling the city in a triumphal march.

I shall never forget my first glimpse of the city by daylight: its brick houses streaked with sea-fog, its bare wooden wharves glimmering in the sunshine, as Mount and I passed through Lyna Street and out along the water by Lee's ship-yard and Waldo's Wharf.

Northward across the misty water the roofs and steeples of Charlestown reddened in the sun; to the west the cannon on Corps Hill glittered, pointing seaward over the Northwest Water Mill. From somewhere in the city came the beating of drums and the faint squealing of fifes; the lion banner of England flapped from Beacon Hill; white tents crowned the summit of Valley Acre; the ashes of the beacon smoked.

In the northwestern portion of the city the quiet of death reigned; there was not a sign of life in the streets; the wooden houses were closed and darkened; the ship-yards and wharves deserted; not a living soul was to be seen abroad. Mount's noiseless moccasined tread awoke no echoes, but my smart heels clattered as we turned southeast through squalid Hawkins Street, through Sudbury, Hanover, Wings Lane, Dock Square, by the Town Dock, and then south, past the Long Wharf and Battery Marsh, above which, on Fort Hill, another British flag rippled against the blue sky.

"The damned rag flies high to-day," muttered Mount.

"Are you not done with cursing it?" I said, impatiently. "This is no day for bitterness."

"It's a slave's flag," retorted Mount – "parry that!"

"It flew for centuries above free men; let that plead for it!" I answered.

There was an inn on Milk Street, near Bishop's Alley, and the first open house we had encountered. Mount, before I could prevent him, had nosed out the tap-room, and I followed perforce, although I knew well enough that it was an ill-advised proceeding, the place being full of British soldiery and Mount in a quarrelsome mood.

The soldiers eyed Mount and his nosegay askance, and Mount cocked his fox-skin cap and ruffled it offensively, outstaring the most insolent of them. But presently, to my relief, the soldiers left without accepting the opportunity for a quarrel, and Mount, somewhat dejected, refilled his glass and emptied it, with a disagreeable laugh. Then we went out by way of Winter Street to the Mall, Jack bearing my nosegay as though it had been a hostile ensign to flaunt before all England.

There seemed to be many people abroad on Common Street; the shops were open all along Treamount and King streets, and the Boston citizens went about their affairs as soberly and quietly as though the city were not choking to death with England's heavy fist at its throat.

As for the Boston people, they resembled our good townsmen of Tryon County somewhat, though their clothes were of a more elegant cut, and even the snuffiest of them wore lace and buckles. Their limbs and features, however, appeared long and thin, a characteristic I had already noticed in New England folk.

Through the double rows of trees I could see the tents of the marines pitched on the Mall, and beyond them a park of artillery and some low redoubts. Soldiers were passing everywhere: here a company marching to the drum across the Common, black gaiters twinkling; there a squadron of Light Horse, in blue and silver, riding, two abreast, to their barracks on George Street. Anon comes a company of red-necked Highlanders, bagpipes squawling, and it made me think of Johnson Hall to see their bare shins passing, sporrans a-swing, and the crawling whine of their pipes in my ears.

I looked at my watch; it was eleven o'clock. Mount and I leaned back against the railing of the south burying-ground, watching the busy life of the camp on the Common. I had never before seen so many soldiers together, nor such a brilliant variety of uniforms. The towns-people, too, lingered to watch the soldiers, some sullenly, some indifferently, some in open enjoyment. These latter were doubtless Tories, for in their faces one could not mistake the expression of sneering triumph. Also many of them talked to the soldiers, which earned them unconcealed scowls from passing citizens.

"Well," said Mount, "have you seen enough of the lobster-backs? The sight of them," he continued, raising his voice, "sours my stomach, and I care not who knows it."

Several people near us looked at him.

"Keep quiet!" I said, sharply. "I have no desire to spend the day in the provost cell yonder. Can you not remember what this day means to me?"

Mount shrugged his broad shoulders, lighted his pipe, and sat down on the grass under a tall elm.

"Sit beside me, lad," he said, "and I'll tell you all about these gay birds, and how to know them by their plumage. Mark! Yonder comes an officer in black and scarlet, wearing a single gold epaulette and a gold gorget, with the royal arms in gold on his white baldric. That's the royal artillery, Mr. Cardigan. That gay old buck beside him is a colonel of foot. He's all scarlet trimmed up with yellow and white. Most of them wear white breeches and black gaiters. There! That fellow in blue and silver, with orange cuffs and top-boots, is a trooper of Light Horse. See the steel head-piece with its roll of bear-skin and the orange plume on the left side. Some of 'em wear red cuffs and plumes, but you can tell them by their laced blue vests and jack-boots, and the officers by white baldrics and two silver epaulettes."

"What is that fellow there with the bear-skin cap and white plume and tassels?" I asked, with a pretence of interest which in my anxiety and excitement I could not feel. The splendid uniform which I pointed out glittered in stripes of silver and pale blue embroidery over a scarlet coat.

"That lad is a drummer of the Grenadiers," said Mount. "The soldier beside him with the green facings and green-and-gold stock is one of the Twenty-fourth Foot – a sergeant by his baldric and cross-spear. Oh, they're gay and godless, as the Weasel would say – "

He paused and looked down. The slightest tremor twitched his underlip. I laid my hand lightly on his shoulder.

"Ay, ay," he said, "I'm lost without him – I don't know what to do – I don't know. I see him in my sleep; he comes in dreams o' the woods. I wake laughing at his dry jests, and find my face twisted wi' tears. There's never a leaf stirs on a bough but I listen for Cade's padded footfall behind me; there's never a free wind blows but I hark for his voice a-calling me back to the sweet green forest and the spice o' the birch camp-fire. Lad! lad! He's dead and buried these long weeks, and I am but a weird-hound on a spectre trail, dogging his wraith."

We sat there on the grass watching the marines drilling; the artillery trotted clanking past for exercise at the Fox Hill redoubt, and presently we heard the dull boom-booming of their cannon along the west shore of the bay.

"They even shoot at the rebel fishes," sneered Mount, raising his voice for the benefit of his neighbours.

I sprang to my feet impatiently, adjusted my sword, and dusted the skirts of my coat.

"It's not half-past eleven yet," observed Mount.

"I don't care," I muttered; "I shall go to Queen Street now. Come, Jack! I cannot endure this delay, I tell you."

He did not answer.

"Come, Jack," I repeated, turning around to summon him. "What are you staring at, man?"

As I spoke a roughly clad man pushed in between me and Mount, swinging a knobbed stick; another man followed, then another. Mount had leaped to his feet and backed up to my side.

"It's Billy Bishop's gang!" he said, thickly. "Leave me, lad, or they'll take us both!"

Before I could comprehend what was on foot, half a dozen men suddenly surrounded Mount, and silently began to close in on him.

"Go!" muttered Mount, fiercely, pushing me violently from him.

"No, you don't!" said a cool voice at my elbow; "we want the Weasel, too, for all his fine clothes!"