Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish
me outright."
A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded
hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the
camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as
large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within,
lights and music and sounds of revelry.
"By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of
substance," says Dick. And then: "Can you pick out a good horse in the
dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these
cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed."
I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the
hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a
sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and
passed up the broad avenue to the manor house.
XLVI
HOW OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES
For a doorkeeper some one or another of the officer guests had set a
sergeant on guard; but though the night was yet young the man passed us
into the great entrance hall with a hiccough and a wink that spoke thus
early of an open house and freely flowing good cheer.
As we had hoped to find it, this rout at Master Harndon's was a stifling
jam, and a good half of the guests were in civilian plain clothes,
neither Paris nor London having as yet reached so far into the Carolina
plantations to proscribe homespun and to prescribe the gay toggeries of
the courts.
Pages:
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422