Page:The Partisan (revised).djvu/40

, there's no better boy in Goose Creek, though he is cross and snappish when his fit's on, and no chicken either, as he says himself. He'll fight for his majesty any day, I know. There's no mistake in him&mdash;there's no mistake in any of the boys&mdash;I can answer for all that's here except&mdash;" and here the landlord paused in one of the longest speeches he had ever made, and his eye rested doubtfully upon the person of the stranger.

"Except me," said the latter, coming forward, looking Hastings attentively in the face as he spoke, and at the same time placing his hand with some little emphasis upon the shoulders of old Humphries,&mdash;"except me, Master Humphries, for whom you can say nothing&mdash;of whom you know nothing&mdash;but about whom you are excessively curious. You only know I am not a captain, nor yet a colonel; and as I have not satisfied your desires on these subjects, of course you cannot answer for my loyalty."

"Bless me, no; that I can't, stranger."

"But I can answer for myself and prefer to do so, Master Humphries, and that's enough for all parties; and I can say, as you have already said for these gentlemen, that my loyalty is quite as good as that of any around me, as we shall all see in due season. And now that this quarrel is ended, let me only beg of the worthy sergeant here, that he may not be so quick to draw his weapon upon the man that is unarmed. The action is by no means so creditable to the soldier, and one that he may, most probably, in time, come to be ashamed of."

The perfect coolness and self-possession of the stranger, in this brief interlude, confounded Hastings not less than it did the rest. He knew not in what character to behold him, and, but that he was rather stolid than otherwise, might have exhibited traces of that confusion which his mind certainly felt. But the air of superiority which the other manifested, annoyed him too greatly to give way to doubt or indetermination; and he was about to answer roughly, when a remark which Davis made, of a churlish nature, to the coquettish Bella Humphries, who still lingered beside the sergeant, attracted the latter's attention, and giving a glance to the speaker, he threw his collected spleen in that quarter, while addressing the girl&mdash;