“Aren’t you going away?” we asked anxiously. “What did you take the papers for?”
“Little madam,” he said, “you had best go to bed and get a good night’s rest. That is what I am going to do. Mrs. Norman, make this poor child go to bed. And you will promise me to try to rest too, won’t you?”
Mr. Holliway opened it to admit the Dutchman.
“Shentlemen,” he began earnestly, “tey haf got te leetle Chew poy trunk mit giffin’ him visky, unt he haf tolt everyding. I pe your vrent. You mus’ get avay pefore mitnight.”
“The little Jew knows nothing to tell,” said the captain. “His drunken babble is not worth attention. We can not leave my sisters.”
“How you help tem by stayin’? I gif you my vort dat tey vill get to Paltimore all right. I hates to see tem Yankees takes you up in mine house.”
Milicent and I believed in the German. So I think did both gentlemen by this time, but we had come this far under their care, and they were loath to leave us unless entirely convinced that it was for our safety as well as their own. Mr. Holliway was no less concerned about us than Captain Locke was, but he took a darker view of the situation. He drew Locke aside and they talked together in low tones. I caught the word “reckless” and “those papers,” and “a disadvantage to them,” “safer without us.” When they turned back to us Captain Locke said:
“We leave the question in your hands, ladies. Perhaps we--and more particularly I--endanger you by remaining. But I hate to leave you alone this way, and I am not afraid of anything that can happen to me. If the worst came to the worst, and we were arrested, I have some influence in the North which might still be of benefit to us all.”
“Use it for yourself and Mr. Holliway,” we said, “and go.”
“Think well, ladies. You want us to go now, but when we are gone and you are here alone, won’t you feel desolate and deserted?”
“We will only be glad you’re gone,” I said.
“I don’t think I ever heard such a polite speech in my life,” said Captain Locke, laughing. “Holliway, I think we had better leave immediately.”
He stood cool and smiling, but Mr. Holliway, whose health was not robust, and upon whom the hardships of the journey and the excitement had told, was ghastly. Not that he lacked courage. He would have stayed and died for us, as far as that was concerned; but his physical endurance was not great, and from the first he had been oppressed with a presentiment of evil.