Page:The Partisan (revised).djvu/46

 "I do desire it, squire; but there's odds against me, or we'd a-been at it afore this."

"What odds?"

"Look there!" and as Davis replied, he pointed to the fortress upon the opposite hill, a few hundred yards off, where the cross of Great Britain streamed high among the pine-trees, and from the entrance of which, at that very moment, a small body of regulars were pouring out into the street, and proceeding with martial music to the market-place.

"I see," replied the other&mdash;" I see; but why should they prove odds against you in a personal affair with this sergeant? You have justice from them surely."

"Justice!&mdash;such justice as a tory captain gives when he wants your horse, and don't want to pay for it."

Davis replied truly, in his summing up of British justice at that period.

"But you do not mean to say that the people would not be protected, were complaints properly made to the officers?"

"I do; and what's worse, complaint only goes after new hickories. One man was strapped up only yesterday, because he complained that Corporal Townes kicked his wife and broke his crockery. They gave him a hundred lashes."

"And yet loyalty must have its advantages, more than equal to this usage, else"&mdash;and a smile of bitter scorn played upon the lips of the speaker as he finished the sentence&mdash;"else there would not be so many to love it so well and submit to it so patiently."

The countryman gazed earnestly at the speaker, whose eyes were full of a most searching expression, which could not be misunderstood.

"Dang it, stranger," he cried, "what do you mean&mdash;who are you?"

"A man!" answered the speaker boldly;&mdash;"one who has not asked for a British protection, nor submitted to their hickories;" and the form of the stranger was elevated duly as he spoke, and his eye was lighted up with scornful fires, as his reference was made sarcastically to the many in the neighbourhood who had done both. The face of Davis was flushed when he heard this reply; the tears