“You’re all right!” he said, heartily. “You can make your getaway as quick as you like.”
But to the conspiracy Miss Farrar refused to lend herself.
“How do you know,” she demanded, “that he will keep his promise? He may not go back to his own army. He can be just as dead on my lawn as anywhere else!”
“How you wrong me!” he protested. “How dare you doubt the promise of a dying man? These are really my last words, and I wish I could think of something to say suited to the occasion, but the presence of strangers prevents.”
He mounted his bicycle. “‘If I had a thousand lives to give,’” he quoted with fervor, “‘I’d give them all to--’” he hesitated, and smiled mournfully on Miss Farrar. Seeing her flushed and indignant countenance, he added, with haste, “to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!”
As he started on his wheel slowly down the path, he turned to the sergeant.
“I’m escaping,” he explained. The Reds, with an enthusiasm undoubtedly genuine, raised their rifles, and the calm of the Indian summer was shattered by two sharp reports. Lathrop, looking back over his shoulder, waved one hand reassuringly.
“Death was instantaneous,” he called. He bent his body over the handle-bar, and they watched him disappear rapidly around the turn in the road.
As though signifying that to oblige a woman he would shoot any number of prisoners, the sergeant raised his hat.
“Don’t mention it, lady,” he said. “I seen he was annoying you, and that’s why I got rid of him. Some of them amateur soldiers, as soon as they get into uniform, are too fresh. He took advantage of you because your folks were away from home. But don’t you worry about that. I’ll guard this house until your folks get back.”
“Really!” she exclaimed; “I need no one to guard me.”
But the soldier was obdurate. He motioned his comrade down the road.
“Watch at the turn,” he ordered; “he may come back or send some of the Blues to take us. I’ll stay here and protect the lady.”
Again Miss Farrar protested, but the sergeant, in a benign and fatherly manner, smiled approvingly. Seating himself on the grass outside the fence, he leaned his back against the gatepost, apparently settling himself for conversation.
“Now, how long might it have been,” he asked, “before we showed up, that you seen us?”