At this there came an interruption from the outer room. “Why don’t you bring the d—d Tory out?” cried a voice that scorned disguise. “What’s the use of all this palaver, Levi? Might be a Cherokee pow-wow by the sound of it. Come! If he don’t know what to expect he’d best go and ask at Buford’s! Bring him out, confound you! Here’s his horse, and a rope and—” “You’ll let me dress?” I said. There was no chance, I saw, but clearly what chance there was lay in coolness and delay, if delay were possible. “With a long journey before me, a man likes to start handsomely,” I continued, addressing the smaller man whom they called Levi. “I am sure that Captain Wilmer would not wish to put me to more inconvenience than is necessary. He’s been at a good deal of trouble—” “A vast lot too much,” the man in the outer room struck in. “He needs a lesson, too, and we’re the lads of mettle to give it him! Here,” with a mingling of sarcasm and impatience, “pass along my lord’s vally, and his curling tongs! ’Fraid we can’t stop while he powders! Now, no nonsense, damme! Where’s his clothes? Where’s that nigger? Tom!” The nigger was passed in from one to another, getting some rough usage on the way. “If you could withdraw, gentlemen, for a minute?” I said. Alone I might think of something. But, “No, stranger, by your leave,” Levi replied, with a sneer. “You’re too precious! We’re not going to lose sight of you till—till the time comes. Go on with your dressing, if you don’t want to go in your shirt!” Perhaps it was as well that they did not go, for I was shaky on my legs and I feared nothing so much as that I should break down through bodily weakness. Their presence braced me and gave me the less time to think. Tom’s fingers trembled so much that he was not as useful as he might have been, but with his help I got somehow into my clothes—with many a twinge and one groan that I could not check. The injured arm was already bound to my side, but by passing the other arm through the sleeve of a coat—Wilmer’s I suppose, for my uniform was not wearable—and looping the garment loosely round my neck, I was clothed after a fashion. With these men looking sombrely on, and their shadows, cast by the wavering light of the candle, rising and falling on the ceiling, and the hurry and silence, broken now and again by some, “Lord ha’ mercy” from the outer room, it was such a toilet as men make in Newgate but surely nowhere else. “That’ll do,” Levi cried by and by. “You’ll not catch cold.” “We’ll answer for that!” chimed in another. “Bring him on! He’ll be warm enough where he’s going! We’ve wasted more time than enough already!”