"Poor!" cried the captain. "If he is poor, King George is a bad
paymaster."
"Yes, indeed," said one of the subalterns, "his Majesty owes him a
dukedom."
"And congress a halter," continued the commanding officer commencing
anew on a fresh supply of the cakes.
"I am sorry," said Mr. Wharton, "that any neighbor of mine should incur
the displeasure of our rulers."
"If I catch him," cried the dragoon, while buttering another cake, "he
will dangle from the limbs of one of his namesakes."
"He would make no bad ornament, suspended from one of those locusts
before his own door," added the lieutenant.
"Never mind," continued the captain; "I will have him yet before I'm a
major."
As the language of the officers appeared to be sincere, and such as
disappointed men in their rough occupations are but too apt to use, the
Whartons thought it prudent to discontinue the subject. It was no new
intelligence to any of the family, that Harvey Birch was distrusted and
greatly harassed by the American army. His escapes from their hands, no
less than his imprisonments, had been the conversation of the country in
too many instances, and under circumstances of too great mystery, to be
easily forgotten. In fact, no small part of the bitterness expressed by
Captain Lawton against the peddler, arose from the unaccountable
disappearance of the latter, when intrusted to the custody of two of his
most faithful dragoons.
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