Mrs. Condiment sighed and wiped her eyes under her spectacles.
The worthy minister, now seriously alarmed, came to him and said: "My dear, dear major, do not be unjust--consider. She is an old
faithful domestic, who has been in your service forty years--whom you
could not live without! I say it under advisement--whom you could not
live without!"
"Hang it, sir, nor live with! Think of her helping to free the
prisoners! Actually taking Black Donald--precious Father Gray!--into
their cell and leaving them together to hatch their--beg you
pardon--horrid plots!"
"But, sir, instead of punishing the innocent victim of his deception,
let us be merciful and thank the Lord, that since those men were
delivered from prison, they were freed without bloodshed; for remember
that neither the warden nor any of his men, nor any one else has been
personally injured."
"Hang it, sir, I wish they had cut all our throats to teach us more
discretion!" broke forth Old Hurricane.
"I am afraid that the lesson so taught would have come too late to be
useful!" smiled the pastor.
"Well, it hasn't come too late now! Mrs. Condiment, mum, mind what I
tell you! As soon as we return to Hurricane Hall, send in your accounts
and seek a new home! I am not going to suffer myself to be set at
naught any longer!" exclaimed Old Hurricane, bringing down his cane
with an emphatic thump.
The sorely troubled minister was again about to interfere, when, as the
worm if trodden upon, will turn, Mrs. Condiment herself spoke up,
saying: "Lor, Major Warfield, sir, there were others deceived besides me, and
as for myself, I never can think of the risk I've run without growing
cold all over!"
"Serves you right, mum, for your officiousness, and obsequiousness and
toadying to--precious Mr. Gray!--serves you doubly right for famishing
me at my own table!"
"Uncle!" said Capitola, "'Honor bright! Fair play is a jewel!' If you
and I, who have seen Black Donald before, failed to recognize that
stalwart athlete in a seemingly old and sickly man, how could you
expect Mrs. Condiment to do so, who never saw him but once in her life,
and then was so much frightened that she instantly fainted?"
"Pah! pah! pah! Cap, hush! You, all of you, disgust me, except Black
Donald! I begin to respect him! Confound if I don't take in all the
offers I have made for his apprehension, and at the very next
convention of our party I'll nominate him to represent us in the
National Congress; for, of all the fools that ever I have met in my
life, the people of this county are the greatest! And fools should at
least be represented by one clever man--and Black Donald is the very
fellow! He is decidedly the ablest man in this congressional district."