The youth laughed irreverently, and the stranger, who had been standing apart, but still within hearing, noted the incident with considerable show of interest in his countenance.
"And what do you laugh at, John? Don't, boy—I pray you, don't. Let's have a glass together, and don't trouble yourself to be laughing again; there's danger in it. Come: a glass.—Good old Jamaica! Won't you join us, stranger?"
The youth declined, and Davis proceeded—
"Why do I laugh, Master Humphries? In truth I ought not to laugh when I see"—
Here he paused, and with a praiseworthy delicacy, he whispered in the old man's ear his objections to the large degree of intimacy existing between the British sergeant and his pretty daughter.
"Oh, go, John! there's no harm, boy. You're only jealous 'cause she turned you off."
"Turned me off, indeed!" responded the other, indignantly and aloud—"turned me off! No, Master Humphries—not so bad neither. But it's no use talking—you'll know all in time, and will wish you had minded what I told you. But go your own gait, you'll grow fatter upon it;" and with this not very nice proverb the disappointed lover turned away without taking the proffered Jamaica.
This scene had not been lost on the stranger youth, though little regarded by the other personages, who had each made his speech and taken his drink and departure. There was much more spoken that we do not care to record, but which, duly noted by the one observer to whom we have made especial reference, was held not unworthy in his mind of proper consideration. He had seen a dogged disposition on the part of Davis to break and quarrel with the British sergeant; and though he clearly saw that much of this disposition arose, as old Humphries had asserted, from a jealous dislike of the intimacy between Bella and the person in question, he yet perceived that many of the phrases made use of by the countryman indicated anything but respect or good feeling for the British authority. There was a sturdy boldness in his air and manner, when the other spoke to him of treason, which said that the crime was, after all, a venial one in his mind; and this disposition, perceptible as it must have been to the sergeant, not less than to the
