A Spectre of Power by Mary Noailles Murfree

IN her after life Lilias often reviewed her sentiments as she sat there in the blue cold, with that curious suggestion of grit in the air common to a low temperature, the repulsion to the dust of the place more pronounced and apparent to the sensitive finger-tips than if it were summer. She had wrapped herself in the otter-fur mantle that she had carried in view of the relinquishment of her red rokelay to the fugitive. Presently she put both feet on the rungs of the chair and crouched forward like some tiny animal, her golden hair barely glimpsed beneath the light brown tints of the fur. Sometimes she put her blue hands to her mouth to feel how chill they were, and blew her warm breath upon them; then again she clenched the trembling fingers and drew her mantle closer. How cold it was! How had he endured it! It might be colder still on the river, but he was speeding toward freedom, and there was genial warmth in the mere suggestion. How cruel men were to each other! And he was but obeying the behests of his government, as Captain Howard regarded as sacred every scrawl that reached him from headquarters.

Now and again the sounds from the guardroom caught her attention, -- a tramp of feet with a measured swinging gait, a snatch of song, and presently a droning deep voice going on and on, as one should say for an hour or more, with but little interruption, telling a long story.

How cold it was! how cold! She wondered how long she could sustain it. The longer she sat here in her wrap of otter fur the farther he would be on his way down the Keowee River. If only she could know that he had made good his escape! that she had atoned for the dreadful evil she had wrought in revealing his secret! Then indeed she would be happy! In liberating him, she argued, she had promoted no massacre of women and children. If aught that he had planned threatened them it was frustrated, for he was off and on his way out of the country, and she had aided his flight, nay, made it possible. If only she could know that he had won the river bank and found the canoe! Down and down the Savannah he would paddle the canoe, and a man in buckskins, the usual garb of the country, -- for he would soon doff the woman's habiliments, -- would attract no attention from casual observers on the banks; and some night -- some dark night soon -- he would float out of Charlestown harbor, and finally be picked up by some French man-of-war or merchantman, so many there were then in the southern waters. The pursuit would undoubtedly take head in the opposite direction. Few would imagine it safer to flee directly toward the enemy's stronghold rather than from it. They would follow him back into the Indian country, where he had friends, influence, the French prestige -- a thousand reasons to command succor and concealment. But to Charlestown -- into the lion's mouth? In this instance the lion slept with his mouth open. Somehow she was sure no one would think of this resource but herself. She would give him all the time she could, a good start ahead of all possible pursuit. Six hours it might be, if she could so long endure the cruel cold, before the noise of his escape should be bruited abroad. The noonday meal was just concluded. The British soldier was presumed to eat no supper; at least, only two meals were furnished him, except on the frontier, where to content him the better, perhaps, on the theory that the road to his heart lay through his stomach, a third was served. This came a little before the hour of retreat. She wondered if the prisoners shared in this extra refection. She had an idea that then at all events she must needs call in the guard; she would be able to endure it no longer.

As she sat crouching and still in the only chair of the bleak and bare apartment, her attention was attracted by a crystalline tinkle against the glass of the window. She thought it must be snowing afresh. Presently she rose, stood upon the chair, for the window was exceedingly high, to be out of the reach of any enterprising prisoner, and then she stepped noiselessly upon the table. Looking upward through the grimy glass she could see the whirl of dizzy flakes against the sky. A tumultuous storm it was. A man fleeing through it would be invisible. It would render pursuit impracticable, so long as it should continue. Her heart gave a great throb of triumph. The afternoon was wearing on. The light was dulling fast, and unless a barricade of ice should impede the flow of the river these few hours' start would mean freedom to a man fleeing for his life!

Reassured, invigorated, she stepped slowly, softly down from the table to the chair, and then from the chair to the floor. She seated herself anew in silence, in loneliness, muffled to her eyebrows in her otter furs, and listening to the gay snatches of song about the great flaring hearth in the guardroom.

And it was cold, it was very cold!

During the afternoon Jock Lesly decided to tramp over to the fort. He had a desire to compare views with Captain Howard and expatiate on the incident of the capture, so full of import to them both, -- to the soldier as representing the military element, and the trader the mercantile interests of the post. He had scarcely stretched out his smoking boots to the fire, seated in the officer's comfortable quarters, than Captain Howard introduced the subject of the weather in reference to the prisoner, intending to thank the trader for the consideration he had manifested in sending blankets to the fort, in view of the arctic temperature.

"We ought to consider our obligations to the helpless," said the officer, "but, as far as I am concerned, Gad, sir, I'm kept so short for funds that it is often like letting a faithful soldier and servant of the king go cold in order to house and blanket and warm some miscreant enemy to the whole community."