“We ask no consideration of any kind from men who have come to despoil our country and ruin its people,” she said icily.
Colonel Winchester flushed.
“But madame,” he protested, “we do not come to destroy.”
“I do not care to argue with you about it,” she said in the same lofty tone, “and also you need not address me as madame. I am Miss Woodville.”
Dick started.
“Does this house belong to Colonel John Woodville?” he asked.
“It does not,” she replied crisply, “but it belongs to his elder brother, Charles Woodville, who is also a colonel, and who is my father. What do you know of Colonel John Woodville?”
“I met his son once,” replied Dick briefly.
She glanced at him sharply. Dick thought for a moment that he saw alarm in her look, but he concluded that it was only anger.
They stood confronting each other, the little group of officers and the woman, and Colonel Winchester, embarrassed, but knowing that he must do something, went forward and pushed back a door opening into the hall. Dick automatically followed him, and then stepped back, startled.
A roar like that of a lion met them. An old man, with a high, bald and extremely red forehead lay in a huge bed by a window. It was a great head, and eyes, set deep, blazed under thick, white lashes. His body was covered to the chin.
Dick saw that the man’s anger was that of the caged wild beast, and there was something splendid and terrible about it.
“You infernal Yankees!” he cried, and his voice again rumbled like that of a lion.
“Colonel Charles Woodville, I presume?” said Colonel Winchester politely.
“Yes, Colonel Charles Woodville,” thundered the man, “fastened here in bed by a bullet from one of your cursed vessels in the Mississippi, while you rob and destroy!”
And then he began to curse. He drew one hand from under the cover and shook his clenched fist at them in a kind of rhythmic beat while the oaths poured forth. To Dick it was not common swearing. There was nothing coarse and vulgar about it. It was denunciation, malediction, fulmination, anathema. It had a certain majesty and dignity. Its richness and variety were unequaled, and it was hurled forth by a voice deep, powerful and enduring.
Dick listened with amazement and then admiration. He had never heard its like, nor did he feel any offense. The daughter, too, stood by, pursing her prim lips, and evidently approving. Colonel Winchester was motionless like a statue, while the infuriated man shook his fist at him and launched imprecations. But his face had turned white and Dick saw that he was fiercely angry.
When the old man ceased at last from exhaustion Colonel Winchester said quietly:
“If you had spoken to me in the proper manner we might have gone away and found quarters elsewhere. But we intend to stay here and we will repay your abuse with good manners.”
Dick saw the daughter flush, but the old man said:
“Then it will be the first time that good manners were ever brought from the country north of the Mason and Dixon line.”
Colonel Winchester flushed in his turn, but made no direct reply.
“If you will assign us rooms, Miss Woodville,” he said, “we will go to them, otherwise we’ll find them for ourselves, which may be less convenient for you. I repeat that we desire to give you as little trouble as possible.”
“Do so, Margaret,” interrupted Colonel Woodville, “because then I may get rid of them all the sooner.”
Colonel Winchester bowed and turned toward the door. Miss Woodville, obedient to the command of her father, led the way. Dick was the last to go out, and he said to the old lion who lay wounded in the bed:
“Colonel Woodville, I’ve met your nephew, Victor.”
He did not notice that the old man whitened and that the hand now lying upon the cover clenched suddenly.
“You have?” growled Colonel Woodville, “and how does it happen that you and my nephew have anything in common?”
“I could scarcely put it that way,” replied Dick, refusing to be angered, “unless you call an encounter with fists something in common. He and I had a great fight at his father’s plantation of Bellevue.”